The problem with that logic is, you can't (well, normally.:) choose the people running the company. What would happen if the people running your power or cable ran everything, instead of the people running your phone? Just because they'd have a combined subscriber base doesn't mean they'd invest more capital in maintenance. They'd only have to invest the amount any other single company does, so reliability wouldn't necessarily increase by any appreciable factor.
It could be argued, yes, but anything can be argued, whether there is any merit behind the argument or not. Slavery is involuntary subjection, whereas a contract is something entered into freely. If there is any duress involved, the contract is void. They are two mutually exclusive concepts. Few Constitutional protections are free from voluntary waiver, anyway. It would be more likely to successfully argue that laws prohibiting such provisions violate the right to contract freely.
You've apparently never read any of the writings of the framers who strongly opposed involvement in the politics of other countries. They wanted to leave others alone and in turn be left alone. That is abundantly clear by the historical records left.
A right held by us, yes, a power delegated to the government, no. I stand by my comment that you should pick up a firearm and go help liberate the country of your choice. That is your right under the 9th amendment. But there is no such power delegated to the government to enter the armed forces of the United States into a conflict that does not otherwise involve our national defense.
For all of your protestations against people who (apparently implicitly, as I never saw a single explicit claim) claim to know everything, you sure give a lot of reasons why we should believe your factually unfounded argument.
Nowhere does it say that, but nowhere did I in any way imply that was the case. I simply said the government cannot legally exceed the authority given it by the people through the Constitution. What you were advocating has not been delegated, and is thus outside of the governmental scope of powers, whether the government abides by that scope or not.
Now who's believing the media. Obviously you haven't watched the reports on the fall of Baghdad, where there were 50 or so Iraqis who were coached, surrounded by marines and reporters. Pictures from outside the square showed that Marine tanks had sealed it off to anyone not chosen to participate in a staged media event. Then there were the underreported instances of anti-american protests where protesters were shot and killed. Then people protesting the shootings later were shot and killed. Funny how you don't see that on the nightly news. Your argument doesn't hold water.
Influence North Korea my ass. North Korea has been getting more belligerent the more we posture. You know why we haven't invaded? Because they actually have weapons of mass destruction. You know why we invaded Iraq? Because we knew they didn't have weapons of mass destruction.
Oh, and where in the US Constitution does it authorize the federal government to enforce a set of rules (oh, and what are these rules, and where in the Constitution are they enumerated?) on foreign powers who are not invading or threatening to invade US territory?
It's not about caring, it's about it not being a power delegated to the American government. The federal government is not authorized to exercise powers that aren't delegated to it, period, period, period. Just because some group of people wants it to step outside the bounds of delegated authority doesn't mean shit from a Constitutional standpoint. If you want to make a difference, pick up a firearm and travel to your favorite pet civil-war-torn or brutalized-by-a-totalitarian-government country and get fighting. But don't try to make others join a cause they may not support. That is the point, my friend.
How can you call yourself an American, talking like that? The government wants to trash the Constitution, so you must be some Nazi-commie-pinko-fag-(insert more knee-jerk propagandist titles here)-terrorist to complain! Damn Unamerican and unpatriotic if you ask me. Can't have people calling for the Constitution to be upheld. That'd mean people might actually have to read it first!
Guards, arrest that man!
"Move along, nothing to see here. Hust getting rid of an agitator. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
While I agree that OSS should be considered by agencies, even to the extent of mandating agencies to consider it, saying that it is a special category of software [that] needs legislation is a bit naive. Just because something can't sustain itself does not mean that it needs legislative protection. Not even something that is non-commercial. It does not fall into any delegation of governmental power to help protect "Free Project A" simply because it is useful.
In fact, it is contrary to those delegated powers and stated aims, because anything not explicitly allowed of a Constitutional Republican nation's government is explicitly disallowed. Maybe you should read some of those historical governing documents that most Americans take for granted.
They'll never pass a flat tax like that, because it would mean that the masses who pay no income tax would have to pick up the slack for the lost revenue in the upper classes. Since the people who stand to be taxed more make up a much larger percentage of the population, it would be political suicide to actually attempt to implement said tax change. And if they exempt the lower classes, they'll lose tax revenue, which politicians by-and-large don't like to do either. No, the system will remain burdensome, complicated, and unfair until enough people get sick of it to start electing politicians to change the system (unlikely) or start killing the politicians who maintain the system (more likely).
Just for the record, I believe that an income tax violates several protected rights, because its application presumes that the government has the right to destroy personal property, as the right to find or make employment is the basis for all private property rights. For those who don't know much about the law, the power to tax something means the power to destroy something through overtaxation. If they have the power to tax it, they can tax it at any rate they want. In this case, it means they can legitimately raise the employment taxes to 150% of what you make, thus making it impossible to legally obtain work without going into debt to the government.
Anyone who is a proponent of the income tax (personal, not corporate) in any form is really a proponent of destroying the right to private property, and the right to exercise the means to sustain life. The two are mutually exclusive concepts.
Cities and towns only fail to worry about zoning or rights-of-way when abusing their power. They are an entity that must follow the same laws as everyone else. Cities rarely own much land, except for public rights of way, and the land situated under public buildings. All of the rest of the "city" is held by private individuals, so yes, they do need to worry about those issues.
No overhead for upkeep? Excuse me, but there's a definite overhead. Either you pay for it all in taxes, and the providers rape the taxpayers, or you pay for it in user fees. Either way, there are just as many costs involved as private enterprise, plus the added burden of paying the people who comprise the bureaucracy designated to administer the infrastructure and business behind licensing use of the infrastructure.
Just because commercial interests are not necessarily in line with those of non-commercial entities does not make it a compelling issue to destroy commercial interests. Look at the Soviet Union, and what happened when they destroyed commercial interests. There is no more Soviet Union. You cannot remove commercial interest without, by necessity, managing ALL interest by force (all government authority derives from the threat or use of force).
Unfortunately, what it always comes down to with municipalities is taxes. There is no way to implement a system like this without increasing taxes. Bonds don't pay for it all unless it's something wildly popular coupled with enough people with enough money to buy the bonds, coupled with the city making investmest that provide enough rate of return to redeem the bonds, plus the bond interest, plus the costs of the installation.
This doesn't happen, because municipalities don't invest enough of their capital. They spend it. That means that the money has to come from either service cuts or taxes (they don't have the other option of monetizing debt, only the federal government can get away with that). Service cuts? From a political body? Not on your life, unless they absolutely have to! So taxes go up. Taxes that someone or other is forced to pay.
Essentially, what is being advocated is that cities should shoulder a group of people with the burden of paying for infrastructure to be built so that a bunch of other people can have cheap access to a bunch of bandwidth.
Now, can you tell me where in any state or federal Constitution there is an enumerated right to be provided with cheap bandwidth through the force of a governmental agency, at someone else's expense? There isn't one, meaning that it is not something that is within the lawful purview of any municipality. Remember, municipalities derive their power from delegated state powers. States derive their powers from those held by their populace, as delegated in the state's Constitution.
It's not a loophole, it's called a voluntary relationship. The intern gets experience that they can put onto a resume (thus raising their pay options for all those ads that say "salary DOE"), and the company gets a) free work and b) a likely job candidate that they don't have to train for their specific environment. It's an extension of what used to be referred to as an apprenticeship.
If you live in a fucked up place like Oregon, where the minimum wage is nearly the highest in the USA, it's one of the only ways to get entry-level experience. Companies won't pay someone with zero experience $7/hr unless they absolutely have to.
Since the tone of your post seems to imply that you believe not paying interns is a shady manipulation of law, consider that requiring interns be paid (which is a violation of the right to contract freely, btw) would simply remove many of the opportunities that entry-level workers have to gain experience, and thus a higher-paying entry job. Some people still understand that sometimes advancement requires investment and sacrifice, but those people tend not to be in the mainstream of society.
You seem really confused about how modern society works. Your rights do emanate from the state, or at least, the lawmaking part of it.
So if you're born in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to expatriate parents, you have no human rights? Glad I don't live in Europe, where there apparently are no rights. At least there's the legal framework for natural rights in the US (even if no government official acts accordingly). Here the power of government is derived from the citizenry, not vice versa. The government has power only over those rights that have been specifically relinquished to it (legally, if not in actual practice).
As far as taxes go, I don't want it going to people committing fraud either. However, I think the way to make that happen is to eliminate welfare and corporate & social entitlement programs completely. But that would require people to be personally responsible for themselves (or be able to find someone who will willingly do it for them), and we can't have that, now can we?
Remember, the Nazis were the darlings of the Left, until they started killing people in large numbers.
Unfortunately, it's a common symptom of public education. They just don't teach anymore, whether the subject is math, history, economics, or just good old-fashioned critical thinking skills.
I doubt that it even occurs to most people who propose class warfare (which is what the whole rich-poor taxation arguments amount to)that the income tax is a) a wartime measure b) most Americans don't have a fsking clue which war it's from and c) don't even know that it strips them of their fundamental right to own property. For those who don't understand the last part, the power to tax something means the power to tax at any rate, without any limits, even 1000%. This means that, anything that can be taxed, can be banned.
Since your own hands and mind, and hence the work you do with them, form the basis of the creation of property, taxing the production connotes the power to prevent any use through excessive taxation, or, the ability to destroy the property rights of any or all.
It's too bad Americans by-and-large don't have the attention span or critical thinking skills to understand anything more in-depth than a Seinfeld episode, so they'll get fleeced until there is enough critical mass to either make change peacefully, or violently.
Actually, it's not a lie, it's simply a misunderstanding. Certain jurisdictions have "Good Samaritan" laws that limit liability for simple negligence during the course of a life-threatening accident. Sometimes doctors are covered under the laws, sometimes they aren't. Where they aren't, they are liable for their actions the same as they are liable in a hospital setting.
The statement that no jury would convict someone under those circumstances is absolutely untrue, as it has happened in the past. It has nothing to do with all doctors being greedy, soulless bastards.
As an example, one of my mother's good friends wouldn't be alive today were it not for a doctor being the first on the scene of his accident. He had crushed his jaw, and was in the process of asphyxiating on his own blood. The doctor performed a tracheotomy using the shaft of a BIC (or some pen like it). Then he left the scene, because he was in an area where doctors were not covered by a "good Samaritan" law. Had my mother's friend died as a result of the tracheotomy (nevermind that he would have died anyway without it), the doctor would have been as liable for the death as if he had died of a tracheotomy on an operating room table in some hospital. So he did what he could, and left before he could be identified.
The law does not actively punish doctors who help, but there are areas where they are barred from helping through ommission. They are simply not released from their everyday liabilities, so they cannot afford to risk their livelihood by helping.
Unless they're driving a truck that's professionally painted with the logo of the cable company, they're probably contractors who get paid by the piece. A certain amount for installing an outlet, for hooking up the modem, for running an outside line, etc. Some contractors even get paid by the hour, but those are usually only the giant national outlets. The guys driving the company trucks usually don't care how long they stay there. (as far as contractors go, depending on what the employer's contract with the cable co. states, they often times get paid for every time they go back. Sometimes the customer is charged, sometimes they aren't.)
I would love to see the Hawaiian islands returned to the Hawaiians. But US politicians don't have any morals, and the Hawaiians aren't likely to militarily defeat the US Army, so it's not really likely.
I've been typing on a Dvorak layout for something like 6 years now, and have never had a problem switching between layouts. That's just me though. My girlfriend can barely touch a QWERTY keyboard, so I think everyone's mileage will vary.
Half.com's record with my family is about half.:) Some shippers are prompt and courteous, some take months. That's what happens when you work with a conglomeration of independent resellers, though.
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The problem with that logic is, you can't (well, normally. :) choose the people running the company. What would happen if the people running your power or cable ran everything, instead of the people running your phone? Just because they'd have a combined subscriber base doesn't mean they'd invest more capital in maintenance. They'd only have to invest the amount any other single company does, so reliability wouldn't necessarily increase by any appreciable factor.
It could be argued, yes, but anything can be argued, whether there is any merit behind the argument or not. Slavery is involuntary subjection, whereas a contract is something entered into freely. If there is any duress involved, the contract is void. They are two mutually exclusive concepts. Few Constitutional protections are free from voluntary waiver, anyway. It would be more likely to successfully argue that laws prohibiting such provisions violate the right to contract freely.
To be shortly followed by the eLoo, where Windows goes when it needs to take a crap.
That would be "sir." :)
/. suffers from the same maladies that ails most of the rest of the U.S.: ignorance and/or laziness.
Unfortunately,
You've apparently never read any of the writings of the framers who strongly opposed involvement in the politics of other countries. They wanted to leave others alone and in turn be left alone. That is abundantly clear by the historical records left.
A right held by us, yes, a power delegated to the government, no. I stand by my comment that you should pick up a firearm and go help liberate the country of your choice. That is your right under the 9th amendment. But there is no such power delegated to the government to enter the armed forces of the United States into a conflict that does not otherwise involve our national defense.
For all of your protestations against people who (apparently implicitly, as I never saw a single explicit claim) claim to know everything, you sure give a lot of reasons why we should believe your factually unfounded argument.
Nowhere does it say that, but nowhere did I in any way imply that was the case. I simply said the government cannot legally exceed the authority given it by the people through the Constitution. What you were advocating has not been delegated, and is thus outside of the governmental scope of powers, whether the government abides by that scope or not.
Now who's believing the media. Obviously you haven't watched the reports on the fall of Baghdad, where there were 50 or so Iraqis who were coached, surrounded by marines and reporters. Pictures from outside the square showed that Marine tanks had sealed it off to anyone not chosen to participate in a staged media event. Then there were the underreported instances of anti-american protests where protesters were shot and killed. Then people protesting the shootings later were shot and killed. Funny how you don't see that on the nightly news. Your argument doesn't hold water.
Influence North Korea my ass. North Korea has been getting more belligerent the more we posture. You know why we haven't invaded? Because they actually have weapons of mass destruction. You know why we invaded Iraq? Because we knew they didn't have weapons of mass destruction.
Oh, and where in the US Constitution does it authorize the federal government to enforce a set of rules (oh, and what are these rules, and where in the Constitution are they enumerated?) on foreign powers who are not invading or threatening to invade US territory?
It's not about caring, it's about it not being a power delegated to the American government. The federal government is not authorized to exercise powers that aren't delegated to it, period, period, period. Just because some group of people wants it to step outside the bounds of delegated authority doesn't mean shit from a Constitutional standpoint. If you want to make a difference, pick up a firearm and travel to your favorite pet civil-war-torn or brutalized-by-a-totalitarian-government country and get fighting. But don't try to make others join a cause they may not support. That is the point, my friend.
Wait, wait, that would actually require some effort.
How can you call yourself an American, talking like that? The government wants to trash the Constitution, so you must be some Nazi-commie-pinko-fag-(insert more knee-jerk propagandist titles here)-terrorist to complain! Damn Unamerican and unpatriotic if you ask me. Can't have people calling for the Constitution to be upheld. That'd mean people might actually have to read it first!
Guards, arrest that man!
"Move along, nothing to see here. Hust getting rid of an agitator. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain."
While I agree that OSS should be considered by agencies, even to the extent of mandating agencies to consider it, saying that it is a special category of software [that] needs legislation is a bit naive. Just because something can't sustain itself does not mean that it needs legislative protection. Not even something that is non-commercial. It does not fall into any delegation of governmental power to help protect "Free Project A" simply because it is useful.
In fact, it is contrary to those delegated powers and stated aims, because anything not explicitly allowed of a Constitutional Republican nation's government is explicitly disallowed. Maybe you should read some of those historical governing documents that most Americans take for granted.
Okay, then use a vector format. :)
They'll never pass a flat tax like that, because it would mean that the masses who pay no income tax would have to pick up the slack for the lost revenue in the upper classes. Since the people who stand to be taxed more make up a much larger percentage of the population, it would be political suicide to actually attempt to implement said tax change. And if they exempt the lower classes, they'll lose tax revenue, which politicians by-and-large don't like to do either. No, the system will remain burdensome, complicated, and unfair until enough people get sick of it to start electing politicians to change the system (unlikely) or start killing the politicians who maintain the system (more likely).
Just for the record, I believe that an income tax violates several protected rights, because its application presumes that the government has the right to destroy personal property, as the right to find or make employment is the basis for all private property rights. For those who don't know much about the law, the power to tax something means the power to destroy something through overtaxation. If they have the power to tax it, they can tax it at any rate they want. In this case, it means they can legitimately raise the employment taxes to 150% of what you make, thus making it impossible to legally obtain work without going into debt to the government.
Anyone who is a proponent of the income tax (personal, not corporate) in any form is really a proponent of destroying the right to private property, and the right to exercise the means to sustain life. The two are mutually exclusive concepts.
Cities and towns only fail to worry about zoning or rights-of-way when abusing their power. They are an entity that must follow the same laws as everyone else. Cities rarely own much land, except for public rights of way, and the land situated under public buildings. All of the rest of the "city" is held by private individuals, so yes, they do need to worry about those issues.
No overhead for upkeep? Excuse me, but there's a definite overhead. Either you pay for it all in taxes, and the providers rape the taxpayers, or you pay for it in user fees. Either way, there are just as many costs involved as private enterprise, plus the added burden of paying the people who comprise the bureaucracy designated to administer the infrastructure and business behind licensing use of the infrastructure.
Just because commercial interests are not necessarily in line with those of non-commercial entities does not make it a compelling issue to destroy commercial interests. Look at the Soviet Union, and what happened when they destroyed commercial interests. There is no more Soviet Union. You cannot remove commercial interest without, by necessity, managing ALL interest by force (all government authority derives from the threat or use of force).
Unfortunately, what it always comes down to with municipalities is taxes. There is no way to implement a system like this without increasing taxes. Bonds don't pay for it all unless it's something wildly popular coupled with enough people with enough money to buy the bonds, coupled with the city making investmest that provide enough rate of return to redeem the bonds, plus the bond interest, plus the costs of the installation.
This doesn't happen, because municipalities don't invest enough of their capital. They spend it. That means that the money has to come from either service cuts or taxes (they don't have the other option of monetizing debt, only the federal government can get away with that). Service cuts? From a political body? Not on your life, unless they absolutely have to! So taxes go up. Taxes that someone or other is forced to pay.
Essentially, what is being advocated is that cities should shoulder a group of people with the burden of paying for infrastructure to be built so that a bunch of other people can have cheap access to a bunch of bandwidth.
Now, can you tell me where in any state or federal Constitution there is an enumerated right to be provided with cheap bandwidth through the force of a governmental agency, at someone else's expense? There isn't one, meaning that it is not something that is within the lawful purview of any municipality. Remember, municipalities derive their power from delegated state powers. States derive their powers from those held by their populace, as delegated in the state's Constitution.
Not I. This just means he's not totally worthless, just mostly.
It's not a loophole, it's called a voluntary relationship. The intern gets experience that they can put onto a resume (thus raising their pay options for all those ads that say "salary DOE"), and the company gets a) free work and b) a likely job candidate that they don't have to train for their specific environment. It's an extension of what used to be referred to as an apprenticeship.
If you live in a fucked up place like Oregon, where the minimum wage is nearly the highest in the USA, it's one of the only ways to get entry-level experience. Companies won't pay someone with zero experience $7/hr unless they absolutely have to.
Since the tone of your post seems to imply that you believe not paying interns is a shady manipulation of law, consider that requiring interns be paid (which is a violation of the right to contract freely, btw) would simply remove many of the opportunities that entry-level workers have to gain experience, and thus a higher-paying entry job. Some people still understand that sometimes advancement requires investment and sacrifice, but those people tend not to be in the mainstream of society.
You seem really confused about how modern society works. Your rights do emanate from the state, or at least, the lawmaking part of it.
So if you're born in the middle of the Pacific Ocean to expatriate parents, you have no human rights? Glad I don't live in Europe, where there apparently are no rights. At least there's the legal framework for natural rights in the US (even if no government official acts accordingly). Here the power of government is derived from the citizenry, not vice versa. The government has power only over those rights that have been specifically relinquished to it (legally, if not in actual practice).
As far as taxes go, I don't want it going to people committing fraud either. However, I think the way to make that happen is to eliminate welfare and corporate & social entitlement programs completely. But that would require people to be personally responsible for themselves (or be able to find someone who will willingly do it for them), and we can't have that, now can we?
Remember, the Nazis were the darlings of the Left, until they started killing people in large numbers.
Unfortunately, it's a common symptom of public education. They just don't teach anymore, whether the subject is math, history, economics, or just good old-fashioned critical thinking skills.
I doubt that it even occurs to most people who propose class warfare (which is what the whole rich-poor taxation arguments amount to)that the income tax is a) a wartime measure b) most Americans don't have a fsking clue which war it's from and c) don't even know that it strips them of their fundamental right to own property. For those who don't understand the last part, the power to tax something means the power to tax at any rate, without any limits, even 1000%. This means that, anything that can be taxed, can be banned.
Since your own hands and mind, and hence the work you do with them, form the basis of the creation of property, taxing the production connotes the power to prevent any use through excessive taxation, or, the ability to destroy the property rights of any or all.
It's too bad Americans by-and-large don't have the attention span or critical thinking skills to understand anything more in-depth than a Seinfeld episode, so they'll get fleeced until there is enough critical mass to either make change peacefully, or violently.
Actually, it's not a lie, it's simply a misunderstanding. Certain jurisdictions have "Good Samaritan" laws that limit liability for simple negligence during the course of a life-threatening accident. Sometimes doctors are covered under the laws, sometimes they aren't. Where they aren't, they are liable for their actions the same as they are liable in a hospital setting.
The statement that no jury would convict someone under those circumstances is absolutely untrue, as it has happened in the past. It has nothing to do with all doctors being greedy, soulless bastards.
As an example, one of my mother's good friends wouldn't be alive today were it not for a doctor being the first on the scene of his accident. He had crushed his jaw, and was in the process of asphyxiating on his own blood. The doctor performed a tracheotomy using the shaft of a BIC (or some pen like it). Then he left the scene, because he was in an area where doctors were not covered by a "good Samaritan" law. Had my mother's friend died as a result of the tracheotomy (nevermind that he would have died anyway without it), the doctor would have been as liable for the death as if he had died of a tracheotomy on an operating room table in some hospital. So he did what he could, and left before he could be identified.
The law does not actively punish doctors who help, but there are areas where they are barred from helping through ommission. They are simply not released from their everyday liabilities, so they cannot afford to risk their livelihood by helping.
Unless they're driving a truck that's professionally painted with the logo of the cable company, they're probably contractors who get paid by the piece. A certain amount for installing an outlet, for hooking up the modem, for running an outside line, etc. Some contractors even get paid by the hour, but those are usually only the giant national outlets. The guys driving the company trucks usually don't care how long they stay there. (as far as contractors go, depending on what the employer's contract with the cable co. states, they often times get paid for every time they go back. Sometimes the customer is charged, sometimes they aren't.)
Too bad more Americans won't say this publically.
I would love to see the Hawaiian islands returned to the Hawaiians. But US politicians don't have any morals, and the Hawaiians aren't likely to militarily defeat the US Army, so it's not really likely.
How else do you think morons get re-elected? They have to come up with a good war to boost ratings.
I've been typing on a Dvorak layout for something like 6 years now, and have never had a problem switching between layouts. That's just me though. My girlfriend can barely touch a QWERTY keyboard, so I think everyone's mileage will vary.
Half.com's record with my family is about half. :)
Some shippers are prompt and courteous, some take months. That's what happens when you work with a conglomeration of independent resellers, though.