I was thinking of Godel's incompleteness theorem (that no mathematical model can ever be complete enough to mimic reality- something we well know in the computer world, that the digital is only a "good enough" approximation of the analog), but that fits too.
Maybe a physical theory of the origin of time and space and reality is beyond us, but the point here is that cosmology is a hard science in the sense that it involves the comparison of observations to theoretical predictions (which are based on computation not conjecturing: "I wonder if the universe goes on forever" and then looking through a telescope to see if it does).
Well, then by those rules most religions are "hard sciences" too once you cut down to the basic theology, which is always based on a subjective observational test.
I'm afraid I don't follow you here. Sociology and PolySci are both the study of (Soilent Green! It's) people. I don't understand what you mean when you say they are evolutionary. I don't understand how one may translate calling them evolutionary into saying they are the reaction to an infinite universe. Finally (skipping the evolutionary term) I don't understand how studying people is a reaction to an infinite universe. I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm just not understanding you. Perhaps you would care to elaborate?
Political, religious, cultural and economic systems are the way they are because they are made up of (seemingly) random elements- that whole free will thing you were talking about- that fit themselves into a given climate, not at all unlike random mutation affecting DNA in a survival of the fittest situaiton. It's still a soft science, because as we all know, random events don't really exist- they only seem to because we don't have all the information needed to predict them.
I don't mean to suggest that the philosophy of science is useless. I mean to suggest that cosmology is a hard science. Perhaps if your knowledge of cosmology is based on coffee shop talk and a good NOVA special you might conclude that cosmology is a 'soft science'. Goodness knows, I've heard a number of wide-eyed youths discuss the matter in breathless what-ifs. As fluffy (and cool and entertaining) as that sort of talk is it may sound like 'soft science' talk. But if you trace that stuff backwards, it's not made up by more people in coffee shops. It's made up by people doing work in relativity and astronomy and high energy physics. Math, telescopes, math, particle accelerators, math and math. These people are doing hard science.
Math and high energy physics aren't exactly hard science yet- one is theoretical and in fact contains a theory that it will NEVER be a complete model of reality, the other contains a lot of stuff we don't really know (leading to quantum physics and all of that rot). But besides that, Cosmology is trying to answer questions that are indeed too big to answer- and would probably go against physics as we know it to actually answer.
Sociology, Political Science, and such are 'soft sciences' because they study mankind, which is inherently illogical. This isn't to say that there isn't cause and effect to be investigated, but 'free will' sorta screws up a purely mechanical theory of sociology.
There's more to it than that- both sociology and political science are also evolutionary- which means they are mankind's reaction to an infinite universe.
Cosmology, on the other hand actually is a hard science. If you think of it as the intersection of philosophy, math, astronomy and religion (as opposed to math, math, math, and astronomy) I would suggest that it is perhaps because you studied it more in a coffee house and less in a classroom.
And I'd suggest that if you're studying *ANYTHING* only in the classroom and the lab, you've missed the entire point of the philosophy of science.
Many people enjoy asking if God plays dice with the universe or what is the status of Schroedinger's cat. There is a propensity to mistake these "philosophy of science" questions for the actual science itself.
Darwin was right- without the philosophy, the science is useless.
Alright, after reading that, I want a yottabyte hard drive in my house server- ought to be good for recording all sensor data, including DVR, for the next century or so....
Agreed. And the reason it's a soft science is similar to the reason why sociology or philosophy is a soft science- we're finite beings searching for infinite answers. There's a serious mismatch between our ability to comprehend and the size of what we're trying to comprehend.
Of course it is a non-jury terrorist trial; the defendants are charged with terrorism. But not just know the law- a judge should be LEARNED, well informed in other areas as well. Else how can he know if a law makes any sense at all?
LIVR- Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed....
Many judges may be unfamiliar with the concept of what DNA is. Does that mean there should be a special group of biologist judges to rule on cases involving DNA, along with the group of tech judges to rule on cases involving websites and forums?
If the ability of the state to hand me over to a foreign country for torture was involved, I'd damn sight want a judge who is familiar enough with the concept of DNA to understand the probabilities and error rate of the science, if that was the primary evidence against me. Websites and forums are a good deal more common- find a judge under the age of 40 and you'll likely have a good one.
I think the least we can do for the defendants in this case is provide them with a judge who is LIVR, minimum....with emphasis on the L. They're under 25- why is somebody who is 59 even considered enough of a peer to understand their culture?
I was using more the popular definition- but to me anybody who isn't online at this point in any first-world country is attempting to avoid the internet on purpose, not by accident.
The solicitors will have to spend an hour or so having someone explain the basic concepts of the internet.
If he's anything like my luddite of a father in law, maybe a year or two of reeducation will allow him to come CLOSE to understanding web pages and online forums. Maybe. Got to remember, this guy is of a generation that when computers came to the workplace, they simply hired people to deal with the computers instead of actually learning anything themselves.
This Luddite should recuse himself and allow the state to pick, at the very least, somebody who once hooked a modem up to a ZX Spectrum, if nobody more modern is available.
Instead of pirates, you should call them witches. After all, they somehow transfer sound and images; outright witchcraft!
Mod parent up- this is EXACTLY the attitude I'd expect from our wetback-general...has anybody ever bothered to check the immigration status of the Attorney General?
Under the law != popular tradition, by a long shot. Which to me says there's a horrible problem with the way we make laws in this country.
I committed that first act of piracy (making of a mix tape to give to a friend) in the sixth grade, to a girl who I had some affection for (affection that wasn't returned). She found it creepy...Ah, nerds in love.
That was 22 years ago of course, and there's definately a quality difference between a mix tape and a CD; but we considered it fair use back then. Of course, that was to a single person- and I'm sure it ended up in the trash in the next week.
That's all well and dandy for those pirates who actually make money off of piracy- but that's a small percentage of the pirates out there. The grand majority are either making use of what used to be considered fair use: Mix CDs and tapes for friends, backups of media purchased legally, copies for educational use, etc. If you're going to crack down on piracy and hit them in the wallets so to speak, what do you do when the wallet is empty and has never had any cash in it?
Not understanding the real purpose behind Open Source and Public Domain software projects would indicate a seriously underdeveloped, perhaps even to the point of brain damage, sense of creativity.
And frankly, without them, most open-source projects would rapidly wither away: without an intellectual property behemoth like Microsoft to fight, what would be the point?
The point would be to get the nightmares out of my head, you idiot! Fighting Microsoft or even earning money is a distant motivator in comparison to actually fixing something that needs fixing and that I know how to do.
Cash out my pension, find a nice plot of land on a major highway people use to go on vacation, and get myself a nice mental case of dementia concretia; charging people $6 a carload to look at "art" that teaches a lesson about recycling junk and making alternative energy. If I make enough alternative energy, I'll also want an electric train to the nearest population centers. But your mileage may vary....
Get a smaller house, move 2 miles down the road where the property values are 30% less, don't eat out 5 nights a week, whatever.
You're apparently unaware of just how insane property values in New York (and Southern California, and Singapore, and a few other places where human congregations exceed 300 people per square kilometer) really are. Try "move to another state where property values are 30% less", because it isn't just 2 miles down the road, it's 200 miles down the road. Where concentrations of people need food shipped in from far away, food prices go up. And all the rest.
A $100k job in New York City is the same as a $25k job in Kansas- that's how different the prices really are.
The part about you not being a bad guy.. I take that back. Sure is a lot of "stamping out" and "virtual" jails goind on, in your world. When you uhh.. creat this system of yours I asume you have someone in mind for the programing of it.. so.. you want to program this new system yourself and "stamp out" unproductive people.. etc.. etc.. Thats very nice, and all but I don't see you being diffrent than any other dictatior.
Here is what is different- this "new system" won't be programmed by a single individual. It's business rules, really laws, can be proposed by anybody, and will be voted upon by everybody. No human being will execute those laws. ANY human being will be allowed to write them, and if they gain a majority 150.00001 million votes, then the law will be added to the ruleset for the expert systems that actually run the government. Repealing a law will be similarily easy. EVERYBODY will be able to vote, EVERYBODY will be able to write the program. Minorities who are sociopathic, greedy, and selfish, will find themselves cut off from the good things of society; those who aren't sociopathic will find more freedom, not less, without anonymity; the freedom to do good without worrying about evil. Evil can only thrive if nobody knows you do it, and if nobody else has the power to change the law to stop the evil.
So your going to have to "stamp out" a lot of people like me because I for one wont let you do this.
People like you are already doing it. Every time you campaign for lower taxes, government has to become more efficient. Every time government has to become more efficient, that means lowered headcount among the bureaucrats. Every time we lower headcount among the bureaucrats, the easiest way to do it is to turn the job over to a computer. The law is already as structured as a computer program- it's just one big if-then-else tree. And the good thing is- with every bureaucrat you replace with a computer, that's one less human being who will be making the arbitrary fire and health inspections you hate so much. Eventually, all of the scheduling for those inspections will be done by computer. You can either have the program written by the current set of politicians (the default) or insist on the ability to write the laws yourself. It's not up to me- but I think the choice is obvious. Either take over the government from the inside- or stand outside it and get run over by it.
What you are is a Statist. I think thats fair to say.. You believe government should have massive control in your daily life. There is great error in your ways.. primarily because you keep sayings you keep talking about people as a united force. The In actuality "we" are not the people. We are not states. We are not government. We are not nations.
What I am is actually something new- I'm an electronic Statist. I believe government should have massive control over daily life- but I ALSO believe the people should be the government, and that the "machinery of government" should in actuality *be machinery*. In other words, I want to put every bureaucrat out of work, and turn the government into one giant slashdot.
Those terms are made up.. what "we" are is individual men each with our own ideas about things. This is why happy places where "everyone" acts a certain way.. don't exist on earth.
Then you've never been to a Catholic Monastery. You should spend some time in one- you might find something that "don't exist on earth".
First off, I don't do drugs, and you say.. you wouldn't do business with them.. fair enough, You get to choose who you associate with.. pot heads are washed out, and unreliable.. but you seem to support putting them in government cages.
Government cages with RealID can be virtual instead of physical. I want the ability to ask somebody for their RealID card, scan it with my cell phone, and pull up their government record.
41%.. Thats about 130,000,000 people in jail, most of whom.. don't want to hurt people at all they just want to smoke there weed in peace.
Something that we should stamp out if we want a PRODUCTIVE society- but the easiest way is virtual jails.
Democracy is a bad thing. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding whats for dinner. In democracy someone ALWAYS looses. I want a system where everybody has the opportunity to win. A system of liberty. A system where we enshrine the rights of the people and say These rights are rights that the government can never take away.
And in so doing, you will create losers too. Not everybody can "win" all the time, we don't have the resources for that in the solar system.
No.. corporations are again "legal fiction" They could not exist without government.
And just what government endorsed IBM, an INTERNATIONAL corporation?
Government creates protections for rich people so they can conduct questionable business practices with immunity. There is quite a bit of difference between them too as Wal-Mart can't put me in jail.
No, just in debt, which is worse than jail.
there have been people who have said it before.. they will say things like this again.. "No taxations without representation.. bahh.. we don't need a revolutionary war.. king George knows what he is doing." or "Yeah.. in 2029 the government took over like V for Vendetta.. why bother fighting them. Who needs freedom."
You just need to expand your mind to other freedoms than cheating your neighbor.
But men live for freedom.. if you don't believe that.. Why do kids move out of their parents house into tiny apartments? Why do people go to Vegas? Why will men say such things as.. "What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Because they are fools- trading security for freedom, devaluing human life until it's worth less than a five cent increase in stock price. It's a SCAM.
I gotta go.. I think you have some crazy ideas.. and I don't expect you to change you mind right away, but think about it. Think about who government hurts. Think about who they aim to protect, it sure isn't us.
The way around that is to take away the functions of government from human beings.
Hea, I don't think your a bad guy or anything but your REALLY convinced that anyone who breaks a law is a bad, evil, monstrous, person. Are you a cop?
Close enough, I'm a programmer who has been hired by the state to replace bureaucrats with computer programs.
You didn't answer my question about marijuana.. what about alcohol? it was illegal once.. were the people drinking it when it was illegal bad and then when it was legal suddenly good again? Why did we need a law for that if people like it?
Personally, I think there should be a law against drinking in public- after all, that's where the problem arises. And no, I wouldn't do business with anybody who does marijuana OR alcohol to excess- it's proof of a lack of intelligence.
I would say the corruption of the Mexican Government has quite a bit to do with the sad state of Mexico. Again.. the problem is welfare.. if we get rid of it.. and if your right.. that they only want to be freeloaders.. then they won't come at all.
Same if we get rid of the cheap labor fraudsters who lure them here with jobs that don't pay enough to live on. No need to actually deport them- they'll deport themselves once the jobs are gone.
Lifelock is not an ID system. It is an Anti Identity Theft system. You wouldn't accept it at all because there is nothing to accept.. all they do is prevent identity theft and fraud.
Then they are an incomplete system for the later- the reason for a national ID card is to give us a way to trust people again.
And when are we going to get such a system.. because we don't have it now. People are not in control of this government. How many people voted for the Patriot Act? How many voted for the IRS? ---- actually.. how many vote? about 50%? and of that 50% about half win.. so your down to 25% of the population that matter.. and of those.. how many are informed??
Nobody votes right now because they know that we no longer have a democracy. Every politician is already bought and paid for- and the representative system only represents the rich. We need a new constitutional congress and a new deal.
Government bureaucrats are not held accountable.. if a government project fails.. (and most do) the reason is always that it didn't have enough money. they say "Our intentions were good." And keep failed programs running.
Actually, most don't. Fail that is. Most succeed and you never hear about them.
but again from above.. its not.. Did you know that the FDA wants to label vegetable juice as a drug? They want to do it because they conceder "May cure cancer" a drug claim. By law in the US the only thing that can "cure" something is a drug. How many people voted for vegetables being labeled drugs? NONE, it was a rule change by unelected bureaucrats.
And if we had NO anonymity and a direct vote system instead of a government, there would be no unelected bureaucrats- they'd be replaced with computer programs like the one I wrote which protects the earnings of 20,000 employeees of 4,000 contractors in Oregon working on the roads.
Besides this.. you don't even want to get me started on our money system in the US.. The Dollar is not backed by gold. Its backed by the US's ability to collect taxes. When the government wants money for a War, or a Project or a Hurricane.. they just print as much as they like! That causes the value of the dollar to drop.. do you think that gas is really going up? or is the dollar going down? Are companies making record profits.. or is the dollars amount worth a record low? What good is the DJIA being 13,000 if its actually *worth* half as much? 10 years ago the price of gold was $340 an ounce.. today its $690!! http://www.kitco.com/LFgif/au3650nyb.gif The value of gold did not change.. its the dollar that changed.. and the government is not doing a thing about it.. They like it because they can spend as much as they lik
Slashdot Mirror
I was thinking of Godel's incompleteness theorem (that no mathematical model can ever be complete enough to mimic reality- something we well know in the computer world, that the digital is only a "good enough" approximation of the analog), but that fits too.
Maybe a physical theory of the origin of time and space and reality is beyond us, but the point here is that cosmology is a hard science in the sense that it involves the comparison of observations to theoretical predictions (which are based on computation not conjecturing: "I wonder if the universe goes on forever" and then looking through a telescope to see if it does).
Well, then by those rules most religions are "hard sciences" too once you cut down to the basic theology, which is always based on a subjective observational test.
I'm afraid I don't follow you here. Sociology and PolySci are both the study of (Soilent Green! It's) people. I don't understand what you mean when you say they are evolutionary. I don't understand how one may translate calling them evolutionary into saying they are the reaction to an infinite universe. Finally (skipping the evolutionary term) I don't understand how studying people is a reaction to an infinite universe. I'm not trying to be a dick, I'm just not understanding you. Perhaps you would care to elaborate?
Political, religious, cultural and economic systems are the way they are because they are made up of (seemingly) random elements- that whole free will thing you were talking about- that fit themselves into a given climate, not at all unlike random mutation affecting DNA in a survival of the fittest situaiton. It's still a soft science, because as we all know, random events don't really exist- they only seem to because we don't have all the information needed to predict them.
I don't mean to suggest that the philosophy of science is useless. I mean to suggest that cosmology is a hard science. Perhaps if your knowledge of cosmology is based on coffee shop talk and a good NOVA special you might conclude that cosmology is a 'soft science'. Goodness knows, I've heard a number of wide-eyed youths discuss the matter in breathless what-ifs. As fluffy (and cool and entertaining) as that sort of talk is it may sound like 'soft science' talk. But if you trace that stuff backwards, it's not made up by more people in coffee shops. It's made up by people doing work in relativity and astronomy and high energy physics. Math, telescopes, math, particle accelerators, math and math. These people are doing hard science.
Math and high energy physics aren't exactly hard science yet- one is theoretical and in fact contains a theory that it will NEVER be a complete model of reality, the other contains a lot of stuff we don't really know (leading to quantum physics and all of that rot). But besides that, Cosmology is trying to answer questions that are indeed too big to answer- and would probably go against physics as we know it to actually answer.
Sociology, Political Science, and such are 'soft sciences' because they study mankind, which is inherently illogical. This isn't to say that there isn't cause and effect to be investigated, but 'free will' sorta screws up a purely mechanical theory of sociology.
There's more to it than that- both sociology and political science are also evolutionary- which means they are mankind's reaction to an infinite universe.
Cosmology, on the other hand actually is a hard science. If you think of it as the intersection of philosophy, math, astronomy and religion (as opposed to math, math, math, and astronomy) I would suggest that it is perhaps because you studied it more in a coffee house and less in a classroom.
And I'd suggest that if you're studying *ANYTHING* only in the classroom and the lab, you've missed the entire point of the philosophy of science.
Many people enjoy asking if God plays dice with the universe or what is the status of Schroedinger's cat. There is a propensity to mistake these "philosophy of science" questions for the actual science itself.
Darwin was right- without the philosophy, the science is useless.
Alright, after reading that, I want a yottabyte hard drive in my house server- ought to be good for recording all sensor data, including DVR, for the next century or so....
Agreed. And the reason it's a soft science is similar to the reason why sociology or philosophy is a soft science- we're finite beings searching for infinite answers. There's a serious mismatch between our ability to comprehend and the size of what we're trying to comprehend.
Of course it is a non-jury terrorist trial; the defendants are charged with terrorism. But not just know the law- a judge should be LEARNED, well informed in other areas as well. Else how can he know if a law makes any sense at all? LIVR- Learned, Impartial, and Very Relaxed....
Many judges may be unfamiliar with the concept of what DNA is. Does that mean there should be a special group of biologist judges to rule on cases involving DNA, along with the group of tech judges to rule on cases involving websites and forums?
If the ability of the state to hand me over to a foreign country for torture was involved, I'd damn sight want a judge who is familiar enough with the concept of DNA to understand the probabilities and error rate of the science, if that was the primary evidence against me. Websites and forums are a good deal more common- find a judge under the age of 40 and you'll likely have a good one.
I think the least we can do for the defendants in this case is provide them with a judge who is LIVR, minimum....with emphasis on the L. They're under 25- why is somebody who is 59 even considered enough of a peer to understand their culture?
I was using more the popular definition- but to me anybody who isn't online at this point in any first-world country is attempting to avoid the internet on purpose, not by accident.
The solicitors will have to spend an hour or so having someone explain the basic concepts of the internet.
If he's anything like my luddite of a father in law, maybe a year or two of reeducation will allow him to come CLOSE to understanding web pages and online forums. Maybe. Got to remember, this guy is of a generation that when computers came to the workplace, they simply hired people to deal with the computers instead of actually learning anything themselves.
This Luddite should recuse himself and allow the state to pick, at the very least, somebody who once hooked a modem up to a ZX Spectrum, if nobody more modern is available.
And 39 million of the original 40 million were on computers that immediately had their hard drives erased and Linux installed.
Instead of pirates, you should call them witches. After all, they somehow transfer sound and images; outright witchcraft!
Mod parent up- this is EXACTLY the attitude I'd expect from our wetback-general...has anybody ever bothered to check the immigration status of the Attorney General?
Under the law != popular tradition, by a long shot. Which to me says there's a horrible problem with the way we make laws in this country.
I committed that first act of piracy (making of a mix tape to give to a friend) in the sixth grade, to a girl who I had some affection for (affection that wasn't returned). She found it creepy...Ah, nerds in love.
That was 22 years ago of course, and there's definately a quality difference between a mix tape and a CD; but we considered it fair use back then. Of course, that was to a single person- and I'm sure it ended up in the trash in the next week.
You misunderstand- if he's basing the fine on (SumOfIllGottenGains)*x%, even if that X is 500, 500% of zero is still zero.
Guess that's what we get when we lean on the guys who flunked math for creating law.
That's all well and dandy for those pirates who actually make money off of piracy- but that's a small percentage of the pirates out there. The grand majority are either making use of what used to be considered fair use: Mix CDs and tapes for friends, backups of media purchased legally, copies for educational use, etc. If you're going to crack down on piracy and hit them in the wallets so to speak, what do you do when the wallet is empty and has never had any cash in it?
More like it got moved to Sunday Nights, opposite King of The Hill!
Not understanding the real purpose behind Open Source and Public Domain software projects would indicate a seriously underdeveloped, perhaps even to the point of brain damage, sense of creativity.
And frankly, without them, most open-source projects would rapidly wither away: without an intellectual property behemoth like Microsoft to fight, what would be the point?
The point would be to get the nightmares out of my head, you idiot! Fighting Microsoft or even earning money is a distant motivator in comparison to actually fixing something that needs fixing and that I know how to do.
Cash out my pension, find a nice plot of land on a major highway people use to go on vacation, and get myself a nice mental case of dementia concretia; charging people $6 a carload to look at "art" that teaches a lesson about recycling junk and making alternative energy. If I make enough alternative energy, I'll also want an electric train to the nearest population centers. But your mileage may vary....
Get a smaller house, move 2 miles down the road where the property values are 30% less, don't eat out 5 nights a week, whatever.
You're apparently unaware of just how insane property values in New York (and Southern California, and Singapore, and a few other places where human congregations exceed 300 people per square kilometer) really are. Try "move to another state where property values are 30% less", because it isn't just 2 miles down the road, it's 200 miles down the road. Where concentrations of people need food shipped in from far away, food prices go up. And all the rest.
A $100k job in New York City is the same as a $25k job in Kansas- that's how different the prices really are.
The part about you not being a bad guy.. I take that back. Sure is a lot of "stamping out" and "virtual" jails goind on, in your world. When you uhh.. creat this system of yours I asume you have someone in mind for the programing of it.. so.. you want to program this new system yourself and "stamp out" unproductive people.. etc.. etc.. Thats very nice, and all but I don't see you being diffrent than any other dictatior.
Here is what is different- this "new system" won't be programmed by a single individual. It's business rules, really laws, can be proposed by anybody, and will be voted upon by everybody. No human being will execute those laws. ANY human being will be allowed to write them, and if they gain a majority 150.00001 million votes, then the law will be added to the ruleset for the expert systems that actually run the government. Repealing a law will be similarily easy. EVERYBODY will be able to vote, EVERYBODY will be able to write the program. Minorities who are sociopathic, greedy, and selfish, will find themselves cut off from the good things of society; those who aren't sociopathic will find more freedom, not less, without anonymity; the freedom to do good without worrying about evil. Evil can only thrive if nobody knows you do it, and if nobody else has the power to change the law to stop the evil.
So your going to have to "stamp out" a lot of people like me because I for one wont let you do this.
People like you are already doing it. Every time you campaign for lower taxes, government has to become more efficient. Every time government has to become more efficient, that means lowered headcount among the bureaucrats. Every time we lower headcount among the bureaucrats, the easiest way to do it is to turn the job over to a computer. The law is already as structured as a computer program- it's just one big if-then-else tree. And the good thing is- with every bureaucrat you replace with a computer, that's one less human being who will be making the arbitrary fire and health inspections you hate so much. Eventually, all of the scheduling for those inspections will be done by computer. You can either have the program written by the current set of politicians (the default) or insist on the ability to write the laws yourself. It's not up to me- but I think the choice is obvious. Either take over the government from the inside- or stand outside it and get run over by it.
A Drivers License is so a police offer can identify the driver of a motor vehicle.
But without RealID, you don't know that a driver's license is accurate- you're back to the bogus ID problem.
What you are is a Statist. I think thats fair to say.. You believe government should have massive control in your daily life. There is great error in your ways.. primarily because you keep sayings you keep talking about people as a united force. The In actuality "we" are not the people. We are not states. We are not government. We are not nations.
What I am is actually something new- I'm an electronic Statist. I believe government should have massive control over daily life- but I ALSO believe the people should be the government, and that the "machinery of government" should in actuality *be machinery*. In other words, I want to put every bureaucrat out of work, and turn the government into one giant slashdot.
Those terms are made up.. what "we" are is individual men each with our own ideas about things. This is why happy places where "everyone" acts a certain way.. don't exist on earth.
Then you've never been to a Catholic Monastery. You should spend some time in one- you might find something that "don't exist on earth".
First off, I don't do drugs, and you say.. you wouldn't do business with them.. fair enough, You get to choose who you associate with.. pot heads are washed out, and unreliable.. but you seem to support putting them in government cages.
Government cages with RealID can be virtual instead of physical. I want the ability to ask somebody for their RealID card, scan it with my cell phone, and pull up their government record.
41%.. Thats about 130,000,000 people in jail, most of whom.. don't want to hurt people at all they just want to smoke there weed in peace.
Something that we should stamp out if we want a PRODUCTIVE society- but the easiest way is virtual jails.
Democracy is a bad thing. Democracy is two wolves and a lamb deciding whats for dinner. In democracy someone ALWAYS looses. I want a system where everybody has the opportunity to win. A system of liberty. A system where we enshrine the rights of the people and say These rights are rights that the government can never take away.
And in so doing, you will create losers too. Not everybody can "win" all the time, we don't have the resources for that in the solar system.
No.. corporations are again "legal fiction" They could not exist without government.
And just what government endorsed IBM, an INTERNATIONAL corporation?
Government creates protections for rich people so they can conduct questionable business practices with immunity. There is quite a bit of difference between them too as Wal-Mart can't put me in jail.
No, just in debt, which is worse than jail.
there have been people who have said it before.. they will say things like this again.. "No taxations without representation.. bahh.. we don't need a revolutionary war.. king George knows what he is doing." or "Yeah.. in 2029 the government took over like V for Vendetta.. why bother fighting them. Who needs freedom."
You just need to expand your mind to other freedoms than cheating your neighbor.
But men live for freedom.. if you don't believe that.. Why do kids move out of their parents house into tiny apartments? Why do people go to Vegas? Why will men say such things as.. "What is it that gentlemen wish? What would they have? Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery? Forbid it, Almighty God! I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!"
Because they are fools- trading security for freedom, devaluing human life until it's worth less than a five cent increase in stock price. It's a SCAM.
I gotta go.. I think you have some crazy ideas.. and I don't expect you to change you mind right away, but think about it. Think about who government hurts. Think about who they aim to protect, it sure isn't us.
The way around that is to take away the functions of government from human beings.
Hea, I don't think your a bad guy or anything but your REALLY convinced that anyone who breaks a law is a bad, evil, monstrous, person. Are you a cop?
Close enough, I'm a programmer who has been hired by the state to replace bureaucrats with computer programs.
You didn't answer my question about marijuana.. what about alcohol? it was illegal once.. were the people drinking it when it was illegal bad and then when it was legal suddenly good again? Why did we need a law for that if people like it?
Personally, I think there should be a law against drinking in public- after all, that's where the problem arises. And no, I wouldn't do business with anybody who does marijuana OR alcohol to excess- it's proof of a lack of intelligence.
I would say the corruption of the Mexican Government has quite a bit to do with the sad state of Mexico. Again.. the problem is welfare.. if we get rid of it.. and if your right.. that they only want to be freeloaders.. then they won't come at all.
Same if we get rid of the cheap labor fraudsters who lure them here with jobs that don't pay enough to live on. No need to actually deport them- they'll deport themselves once the jobs are gone.
Lifelock is not an ID system. It is an Anti Identity Theft system. You wouldn't accept it at all because there is nothing to accept.. all they do is prevent identity theft and fraud.
Then they are an incomplete system for the later- the reason for a national ID card is to give us a way to trust people again.
And when are we going to get such a system.. because we don't have it now. People are not in control of this government. How many people voted for the Patriot Act? How many voted for the IRS? ---- actually.. how many vote? about 50%? and of that 50% about half win.. so your down to 25% of the population that matter.. and of those.. how many are informed??
Nobody votes right now because they know that we no longer have a democracy. Every politician is already bought and paid for- and the representative system only represents the rich. We need a new constitutional congress and a new deal.
Government bureaucrats are not held accountable.. if a government project fails.. (and most do) the reason is always that it didn't have enough money. they say "Our intentions were good." And keep failed programs running.
Actually, most don't. Fail that is. Most succeed and you never hear about them.
but again from above.. its not.. Did you know that the FDA wants to label vegetable juice as a drug? They want to do it because they conceder "May cure cancer" a drug claim. By law in the US the only thing that can "cure" something is a drug. How many people voted for vegetables being labeled drugs? NONE, it was a rule change by unelected bureaucrats.
And if we had NO anonymity and a direct vote system instead of a government, there would be no unelected bureaucrats- they'd be replaced with computer programs like the one I wrote which protects the earnings of 20,000 employeees of 4,000 contractors in Oregon working on the roads.
Besides this.. you don't even want to get me started on our money system in the US.. The Dollar is not backed by gold. Its backed by the US's ability to collect taxes. When the government wants money for a War, or a Project or a Hurricane.. they just print as much as they like! That causes the value of the dollar to drop.. do you think that gas is really going up? or is the dollar going down? Are companies making record profits.. or is the dollars amount worth a record low? What good is the DJIA being 13,000 if its actually *worth* half as much? 10 years ago the price of gold was $340 an ounce.. today its $690!! http://www.kitco.com/LFgif/au3650nyb.gif The value of gold did not change.. its the dollar that changed.. and the government is not doing a thing about it.. They like it because they can spend as much as they lik