Apparently M$ doesn't think so, they're building a new SE for MSN.
Google has been pretty stagnant for months now, but it was always easy enough to manipulate, and is generally considered harder to game now. Right now they are not giving good rank to most new sites for some reason, perhaps to fight "SE spam."
Google is probably in the process of massive overhauls too. It hasn't really updated its algorithm much in months, and many people believe we're in for a big shake-up.
Certainly there is no such thing as search that cannot be manipulated. Search must be based on some sort of criteria, and manipulation is simply knowing those criteria and making your website match them. It is impossible to keep the criteria completely secret, because they can be reverse-engineered by experimentation. The trick from the SE point of view is to get the criteria closer and closer to the criteria of a reasonable person for a "relevant website." That's not easy.
Rest assured, the big G is working on it. But so are others. Competition in the search market is far from dead.
Yes, but this is one of the limitations of the process. This is the reason undesirable bits often get passed as riders, and other nonsense like that.
Suppose they could, for example, use a Condorcet voting system to design a budget, where each congressmember ranks each proposed budget item according to his or her own priorities, resulting in an aggregate ranking of budget priorities. Wouldn't that make more sense than sending a comittee off to design the budget and then just voting on whether to approve it or not?
Of course maybe we need 3 or 5 version of every bill and can use one of these methods to get better compromise
Exactly. Or we could use these methods to rank priorities for legislation and for budgets and so forth. This could make the creation of laws more democratic. As it stands, the approval is democratic, but the actual drafting of legislation is not.
Presumably, by your description, a proper constitutional republic would still be democratic, however, which still requires Joe Voter to make decisions that affect the fate of the nation.
I agree completely that the federal government has way too much power and is meddling in affairs it should never meddle in, both within the US and in the rest of the world.
There is one problem with the Libertarian position, however. There are two major concentrations of power in our system, and both of them are exercising way too much power over the rights of the individual. One is, as you say, the federal government. The other is the corporate world. The former may be the only thing with enough power to protect us from the latter, and should be used for that purpose to the extent that we still have control over it. Unfortunately, these power systems are mostly working together at this point. Making either one more democratic would help us to use it against the other.
Eventually, of course, both will have to be dismantled, and the whole mess needs to be scaled way down to the point where it can actually respond to the needs of the people. Scale is the problem, not the solution. However, this will take time, and as it stands, we need to work with what we have. Making the government more democratic would certainly be a step in the right direction.
The massive limitation of the powers of the federal government, as you propose, without taking any measures to dismantle corporate power, would lead immediately to corporate dictatorship.
All of this leads to an interesting question. If the winner-take-all system doesn't work very well for the population selecting candidates (and I think reasonable people can agree that this system is severely broken), is it also similarly broken for legislatures? Should we implement some sort of Condorcet voting for creating laws?
I agree, then, that Condorcet should be used for single-seat elections like Presidents and Mayors, whereas your version of IRV with proportional representation should be used for multi-seat elections.
All of this also leads to an interesting question: should we also change the way votes are cast in Congress? If the winner-take-all system we have doesn't work well for electing candidates, doesn't it have the same problems when it comes to those candidates making decisions?
I don't know what universe you're talking about, but the America I live in is ruled almost entirely by corporate interests, with the population only having a marginal say about mostly irrelevant social issues. In the America I live in, most people don't seem to think government represents them very well, nor that their parties represent them very well, but they are forced to vote for what they regard as the lesser of two evils. In the America I live in, polls consistently show that people lack confidence in our leaders, either government or corporate, and yet they continue to vote for them because they have no real choice. I'd say that's pretty severely broke.
Joe Voter has even the foggiest notion what's best for the country
So, would you then prefer to live in a dictatorship? Seriously, democracy has its flaws and this is one of them, but the alternatives are much worse because they take away our freedom.
Furthermore, this attitude is seriously elitist. Joe Voter may know more than you give him credit for. Of course most people don't understand the technical details of how to run the country, indeed, no one person really understands that. But the population as a whole should determine things like general direction and basic values, which is what you're supposed to be voting for when you vote for a candidate.
Joe Voter doesn't know what's best for the whole country, but he often has a pretty good idea what's good for him, and since the country is just Joe Voter in aggregate, its interest is just his interest in aggregate.
The problem we have in our system is not so much that the voters are stupid, but that their opinions have been deliberately manipulated so as to be contrary to their own interest. But this doesn't always work: "you can't fool all the people all the time," and democracy is still the best chance we have to get a government that represents the interest of the general population. As it is, we have an oligarchy representing the interests of the priviledged few. Moving in a more democratic direction would help to correct that.
That was staggeringly insightful, and I wish I had mod points. Some questions, though:
The Wiki article says: "With a narrower definition of "irrelevant alternatives" which excludes those candidates in the Smith set, some Condorcet methods meet all the criteria."
Doesn't this mean that no system is perfect, but some Condorcet methods get close? Doesn't that make the Condorcet method superior?
Also, I agree totally about proportional representation. However, couldn't there be some way to modify the Condorcet method to provide proportional representation without violating the Monotonicity criterion? I'm not sure how to do this, but it seems to be worth looking into.
IRV would certainly be an improvement over the current system. However, the Monotonicity problem makes voter choice an almost impossible multilemma, since you might actually be hurting your candidates by ranking them higher. To really vote properly, you would have to watch the polls like a hawk and sometimes make odd choices that do not conform to your preferences in order to create your desired outcome. Seems to me that it would be better to sacrifice the "irrelevant alternatives" criterion, since in reality nothing is really irrelevant anyway, everything is interconnected.
It may be true that conservation can't solve the whole problem. But it's nuts to dismiss conservation on these grounds. Even if it can't solve the whole problem, it can make it a lot less severe!
Once I can go out and spend, say, $8000 on a low-maintenance, self-contained solar system the size of a washing machine
Why does it have to be the size of a washing machine? Doesn't it just have to be the size of your roof? If you cover your roof with photovoltaic cells and use energy-efficient appliances, you can get by just fine and most of the time produce a serplus to sell back to the grid, especially if you use wind turbines as well for rainy days. Granted the price is still pretty steep, but it pays off in the long term. Solar energy is viable for personal use right now, if you can afford the initial investment.
As I said before, some things scale well, but agriculture is not one of them.
The economy of scale applies very well to industrial manufacturing. However, when you apply it to farming, you get problems. The conventional assesment of the costs of modern farming do not usually include environmental damage and soil depletion and so forth. If you include those, the cost, not just in calories but in money, is higher with factory farming.
The solution, as I've pointed out before, is permaculture. With permaculture you can produce surplus food using less land and less labor in the long term than industrial agriculture. This is because permaculture uses modern science and technology to develop self-sustaining food-producing ecosystems. These require little maintanance and produce more food per acre than industrial monoculure.
Permaculture does not scale, but it does allow the population to grow its own food, produce a surplus, and sill have plenty of spare time to work on Space Ship One. Sounds like a pretty good deal, eh?
But that's a false dilemma, you see. With proper use of technology, implementing techniques based on biology and ecology, we can grow enough food without using pesticides. So you don't have to die of starvation or slow poisoning. How does that choice sound?
That's what I'm on about, right on man! One quibble though: don't say "technology is not the answer" around here, you'll get called a luddite faster than you can say "Unibomber." In fact technology is the answer, it's just a different technology from pesticides and GMOs. The relevant technology is permaculture and it's based on biology and ecology. Permaculture is not anti-tech at all, it just uses tech in a smart way.
We still have starvation and famine now, and we're growing more than enough food for the whole population. The problem is not production, it's distribution.
Furthermore, green farming does not mean refusing to use modern technology, it just means refusing to use destructive technologies. See my earlier post about permaculture. With modern technology, we can grow more food without using destructive technologies, if we do it right.
I will admit that his answer to this was shallow. But there is a case to be made here, he just didn't bother to make it.
A new technology exists called permaculture. It is based on the use of modern biology to design self-sustaining, food producing ecosystems. Permaculture can produce more food per unit land than traditional monoculture can with or without artificial chemicals and genetic engineering.
It is true that there were fewer people when we last tried green agriculture on a large scale. But there was also a vastly inferior knowledge of biology and ecology. With modern scientific methods, it can be made to work.
If those factory laborers didn't think working in the factories was an improvement over the available alternatives, what were they doing there
They got kicked off their land, that's what they were doing there. The industrial workforce was built through a series of vicious landgrabs, which displaced large segments of the peasant population and forced them into the factories.
The activists have put their personal opinions about the harmfulness of the logging above everyone else's
That logging is harmful is not opinion, it is clearly demonstrable scientific fact. If we are to abandon science completely and adopt total metaphysical relativism, then sure, the opnions of ignorant rednecks and greed-driven corporate executives carry as much weight as those of trained ecologists. That the corporate execs have succeded in deluding large portions of the population doesn't give their opinions any greater weight.
don't think you can injure third parties to spread your message and call it moral.
Ah. Yes, I agree completely. I thought we were talking about injuring property, not people.
I'd like to thank you, M. Silver, you've given me an opportunity to seriously rethink my moral system, and I've come up with something which may help to explain where I'm coming from.
I think our difference of opinion arises from the fact that you believe in the concept of "property rights," whereas I do not. I must admit, I am prejudiced: I have a prejudice against inanimate objects. I do not assign them any inherent moral worth. This is in sharp contrast to the typical propertarian view, which assigns moral worth to objects relative to their "owner."
I assign moral worth to objects based on their function, as defined in relationship to living organisms. Objects have positive moral worth to the extent that they benefit living organisms, and negative moral worth to the extent that they harm them.
Because of this difference, it has been very difficult for me to translate your argument into terms that make sense in my value system. However, your above statement clarifies it completely, and you have a valid point. Certainly it is immoral to impar the overall function of an object, that is, to transform an object in such a way that it benefits living organisms less or harms them more.
So then the question becomes: does a coffee shop (for example) benefit living organisms more or less if it has "STOP BUSH" written on it?
This question separates the moral issue completely from what I view as the false right of "private property." Now we can talk about it in terms that make sense to me.
So now we have to determine to what extent the words "STOP BUSH" written on the coffee shop decrease its benefit to people in allowing its operators to sell coffee and make a living, and allowing its customers to buy coffee which they enjoy. We also have to determine whether the words "STOP BUSH" written on the coffee shop will actually have any effect on the presidential campaign.
Now, there's a pretty good case to be made that the answer to both questions is "not much." Most New Yorkers will probably not stop buying coffee at their favorite coffee shop simply because it has "STOP BUSH" written on it. Most people are not going to vote against Bush just because they saw "STOP BUSH" written on a coffee shop. So really, the moral impact of this action is pretty negligible either way, probably not even worth arguing over.
Now, within this tiny realm of moral discrepancy, there is room for argument. So if you can convince me that the negative impact of the graffitti on the business will be greater than the negative impact of the graffitti on the Bush campaign, then I will agree that the act is immoral.
There is also a general issue here. I think that if you impair the function of an object (whether it "belongs to you" or not), you have a moral obligation to repair that function. So if the graffitti does harm the shopkeeper's business, it is the moral obligation of the person who wrote it to clean it up, or to pay the shopkeeper to have it cleaned up. That is why vandalism should be illegal, and I think people should not do jail time for it, but they should be required to pay restitution.
are you a college student?
LOL. No, I am not, I'm 31 years old and left graduate school four years ago. But I can see why you ask. Disrespect for property rights is common among college students because they don't own much property. As people age and accumulate more property, their respect for property rights tends to increase. In my case, I doubt I will ever recognize the legitimacy of property rights, regardless of how much property I "own."
What about the poor shopkeeper in NY who gets down-with-Bush slogans written all over his store in permanent marker... How long before somebody's freedom of speech puts him out of business
Well, for one thing, that seems like an unlikely scenario to me. I expect shopkeepers in NY are used to dealing with graffitti, and that it would not put them out of business or even slow them down appreciably. Certainly, from a business standpoint, if I were a NYC shop owner, I would regard a little graffitti as a small price to pay for the enormous amount of business that is probably generated by having those kinds of crowds around. I bet they're making a killing right now. As I said, let's try to keep this in perspective, I'm not talking about burning down buildings or something, just writing on them.
For another thing, I never said it should be legal. In fact, I specifically said it should be illegal, and that the perp should be arrested for it.
What I am saying is, it's moral, not legal, not within his rights, but nonetheless moral, to deface property in order to spread an important, valid, and correct message. You say what about the shopkeepers in NYC, but I say what about the thousands of people who have been killed as a direct result of decisions made by Bush? Not just in my value system, but in the value system of our culture in general, doesn't human life trump property? If it doesn't, then we're in worse shape than I thought.
Now, as I said to st0rmshad0w, we can argue tactics if you like. Writing on shop windows or whatever may not be an effective means of stopping Bush, and if it is not (and I agree that it probably isn't) then there is no reason to do it. But this is a tactical issue, not a moral issue. In terms of moral value, I say that getting Bush out of office is way more important than protecting buildings from graffitti.
Yes, this is only my opinion, I wouldn't presume to impose it on anyone else, and you of course have the right to make your own moral judgments. As for the law, I will say again, I think vandalism should be illegal. But if someone is willing to go to jail to spread an anti-Bush message by writing on shop windows, and they think that is an effective tactic, I personally give them my moral support, that's all I'm saying.
I don't know about that. I think killing tens of thousands of people is coldly cruel. I think writing on things is a minor nuisance at worst. Let's keep things in perspective here.
Slashdot Mirror
Google has sponsored results too. At least they're separating them out from the main index, like G does.
Google has been pretty stagnant for months now, but it was always easy enough to manipulate, and is generally considered harder to game now. Right now they are not giving good rank to most new sites for some reason, perhaps to fight "SE spam."
Google is probably in the process of massive overhauls too. It hasn't really updated its algorithm much in months, and many people believe we're in for a big shake-up.
Certainly there is no such thing as search that cannot be manipulated. Search must be based on some sort of criteria, and manipulation is simply knowing those criteria and making your website match them. It is impossible to keep the criteria completely secret, because they can be reverse-engineered by experimentation. The trick from the SE point of view is to get the criteria closer and closer to the criteria of a reasonable person for a "relevant website." That's not easy.
Rest assured, the big G is working on it. But so are others. Competition in the search market is far from dead.
Yes, but this is one of the limitations of the process. This is the reason undesirable bits often get passed as riders, and other nonsense like that.
Suppose they could, for example, use a Condorcet voting system to design a budget, where each congressmember ranks each proposed budget item according to his or her own priorities, resulting in an aggregate ranking of budget priorities. Wouldn't that make more sense than sending a comittee off to design the budget and then just voting on whether to approve it or not?
Exactly. Or we could use these methods to rank priorities for legislation and for budgets and so forth. This could make the creation of laws more democratic. As it stands, the approval is democratic, but the actual drafting of legislation is not.
I agree completely that the federal government has way too much power and is meddling in affairs it should never meddle in, both within the US and in the rest of the world.
There is one problem with the Libertarian position, however. There are two major concentrations of power in our system, and both of them are exercising way too much power over the rights of the individual. One is, as you say, the federal government. The other is the corporate world. The former may be the only thing with enough power to protect us from the latter, and should be used for that purpose to the extent that we still have control over it. Unfortunately, these power systems are mostly working together at this point. Making either one more democratic would help us to use it against the other.
Eventually, of course, both will have to be dismantled, and the whole mess needs to be scaled way down to the point where it can actually respond to the needs of the people. Scale is the problem, not the solution. However, this will take time, and as it stands, we need to work with what we have. Making the government more democratic would certainly be a step in the right direction.
The massive limitation of the powers of the federal government, as you propose, without taking any measures to dismantle corporate power, would lead immediately to corporate dictatorship.
All of this leads to an interesting question. If the winner-take-all system doesn't work very well for the population selecting candidates (and I think reasonable people can agree that this system is severely broken), is it also similarly broken for legislatures? Should we implement some sort of Condorcet voting for creating laws?
All of this also leads to an interesting question: should we also change the way votes are cast in Congress? If the winner-take-all system we have doesn't work well for electing candidates, doesn't it have the same problems when it comes to those candidates making decisions?
I don't know what universe you're talking about, but the America I live in is ruled almost entirely by corporate interests, with the population only having a marginal say about mostly irrelevant social issues. In the America I live in, most people don't seem to think government represents them very well, nor that their parties represent them very well, but they are forced to vote for what they regard as the lesser of two evils. In the America I live in, polls consistently show that people lack confidence in our leaders, either government or corporate, and yet they continue to vote for them because they have no real choice. I'd say that's pretty severely broke.
So, would you then prefer to live in a dictatorship? Seriously, democracy has its flaws and this is one of them, but the alternatives are much worse because they take away our freedom.
Furthermore, this attitude is seriously elitist. Joe Voter may know more than you give him credit for. Of course most people don't understand the technical details of how to run the country, indeed, no one person really understands that. But the population as a whole should determine things like general direction and basic values, which is what you're supposed to be voting for when you vote for a candidate.
Joe Voter doesn't know what's best for the whole country, but he often has a pretty good idea what's good for him, and since the country is just Joe Voter in aggregate, its interest is just his interest in aggregate.
The problem we have in our system is not so much that the voters are stupid, but that their opinions have been deliberately manipulated so as to be contrary to their own interest. But this doesn't always work: "you can't fool all the people all the time," and democracy is still the best chance we have to get a government that represents the interest of the general population. As it is, we have an oligarchy representing the interests of the priviledged few. Moving in a more democratic direction would help to correct that.
The Wiki article says: "With a narrower definition of "irrelevant alternatives" which excludes those candidates in the Smith set, some Condorcet methods meet all the criteria."
Doesn't this mean that no system is perfect, but some Condorcet methods get close? Doesn't that make the Condorcet method superior?
Also, I agree totally about proportional representation. However, couldn't there be some way to modify the Condorcet method to provide proportional representation without violating the Monotonicity criterion? I'm not sure how to do this, but it seems to be worth looking into.
IRV would certainly be an improvement over the current system. However, the Monotonicity problem makes voter choice an almost impossible multilemma, since you might actually be hurting your candidates by ranking them higher. To really vote properly, you would have to watch the polls like a hawk and sometimes make odd choices that do not conform to your preferences in order to create your desired outcome. Seems to me that it would be better to sacrifice the "irrelevant alternatives" criterion, since in reality nothing is really irrelevant anyway, everything is interconnected.
It may be true that conservation can't solve the whole problem. But it's nuts to dismiss conservation on these grounds. Even if it can't solve the whole problem, it can make it a lot less severe!
Why does it have to be the size of a washing machine? Doesn't it just have to be the size of your roof? If you cover your roof with photovoltaic cells and use energy-efficient appliances, you can get by just fine and most of the time produce a serplus to sell back to the grid, especially if you use wind turbines as well for rainy days. Granted the price is still pretty steep, but it pays off in the long term. Solar energy is viable for personal use right now, if you can afford the initial investment.
The economy of scale applies very well to industrial manufacturing. However, when you apply it to farming, you get problems. The conventional assesment of the costs of modern farming do not usually include environmental damage and soil depletion and so forth. If you include those, the cost, not just in calories but in money, is higher with factory farming.
The solution, as I've pointed out before, is permaculture. With permaculture you can produce surplus food using less land and less labor in the long term than industrial agriculture. This is because permaculture uses modern science and technology to develop self-sustaining food-producing ecosystems. These require little maintanance and produce more food per acre than industrial monoculure.
Permaculture does not scale, but it does allow the population to grow its own food, produce a surplus, and sill have plenty of spare time to work on Space Ship One. Sounds like a pretty good deal, eh?
Scaling is overrated. Some things scale well. Agriculture is not one of them. See, for example, the pig shit problem. Pig shit does not scale well.
But that's a false dilemma, you see. With proper use of technology, implementing techniques based on biology and ecology, we can grow enough food without using pesticides. So you don't have to die of starvation or slow poisoning. How does that choice sound?
You are overlooking the intellectual property law problems, which are the main problem with GMOs.
That's what I'm on about, right on man! One quibble though: don't say "technology is not the answer" around here, you'll get called a luddite faster than you can say "Unibomber." In fact technology is the answer, it's just a different technology from pesticides and GMOs. The relevant technology is permaculture and it's based on biology and ecology. Permaculture is not anti-tech at all, it just uses tech in a smart way.
Furthermore, green farming does not mean refusing to use modern technology, it just means refusing to use destructive technologies. See my earlier post about permaculture. With modern technology, we can grow more food without using destructive technologies, if we do it right.
A new technology exists called permaculture. It is based on the use of modern biology to design self-sustaining, food producing ecosystems. Permaculture can produce more food per unit land than traditional monoculture can with or without artificial chemicals and genetic engineering.
It is true that there were fewer people when we last tried green agriculture on a large scale. But there was also a vastly inferior knowledge of biology and ecology. With modern scientific methods, it can be made to work.
They got kicked off their land, that's what they were doing there. The industrial workforce was built through a series of vicious landgrabs, which displaced large segments of the peasant population and forced them into the factories.
That logging is harmful is not opinion, it is clearly demonstrable scientific fact. If we are to abandon science completely and adopt total metaphysical relativism, then sure, the opnions of ignorant rednecks and greed-driven corporate executives carry as much weight as those of trained ecologists. That the corporate execs have succeded in deluding large portions of the population doesn't give their opinions any greater weight.
I'm still an idealist, that's for sure, but I do recognize that compromise is necessary, jaded or not.
Ah. Yes, I agree completely. I thought we were talking about injuring property, not people.
I'd like to thank you, M. Silver, you've given me an opportunity to seriously rethink my moral system, and I've come up with something which may help to explain where I'm coming from.
I think our difference of opinion arises from the fact that you believe in the concept of "property rights," whereas I do not. I must admit, I am prejudiced: I have a prejudice against inanimate objects. I do not assign them any inherent moral worth. This is in sharp contrast to the typical propertarian view, which assigns moral worth to objects relative to their "owner."
I assign moral worth to objects based on their function, as defined in relationship to living organisms. Objects have positive moral worth to the extent that they benefit living organisms, and negative moral worth to the extent that they harm them.
Because of this difference, it has been very difficult for me to translate your argument into terms that make sense in my value system. However, your above statement clarifies it completely, and you have a valid point. Certainly it is immoral to impar the overall function of an object, that is, to transform an object in such a way that it benefits living organisms less or harms them more.
So then the question becomes: does a coffee shop (for example) benefit living organisms more or less if it has "STOP BUSH" written on it?
This question separates the moral issue completely from what I view as the false right of "private property." Now we can talk about it in terms that make sense to me.
So now we have to determine to what extent the words "STOP BUSH" written on the coffee shop decrease its benefit to people in allowing its operators to sell coffee and make a living, and allowing its customers to buy coffee which they enjoy. We also have to determine whether the words "STOP BUSH" written on the coffee shop will actually have any effect on the presidential campaign.
Now, there's a pretty good case to be made that the answer to both questions is "not much." Most New Yorkers will probably not stop buying coffee at their favorite coffee shop simply because it has "STOP BUSH" written on it. Most people are not going to vote against Bush just because they saw "STOP BUSH" written on a coffee shop. So really, the moral impact of this action is pretty negligible either way, probably not even worth arguing over.
Now, within this tiny realm of moral discrepancy, there is room for argument. So if you can convince me that the negative impact of the graffitti on the business will be greater than the negative impact of the graffitti on the Bush campaign, then I will agree that the act is immoral.
There is also a general issue here. I think that if you impair the function of an object (whether it "belongs to you" or not), you have a moral obligation to repair that function. So if the graffitti does harm the shopkeeper's business, it is the moral obligation of the person who wrote it to clean it up, or to pay the shopkeeper to have it cleaned up. That is why vandalism should be illegal, and I think people should not do jail time for it, but they should be required to pay restitution.
are you a college student?
LOL. No, I am not, I'm 31 years old and left graduate school four years ago. But I can see why you ask. Disrespect for property rights is common among college students because they don't own much property. As people age and accumulate more property, their respect for property rights tends to increase. In my case, I doubt I will ever recognize the legitimacy of property rights, regardless of how much property I "own."
Well, for one thing, that seems like an unlikely scenario to me. I expect shopkeepers in NY are used to dealing with graffitti, and that it would not put them out of business or even slow them down appreciably. Certainly, from a business standpoint, if I were a NYC shop owner, I would regard a little graffitti as a small price to pay for the enormous amount of business that is probably generated by having those kinds of crowds around. I bet they're making a killing right now. As I said, let's try to keep this in perspective, I'm not talking about burning down buildings or something, just writing on them.
For another thing, I never said it should be legal. In fact, I specifically said it should be illegal, and that the perp should be arrested for it.
What I am saying is, it's moral, not legal, not within his rights, but nonetheless moral, to deface property in order to spread an important, valid, and correct message. You say what about the shopkeepers in NYC, but I say what about the thousands of people who have been killed as a direct result of decisions made by Bush? Not just in my value system, but in the value system of our culture in general, doesn't human life trump property? If it doesn't, then we're in worse shape than I thought.
Now, as I said to st0rmshad0w, we can argue tactics if you like. Writing on shop windows or whatever may not be an effective means of stopping Bush, and if it is not (and I agree that it probably isn't) then there is no reason to do it. But this is a tactical issue, not a moral issue. In terms of moral value, I say that getting Bush out of office is way more important than protecting buildings from graffitti.
Yes, this is only my opinion, I wouldn't presume to impose it on anyone else, and you of course have the right to make your own moral judgments. As for the law, I will say again, I think vandalism should be illegal. But if someone is willing to go to jail to spread an anti-Bush message by writing on shop windows, and they think that is an effective tactic, I personally give them my moral support, that's all I'm saying.
I don't know about that. I think killing tens of thousands of people is coldly cruel. I think writing on things is a minor nuisance at worst. Let's keep things in perspective here.