The problem is, what you consider being bland others consider non-important. in fact, they would find plastering stickers on things the equivalent of strutting like a peacock, and would argue that society is already too LOOK AT ME!!!! I have a nephew with many tattoos. Mostly random, no style, just all over the place. He occasionally complains about being judged by them. But you're judge by the things you chose. Just as he chose to be more popular with his tattoos in one community, he also chose to be judged by another. These are choices. Should you be judge by border patrol for these things? No. will you? Probably. I dress bland, my thoughts are the things important to me. I NEVER get stopped at border crossings. My somewhat flashy friends: All the time.
I used to travel with a very nice at the time Nikon camera in some sketchy locations. I covered that thing with blue painters tape making it look like i was holding pieces together with the tape, and added some large clumps of rubber cents looking goop to some joints. Nobody ever bothered with it. Other cheaper stuff got swiped, not that camera.
The one everyone keeps ignoring, is military spending. Like or hate the US, they spend a gob on the military, and most of Europe falls under that protection umbrella. Remove that protection (or fascism, or imperialism or whatever you like to call it) and SOMETHING will need to fill the newly obvious vacuum. Either each country will need to increase expenditures in that area drastically, or there may be a remaking of borders. And that money has to come from somewhere.
If you believe the US removing it's military presence will revert everyone to lions lying with sheep, you're pretty naive.
You call it "broken down". some would call it "wisdom". Would you WANT an elderly establishment that had even more energy than now to spend all their time making sure that there are no curbs?
Oh god, no. The bullet train fiasco is ONLY caused by California's inability to admit they were wrong and it is a cash drain that will never end. That and the fact it's the current governor's pet project.
You completely ignored the issue that allowed that giant company to exist, or the large sum of money to be. Additionally, there are many many more small farmers and people renting land than their are Deus Ex Machina rich CEOs with specific hunting needs.
A large component of the move to lack of consequences is the common teaching that someone is not responsible for the things they do: They're poor. They're the wrong race. They're disabled in some way. Their family had issues. They have a mental condition.
Rather than asking people to rise up above their problems, we often give this as an excuse to get a pass on things. This leads to a weaker society.
"Honestly, the whole industrialized world, including the US, has settled on capitalism with a socialist safety net as the best economic structure. We only debate about the scope, scale and structure of the safety net."
Greed is amoral. If I offer you one cookie or two , and you're hungry for cookies, you will probably want two. That's natural Greed, PROPERLY HARNESSED, is a tool. It's understandable, you can manage it, and you can be pretty sure where greedy motivation will take you. It's the rules of greed and how it's harnessed that present the problems, however. letting it become the sole purpose of a society is damaging, just like only eating cookies all day is.
The north was more a Soviet Russia puppet state than a Chinese one, though Kim did get his start in china. While many North Korean soldiers were trained fighting in the Chinese civil war, the leadership of Kim was primarily supplied by Russia. Per Wikipedia:
"Kim arrived in the Korean port of Wonsan on 19 September 1945 after 26 years in exile.[29]:51 According to Leonid Vassin, an officer with the Soviet MVD, Kim was essentially "created from zero". For one, his Korean was marginal at best; he had only had eight years of formal education, all of it in Chinese. He needed considerable coaching to read a speech (which the MVD prepared for him) at a Communist Party congress three days after he arrived.[8]:50
In December 1945, the Soviets installed Kim as chairman of the North Korean branch of the Korean Communist Party.[29]:56 Originally, the Soviets preferred Cho Man-sik to lead a popular front government, but Cho refused to support a UN-backed trusteeship and clashed with Kim.[34] General Terentii Shtykov who led the Soviet occupation of northern Korea, supported Kim over Pak Hon-yong to lead the Provisional People's Committee for North Korea on 8 February 1946.[35] As chairman of the committee, Kim was "the top Korean administrative leader in the North," though he was still de facto subordinate to General Shtykov until the Chinese intervention in the Korean War.[33][29]:56[35]
To solidify his control, Kim established the Korean People's Army (KPA), aligned with the Communist Party, and he recruited a cadre of guerrillas and former soldiers who had gained combat experience in battles against the Japanese and later against Nationalist Chinese troops.[36] Using Soviet advisers and equipment, Kim constructed a large army skilled in infiltration tactics and guerrilla warfare. Prior to Kim's invasion of the South in 1950, which triggered the Korean War, Joseph Stalin equipped the KPA with modern, Soviet-built medium tanks, trucks, artillery, and small arms. Kim also formed an air force, equipped at first with Soviet-built propeller-driven fighters and attack aircraft. Later, North Korean pilot candidates were sent to the Soviet Union and China to train in MiG-15 jet aircraft at secret bases.[37]"
"Assigning blame there is a bit like my trying to decide which of my children needs punished for starting a physical fight when they've been harassing each other all day." Yeah, um, no. If one kid is busy poking the other, and the other steals his bike and hits him with a brick, we're gonna blame the brick kid. Pretending like US imperialism started that is disingenuous. If the North hadn't invaded, things would have stayed at the 38th and all those people would have survived. Your'e being revisionist, and you know it. In other words THE COMMUNISTS ARE TO BLAME.
I just finished reading "The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War" by David Halberstam. You should, perhaps, take a stab at it. It was essentially North Korean pigheadedness, allowed by Russian handlers, that started it all. They were anything BUT Capitalists. The Chinese getting involved was just territorial leftover from the recently ended Chinese Civil War and stupid overreach by MacArthur.
If you really want to ponder an intangible, Denmark and the Scandinavian countries are primarily mono cultures. This may invalidate the concept of "diversity by any means" that seems to be popular, and any argument against makes one a "racist". I don't stand on either side of this debate, I just find it odd.
This is the sort of modern "no true scotsman" argument that's starting to popup. "why, the logical conclusion of that AI is biased because the man who programmed it is biased!"
Walk into your phone center and tell them "I'm looking for the cheapest phone you've got". I had to do this back in the Midwest in a town that my family was visiting for funeral preparation. Only Verizon worked there, and none of us had Verizon. The lady at the counter pulls out an new in box Samsung they just got in, "on discount, I don't know why" . $30 out the door, pay as you go. Functions perfectly acceptable. At that price point, I don't care if I drop it in a toilet.
Google doesn't care about fixing anything. My address is on a small street, and Google maps always shows it at the end of a dead end road, facing a hill, about half a mile away. Only google. All other map services get it correct, including many ancient GPS devices. If I call for a ride, I have to explicitly tell them that google maps is wrong. And half the time, they'll call me saying they can't find the place, they're facing an hill. It's been this way for, oh, four years now.
Slashdot Mirror
my dad had some idiot kick his bumper in the last election cycle.
You had me going there, until "The Man",
stickers on laptops are not worth fighting over. Yes, yes, I know. They came for my neighbors stickers and nobody stood up...
The problem is, what you consider being bland others consider non-important. in fact, they would find plastering stickers on things the equivalent of strutting like a peacock, and would argue that society is already too LOOK AT ME!!!!
I have a nephew with many tattoos. Mostly random, no style, just all over the place. He occasionally complains about being judged by them. But you're judge by the things you chose. Just as he chose to be more popular with his tattoos in one community, he also chose to be judged by another. These are choices. Should you be judge by border patrol for these things? No. will you? Probably.
I dress bland, my thoughts are the things important to me. I NEVER get stopped at border crossings. My somewhat flashy friends: All the time.
I used to travel with a very nice at the time Nikon camera in some sketchy locations. I covered that thing with blue painters tape making it look like i was holding pieces together with the tape, and added some large clumps of rubber cents looking goop to some joints. Nobody ever bothered with it. Other cheaper stuff got swiped, not that camera.
The one everyone keeps ignoring, is military spending.
Like or hate the US, they spend a gob on the military, and most of Europe falls under that protection umbrella.
Remove that protection (or fascism, or imperialism or whatever you like to call it) and SOMETHING will need to fill the newly obvious vacuum.
Either each country will need to increase expenditures in that area drastically, or there may be a remaking of borders. And that money has to come from somewhere.
If you believe the US removing it's military presence will revert everyone to lions lying with sheep, you're pretty naive.
You call it "broken down". some would call it "wisdom". Would you WANT an elderly establishment that had even more energy than now to spend all their time making sure that there are no curbs?
Some poor people deserve to be poor. Some rich people also deserve to be poor.
Oh god, no. The bullet train fiasco is ONLY caused by California's inability to admit they were wrong and it is a cash drain that will never end. That and the fact it's the current governor's pet project.
You completely ignored the issue that allowed that giant company to exist, or the large sum of money to be. Additionally, there are many many more small farmers and people renting land than their are Deus Ex Machina rich CEOs with specific hunting needs.
A large component of the move to lack of consequences is the common teaching that someone is not responsible for the things they do:
They're poor.
They're the wrong race.
They're disabled in some way.
Their family had issues.
They have a mental condition.
Rather than asking people to rise up above their problems, we often give this as an excuse to get a pass on things. This leads to a weaker society.
They store them next to the Unicorns on aisle 42.
"Honestly, the whole industrialized world, including the US, has settled on capitalism with a socialist safety net as the best economic structure. We only debate about the scope, scale and structure of the safety net."
That sums it up nicely, thank you.
"When you talk about deaths from socialism you have to leave off stuff like Stalinism, Maoism, etc."
Why?
Greed is amoral. If I offer you one cookie or two , and you're hungry for cookies, you will probably want two. That's natural
Greed, PROPERLY HARNESSED, is a tool. It's understandable, you can manage it, and you can be pretty sure where greedy motivation will take you.
It's the rules of greed and how it's harnessed that present the problems, however. letting it become the sole purpose of a society is damaging, just like only eating cookies all day is.
The north was more a Soviet Russia puppet state than a Chinese one, though Kim did get his start in china. While many North Korean soldiers were trained fighting in the Chinese civil war, the leadership of Kim was primarily supplied by Russia.
Per Wikipedia:
"Kim arrived in the Korean port of Wonsan on 19 September 1945 after 26 years in exile.[29]:51 According to Leonid Vassin, an officer with the Soviet MVD, Kim was essentially "created from zero". For one, his Korean was marginal at best; he had only had eight years of formal education, all of it in Chinese. He needed considerable coaching to read a speech (which the MVD prepared for him) at a Communist Party congress three days after he arrived.[8]:50
In December 1945, the Soviets installed Kim as chairman of the North Korean branch of the Korean Communist Party.[29]:56 Originally, the Soviets preferred Cho Man-sik to lead a popular front government, but Cho refused to support a UN-backed trusteeship and clashed with Kim.[34] General Terentii Shtykov who led the Soviet occupation of northern Korea, supported Kim over Pak Hon-yong to lead the Provisional People's Committee for North Korea on 8 February 1946.[35] As chairman of the committee, Kim was "the top Korean administrative leader in the North," though he was still de facto subordinate to General Shtykov until the Chinese intervention in the Korean War.[33][29]:56[35]
To solidify his control, Kim established the Korean People's Army (KPA), aligned with the Communist Party, and he recruited a cadre of guerrillas and former soldiers who had gained combat experience in battles against the Japanese and later against Nationalist Chinese troops.[36] Using Soviet advisers and equipment, Kim constructed a large army skilled in infiltration tactics and guerrilla warfare. Prior to Kim's invasion of the South in 1950, which triggered the Korean War, Joseph Stalin equipped the KPA with modern, Soviet-built medium tanks, trucks, artillery, and small arms. Kim also formed an air force, equipped at first with Soviet-built propeller-driven fighters and attack aircraft. Later, North Korean pilot candidates were sent to the Soviet Union and China to train in MiG-15 jet aircraft at secret bases.[37]"
"Assigning blame there is a bit like my trying to decide which of my children needs punished for starting a physical fight when they've been harassing each other all day." Yeah, um, no. If one kid is busy poking the other, and the other steals his bike and hits him with a brick, we're gonna blame the brick kid. Pretending like US imperialism started that is disingenuous. If the North hadn't invaded, things would have stayed at the 38th and all those people would have survived.
Your'e being revisionist, and you know it.
In other words THE COMMUNISTS ARE TO BLAME.
I just finished reading "The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War" by David Halberstam. You should, perhaps, take a stab at it. It was essentially North Korean pigheadedness, allowed by Russian handlers, that started it all. They were anything BUT Capitalists. The Chinese getting involved was just territorial leftover from the recently ended Chinese Civil War and stupid overreach by MacArthur.
Nah, that was just the US not recognizing the growing resentment of Colonialism and treating the conflict as a standard Cold War proxy battle.
If you really want to ponder an intangible, Denmark and the Scandinavian countries are primarily mono cultures. This may invalidate the concept of "diversity by any means" that seems to be popular, and any argument against makes one a "racist".
I don't stand on either side of this debate, I just find it odd.
This is the sort of modern "no true scotsman" argument that's starting to popup.
"why, the logical conclusion of that AI is biased because the man who programmed it is biased!"
My favorite Che Guevara shirt, is a picture of Che wearing a che shirt, in which he's also wearing a che shirt, into infinity.
Walk into your phone center and tell them "I'm looking for the cheapest phone you've got".
I had to do this back in the Midwest in a town that my family was visiting for funeral preparation. Only Verizon worked there, and none of us had Verizon.
The lady at the counter pulls out an new in box Samsung they just got in, "on discount, I don't know why" . $30 out the door, pay as you go.
Functions perfectly acceptable.
At that price point, I don't care if I drop it in a toilet.
Menotti Minutillo sounds like a fancy coffee
Google doesn't care about fixing anything. My address is on a small street, and Google maps always shows it at the end of a dead end road, facing a hill, about half a mile away.
Only google.
All other map services get it correct, including many ancient GPS devices.
If I call for a ride, I have to explicitly tell them that google maps is wrong. And half the time, they'll call me saying they can't find the place, they're facing an hill.
It's been this way for, oh, four years now.