Equality of outcome is a really bad idea. Equality of opportunity is easier to approach and much more useful. I'd like to see everyone have a good chance to succeed. What they do with that chance is up to them. In order to approach equality of opportunity, we have to supply people with things. A child who grows up with malnutrition, bad education, and treatable medical conditions which aren't treated, has very little opportunity, and is being denied basic human rights. Liberty is worth very little to someone lacking the basic necessities.
In fact, most people don't want equal outcomes, and are in fact not Communist. ("From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is actually a pretty good way to run a society. Doesn't work with human beings, of course, but there might be an intelligent species out there that could live like that. Note that this is not an enforced equality of outcome in general, but an equality of material reward. There are other ways to pay people.)
You need to lose the idea that your ideas are pure Liberty and everyone else is arguing for tyranny. It makes it impossible to argue with you, since anyone disagreeing with you by definition wants tyranny, which by definition is evil. It makes it difficult for you to convince anyone of anything, since your reasoning will swiftly come back to an axiom other people don't share. It makes it difficult for you to refine and change your ideas, since you see yourself as absolutely right, and you're not willing to accept that other people may have different but valid points of view. One thing I learned from was once when I realized that a Communist I knew was just as patriotic as I was. We both wanted what's best for our country, but we differed greatly in what that "best for our country" was, and we had extremely different ideas on how to approach it.
Religion is a protected class except when you are a business owner and then the government may force you to abandon those beliefs while you operate your private business. Or if you reverse the roles. [thedenverchannel.com] So, even though the constitution protects the exercise of religion and religious belief is a federally protected class, it is not protected the same way as sexual orientation (state law) because????
I'm failing to understand here. If you have certain religious beliefs, then you can indeed collide with the law when trying to execute them. So, if you're a baker open to the public with a hateful religion, you have to sell things to lesbians, by law. If you're a baker with whatever sex and sexual practices, you have to sell things to the public, by law. I'm not aware of any sexual orientation that would prevent one from selling a cake to a member of a protected class.
Twitter, that has an impact on our elections, gets a pass to implement business policies that conform to their political ideology in their private business because????
Because that is exactly the same as other private businesses that have an impact on our elections.
In other words, you're citing a near-religious belief that countries go only one way. You say that Scandinavia is moving a little away from collectivism; if they can do that, then they can stay more or less where they are now indefinitely, varying both ways over the years.
My understanding of "conservatism" is old, not Eurocentric.
In my lifetime, the Democratic Party has swerved left, then considerably to the right, and is now moving to the left again. It never had a serious break with the past. Bill Clinton was more limited in what he could ask for. The Republicans changed their values considerably around 1980.
What your quote said is that lots of Muslims are happy to live in peace with their neighbors. It pointed out that Muslims are more likely than most to be expansionist, but I didn't deny that. Certainly if "most Muslims in the contemporary world desire to live in peace with their neighbors of other faith", violent aggression isn't inherent in the religion, although it does go along with it a disturbing amount of the time.
The largest ICBM has a throw weight of 8800 kilos, and less than half that might be more reasonable. That isn't all going to be explosives, Something fired by ICBM is going to need some sort of re-entry vehicle. Given a flight time of 10 minutes, which seems reasonable, a 20kt task force will cover over three nautical miles, and if they maneuver at all the predicted target would be a rather large area. I'm not impressed with how the numbers are working out, since it will take a pretty hard hit to put a modern carrier out of action. The whole idea reminds me of WWII heavy bombers attacking ships, and doing really badly.
And part of that is practicality. Relying on the police works better in the city, while having guns for self-defense makes more sense in the countryside. Cities are much more mixed places, so people have to get along with more different people. Churches and donations work far better for the poor when communities are small and homogenous.
UBI will be implemented one country at a time. It will provide a satisfactory but not lavish lifestyle for the community, more or less. It will not mean we're all equal financially, since people will have ways to earn more money. The revolutionary effects in employment is that workers will have the option to just quit at any time. This will remove a wide range of exploitation possibilities. Employers would have to pay extra to get people to do distasteful or dangerous jobs. They will have to maintain workplaces up to certain market-driven standards. They won't be able to get extra hours out of people not being paid much.
It does have the advantage that it would eliminate the minimum wage, since everybody already has enough money to live on.
the real question is whether we get there through carefully crafted laws and human compassion, or whether we get there kicking and screaming through half-measures and bureaucratic red tape.
Actually, I'm enough of a cynical bastard to think we'll arrive at it through rioting and other social unrest.
In a liability situation, why would UL help? Suppose you used UL-certified light bulbs, and they were used in a major DDoS attack. You get named in the suit, and when you try to pass the liability on back the company has disappeared or gone bankrupt or is out of the country or something. The UL isn't going to indemnify me. Lots of people will have some IoT-type devices without insurance, since (at least in the US) renter's insurance wasn't all that common when I still rented. Unless people have some sort of legal immunity for buying UL, it won't help.
Fire is local, and the source can usually be determined. IoT problems are global (literally), and it's going to be more difficult to assign liability. Moreover, appliances are judged on not starting fires during normal use. IoTs would need to be secure from attacks, including attacks nobody's thought of yet.
What's the time of flight? A large conventional explosive warhead is going to have to hit or very near-miss a carrier to have much effect. This requires knowing the carrier's position, course, and speed very accurately, and knowing the carrier group will not vary from it.
If Islamist ideology were inherent in Islam, the devout Muslims I've known would have supported it, and they didn't. That follows from the definition of "inherent". Love of liberty is one of the general principles of the founding of the United States (if you were a free male landowner, anyway), but it isn't inherent to the United States.
Drop back a few centuries and you'll find that Christianity had been militant, expansionist, and authoritarian for the vast majority of its history, but those traits are not inherent in Christianity.
It isn't Eurocentric goggles, it's old-timey goggles. The Democratic Party has remained basically the same entity throughout my lifetime. The Republican party changed drastically in 1980, and has continued to change since.
Depends. Are you running a business providing that service? I used to run (not actually successfully) a consulting service. If I'd refused a customer for being Christian, say, that would have been illegal. I don't run that any more, so if someone asks me to do something for them, I can refuse for any reason, including the requester being Christian. If you run a lawn mower business and you won't take black customers,, you're violating the law. If you aren't, you can mow lawns as you please (if the owners approve of it, anyway).
I'm not sure about your final sentence. Are you saying that it's more reasonable to discriminate on the basis of skin color rather than sexual orientation? That I (if I ran a business) should be enjoined against discriminating against people because of race or sex, but not religion or sexual orientation?
In other words, the way to convince conservatives is to be a lot better than them in every way, not just most ways. To coddle their perceptions and avoid trigger words and let them have their safe spaces.
You mean the guy who knew he wasn't supposed to take those pictures, and deliberately did so anyway? Really, if you're going to try to argue against me, you might want to at least look for cites that disagree with me. I don't think you'll find any, but you could look anyway.
You know what's spurring the riots? Fear. Many people are afraid that a Trump presidency will deny them civil rights and encourage discrimination against them, if not worse. The real tragedy of this election is all the fear in the process.
USSR, Communist China, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, etc., when did collectivist policies *not* lead to the total destruction of the individual by placing the collective above all?
Europe, for example? Most Western European countries have more collectivist policies than the US, and they seem to have individuals still.
Slashdot Mirror
I actually agree with a lot of this.
Equality of outcome is a really bad idea. Equality of opportunity is easier to approach and much more useful. I'd like to see everyone have a good chance to succeed. What they do with that chance is up to them. In order to approach equality of opportunity, we have to supply people with things. A child who grows up with malnutrition, bad education, and treatable medical conditions which aren't treated, has very little opportunity, and is being denied basic human rights. Liberty is worth very little to someone lacking the basic necessities.
In fact, most people don't want equal outcomes, and are in fact not Communist. ("From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is actually a pretty good way to run a society. Doesn't work with human beings, of course, but there might be an intelligent species out there that could live like that. Note that this is not an enforced equality of outcome in general, but an equality of material reward. There are other ways to pay people.)
You need to lose the idea that your ideas are pure Liberty and everyone else is arguing for tyranny. It makes it impossible to argue with you, since anyone disagreeing with you by definition wants tyranny, which by definition is evil. It makes it difficult for you to convince anyone of anything, since your reasoning will swiftly come back to an axiom other people don't share. It makes it difficult for you to refine and change your ideas, since you see yourself as absolutely right, and you're not willing to accept that other people may have different but valid points of view. One thing I learned from was once when I realized that a Communist I knew was just as patriotic as I was. We both wanted what's best for our country, but we differed greatly in what that "best for our country" was, and we had extremely different ideas on how to approach it.
I'm failing to understand here. If you have certain religious beliefs, then you can indeed collide with the law when trying to execute them. So, if you're a baker open to the public with a hateful religion, you have to sell things to lesbians, by law. If you're a baker with whatever sex and sexual practices, you have to sell things to the public, by law. I'm not aware of any sexual orientation that would prevent one from selling a cake to a member of a protected class.
Because that is exactly the same as other private businesses that have an impact on our elections.
In other words, you're citing a near-religious belief that countries go only one way. You say that Scandinavia is moving a little away from collectivism; if they can do that, then they can stay more or less where they are now indefinitely, varying both ways over the years.
My understanding of "conservatism" is old, not Eurocentric.
In my lifetime, the Democratic Party has swerved left, then considerably to the right, and is now moving to the left again. It never had a serious break with the past. Bill Clinton was more limited in what he could ask for. The Republicans changed their values considerably around 1980.
What your quote said is that lots of Muslims are happy to live in peace with their neighbors. It pointed out that Muslims are more likely than most to be expansionist, but I didn't deny that. Certainly if "most Muslims in the contemporary world desire to live in peace with their neighbors of other faith", violent aggression isn't inherent in the religion, although it does go along with it a disturbing amount of the time.
The largest ICBM has a throw weight of 8800 kilos, and less than half that might be more reasonable. That isn't all going to be explosives, Something fired by ICBM is going to need some sort of re-entry vehicle. Given a flight time of 10 minutes, which seems reasonable, a 20kt task force will cover over three nautical miles, and if they maneuver at all the predicted target would be a rather large area. I'm not impressed with how the numbers are working out, since it will take a pretty hard hit to put a modern carrier out of action. The whole idea reminds me of WWII heavy bombers attacking ships, and doing really badly.
And part of that is practicality. Relying on the police works better in the city, while having guns for self-defense makes more sense in the countryside. Cities are much more mixed places, so people have to get along with more different people. Churches and donations work far better for the poor when communities are small and homogenous.
It's more complicated than that. Most journalists are under D, but most media owners are under R. It gets complicated from there.
So, how many teens could do computer repair fifteen years ago? I'd suspect there are more now.
UBI will be implemented one country at a time. It will provide a satisfactory but not lavish lifestyle for the community, more or less. It will not mean we're all equal financially, since people will have ways to earn more money. The revolutionary effects in employment is that workers will have the option to just quit at any time. This will remove a wide range of exploitation possibilities. Employers would have to pay extra to get people to do distasteful or dangerous jobs. They will have to maintain workplaces up to certain market-driven standards. They won't be able to get extra hours out of people not being paid much.
It does have the advantage that it would eliminate the minimum wage, since everybody already has enough money to live on.
Actually, I'm enough of a cynical bastard to think we'll arrive at it through rioting and other social unrest.
The USPS is self-supporting, and NASA has a tiny slice of the budget.
In a liability situation, why would UL help? Suppose you used UL-certified light bulbs, and they were used in a major DDoS attack. You get named in the suit, and when you try to pass the liability on back the company has disappeared or gone bankrupt or is out of the country or something. The UL isn't going to indemnify me. Lots of people will have some IoT-type devices without insurance, since (at least in the US) renter's insurance wasn't all that common when I still rented. Unless people have some sort of legal immunity for buying UL, it won't help.
Fire is local, and the source can usually be determined. IoT problems are global (literally), and it's going to be more difficult to assign liability. Moreover, appliances are judged on not starting fires during normal use. IoTs would need to be secure from attacks, including attacks nobody's thought of yet.
Lots of people voted for Bush's gulf war, based on information supplied to them by the administration that turned out to be false.
In other words, a discount version of an aircraft carrier?
What's the time of flight? A large conventional explosive warhead is going to have to hit or very near-miss a carrier to have much effect. This requires knowing the carrier's position, course, and speed very accurately, and knowing the carrier group will not vary from it.
If Islamist ideology were inherent in Islam, the devout Muslims I've known would have supported it, and they didn't. That follows from the definition of "inherent". Love of liberty is one of the general principles of the founding of the United States (if you were a free male landowner, anyway), but it isn't inherent to the United States.
Drop back a few centuries and you'll find that Christianity had been militant, expansionist, and authoritarian for the vast majority of its history, but those traits are not inherent in Christianity.
It isn't Eurocentric goggles, it's old-timey goggles. The Democratic Party has remained basically the same entity throughout my lifetime. The Republican party changed drastically in 1980, and has continued to change since.
Depends. Are you running a business providing that service? I used to run (not actually successfully) a consulting service. If I'd refused a customer for being Christian, say, that would have been illegal. I don't run that any more, so if someone asks me to do something for them, I can refuse for any reason, including the requester being Christian. If you run a lawn mower business and you won't take black customers,, you're violating the law. If you aren't, you can mow lawns as you please (if the owners approve of it, anyway).
I'm not sure about your final sentence. Are you saying that it's more reasonable to discriminate on the basis of skin color rather than sexual orientation? That I (if I ran a business) should be enjoined against discriminating against people because of race or sex, but not religion or sexual orientation?
Everybody has a right to complain, and everybody has a right to reply to those complaints, ad infinitum.
Also, the precedent has been set since we had any concept of privately owned public spaces. There's always been limits on what you can do in them.
In other words, the way to convince conservatives is to be a lot better than them in every way, not just most ways. To coddle their perceptions and avoid trigger words and let them have their safe spaces.
You mean the guy who knew he wasn't supposed to take those pictures, and deliberately did so anyway? Really, if you're going to try to argue against me, you might want to at least look for cites that disagree with me. I don't think you'll find any, but you could look anyway.
You know what's spurring the riots? Fear. Many people are afraid that a Trump presidency will deny them civil rights and encourage discrimination against them, if not worse. The real tragedy of this election is all the fear in the process.
Europe, for example? Most Western European countries have more collectivist policies than the US, and they seem to have individuals still.