I mean, Lessig seems like a smart guy. But "May Day" and "May One"? Yeah, I get "may day" as a distress call, but that's way different than "May One". The "May One" links this to the communist holiday (don't bother telling me about the "socialists" - it's tainted by the USSR) and makes the whole thing bizarre.
Beyond that, the idea that "campaign finance reform" is some magic bullet that will solve the problems in our country is a little clueless, too.
Frankly, I don't know what he meant. My looney left friends on facebook really think that crony capitalism represents "free markets" and then blame free markets and capitalism for the problems caused by crony capitalism.
So forgive me if I have no idea if the parent poster of my original post meant that.
If you say the most qualified get jobs, and the jobs are going to men, then the women most be less qualified. No? All I am asking is for you to back that statement up: either show women are underqualified/less motivated. The alternative is that job allocation is actually not 100% meritocratic.
Are you as concerned about the fact that there are far more female than male nurses? Do you think men are less qualified?
Or maybe certain careers appeal more to one gender than the other.....
You miss the point. Bruce doesn't state that the self-employed are more or less likely to vote in any particular fashion. Bruce states that the explosion of small businesses will move money away from mega-corps, diminishing their budgets and the large donations that they can then make toward Republican elections. That is what they fear.
I'm not sure that he's right but that seems to me to be what he's saying.
This is large corporations donating to political campaigns. You have to get to #17 before you get to the first one that leans Republican.
Mega-corps give to Democrats. In return, they get "regulation" that helps keep them in business. Money moving away from mega-corps will help Republicans, not Democrats.
The bottom line is that "The Republican Party"'s main voting block is self-employed middle-aged men. More "self-employed middle-aged men" doesn't scare the Republicans at all - they stand to benefit the most.
That's because you want that to be true. You probably don't even notice instances where people bring up the same point when idiots say that democrats are so superior.
You could very well be right. However, ever since I first noticed this behavior, I have actively looked for counter-examples. But, as you say, I could be blind to that.
I've also yet to find a single counter-example and I've actively looked. I notice this among my lefty friends on facebook, too. Point out something bad that Democrats do and "well, both parties do that". It's either "Republicans do bad things" or "both parties do bad things".
"I think Obamacare will do one really big thing that truly scares the Republican Party. It will free up millions of smart people to be self-employed, who formerly stayed in the corporate world."
I'm self-employed, 40-something, etc. I can tell you from hanging around with a lot of other folks like myself - they tend to vote Republican and give to the Republicans. Democrats get most of their funding from big business, big labor, and of course Hollywood. This data is openly accessible on the internet for those who care.
If you think self-employed people scare the Republicans you're living in an alternate reality.
It's great that you and your family picked up insurance. I know 3 families who lost their insurance - which was perfectly fine for them - and have to pay many times as much now for less coverage. Maybe, just maybe, that is what "scares the Republican Party". It scares the hell out of me and I'm not a Republican.
I thought that most liberal-leaning people have a love-hate relationship with Obama.
He was supposed to be their progressive knight in shining armor, but keeps doing all the usual political sell-outs to big business, big media, the security apparatus. No Wall Street guys did time, he kept fighting in Afghanistan, no real mea culpa on NSA monitoring.
Um, somebody isn't familiar with liberalism. These things are only bad *if done by a Republican*. All of what you say here fits liberalism like a glove...
Wow, you got +4? Republicans get most of their donations from small business. Democrats screw small business and get most of their donations from big business. Please look at the sunshine foundations reports.
Being "pro-business" is different than crony capitalism.
Bullshit. Every treaty a president has signed (but has not been ratified) is an official policy of the President, and is therefore perfectly valid to the extent that the President is allowed to set policy. So the Kyoto Treaty was law until Bush II took over. In the US System this doesn't mean much because the President's ability to set policy entirely by himself is limited, but the treaty is still US Law to that limited extent.
The main difference is that if an ebay seller screws up your order of pogs , nobody dies.
Depends on what is selling. There are plenty of things that you could buy off ebay that are capable of killing you if they're defective.
If you a going to be carrying passengers, you'd better have a good driving record, a chauffeur's license and a vehicle that receives regular mandated safety inspection.
Sounds good, although someone with a nasty car will get bad feedback, etc. Problem should take care of itself.
And no, you can't trust the free market to self regulate. We've had airlines literally delay the installation of fixes to critical safety flaws because downing the jet to make the repairs cost too much time/money and hundreds have died as a result. If left entirely to the free market, the airlines would cut fleet maintenance to the absolute minimum to keeps the airplane in the sky, and if one of them falls from the sky every so often and crashes due to poor maintenance, it would still be cheaper to pay off the victims than to replace parts at the proper intervals.
And, yet, airplane crashes still happen. The reason is that everybody still makes the calculation that you're talking about there, and we rely on lawsuit judgements to make it more expensive to pay off the victims.
You're going to hate this part: you make the exact same judgement every time you get into a car. You don't have to drive anywhere, but you choose to do so even though thousands of people die in car accidents each year. Many are pedestrians who get hit by cars. If you truly cared about them you would quit driving.
Right?
No, you've decided - whether consciously or not - that the risk is worth it to you to get to the store in 5 minutes instead of an hour.
The libertarians would say the answer to this is to choose an airline with the lowest fatality rate.
All the problems that you mention are overcome by Uber. Your driver has to register and there is a log of who your driver was. If he robs (or worse) you he'll be caught. He's not some anonymous guy driving around in a car. His picture is shown to you before he picks you up so if the wrong guy comes you refuse the ride.
I get what you're saying, by the way. My wife is from the Philippines, and pretty much all the problems you describe are problems in the Philippines. But, again, taxi drivers can take advantage of you simply because they're somewhat anonymous. Get rid of the anonymity and things change.
That works both ways, by the way. Remember that a cabby is also taking a risk by letting an anonymous person into their car. With Uber, not so much.
So you are saying Buffet and Obama went back in time and set up the railroads, setup the policies?
No, but 1% keeps delaying the Keystone Pipeline. His first delay put about $180M in Buffett's pocket in one day just from the stock price of Burlington Northern going up.
This issue is far older then Obama. I can't help but notice this issue is coming up during is administration. If your implication was valid, why would it be coming up now?
By every factor, the US is doing better during Obama's time in office. I bet you hate that.
By every measurable factor we're doing much worse. The economy is worse, employment is down dramatically, fewer people have insurance coverage (amazingly), etc. I would *love* it if we were doing better - I'm nonpartisan so I don't really have a horse in the whole "democrat/republican" race. Sorry.
But, yeah, I hate it that we're doing so much worse.
Seriously. Did the examiner on this even consider asking anyone who knows anything about photography? I'm not a photographer but I've had my picture taken for "promotional" reasons and already knew about this. I've even created a similar setup here when posting stuff online.
What, exactly, are they trying to "patent" and why does this examiner still have a job? It's obvious that we need to have crowdsourcing prior art as an official part of the patent process.
You know, a PIPELINE would be a lot safer way of transporting crude oil around the country... Stopping the construction of pipelines results in more of these rail car accidents you know.
Right. The problem is that President 1%'s buddy Warren Buffett owns a railroad, not a pipeline.
Unless you provide criminal penalties for those who would break this law, don't bother. You know what I mean - you do this for *every* other prohibitive law which doesn't target government, but always seem to forget that part when you're trying to reign in government.
While you're at it, make a breach of this law also be a civil cause of action.
Seriously.
Otherwise, don't bother. If there's no penalties for breaking this law, it'll be ignored like all the rest of them.
You can argue hypotheticals all day, but the fact is that even by the craziest looney left numbers guns are used about 100,000 times each year in self defense in the US. In reality, the number is 10-20 times as high.
I can only hope you're trying for a "+1 funny" mod. A large amount of legislation gets passed that would easily fail a popular vote, and it's not always because we elected the "wrong party".
So its unacceptable for them to behave this way, but its ok if the state does it?
There is no moral equivalence. The state, in removing that man from existence, isn't preying on some randomly chosen innocent stranger with rape and murder in mind. That you find the two to be equivalent removes you from the pool of people who should ever weigh in on such subjects.
I would suggest that you read up on some cases of people found to be innocent after spending time on death row. In many of those cases the state (the police, DA, and/or judge) *were* preying on some randomly chosen innocent stranger with rape and murder in mind. It's just that they used the power of the state to perform those actions indirectly. That doesn't make it any better and - in my view - is actually far worse. The murderers that you're thinking about at least don't try to cover their actions with some veneer of civility.
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Rich campaign donors who bought this. Is that even a serious question?
I mean, Lessig seems like a smart guy. But "May Day" and "May One"? Yeah, I get "may day" as a distress call, but that's way different than "May One". The "May One" links this to the communist holiday (don't bother telling me about the "socialists" - it's tainted by the USSR) and makes the whole thing bizarre.
Beyond that, the idea that "campaign finance reform" is some magic bullet that will solve the problems in our country is a little clueless, too.
Frankly, I don't know what he meant. My looney left friends on facebook really think that crony capitalism represents "free markets" and then blame free markets and capitalism for the problems caused by crony capitalism.
So forgive me if I have no idea if the parent poster of my original post meant that.
They are only crying because this a market they don't have cornered.
Actual competition is terrifying to "free market capitalists".
No it's not. It's terrifying to cronies who use crony capitalism to keep a grip on their markets through government "regulation".
White Demons. I'd like to see that as a team name and logo.
How about "Fighting Irish"?
If you say the most qualified get jobs, and the jobs are going to men, then the women most be less qualified. No? All I am asking is for you to back that statement up: either show women are underqualified/less motivated. The alternative is that job allocation is actually not 100% meritocratic.
Are you as concerned about the fact that there are far more female than male nurses? Do you think men are less qualified?
Or maybe certain careers appeal more to one gender than the other.....
You miss the point. Bruce doesn't state that the self-employed are more or less likely to vote in any particular fashion. Bruce states that the explosion of small businesses will move money away from mega-corps, diminishing their budgets and the large donations that they can then make toward Republican elections. That is what they fear.
I'm not sure that he's right but that seems to me to be what he's saying.
LOL. I got that. This is going to hurt:
https://www.opensecrets.org/or...
This is large corporations donating to political campaigns. You have to get to #17 before you get to the first one that leans Republican.
Mega-corps give to Democrats. In return, they get "regulation" that helps keep them in business. Money moving away from mega-corps will help Republicans, not Democrats.
He said "The Republican Party".
The bottom line is that "The Republican Party"'s main voting block is self-employed middle-aged men. More "self-employed middle-aged men" doesn't scare the Republicans at all - they stand to benefit the most.
That's because you want that to be true. You probably don't even notice instances where people bring up the same point when idiots say that democrats are so superior.
You could very well be right. However, ever since I first noticed this behavior, I have actively looked for counter-examples. But, as you say, I could be blind to that.
I've also yet to find a single counter-example and I've actively looked. I notice this among my lefty friends on facebook, too. Point out something bad that Democrats do and "well, both parties do that". It's either "Republicans do bad things" or "both parties do bad things".
I'm non-parisan.
"I think Obamacare will do one really big thing that truly scares the Republican Party. It will free up millions of smart people to be self-employed, who formerly stayed in the corporate world."
I'm self-employed, 40-something, etc. I can tell you from hanging around with a lot of other folks like myself - they tend to vote Republican and give to the Republicans. Democrats get most of their funding from big business, big labor, and of course Hollywood. This data is openly accessible on the internet for those who care.
If you think self-employed people scare the Republicans you're living in an alternate reality.
It's great that you and your family picked up insurance. I know 3 families who lost their insurance - which was perfectly fine for them - and have to pay many times as much now for less coverage. Maybe, just maybe, that is what "scares the Republican Party". It scares the hell out of me and I'm not a Republican.
I thought that most liberal-leaning people have a love-hate relationship with Obama.
He was supposed to be their progressive knight in shining armor, but keeps doing all the usual political sell-outs to big business, big media, the security apparatus. No Wall Street guys did time, he kept fighting in Afghanistan, no real mea culpa on NSA monitoring.
Um, somebody isn't familiar with liberalism. These things are only bad *if done by a Republican*. All of what you say here fits liberalism like a glove...
Wow, you got +4? Republicans get most of their donations from small business. Democrats screw small business and get most of their donations from big business. Please look at the sunshine foundations reports.
Being "pro-business" is different than crony capitalism.
Bullshit. Every treaty a president has signed (but has not been ratified) is an official policy of the President, and is therefore perfectly valid to the extent that the President is allowed to set policy. So the Kyoto Treaty was law until Bush II took over. In the US System this doesn't mean much because the President's ability to set policy entirely by himself is limited, but the treaty is still US Law to that limited extent.
Kyoto was never signed by the US.
The main difference is that if an ebay seller screws up your order of pogs , nobody dies.
Depends on what is selling. There are plenty of things that you could buy off ebay that are capable of killing you if they're defective.
If you a going to be carrying passengers, you'd better have a good driving record, a chauffeur's license and a vehicle that receives regular mandated safety inspection.
Sounds good, although someone with a nasty car will get bad feedback, etc. Problem should take care of itself.
And no, you can't trust the free market to self regulate. We've had airlines literally delay the installation of fixes to critical safety flaws because downing the jet to make the repairs cost too much time/money and hundreds have died as a result. If left entirely to the free market, the airlines would cut fleet maintenance to the absolute minimum to keeps the airplane in the sky, and if one of them falls from the sky every so often and crashes due to poor maintenance, it would still be cheaper to pay off the victims than to replace parts at the proper intervals.
And, yet, airplane crashes still happen. The reason is that everybody still makes the calculation that you're talking about there, and we rely on lawsuit judgements to make it more expensive to pay off the victims.
You're going to hate this part: you make the exact same judgement every time you get into a car. You don't have to drive anywhere, but you choose to do so even though thousands of people die in car accidents each year. Many are pedestrians who get hit by cars. If you truly cared about them you would quit driving.
Right?
No, you've decided - whether consciously or not - that the risk is worth it to you to get to the store in 5 minutes instead of an hour.
The libertarians would say the answer to this is to choose an airline with the lowest fatality rate.
Yep. I usually fly Southwest.
All the problems that you mention are overcome by Uber. Your driver has to register and there is a log of who your driver was. If he robs (or worse) you he'll be caught. He's not some anonymous guy driving around in a car. His picture is shown to you before he picks you up so if the wrong guy comes you refuse the ride.
I get what you're saying, by the way. My wife is from the Philippines, and pretty much all the problems you describe are problems in the Philippines. But, again, taxi drivers can take advantage of you simply because they're somewhat anonymous. Get rid of the anonymity and things change.
That works both ways, by the way. Remember that a cabby is also taking a risk by letting an anonymous person into their car. With Uber, not so much.
So you are saying Buffet and Obama went back in time and set up the railroads, setup the policies?
No, but 1% keeps delaying the Keystone Pipeline. His first delay put about $180M in Buffett's pocket in one day just from the stock price of Burlington Northern going up.
This issue is far older then Obama. I can't help but notice this issue is coming up during is administration. If your implication was valid, why would it be coming up now?
By every factor, the US is doing better during Obama's time in office. I bet you hate that.
By every measurable factor we're doing much worse. The economy is worse, employment is down dramatically, fewer people have insurance coverage (amazingly), etc. I would *love* it if we were doing better - I'm nonpartisan so I don't really have a horse in the whole "democrat/republican" race. Sorry.
But, yeah, I hate it that we're doing so much worse.
Seriously. Did the examiner on this even consider asking anyone who knows anything about photography? I'm not a photographer but I've had my picture taken for "promotional" reasons and already knew about this. I've even created a similar setup here when posting stuff online.
Took me 10 seconds to find this page:
http://www.raydobbins.com/phot...
What, exactly, are they trying to "patent" and why does this examiner still have a job? It's obvious that we need to have crowdsourcing prior art as an official part of the patent process.
You know, a PIPELINE would be a lot safer way of transporting crude oil around the country... Stopping the construction of pipelines results in more of these rail car accidents you know.
Right. The problem is that President 1%'s buddy Warren Buffett owns a railroad, not a pipeline.
Do the math.
Holy hell look at that name...this bill must be full of draconian nightmare laws!
Bingo. We name our laws using the same methods that communists use to name their totalitarian hell-holes.
Unless you provide criminal penalties for those who would break this law, don't bother. You know what I mean - you do this for *every* other prohibitive law which doesn't target government, but always seem to forget that part when you're trying to reign in government.
While you're at it, make a breach of this law also be a civil cause of action.
Seriously.
Otherwise, don't bother. If there's no penalties for breaking this law, it'll be ignored like all the rest of them.
surely you see the difference between a vote on the assault weapons ban and a vote to "ban guns". methinks you're being dishonest.
Really? What is an "assault weapon"?
You can argue hypotheticals all day, but the fact is that even by the craziest looney left numbers guns are used about 100,000 times each year in self defense in the US. In reality, the number is 10-20 times as high.
You don't tend to see the left calling for banning guns either; just restricting their construction, sale and use.
No, *YOU* don't tend to see it, probably because you ignore it.
https://www.google.com/search?...
It's frightening how much shit comes up on that search.
I can only hope you're trying for a "+1 funny" mod. A large amount of legislation gets passed that would easily fail a popular vote, and it's not always because we elected the "wrong party".
So its unacceptable for them to behave this way, but its ok if the state does it?
There is no moral equivalence. The state, in removing that man from existence, isn't preying on some randomly chosen innocent stranger with rape and murder in mind. That you find the two to be equivalent removes you from the pool of people who should ever weigh in on such subjects.
I would suggest that you read up on some cases of people found to be innocent after spending time on death row. In many of those cases the state (the police, DA, and/or judge) *were* preying on some randomly chosen innocent stranger with rape and murder in mind. It's just that they used the power of the state to perform those actions indirectly. That doesn't make it any better and - in my view - is actually far worse. The murderers that you're thinking about at least don't try to cover their actions with some veneer of civility.