Now explain why government spending on military ventures (WWII) CAN fix the economy, yet government spending on anything else (roads, new technology (Internet anyone?), electrical grid, R&D, universities (GI Bill anyone?), city infrastructure, etc. etc.) CAN'T fix the economy.
I didn't say WWII "got us out of Depression". I only said that it shook things up.
Truth be told, if there had been no New Deal or WWII, i.e. no government intervention and obstruction, the "Great Depression" would have been little more than a good sized recession. After all, nothing substantial actually had been destroyed (at least before WWII); it was just a stock market crash.
Those who lost jobs would have eventually found jobs somewhere (maybe in a different field, maybe with some paycut; but that's all part of reallocation of resources), much sooner if government hadn't crowded out all the private investments.
Perhaps I should be careful in saying that government can never help the economy. I mean to say that the government action can never help the economy in long term, and that even the short term benefits of "stimulus spending" is overrated (as New Deal has shown in how long Great Depression lasted, even though it was supposed to fix it).
Suppose I agree (I don't) that New Deal was what got America out of Great Depression (it wasn't; it was the whole shake-up with WWII). And suppose that I completely agree with the goals of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Suppose all these programs are God's finest gift to men. Suppose these socialist programs are the best thing ever happened to United States of America.
From those (preposterous) suppositions, does it follow that because a little socialism was good, a whole lot of it would be better?
No. U.S.S.R. proved the contrary nearly 2 decades ago.
I do think government should provide some things to some people at the expense of others, if nothing else just because we live in softer times. I do think that government should provide "safety nets" so that people don't starve. So that people don't die of horrible diseases easily treatable only if they had a little bit of money. These things don't help the economy or promote general welfare (as defined by amount of "wealth" in the society), but we can afford to be generous to those too... lazy to lift themselves up. (And before you argue that Social Security is paid for by its beneficiaries, I'm talking only about those who put hardly anything into the system and yet receive some minimum pension.)
But, just because these things make the society look nicer doesn't mean we should argue for even more socialism. Just because the government should make sure no one starves doesn't mean it should make sure everyone has a car or even a computer. Just because the government should ensure some sort of health care for those who can't afford any doesn't mean it should set up a national health care system that answers to no one (or, one that is as responsive and responsible as, say, your local DMV).
Just because a little socialism was good (and I would argue against even that) doesn't mean we should have more socialism. There is wisdom in moderation in everything.
I'll root for America to succeed, you root for it to fail, and we'll see who wins in 2010 regardless of what happens.
It's not a matter of someone wishing America to go belly up against someone wishing America to soar like eagle.
It's a matter of what is (something Clinton had trouble defining, BTW). As far as history has shown, socialism (and if Democrats are in charge, that's the way we are going) has never been good for economy, at least not of large powerful countries like U.S. (small countries often can get away with a lot of economically bad things because they are dependent on foreign nations anyway). So, we conservatives (or at least libertarians, I couldn't care less about social conservatives) say that if Democrats get their wish, it will be bad for the country, and what GP said is that when that happens, he wants Democrats to own up to their mistakes rather than passing the blame off as they have with CRA.
On the other hand, if the economy benefits from the socialist policies passed by Democrats, then, well, it will be a shock to most economists and we will have learned something new. Maybe human nature has changed or the main drivers of economic forces changed. Something that wouldn't have been true 200 years ago would have become true, if that happened.
But, let's wait to see that happen. Until then, I'll side with those who say socialist policies don't benefit the economy, but that doesn't mean I wish for America to suffer (after all, I am an American; when America suffers, I suffer). It does mean I think, based on all the facts and what happened before, if Democrats get their socialist policies enacted in such a large country as U.S. our economy will suffer (not that I want it to).
No, that's not the case. Stallman is pretty clear on this point. Going back to his original reason for creating GNU (the infamous printer incident at MIT), the core point has always been to create an environment in which software authors are encouraged to start from pieces which enforce good citizenship, which by his definition (no judgment, here) is defined as providing source and allowing modification.
Perhaps this will go nowhere with us outsiders talking about it back and forth, but if you follow his anecdote through, it wasn't (necessarily) that the printer driver didn't come with sources. It was that when he found someone who had a copy of the source, and he asked for it, he said he couldn't share it because he agreed not to.
To the extent that copyright is used to prevent spreading of such knowledge—so that even those who do have access to the source and are willing cannot share it—FSF must be against copyright (and it doesn't make a difference as far as its mission goes whether copyleft dominates the world or copyright (at least on technical materials as software) is abolished).
Now, as far as secrets (such as source code) can be kept without copyright protection, namely, trade secret and all those NDAs, I frankly don't know which way FSF would go. Copyleft doesn't help in this case (after all, since it's secret how is anyone going to know whether copylefted material has been used? Enough changes in the code, and the traditional methods to spot GPL violation may not work), and copyright doesn't matter.
Until we see an authoritative source saying clearly one way or another, i.e. whether FSF would have no copyleft or copyright at all than copyright balanced with copyleft, it's just a speculation—speculation based on more than 20-year old anecdote that some say are not factual anyway.
P.S. One could argue that we should do away with copyright and outlaw NDAs... but I feel that outlawing of something like a nondisclosure agreement would be outright unconstitutional with its infringement on the freedom of contract.
the FSF would have been happy to lose the protection of the GPL by copyright on software being abolished. Indeed, I believe that is still the case, but I don't speak for the FSF.
Well, I don't speak for FSF either, but I will say that I support FSF because I also believe that FSF would rather see copyright (at least ones on software) abolished than to keep its leverage of copyleft.
If I ever see evidence that's not the case, well, FSF would lose my support.
If that's the case, then why don't they use a BSD-like license? Because that's all they will have if copyrights are eliminated -- anyone can take FSF code, modify it, and lock away their modifications.
Because BSD-like license will not motivate the big players to abolish copyright. The only way to get traditional backers of copyright to oppose copyright on certain things is to poison it—and copyleft is exactly that. If enough software libraries and tools are under copyleft, and the big players want to use them without putting their own work under copyleft (or paying for separate license, if such option is available), then the only way is to abolish copyright.
Using BSD-like license (which is little better than just putting it in public domain) will just let the big players keep trampling on you.
Well, reducing armaments globally would also solve world hunger several times over.
Wrong. The existing armaments can destroy the world many times over. The cost of producing them is peanuts compared to what we already spend on foreign aids and welfare.
Just look at United States. Right now, even with all the expenditures related to the war in Iraq, the military budget of United States (which outstrips military budget of any other country) is less than $700 billion. That sounds like a lot, but compared to the welfare budget (this is for a different year, and without all the "stimulus" funding), we spent $600 billion on Social Security, $380 billion on Medicare, $200 billion for Medicaid, and $320 for unemployment for total of at least $1500 billion on welfare programs federally.
This is how much we are spending to "feed the poor" in the United States and that's crippling our nation. Can you imagine what would happen if we tried to do that for, what, 1, 2, or 3 billion more people?
The liberal media would have you believe that we spend too much for military and armaments. Maybe we do—we sure spend much, much more than before the world wars. But compared to other spendings like those on social programs, it's really peanuts, and before we talk about removing our only defense from our enemies, we should talk about letting each person take responsibility for his action and not burdening the society for his (or his father's) laziness.
So why in the hell would anyone support polluting this planet?
It depends on what you mean by "pollution". If you mean nasty stuff like ozone (at the surface level; not up there where it blocks UV) or other things that used to come out of tailpipes and factories, sure, I don't think anybody is against reducing these nasty pollutions (that's what the catalytic converters and all those filter things are for).
But, what's really insidious about the "global warming" crowd is that they got people to think about carbon dioxide (CO2) as a polluting gas. CO2 is not pollution. Sure, you can get CO2 poisoning, but then, you can also die from eating too much salt or sugar (or water on the flip side). CO2 per se is not toxic, it's not "pollution". You breathe it out, and plants need them for photosynthesis.
So, that's what the debate is about, because any time you burn something other than hydrogen, you are going to generate CO2, and to scrub it out of the emission, it will just cost too much (way more than filtering other, actually noxious gas out).
There have been no studies that linked slightly elevated level of CO2 in the atmosphere (I think currently at 200 to 500 ppm or so; it takes about 1%, or 10,000 ppm for anyone to feel anything) to any harmful effect on long term health.
So once we get rid of all the nasty stuff that everyone agrees we should get rid of, the debate is really down to, "Should we bother with this innocuous gas CO2 where the only concern is some unproven possible effect on global climate?"
And I would say most reasonable people I know around me (mostly physics professors) say "No" to that question.
Maybe you meant immoral, but it's quite impossible for copyright to be unconstitutional.
Well, it may be impossible for copyright per se to be unconstitutional. But particular kinds of copyright act can be unconstitutional.
For one, the constitution only allows for copyright (i.e. monopoly) for limited time. In the last century, the law makers repeatedly extended copyright retroactively so that the duration of copyright became "limited" in name only (if you could call author's life plus 70 years "limited" in the first place).
That would be—and should have been—unconstitutional.
But unfortunately, for some inexplicable reason Lessig lost the case and the Supreme Court ruled that these retroactive extensions were all perfectly constitutional.
I am a liberal because I subscribe to political beliefs of individual civil rights and freedoms.
That's not what makes you a liberal. It just markes you as "not a social conservative".
Plenty of groups that truly despise liberals (even more so that social conservatives do), such as libertarians and their ideological cousins, believe in the same thing you just said: individual civil rights and freedoms.
What really sets you apart as "liberal" (I do not mean it in the classical sense—the "classical liberal" includes both contemporary liberals and libertarians) in your stance on fiscal/economic policy.
If you believe that you have to tax the rich to give it to the poor ("spread the wealth"), then you are a liberal. If you believe that everyone should have equal chance to succeed, but beyond that the role of the government must be minimized, then you are a libertarian (or, at least, not a "liberal" in the contemporary sense).
Slashdot, for example, despite its Democratic bias (at least that of the editors), is supposed to have a libertarian vent to it, rather than liberal—and that's why Obama was not and is not wildly popular here.
I never said it was a matter of funding. Stop putting words in my mouth. If you're spending twice as much for inferior results, then how can you call yourself a great nation?
The figure I was talking about the amount of money U.S. spends per pupil for public schools. i.e. the government money, the tax money (not all federal; I think more than half comes from local taxes like property tax).
The perceived failure of public school system is the failure of the government, yet another evidence why we shouldn't trust it with more money, more power, and more spending discretion. Catholic schools, on the other hand, are doing well, and guess what, they are teaching evolution (compared that to some public schools in certain states).
There are very few things that the government does well or even should try to do (the few things being making war or arresting criminals). Anything else should be done by private citizens, who are the most qualified people to judge exactly how their money should be spent—tax takes that power away from them, and that's why it's evil, even with the supposed "representation".
That can't even provide healthcare and decent education to all of its citizens?
Yes, keep repeating the lies.
As for the education, U.S.A. spends more per student than any other country (including the socialist European ones). If there are any problems with the public school system, it's not a matter of funding, as you suggest.
As for health care, why is it that nearly all new, more effective drugs are invented by American companies and, all over the world, for the best medical care money can buy, people come to America?
Socialism may help you provide leeches and substandard medical care to all the masses, but it's only by the brilliance of capitalism and individualism that good medical technologies can be invented in the first place. Whether you can afford it, well, the free market is still the undisputed, most efficient resource allocation mechanism (if central planning could even begin to compete, U.S.S.R. would've won the Cold War). Those whose lives are worth the cost of the system will be able to afford the care they need.
You anti-taxers are amazing. You're all about "hey, this great country, what it really needs is less money, then it would be even greater!"
There's the saying (in fact, you can buy a T-shirt saying this at Washington D.C. airports): "I love my country. It's the government I'm afraid of."
America is the greatest country in the world in the human history, and it's precisely because it was the only country to celebrate individualism for what it was—the only practical way to promote collective good, given that men are men and angels do not govern.
America (the people, that is, not the bureaucrats or politicians in D.C.) will even be greater if she has more money (naturally), and one of the ways to do that is to reduce the amount of money taken by the government, and the easiest way to do that is to reduce tax, and the easiest way to reduce tax is to cut income tax, which is also the best way to uplift the middle class—there's no easy, arbitrarily set invisible line that separates the middle class from the ultra rich, and given that the ultra rich do not, as a group, pay so much tax anyway (or so you claim), cutting all income tax will help the middle class most, the exact group you want to help.
Far safer and easier to do, me thinks, to park a large asteroid in synchronous orbit between the Earth and Sun to occlude solar radiation.
Horribly unrealistic. Consider the moon:
For an "asteroid", it's a fairly large asteroid—it's large enough that its own gravity keeps it roughly spherical (many asteroids are not large enough to do that).
It's also very close to the Earth. It's probably not very realistic to get anything that's nearly the size of the moon much closer to Earth.
Now, imagine what happens in a solar eclipse: a tiny patch of land on Earth gets the shadow of the moon—even during a full solar eclipse most of the hemisphere sees the sun and receives the solar radiation normally. You cannot cut off solar radiation by any significant amount by placing an object between the sun and the Earth.
A "solar shade" that covers the almost all the surface of the earth might be more realistic, but given that the whole "global warming" is half invented "problem" in the first place, I think for now we should stick to painting streets white, rather than engage in a massive project with no doubt enormous engineering challenges.
Bush stood for scientific progress...and yet was against medical research using stem cells
Bush was a politician. But then, so is Obama. Expect politicians to cater to their main constituents. These days, such little things like "principle" is out of fashion anyway.
As far as this whole attitude of either administration towards science goes, I'm just pointing out that both administrations are exactly the same—a lot of lip service, and not a whole lot of change.
As for the whole stem cell issue goes, you know, being against funding of stem cell research with federal dollars isn't the same thing as being against scientific progress. Either way, the federal budget for scientific research remains the same, so the funds that weren't spent on stem cell research were spent on some other hopefully worthwhile projects.
One could almost argue that such hot topics as stem cell research shouldn't be funded by the federal government, given their ability to attract private funding—after all, doesn't the whole argument about why we should have federal government funding for science in the first place begin with how basic science research cannot attract enough funding (otherwise why not just let capitalism and market economy, the most efficient resource allocation mechanism known to men, do their job)?
At least that's the impression one would get reading/., with all the claims about how Internet was never meant to make money (as if the architects of the Internet actually intended anything).
You're a selfish tool who is unappreciative of the advantages he was blessed with, and unwilling to share them with the less fortunate. I hope one day you realize that.
Or you are a selfish tool who is unappreciative of the advantages that the rich are already sharing with you (especially in terms of income tax, for which the rich pay more than 30% of their income and the poor pay none) and are demanding ever more and more.
I hope one day you realize that—preferably before the rich break the shackles of slavery you have placed on them.
And do you know what one of the complaints against Bush's No Child Left Behind was?
That it required pedagogical methods to be scientifically proven [1].
Teachers didn't like that because then they couldn't use anecdote-based or other methods that they would prefer than methods that were "scientifically proven".
Expect similar complaints from the doctors (after all, if they were really scientists, they would've gone into research; there's a reason they chose the career that they chose), and yes, the "O admin" believes in the scientific method just as much as the Bush administration did—it's just the left-wing distortions in the media that made you think somehow Bush stood against scientific progress (remember last year, Bush proposed a relatively generous science budget, but it never got past the Democratic congress).
[1] From Department of Education website, "It only funds curricula and teaching methods that are scientifically proven to work."
I don't care if people don't believe in anthropogenic global warming... if our houses can be powered with windmills instead of power plants burning bunker C (which stinks), then lets do it.
But how much are you willing to spend to do it? Or, perhaps more precisely, how much would the people be willing to spend to do it? If Al Gore hadn't lied and made them believe in global warming, would they be willing to pay twice as much for "clean energy" as for "dirty energy"?
It is a good idea not to pee in your own drinking water. But, when the choice is between peeing in my own drinking water or not peeing at all, you know what, I think I will pee in my drinking water and somehow purify it afterwards.
When the "dirty energy" makes so much more economic sense (it would be nice if "clean energy" made economic sense, of course), the only way to get people to make sacrifices for this climate change agenda is to lie to them—as Al Gore apparently realized (see factual misstatements and exaggerations in his "documentary").
Just how much do you think you should have to pay for such a device? Cellphones are far from the only "subscription" service with a "registration fee" or equivalent.
For a SIM card? Probably something around $3 to $5. At least that's what I paid in Poland (I know, if I love Poland so much, why don't I move there—I'm just comparing, not saying that Poland is better than U.S.).
Note that I am providing my only phone, and you know, with the SIM card, the expectation is that I will be buying additional minutes on the account, so even giving the SIM card free to me could make market sense. Kinda like how your credit card company (or bank) "gives" your credit/ATM card "for free", because you make them enough money and the card really costs peanuts.
What do you think I've been wanting here in the USA? A SIM-only cell phone plan. Like Vodafone.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "SIM-only cell phone plan", but there are pay-as-you-go plans from major wireless carriers, like T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon (although Verizon's "pay-as-you-go" is just subscription on daily installment, since you pay daily "access fee" even on days you don't use your phone).
And you don't have to get a new cell phone when you get the SIM cards for these services, so if you have an unlocked cell phone or one that works with the carrier, you just go to the dealership and get the SIM card.
Granted, this is far less convenient than some places overseas, where you can just buy SIM cards at newspaper stands (and I don't think I should have to pay $10+ just for the SIM card, as I did when I got it from T-Mobile), but if you plan on using the same SIM card for a reasonable length of time, like most normal people, it's a minor inconvenience.
(current California law sets a minimum age (something around 50 or 60s, I think) for heterosexual couples, while no such limit exists for homosexual couples).
Oh, and yes, this is something else I learned from my gay friends. I don't actually have the time to research all these things. I know as much as I know only because I overhear these things from my gay friends when I am at their place for social events.
If I didn't know any gay people, my gut feeling would simply have been "no, don't change the meaning of the word, and especially not by a government action", without any details of issues (such as the unequal powers of spouse and domestic partner). But because I have gay friends, I do know those things now—but even then, my position stands; forcing acceptance on people goes against libertarian values.
You should know that some of the prominent "libertarian" thinkers before and after the Civil War opposed any federal government action or law against the slave states even while encouraging slaves to escape (after the war, they would speak against the forced integration). Just because something is good doesn't mean it's good to force it on people—that's the way liberals think, not libertarians.
Slashdot Mirror
Now explain why government spending on military ventures (WWII) CAN fix the economy, yet government spending on anything else (roads, new technology (Internet anyone?), electrical grid, R&D, universities (GI Bill anyone?), city infrastructure, etc. etc.) CAN'T fix the economy.
I didn't say WWII "got us out of Depression". I only said that it shook things up.
Truth be told, if there had been no New Deal or WWII, i.e. no government intervention and obstruction, the "Great Depression" would have been little more than a good sized recession. After all, nothing substantial actually had been destroyed (at least before WWII); it was just a stock market crash.
Those who lost jobs would have eventually found jobs somewhere (maybe in a different field, maybe with some paycut; but that's all part of reallocation of resources), much sooner if government hadn't crowded out all the private investments.
Perhaps I should be careful in saying that government can never help the economy. I mean to say that the government action can never help the economy in long term, and that even the short term benefits of "stimulus spending" is overrated (as New Deal has shown in how long Great Depression lasted, even though it was supposed to fix it).
Suppose I agree (I don't) that New Deal was what got America out of Great Depression (it wasn't; it was the whole shake-up with WWII). And suppose that I completely agree with the goals of Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid.
Suppose all these programs are God's finest gift to men. Suppose these socialist programs are the best thing ever happened to United States of America.
From those (preposterous) suppositions, does it follow that because a little socialism was good, a whole lot of it would be better?
No. U.S.S.R. proved the contrary nearly 2 decades ago.
I do think government should provide some things to some people at the expense of others, if nothing else just because we live in softer times. I do think that government should provide "safety nets" so that people don't starve. So that people don't die of horrible diseases easily treatable only if they had a little bit of money. These things don't help the economy or promote general welfare (as defined by amount of "wealth" in the society), but we can afford to be generous to those too ... lazy to lift themselves up. (And before you argue that Social Security is paid for by its beneficiaries, I'm talking only about those who put hardly anything into the system and yet receive some minimum pension.)
But, just because these things make the society look nicer doesn't mean we should argue for even more socialism. Just because the government should make sure no one starves doesn't mean it should make sure everyone has a car or even a computer. Just because the government should ensure some sort of health care for those who can't afford any doesn't mean it should set up a national health care system that answers to no one (or, one that is as responsive and responsible as, say, your local DMV).
Just because a little socialism was good (and I would argue against even that) doesn't mean we should have more socialism. There is wisdom in moderation in everything.
You know, you are right. I actually read Atlas Shrugged and agreed with most of what was in the novel and shed a few tears here and there as well.
But that speech was so long I skipped past it after reading, oh, what 10 paragraphs of it or so?
I plan on getting an audiobook version and listening to it, but I am not sitting down and reading that radio speech from beginning to the end.
I'll root for America to succeed, you root for it to fail, and we'll see who wins in 2010 regardless of what happens.
It's not a matter of someone wishing America to go belly up against someone wishing America to soar like eagle.
It's a matter of what is (something Clinton had trouble defining, BTW). As far as history has shown, socialism (and if Democrats are in charge, that's the way we are going) has never been good for economy, at least not of large powerful countries like U.S. (small countries often can get away with a lot of economically bad things because they are dependent on foreign nations anyway). So, we conservatives (or at least libertarians, I couldn't care less about social conservatives) say that if Democrats get their wish, it will be bad for the country, and what GP said is that when that happens, he wants Democrats to own up to their mistakes rather than passing the blame off as they have with CRA.
On the other hand, if the economy benefits from the socialist policies passed by Democrats, then, well, it will be a shock to most economists and we will have learned something new. Maybe human nature has changed or the main drivers of economic forces changed. Something that wouldn't have been true 200 years ago would have become true, if that happened.
But, let's wait to see that happen. Until then, I'll side with those who say socialist policies don't benefit the economy, but that doesn't mean I wish for America to suffer (after all, I am an American; when America suffers, I suffer). It does mean I think, based on all the facts and what happened before, if Democrats get their socialist policies enacted in such a large country as U.S. our economy will suffer (not that I want it to).
I am simply being realistic.
No, that's not the case. Stallman is pretty clear on this point. Going back to his original reason for creating GNU (the infamous printer incident at MIT), the core point has always been to create an environment in which software authors are encouraged to start from pieces which enforce good citizenship, which by his definition (no judgment, here) is defined as providing source and allowing modification.
Perhaps this will go nowhere with us outsiders talking about it back and forth, but if you follow his anecdote through, it wasn't (necessarily) that the printer driver didn't come with sources. It was that when he found someone who had a copy of the source, and he asked for it, he said he couldn't share it because he agreed not to.
To the extent that copyright is used to prevent spreading of such knowledge—so that even those who do have access to the source and are willing cannot share it—FSF must be against copyright (and it doesn't make a difference as far as its mission goes whether copyleft dominates the world or copyright (at least on technical materials as software) is abolished).
Now, as far as secrets (such as source code) can be kept without copyright protection, namely, trade secret and all those NDAs, I frankly don't know which way FSF would go. Copyleft doesn't help in this case (after all, since it's secret how is anyone going to know whether copylefted material has been used? Enough changes in the code, and the traditional methods to spot GPL violation may not work), and copyright doesn't matter.
Until we see an authoritative source saying clearly one way or another, i.e. whether FSF would have no copyleft or copyright at all than copyright balanced with copyleft, it's just a speculation—speculation based on more than 20-year old anecdote that some say are not factual anyway.
P.S. One could argue that we should do away with copyright and outlaw NDAs ... but I feel that outlawing of something like a nondisclosure agreement would be outright unconstitutional with its infringement on the freedom of contract.
the FSF would have been happy to lose the protection of the GPL by copyright on software being abolished. Indeed, I believe that is still the case, but I don't speak for the FSF.
Well, I don't speak for FSF either, but I will say that I support FSF because I also believe that FSF would rather see copyright (at least ones on software) abolished than to keep its leverage of copyleft.
If I ever see evidence that's not the case, well, FSF would lose my support.
If that's the case, then why don't they use a BSD-like license? Because that's all they will have if copyrights are eliminated -- anyone can take FSF code, modify it, and lock away their modifications.
Because BSD-like license will not motivate the big players to abolish copyright. The only way to get traditional backers of copyright to oppose copyright on certain things is to poison it—and copyleft is exactly that. If enough software libraries and tools are under copyleft, and the big players want to use them without putting their own work under copyleft (or paying for separate license, if such option is available), then the only way is to abolish copyright.
Using BSD-like license (which is little better than just putting it in public domain) will just let the big players keep trampling on you.
Well, reducing armaments globally would also solve world hunger several times over.
Wrong. The existing armaments can destroy the world many times over. The cost of producing them is peanuts compared to what we already spend on foreign aids and welfare.
Just look at United States. Right now, even with all the expenditures related to the war in Iraq, the military budget of United States (which outstrips military budget of any other country) is less than $700 billion. That sounds like a lot, but compared to the welfare budget (this is for a different year, and without all the "stimulus" funding), we spent $600 billion on Social Security, $380 billion on Medicare, $200 billion for Medicaid, and $320 for unemployment for total of at least $1500 billion on welfare programs federally.
This is how much we are spending to "feed the poor" in the United States and that's crippling our nation. Can you imagine what would happen if we tried to do that for, what, 1, 2, or 3 billion more people?
The liberal media would have you believe that we spend too much for military and armaments. Maybe we do—we sure spend much, much more than before the world wars. But compared to other spendings like those on social programs, it's really peanuts, and before we talk about removing our only defense from our enemies, we should talk about letting each person take responsibility for his action and not burdening the society for his (or his father's) laziness.
So why in the hell would anyone support polluting this planet?
It depends on what you mean by "pollution". If you mean nasty stuff like ozone (at the surface level; not up there where it blocks UV) or other things that used to come out of tailpipes and factories, sure, I don't think anybody is against reducing these nasty pollutions (that's what the catalytic converters and all those filter things are for).
But, what's really insidious about the "global warming" crowd is that they got people to think about carbon dioxide (CO2) as a polluting gas. CO2 is not pollution. Sure, you can get CO2 poisoning, but then, you can also die from eating too much salt or sugar (or water on the flip side). CO2 per se is not toxic, it's not "pollution". You breathe it out, and plants need them for photosynthesis.
So, that's what the debate is about, because any time you burn something other than hydrogen, you are going to generate CO2, and to scrub it out of the emission, it will just cost too much (way more than filtering other, actually noxious gas out).
There have been no studies that linked slightly elevated level of CO2 in the atmosphere (I think currently at 200 to 500 ppm or so; it takes about 1%, or 10,000 ppm for anyone to feel anything) to any harmful effect on long term health.
So once we get rid of all the nasty stuff that everyone agrees we should get rid of, the debate is really down to, "Should we bother with this innocuous gas CO2 where the only concern is some unproven possible effect on global climate?"
And I would say most reasonable people I know around me (mostly physics professors) say "No" to that question.
Maybe you meant immoral, but it's quite impossible for copyright to be unconstitutional.
Well, it may be impossible for copyright per se to be unconstitutional. But particular kinds of copyright act can be unconstitutional.
For one, the constitution only allows for copyright (i.e. monopoly) for limited time. In the last century, the law makers repeatedly extended copyright retroactively so that the duration of copyright became "limited" in name only (if you could call author's life plus 70 years "limited" in the first place).
That would be—and should have been—unconstitutional.
But unfortunately, for some inexplicable reason Lessig lost the case and the Supreme Court ruled that these retroactive extensions were all perfectly constitutional.
That's not what makes you a liberal. It just markes you as "not a social conservative".
Plenty of groups that truly despise liberals (even more so that social conservatives do), such as libertarians and their ideological cousins, believe in the same thing you just said: individual civil rights and freedoms.
What really sets you apart as "liberal" (I do not mean it in the classical sense—the "classical liberal" includes both contemporary liberals and libertarians) in your stance on fiscal/economic policy.
If you believe that you have to tax the rich to give it to the poor ("spread the wealth"), then you are a liberal. If you believe that everyone should have equal chance to succeed, but beyond that the role of the government must be minimized, then you are a libertarian (or, at least, not a "liberal" in the contemporary sense).
Slashdot, for example, despite its Democratic bias (at least that of the editors), is supposed to have a libertarian vent to it, rather than liberal—and that's why Obama was not and is not wildly popular here.
Well, he was a community organizer after all ...
I never said it was a matter of funding. Stop putting words in my mouth. If you're spending twice as much for inferior results, then how can you call yourself a great nation?
The figure I was talking about the amount of money U.S. spends per pupil for public schools. i.e. the government money, the tax money (not all federal; I think more than half comes from local taxes like property tax).
The perceived failure of public school system is the failure of the government, yet another evidence why we shouldn't trust it with more money, more power, and more spending discretion. Catholic schools, on the other hand, are doing well, and guess what, they are teaching evolution (compared that to some public schools in certain states).
There are very few things that the government does well or even should try to do (the few things being making war or arresting criminals). Anything else should be done by private citizens, who are the most qualified people to judge exactly how their money should be spent—tax takes that power away from them, and that's why it's evil, even with the supposed "representation".
That can't even provide healthcare and decent education to all of its citizens?
Yes, keep repeating the lies.
As for the education, U.S.A. spends more per student than any other country (including the socialist European ones). If there are any problems with the public school system, it's not a matter of funding, as you suggest.
As for health care, why is it that nearly all new, more effective drugs are invented by American companies and, all over the world, for the best medical care money can buy, people come to America?
Socialism may help you provide leeches and substandard medical care to all the masses, but it's only by the brilliance of capitalism and individualism that good medical technologies can be invented in the first place. Whether you can afford it, well, the free market is still the undisputed, most efficient resource allocation mechanism (if central planning could even begin to compete, U.S.S.R. would've won the Cold War). Those whose lives are worth the cost of the system will be able to afford the care they need.
You anti-taxers are amazing. You're all about "hey, this great country, what it really needs is less money, then it would be even greater!"
There's the saying (in fact, you can buy a T-shirt saying this at Washington D.C. airports): "I love my country. It's the government I'm afraid of."
America is the greatest country in the world in the human history, and it's precisely because it was the only country to celebrate individualism for what it was—the only practical way to promote collective good, given that men are men and angels do not govern.
America (the people, that is, not the bureaucrats or politicians in D.C.) will even be greater if she has more money (naturally), and one of the ways to do that is to reduce the amount of money taken by the government, and the easiest way to do that is to reduce tax, and the easiest way to reduce tax is to cut income tax, which is also the best way to uplift the middle class—there's no easy, arbitrarily set invisible line that separates the middle class from the ultra rich, and given that the ultra rich do not, as a group, pay so much tax anyway (or so you claim), cutting all income tax will help the middle class most, the exact group you want to help.
Far safer and easier to do, me thinks, to park a large asteroid in synchronous orbit between the Earth and Sun to occlude solar radiation.
Horribly unrealistic. Consider the moon:
For an "asteroid", it's a fairly large asteroid—it's large enough that its own gravity keeps it roughly spherical (many asteroids are not large enough to do that).
It's also very close to the Earth. It's probably not very realistic to get anything that's nearly the size of the moon much closer to Earth.
Now, imagine what happens in a solar eclipse: a tiny patch of land on Earth gets the shadow of the moon—even during a full solar eclipse most of the hemisphere sees the sun and receives the solar radiation normally. You cannot cut off solar radiation by any significant amount by placing an object between the sun and the Earth.
A "solar shade" that covers the almost all the surface of the earth might be more realistic, but given that the whole "global warming" is half invented "problem" in the first place, I think for now we should stick to painting streets white, rather than engage in a massive project with no doubt enormous engineering challenges.
Bush stood for scientific progress...and yet was against medical research using stem cells
Bush was a politician. But then, so is Obama. Expect politicians to cater to their main constituents. These days, such little things like "principle" is out of fashion anyway.
As far as this whole attitude of either administration towards science goes, I'm just pointing out that both administrations are exactly the same—a lot of lip service, and not a whole lot of change.
As for the whole stem cell issue goes, you know, being against funding of stem cell research with federal dollars isn't the same thing as being against scientific progress. Either way, the federal budget for scientific research remains the same, so the funds that weren't spent on stem cell research were spent on some other hopefully worthwhile projects.
One could almost argue that such hot topics as stem cell research shouldn't be funded by the federal government, given their ability to attract private funding—after all, doesn't the whole argument about why we should have federal government funding for science in the first place begin with how basic science research cannot attract enough funding (otherwise why not just let capitalism and market economy, the most efficient resource allocation mechanism known to men, do their job)?
hint: what does .com stand for?
communism?
At least that's the impression one would get reading /., with all the claims about how Internet was never meant to make money (as if the architects of the Internet actually intended anything).
You're a selfish tool who is unappreciative of the advantages he was blessed with, and unwilling to share them with the less fortunate. I hope one day you realize that.
Or you are a selfish tool who is unappreciative of the advantages that the rich are already sharing with you (especially in terms of income tax, for which the rich pay more than 30% of their income and the poor pay none) and are demanding ever more and more.
I hope one day you realize that—preferably before the rich break the shackles of slavery you have placed on them.
And do you know what one of the complaints against Bush's No Child Left Behind was?
That it required pedagogical methods to be scientifically proven [1].
Teachers didn't like that because then they couldn't use anecdote-based or other methods that they would prefer than methods that were "scientifically proven".
Expect similar complaints from the doctors (after all, if they were really scientists, they would've gone into research; there's a reason they chose the career that they chose), and yes, the "O admin" believes in the scientific method just as much as the Bush administration did—it's just the left-wing distortions in the media that made you think somehow Bush stood against scientific progress (remember last year, Bush proposed a relatively generous science budget, but it never got past the Democratic congress).
[1] From Department of Education website, "It only funds curricula and teaching methods that are scientifically proven to work."
I don't care if people don't believe in anthropogenic global warming... if our houses can be powered with windmills instead of power plants burning bunker C (which stinks), then lets do it.
But how much are you willing to spend to do it? Or, perhaps more precisely, how much would the people be willing to spend to do it? If Al Gore hadn't lied and made them believe in global warming, would they be willing to pay twice as much for "clean energy" as for "dirty energy"?
It is a good idea not to pee in your own drinking water. But, when the choice is between peeing in my own drinking water or not peeing at all, you know what, I think I will pee in my drinking water and somehow purify it afterwards.
When the "dirty energy" makes so much more economic sense (it would be nice if "clean energy" made economic sense, of course), the only way to get people to make sacrifices for this climate change agenda is to lie to them—as Al Gore apparently realized (see factual misstatements and exaggerations in his "documentary").
Just how much do you think you should have to pay for such a device? Cellphones are far from the only "subscription" service with a "registration fee" or equivalent.
For a SIM card? Probably something around $3 to $5. At least that's what I paid in Poland (I know, if I love Poland so much, why don't I move there—I'm just comparing, not saying that Poland is better than U.S.).
Note that I am providing my only phone, and you know, with the SIM card, the expectation is that I will be buying additional minutes on the account, so even giving the SIM card free to me could make market sense. Kinda like how your credit card company (or bank) "gives" your credit/ATM card "for free", because you make them enough money and the card really costs peanuts.
I use lynx for everything! Even youtube!
Same here. Just replace "lynx" with a commandline Python script that downloads the Flash video from the YouTube page, which I then watch with MPlayer.
It's so much safer, less burden on my computer, and so much less annoying.
What do you think I've been wanting here in the USA? A SIM-only cell phone plan. Like Vodafone.
I'm not exactly sure what you mean by "SIM-only cell phone plan", but there are pay-as-you-go plans from major wireless carriers, like T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon (although Verizon's "pay-as-you-go" is just subscription on daily installment, since you pay daily "access fee" even on days you don't use your phone).
And you don't have to get a new cell phone when you get the SIM cards for these services, so if you have an unlocked cell phone or one that works with the carrier, you just go to the dealership and get the SIM card.
Granted, this is far less convenient than some places overseas, where you can just buy SIM cards at newspaper stands (and I don't think I should have to pay $10+ just for the SIM card, as I did when I got it from T-Mobile), but if you plan on using the same SIM card for a reasonable length of time, like most normal people, it's a minor inconvenience.
(current California law sets a minimum age (something around 50 or 60s, I think) for heterosexual couples, while no such limit exists for homosexual couples).
Oh, and yes, this is something else I learned from my gay friends. I don't actually have the time to research all these things. I know as much as I know only because I overhear these things from my gay friends when I am at their place for social events.
If I didn't know any gay people, my gut feeling would simply have been "no, don't change the meaning of the word, and especially not by a government action", without any details of issues (such as the unequal powers of spouse and domestic partner). But because I have gay friends, I do know those things now—but even then, my position stands; forcing acceptance on people goes against libertarian values.
You should know that some of the prominent "libertarian" thinkers before and after the Civil War opposed any federal government action or law against the slave states even while encouraging slaves to escape (after the war, they would speak against the forced integration). Just because something is good doesn't mean it's good to force it on people—that's the way liberals think, not libertarians.