Just because atheist intolerance hasn't had the power to oppress on a large scale, doesn't mean it's not a problem.
Also, it's certainly possible to do bad things in the name of atheism - large-scale versions occur much less commonly, partly due to the relative scarcity of atheist communities through history, but look at, say, the several attempts by communist dictatorships to stamp out all religions uniformly. This possibility is there with any movement devoted to an ideal which conflicts with another.
For one thing, right now, your fanatic support of atheism is contributing to making you treat people poorly online, which is harming the cause of reason and atheism.
A pretty elegant hypothesis, defeated solely because its premises are false, or at the very least reductio'ed so far absurdum as to be meaningless in real contexts.
Science doesn't rest on the faith that math underlies reality - it rests on the observation that particular math has predictive properties, measured against the evidence of our senses and extensions thereof. So, well, your argument that science and religion both take up the "Faith Slot" is incorrect. Furthermore, it's actually rather unscientific to say that God "CANNOT BE." The correct statement would be "There is no evidence for God, and He does not make a useful hypothesis."
Also, you don't seem to have a firm grasp on the concept of "mental illness." There are people who are mentally ill whose delusions are quite consistent - furthermore, there are sane people whose opinions change or exist in a state of flux on a variety of matters. The human mind is complex, and rationality isn't its only component, or even its only worthwhile component.
If you actually believe what you posted here, please inform yourself. If you're using it as a rhetorical strategy with knowledge of its inaccuracy, stop doing so. As the child of a mentally ill person (an ACTUALLY mentally ill person - manic depression, or what would now be called severe bipolar disorder), I find it in exceedingly poor taste for you to essentially use mental illness as a synonym for "holds opinions I disagree with."
I understand this is delicate, and honestly hesitate to ask, but what degree of care does your nephew require?
I've worked in special needs classrooms with autistic kids, and there's a world of difference between the kids who are mostly functional, but will randomly run off or make noises, and the kids who'll fly into a rage-like state and smash things and people.
I'm not saying that you're wrong, per se (the award might well be inflated), but depending on the child's actual condition, the cost of care could vary substantially.
Sorry, but I'm not. I'm refuting the specific argument made by Grishnakh, which is that states with permissive gun laws have lower rates of robberies. He says that access to guns ends crime, and I called shenanigans - simple, elegant, complete in and of itself.
Interesting arguments can be started from here; I'm not interested in starting them, or continuing them if you start them, partly because, unlike the factual statement I made in response to Grishnakh's argument, those discussions are long, complicated time sinks, with numerous factors outside of gun laws to take into account (like, oh, the war on drugs, say, and the effect it had on Miami, in particular), and they're beside the point, which was keeping Grishnakh honest in this specific instance.
Deterrence as a rationale for concealed carry isn't the issue here; I understand that you'd much rather twist the topic around to something that you have ready arguments and a vested interest in, but sorry, I'm not talking about that, and won't be lured into doing so.
P.S. I'm not against handgun ownership; please, in the future, try to pay attention to the actual conversation, rather than assuming the other party has picked up the opposite talking point to yours.
So, explain to me where I'm claiming causation here? All I have to prove to puncture the "Handgun States are Safer States" (Grishnakh's argument) is correlation; not causation. I'm not "clumsily alluding" anything; I'm stating, very directly, what I damn well mean.
Also, you're full of crap, dude. Those laws were enacted due to a strong NRA lobby and a pro-gun state legislature. And even if you weren't, laws get enacted "in response" to problems all the time, without necessarily improving the situation.
This isn't confusion on my part, it's backpedaling on yours; present it that way if you want to change your tune here. You don't get to present something as one of the markers of a plague on society in one place, and then turn around and claim "Oh, I've always said it's ok sometimes!"
And anyway, this is my point; circumstances matter, life is complicated, and you can't reduce something as big as "the reasons for poverty" to a single (highly offensive, by the way) social theory, just because it simplifies your headspace and supports your politics.
Your "people are poor because they're BAD!" argument doesn't function. Furthermore, your method of argument isn't fair or actually logical - you've been repeatedly focusing on or inventing detail arguments, to prevent having to come to grips with the basic problem; that your insistence on attacking things you don't actually have first-hand or evidentiary information about is bad logic, and produces rudeness at a staggering rate
Listen - I'm sure that, when you get up in the morning, you're not actually thinking "I'm going to go out there and condemn people without knowing about them, and insult people for no reason." But that's what you're doing, because you're so gosh-darned keen to fit everyone into your personal set of ideological lenses.
P.S. My wife has graciously pointed out that, even if you allow your ridiculous backpedaling, your argument is stupid as hell. HERE'S MAGGIE!
"The premise is that the landlord will not give you your security deposit back, even if you've left the apartment in perfect condition. This happens at the end of the landlord-tenant relationship - you find out about your security deposit when you move, after final inspection. You pay rent before you move. You cannot stop paying rent in response to not getting your security deposit back because you've already stopped paying rent at that point, BECAUSE YOU'VE MOVED. Either you're advocating retaliation by not paying rent to a landlord that hasn't done anything wrong yet, or your plan of sticking it to the man involves time travel, so good luck with that."
Why, if that wasn't a load of horse puckey, it would perfectly skewer my argument!
Why not look up starting salary for a public defender (let's say in Massachusetts, a state that I'm sure you'll agree is high tax and highly prone to spending money on civil service), and average student loans.
As clarification (I wouldn't want to seem unfair) I specified that you can't short the landlord on rent and that you have to turn in your two weeks BECAUSE you previously used that as a negative behavior that the loathed "poor people" engage in. You're exceedingly harsh in criticizing the criminal and/or immoral behaviors you say all poor people engage in, so it's unfair for you to use them here as valid steps to improve your situation.
As for the rest of your post, blah blah unthinking libertarian talking points. I would like to point out that I'm not going to respond to your questions about my life for a reason; my point is that you engage in ad hominem attacks on zero information (which you continue to do here). I have zero interest in providing you with a free dodge of that point. You are being rude and failing to argue in good faith.
P.S. Also, a law degree still isn't an automatic ticket to massive money and the economy has been depressed across the country for years. Just cause you ignore points made doesn't make them go away.
You sound like one of those people who whines that there's no jobs where they live, yet they refuse to move more than 10 miles away from their birthplace, like they have some kind of right to a job in exactly the place where they want to live.
And you sound FAT.
The preceding sentence is just as valid as your argument here. You know FUCK ALL about what I am or am not doing to make my life better. At no point have I whined or complained or done ANYTHING to lead you to believe that I refused to move, or that I believe that I have a right to a job, or ANY of the cookie-cutter libertarianism talking points you're spewing. You know nothing about me, and are still perfectly willing to try and dictate the terms of my own argument and, fuck, the conditions of my personal life to me.
This is why people will continue to be pissed off at you; you are engaging in bad behavior towards them. You are insulting them, without having a goddamned leg to stand on, or any right to be doing so. They're not mad because they're whiny, or somehow inferior, or lazy, or any of the imaginary bullshit you try to attach to them; it's because you are a rude, insensitive jerk, who can't be bothered to actually listen and consider other people's positions before making a statement about them.
I mean, for fuck's sake, you actually told me, without knowing anything about the situation, that my dead father made bad decisions, and that's why he died with nothing to his name. You are willing to go so far as to talk shit about the dead relative of someone you have no information about? That's pretty fucked up.
I mean, I could just as easily say that you have never had to worry about money because your sweet mouth is worth $200 a pop on the street - but I don't, and wouldn't, because I'm actually debating, rather than trying to force you into a losing position by dictating the terms of your argument.
You're doing it to people you directly engage with on the internet, and you've done it to entire classes of people in your arguments. It's bad logic, and frankly, disgusting behavior.
I honestly shouldn't bother to engage with your ridiculous "you can always move" argument - it's practically the "hello world" of Libertarian BS arguments. But, if you really want to put that forward, how about you try this. Plan a move from Sarasota, Florida to, let's say, for argument's sake, Boston, Massachusetts (Note - since you can't pick and choose where you'll live, any state has to be possible - I picked an example where the housing is comparable and the job market is substantially better). Do this assuming an $8 an hour job, no savings, a car that won't survive the trip (and is worth less than $500, maximum), and that you'll need first, last, and deposit at any place you'll be moving into. Further assume that a crooked landlord has decided to keep your security deposit from your existing apartment (pretty much the norm in Florida for student-level housing). You have to either transport or re-buy a bed, a desk, and a chair (Note - this is INCREDIBLY generous - setting up a real apartment, even bare bones, involves a shit-ton more than this). Come up with a practical, low-to-moderate risk solution, that doesn't have a near guarantee of worsening the person moving's financial state to the point of insolvency. Oh, and remember, you get immediately fired when you turn in your two weeks (which you have to do, because elsewise, you're engaging in behavior only worthy of the shiftless poor), and you can't short the landlord any rent, although he's free to fuck you over on the deposit (same reason). This is a perfectly reasonable real world example. Note, before you come back with more vapid attacks on me personally - I'm not whining about my own experience.
I think if you actually thought this out, it might open your eyes a bit; I don't have any real hope that you will, though, or that you won't use it as an excuse for Libertarian wish fulfillment and declare it solved.
Booming economies. Riiiight. Show me one of those that's existed in Florida in the past fifteen years, and I'll show you this lovely bridge, which has many development opportunities. It's located in Brooklyn!
I would just like to point out that you're essentially claiming to know more than me about the circumstances of my life, without knowing dick about where I live, what years my degree and work experience cover, what years and work experience are in my dad's life, or apparently ANYTHING about how being a lawyer works in the real world. Yet, you're willing to go off and declare that it's all due to bad choices, instead of, oh, I don't know, the Florida real estate crash, a change of careers, a hiring freeze covering Sarasota county or my mother's multiple sclerosis, or any of the actual, for real events that occurred in my life or my family's.
This is my entire fucking point - you are being offensively arrogant, and saying that, without knowing a fucking thing about what you're talking about, you can declare that whole groups of people are behaving in certain ways, and destroying themselves and society. You're wrong, but even if you were right, it would be fucking coincidental, because 99% of your conclusions come straight from your imagination.
I mean, as an example of something you are perfectly willing to make up bullshit about - tons of lawyers end up penniless - it is, in fact, incredibly common to end up below the poverty line as a public service lawyer (even before adjusting income to take loans into account).
Moral education isn't connected to wealth - my dad had a Lear Jet at one point, and was a racist jackass, and my wife's mother was raised in a house without a floor, and is a wonderful, kind, moral person. Furthermore, your belief that kids always (or even generally) ape their parents in terms of behavior is laughable. Half of human cultural history is the story of one generation's reflexive rebellion against the previous generation's mores.
Also - your assertion that I claimed that all kids have the same upbringing is simply false.
Teachers aren't poor. In most places, they make at least $30k, sometimes quite a bit more (some school districts are very aggressive about recruiting teachers from out-of-state). That is NOT "poor" (although some spoiled Americans seem to think anything under $100k is).
So, way to ignore my mention of day-care and teachers aides. Also, in South Florida, public school teachers start around $24,000, not counting cost of certification; private school teachers can make significantly less, although they don't always.
"Poor" is being on welfare, food stamps, continually unemployed or under $10k/year, never paying rent (basically move into a place with 1st month's rent, then never pay any more rent and wait 3-6 months to be evicted, then repeat the process over and over again), not owning a car and taking the bus (even in cities with crappy public transit and 2-hour bus rides), etc.
Ahhh, so by "poor" you mean "Reagan's Fake-Ass Portrait of the Welfare Queen." I mean, if you're going to restrict the meaning of a word to a tiny fraction of any of its accepted uses, let a guy know, huh? Regardless, since your definition ignores how welfare/food stamps actually function, includes criminal activity, and is so obviously the product of the conservative stereotype machine, I'm just going to tell you that you don't know what the hell you're talking about, and go ahead and suggest you google the shit out of what the poverty line is currently set at.
I don't have satellite TV. Instead, I use a rabbit-ears antenna. OTA TV is free, always has been.
Assuming you live somewhere that it comes in well enough to make any channels out. But this is beside the point; take your point as granted. The fact remains that you don't remotely have a right to say that a poor person is being bad and wasteful just because they have Satellite TV. Maybe they eat rice and beans three meals a day, so that they can afford saturday morning cartoons for their kids. Maybe they don't have cable internet available, and satellite is the only reasonable-speed internet available. Maybe gramma only speaks portugese, and they want to have something for her to watch from her sickbed, while both other adults are working.
You don't know, because, HOLY CRAP, THESE ARE PEOPLE WITH LIVES! You are willing to pass judgment on people you don't know anything about, because you happen to be comfortably well off.
No, we can see by my capital letters that I've emphasized sections of text for one reason or another - in this case, going by example, mockery, simple emphasis, mockery, and mocking summation.
Nice attempt to reduce my statement to a formal element that there's a knee-jerk reaction attached to, then follow it up by restating the incorrect premise that its based on.
To be fair, I will say that legitimate, licensed carriers do contribute insignificantly to crime; but you don't NEED a license to purchase at a gun show, and weirdly enough, having more legal sources for guns ALSO means that more "fall off the truck," and that it's harder to trace those bought without a record.
Honestly, look the numbers up in a study not funded directly by an advocacy group. I'm not saying "OMG! GUNZ ARE EVIL!" or arguing that concealed carry is inherently bad - but the original statement I responded to is false, and so is the first of yours here. Florida has lax gun laws, and a much higher incidence of gun violence (adjusted for population) than, say, Massachusetts, where I live now.
There are plenty of valid arguments for gun ownership, but "everyone's carrying around a gun, so we don't have crime" isn't one of them, sorry.
So, tell me. On 14,000 a year (the most I've ever made in a year, with, mind you, a bachelor's degree, no criminal record, lily-white skin, and good diction and decent interviewing skills, where are these savings and retirement accounts going to come from?
You talk about skilled and unskilled, middle class and poor, like they're alien races in the libertarian science fiction novel in your head; these are real people. My father had a law degree, and he died penniless. This could happen to you as easily as it happened to him; and no amount of demonizing the poor and fomenting to destroy social safety nets is going to make it less likely.
You're half right in the first paragraph, in that they benefited from having parents. Parents with money. But it's not this indirect quality bullshit you're preaching - the benefit is that they had their parents as a safety net, allowing them to make choices with higher risks and higher rewards.
Case in point - I've had to fund undergrad and grad school entirely on loans supplemented by sporadic work. When I get out, if I don't immediately get a job making at least 48,000 a year or so, I'm screwed. Even after that, a medical crisis, crime, or
A friend of mine, whose parents are in the upper middle class, has made the same choices as me, but with the advantage of being from a wealthy family. She's much worse about money than I am, but since she's not on the hook for loans, and has the option of living with her parents, she has many options I don't have. She can take a lower-paying job and be essentially fine, despite the fact that she routinely spent all the way through $500 per week of college, after room and board.
Also - day care workers - poor as hell, most of the time. Lots of teachers and teachers aides - pretty damn poor (especially the aides).
...wasting their money on booze and satellite TV instead of education for their children, etc. Ever notice how many satellite dishes there are in trailer parks?
Honestly - what could a poor person buy that you wouldn't hate the shit out of them for? Because they're poor, they aren't allowed to have news, or entertainment? Can they have the internet? Or should they just work their 40-60 hours (remember - working multiple part time shifts is the new norm!), then come home and turn themselves off until it's time to serve you burgers again?
You are a horrifying person, who has chosen to basically declare large groups of people nonhuman and worthless, simply on the basis that they don't have as much money as you.
But wait - I've worked as a public school educator.... and seen the difference between the schools located in districts where poor people can afford to live, and those in districts where it's mostly rich people.
Just because a system has the potential for the exceptional to overcome its classism, doesn't mean that there is no classism, or that all exceptional individuals do so.
Dear Uninformed Person who spouts libertarian nonsense,
Ever used the highways? How about city water? If so, shut up about goddamned taxes, and stop using bad logic to equate your political opponents with a schizophrenic murderer. It's childish and stupid.
Taxes aren't voluntary - this is true. But it's not the few that are forcing you to feed those children (or, rather more accurately, to shoulder one or two billionths of the burden of feeding those children). It's the many. REP RE SEN TA TIVE means that our government gets its mandate from the people, under majority rule (with safeguards to protect minority rights). And since very few people of voting age are dumb enough to hold your opinions, you're not going to get your way on this.
Honestly, this whole thread has devolved into fucked-up "BLAME THE POOR!" bullshit, so I'm not going to argue with you past pointing this out: in states where guns are readily available, THEY ROB YOU AT GUNPOINT.
And you know what? The immensely greater lethality of firearms, and the ease of learning to use them means that, no matter how AWESOME and FULL OF TESTOSTERONE you are, in a confrontation involving guns on both sides, you're just about as likely to end up being shot as the other guy.
P.S. For anyone who bought the "robberies aren't as common in states with permissive gun laws" line, check out the statistics on violent crime and cross-reference by gun ownership statistics. If that's TLDR, I'll let you in on the twist ending - MOAR GUNZ != LESS CRIMEZ!
People pick up elements of their environment and attach them to their personal madness, but the media they incorporate into psychotic fantasies isn't remotely causing it.
I'd recommend a book called The Center Cannot Hold, by Elyn Saks - it's a memoir of a woman afflicted with psychotic episodes.
Anyone else notice that the article is internally inconsistent, even within single paragraphs?
Generally, regulation advocates point to something happening, identify it as a problem that government needs to solve, and propose regulation they feel will accomplish that goal. This is not the case with net neutrality because right now internet service providers are voluntarily complying with the standards net neutrality advocates seek to codify. This is even after a federal appeals court ruled in Comcast v. FCC that the FCC (at least currently) lacks the authority to prevent companies from engaging in this behavior.
So, internet service providers are voluntarily complying; you know, except for Comcast, who certainly don't count, because....?
Your belief that only a minority can pirate is bizarre. Once one person with technical skill cracks a game, generally it's a low-to-zero effort for piracy.
An alternate interpretation - "When people who have done real science in the past start trying to present crazy-ass nonsense as science, they stop being paid attention to."
From my understanding, there are a number of steps you go through proving something before you present papers on it at a conference.
Then again, HIV/AIDS is a charged subject; but, on the other hand, one example is not a trend.
Still, I'd be willing to read this description, if you can point me to it; although I'd certainly also like to see the conference organizer's rationale for why he was turned down.
Which shows the problem with throwing around all these analogies - it invites criticism and attacks on the fine points of the analogies, rather than actual engagement with the meat of the argument.
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Just because atheist intolerance hasn't had the power to oppress on a large scale, doesn't mean it's not a problem.
Also, it's certainly possible to do bad things in the name of atheism - large-scale versions occur much less commonly, partly due to the relative scarcity of atheist communities through history, but look at, say, the several attempts by communist dictatorships to stamp out all religions uniformly. This possibility is there with any movement devoted to an ideal which conflicts with another.
For one thing, right now, your fanatic support of atheism is contributing to making you treat people poorly online, which is harming the cause of reason and atheism.
A pretty elegant hypothesis, defeated solely because its premises are false, or at the very least reductio'ed so far absurdum as to be meaningless in real contexts.
Science doesn't rest on the faith that math underlies reality - it rests on the observation that particular math has predictive properties, measured against the evidence of our senses and extensions thereof. So, well, your argument that science and religion both take up the "Faith Slot" is incorrect. Furthermore, it's actually rather unscientific to say that God "CANNOT BE." The correct statement would be "There is no evidence for God, and He does not make a useful hypothesis."
Also, you don't seem to have a firm grasp on the concept of "mental illness." There are people who are mentally ill whose delusions are quite consistent - furthermore, there are sane people whose opinions change or exist in a state of flux on a variety of matters. The human mind is complex, and rationality isn't its only component, or even its only worthwhile component.
If you actually believe what you posted here, please inform yourself. If you're using it as a rhetorical strategy with knowledge of its inaccuracy, stop doing so. As the child of a mentally ill person (an ACTUALLY mentally ill person - manic depression, or what would now be called severe bipolar disorder), I find it in exceedingly poor taste for you to essentially use mental illness as a synonym for "holds opinions I disagree with."
I understand this is delicate, and honestly hesitate to ask, but what degree of care does your nephew require?
I've worked in special needs classrooms with autistic kids, and there's a world of difference between the kids who are mostly functional, but will randomly run off or make noises, and the kids who'll fly into a rage-like state and smash things and people.
I'm not saying that you're wrong, per se (the award might well be inflated), but depending on the child's actual condition, the cost of care could vary substantially.
Sorry, but I'm not. I'm refuting the specific argument made by Grishnakh, which is that states with permissive gun laws have lower rates of robberies. He says that access to guns ends crime, and I called shenanigans - simple, elegant, complete in and of itself.
Interesting arguments can be started from here; I'm not interested in starting them, or continuing them if you start them, partly because, unlike the factual statement I made in response to Grishnakh's argument, those discussions are long, complicated time sinks, with numerous factors outside of gun laws to take into account (like, oh, the war on drugs, say, and the effect it had on Miami, in particular), and they're beside the point, which was keeping Grishnakh honest in this specific instance.
Deterrence as a rationale for concealed carry isn't the issue here; I understand that you'd much rather twist the topic around to something that you have ready arguments and a vested interest in, but sorry, I'm not talking about that, and won't be lured into doing so.
P.S. I'm not against handgun ownership; please, in the future, try to pay attention to the actual conversation, rather than assuming the other party has picked up the opposite talking point to yours.
So, explain to me where I'm claiming causation here? All I have to prove to puncture the "Handgun States are Safer States" (Grishnakh's argument) is correlation; not causation. I'm not "clumsily alluding" anything; I'm stating, very directly, what I damn well mean.
Also, you're full of crap, dude. Those laws were enacted due to a strong NRA lobby and a pro-gun state legislature. And even if you weren't, laws get enacted "in response" to problems all the time, without necessarily improving the situation.
This isn't confusion on my part, it's backpedaling on yours; present it that way if you want to change your tune here. You don't get to present something as one of the markers of a plague on society in one place, and then turn around and claim "Oh, I've always said it's ok sometimes!"
And anyway, this is my point; circumstances matter, life is complicated, and you can't reduce something as big as "the reasons for poverty" to a single (highly offensive, by the way) social theory, just because it simplifies your headspace and supports your politics.
Your "people are poor because they're BAD!" argument doesn't function. Furthermore, your method of argument isn't fair or actually logical - you've been repeatedly focusing on or inventing detail arguments, to prevent having to come to grips with the basic problem; that your insistence on attacking things you don't actually have first-hand or evidentiary information about is bad logic, and produces rudeness at a staggering rate
Listen - I'm sure that, when you get up in the morning, you're not actually thinking "I'm going to go out there and condemn people without knowing about them, and insult people for no reason." But that's what you're doing, because you're so gosh-darned keen to fit everyone into your personal set of ideological lenses.
P.S. My wife has graciously pointed out that, even if you allow your ridiculous backpedaling, your argument is stupid as hell. HERE'S MAGGIE!
"The premise is that the landlord will not give you your security deposit back, even if you've left the apartment in perfect condition. This happens at the end of the landlord-tenant relationship - you find out about your security deposit when you move, after final inspection. You pay rent before you move. You cannot stop paying rent in response to not getting your security deposit back because you've already stopped paying rent at that point, BECAUSE YOU'VE MOVED. Either you're advocating retaliation by not paying rent to a landlord that hasn't done anything wrong yet, or your plan of sticking it to the man involves time travel, so good luck with that."
Why, if that wasn't a load of horse puckey, it would perfectly skewer my argument!
Why not look up starting salary for a public defender (let's say in Massachusetts, a state that I'm sure you'll agree is high tax and highly prone to spending money on civil service), and average student loans.
As clarification (I wouldn't want to seem unfair) I specified that you can't short the landlord on rent and that you have to turn in your two weeks BECAUSE you previously used that as a negative behavior that the loathed "poor people" engage in. You're exceedingly harsh in criticizing the criminal and/or immoral behaviors you say all poor people engage in, so it's unfair for you to use them here as valid steps to improve your situation.
As for the rest of your post, blah blah unthinking libertarian talking points. I would like to point out that I'm not going to respond to your questions about my life for a reason; my point is that you engage in ad hominem attacks on zero information (which you continue to do here). I have zero interest in providing you with a free dodge of that point. You are being rude and failing to argue in good faith.
P.S. Also, a law degree still isn't an automatic ticket to massive money and the economy has been depressed across the country for years. Just cause you ignore points made doesn't make them go away.
And you sound FAT.
The preceding sentence is just as valid as your argument here. You know FUCK ALL about what I am or am not doing to make my life better. At no point have I whined or complained or done ANYTHING to lead you to believe that I refused to move, or that I believe that I have a right to a job, or ANY of the cookie-cutter libertarianism talking points you're spewing. You know nothing about me, and are still perfectly willing to try and dictate the terms of my own argument and, fuck, the conditions of my personal life to me.
This is why people will continue to be pissed off at you; you are engaging in bad behavior towards them. You are insulting them, without having a goddamned leg to stand on, or any right to be doing so. They're not mad because they're whiny, or somehow inferior, or lazy, or any of the imaginary bullshit you try to attach to them; it's because you are a rude, insensitive jerk, who can't be bothered to actually listen and consider other people's positions before making a statement about them.
I mean, for fuck's sake, you actually told me, without knowing anything about the situation, that my dead father made bad decisions, and that's why he died with nothing to his name. You are willing to go so far as to talk shit about the dead relative of someone you have no information about? That's pretty fucked up.
I mean, I could just as easily say that you have never had to worry about money because your sweet mouth is worth $200 a pop on the street - but I don't, and wouldn't, because I'm actually debating, rather than trying to force you into a losing position by dictating the terms of your argument.
You're doing it to people you directly engage with on the internet, and you've done it to entire classes of people in your arguments. It's bad logic, and frankly, disgusting behavior.
I honestly shouldn't bother to engage with your ridiculous "you can always move" argument - it's practically the "hello world" of Libertarian BS arguments. But, if you really want to put that forward, how about you try this. Plan a move from Sarasota, Florida to, let's say, for argument's sake, Boston, Massachusetts (Note - since you can't pick and choose where you'll live, any state has to be possible - I picked an example where the housing is comparable and the job market is substantially better). Do this assuming an $8 an hour job, no savings, a car that won't survive the trip (and is worth less than $500, maximum), and that you'll need first, last, and deposit at any place you'll be moving into. Further assume that a crooked landlord has decided to keep your security deposit from your existing apartment (pretty much the norm in Florida for student-level housing). You have to either transport or re-buy a bed, a desk, and a chair (Note - this is INCREDIBLY generous - setting up a real apartment, even bare bones, involves a shit-ton more than this). Come up with a practical, low-to-moderate risk solution, that doesn't have a near guarantee of worsening the person moving's financial state to the point of insolvency. Oh, and remember, you get immediately fired when you turn in your two weeks (which you have to do, because elsewise, you're engaging in behavior only worthy of the shiftless poor), and you can't short the landlord any rent, although he's free to fuck you over on the deposit (same reason). This is a perfectly reasonable real world example. Note, before you come back with more vapid attacks on me personally - I'm not whining about my own experience.
I think if you actually thought this out, it might open your eyes a bit; I don't have any real hope that you will, though, or that you won't use it as an excuse for Libertarian wish fulfillment and declare it solved.
Either
Booming economies. Riiiight. Show me one of those that's existed in Florida in the past fifteen years, and I'll show you this lovely bridge, which has many development opportunities. It's located in Brooklyn!
I would just like to point out that you're essentially claiming to know more than me about the circumstances of my life, without knowing dick about where I live, what years my degree and work experience cover, what years and work experience are in my dad's life, or apparently ANYTHING about how being a lawyer works in the real world. Yet, you're willing to go off and declare that it's all due to bad choices, instead of, oh, I don't know, the Florida real estate crash, a change of careers, a hiring freeze covering Sarasota county or my mother's multiple sclerosis, or any of the actual, for real events that occurred in my life or my family's.
This is my entire fucking point - you are being offensively arrogant, and saying that, without knowing a fucking thing about what you're talking about, you can declare that whole groups of people are behaving in certain ways, and destroying themselves and society. You're wrong, but even if you were right, it would be fucking coincidental, because 99% of your conclusions come straight from your imagination.
I mean, as an example of something you are perfectly willing to make up bullshit about - tons of lawyers end up penniless - it is, in fact, incredibly common to end up below the poverty line as a public service lawyer (even before adjusting income to take loans into account).
Moral education isn't connected to wealth - my dad had a Lear Jet at one point, and was a racist jackass, and my wife's mother was raised in a house without a floor, and is a wonderful, kind, moral person. Furthermore, your belief that kids always (or even generally) ape their parents in terms of behavior is laughable. Half of human cultural history is the story of one generation's reflexive rebellion against the previous generation's mores.
Also - your assertion that I claimed that all kids have the same upbringing is simply false.
So, way to ignore my mention of day-care and teachers aides. Also, in South Florida, public school teachers start around $24,000, not counting cost of certification; private school teachers can make significantly less, although they don't always.
Ahhh, so by "poor" you mean "Reagan's Fake-Ass Portrait of the Welfare Queen." I mean, if you're going to restrict the meaning of a word to a tiny fraction of any of its accepted uses, let a guy know, huh? Regardless, since your definition ignores how welfare/food stamps actually function, includes criminal activity, and is so obviously the product of the conservative stereotype machine, I'm just going to tell you that you don't know what the hell you're talking about, and go ahead and suggest you google the shit out of what the poverty line is currently set at.
Assuming you live somewhere that it comes in well enough to make any channels out. But this is beside the point; take your point as granted. The fact remains that you don't remotely have a right to say that a poor person is being bad and wasteful just because they have Satellite TV. Maybe they eat rice and beans three meals a day, so that they can afford saturday morning cartoons for their kids. Maybe they don't have cable internet available, and satellite is the only reasonable-speed internet available. Maybe gramma only speaks portugese, and they want to have something for her to watch from her sickbed, while both other adults are working.
You don't know, because, HOLY CRAP, THESE ARE PEOPLE WITH LIVES! You are willing to pass judgment on people you don't know anything about, because you happen to be comfortably well off.
No, we can see by my capital letters that I've emphasized sections of text for one reason or another - in this case, going by example, mockery, simple emphasis, mockery, and mocking summation.
Nice attempt to reduce my statement to a formal element that there's a knee-jerk reaction attached to, then follow it up by restating the incorrect premise that its based on.
To be fair, I will say that legitimate, licensed carriers do contribute insignificantly to crime; but you don't NEED a license to purchase at a gun show, and weirdly enough, having more legal sources for guns ALSO means that more "fall off the truck," and that it's harder to trace those bought without a record.
Honestly, look the numbers up in a study not funded directly by an advocacy group. I'm not saying "OMG! GUNZ ARE EVIL!" or arguing that concealed carry is inherently bad - but the original statement I responded to is false, and so is the first of yours here. Florida has lax gun laws, and a much higher incidence of gun violence (adjusted for population) than, say, Massachusetts, where I live now.
There are plenty of valid arguments for gun ownership, but "everyone's carrying around a gun, so we don't have crime" isn't one of them, sorry.
So, tell me. On 14,000 a year (the most I've ever made in a year, with, mind you, a bachelor's degree, no criminal record, lily-white skin, and good diction and decent interviewing skills, where are these savings and retirement accounts going to come from?
You talk about skilled and unskilled, middle class and poor, like they're alien races in the libertarian science fiction novel in your head; these are real people. My father had a law degree, and he died penniless. This could happen to you as easily as it happened to him; and no amount of demonizing the poor and fomenting to destroy social safety nets is going to make it less likely.
You're half right in the first paragraph, in that they benefited from having parents. Parents with money. But it's not this indirect quality bullshit you're preaching - the benefit is that they had their parents as a safety net, allowing them to make choices with higher risks and higher rewards.
Case in point - I've had to fund undergrad and grad school entirely on loans supplemented by sporadic work. When I get out, if I don't immediately get a job making at least 48,000 a year or so, I'm screwed. Even after that, a medical crisis, crime, or
A friend of mine, whose parents are in the upper middle class, has made the same choices as me, but with the advantage of being from a wealthy family. She's much worse about money than I am, but since she's not on the hook for loans, and has the option of living with her parents, she has many options I don't have. She can take a lower-paying job and be essentially fine, despite the fact that she routinely spent all the way through $500 per week of college, after room and board.
Also - day care workers - poor as hell, most of the time. Lots of teachers and teachers aides - pretty damn poor (especially the aides).
Honestly - what could a poor person buy that you wouldn't hate the shit out of them for? Because they're poor, they aren't allowed to have news, or entertainment? Can they have the internet? Or should they just work their 40-60 hours (remember - working multiple part time shifts is the new norm!), then come home and turn themselves off until it's time to serve you burgers again?
You are a horrifying person, who has chosen to basically declare large groups of people nonhuman and worthless, simply on the basis that they don't have as much money as you.
Well, when you put it that wa-
But wait - I've worked as a public school educator.... and seen the difference between the schools located in districts where poor people can afford to live, and those in districts where it's mostly rich people.
Just because a system has the potential for the exceptional to overcome its classism, doesn't mean that there is no classism, or that all exceptional individuals do so.
Dear Uninformed Person who spouts libertarian nonsense,
Ever used the highways? How about city water? If so, shut up about goddamned taxes, and stop using bad logic to equate your political opponents with a schizophrenic murderer. It's childish and stupid.
Taxes aren't voluntary - this is true. But it's not the few that are forcing you to feed those children (or, rather more accurately, to shoulder one or two billionths of the burden of feeding those children). It's the many. REP RE SEN TA TIVE means that our government gets its mandate from the people, under majority rule (with safeguards to protect minority rights). And since very few people of voting age are dumb enough to hold your opinions, you're not going to get your way on this.
Signed, An Adult
Honestly, this whole thread has devolved into fucked-up "BLAME THE POOR!" bullshit, so I'm not going to argue with you past pointing this out: in states where guns are readily available, THEY ROB YOU AT GUNPOINT.
And you know what? The immensely greater lethality of firearms, and the ease of learning to use them means that, no matter how AWESOME and FULL OF TESTOSTERONE you are, in a confrontation involving guns on both sides, you're just about as likely to end up being shot as the other guy.
P.S. For anyone who bought the "robberies aren't as common in states with permissive gun laws" line, check out the statistics on violent crime and cross-reference by gun ownership statistics. If that's TLDR, I'll let you in on the twist ending - MOAR GUNZ != LESS CRIMEZ!
That's not how psychotic disorders work, sorry.
People pick up elements of their environment and attach them to their personal madness, but the media they incorporate into psychotic fantasies isn't remotely causing it.
I'd recommend a book called The Center Cannot Hold, by Elyn Saks - it's a memoir of a woman afflicted with psychotic episodes.
Anyone else notice that the article is internally inconsistent, even within single paragraphs?
So, internet service providers are voluntarily complying; you know, except for Comcast, who certainly don't count, because....?
Your belief that only a minority can pirate is bizarre. Once one person with technical skill cracks a game, generally it's a low-to-zero effort for piracy.
The best strategy until your user's internet goes out, or until you go out of business or stop supporting the game.
It's certainly effective (until someone hacks the game to remove it) but it's really annoying.
An alternate interpretation - "When people who have done real science in the past start trying to present crazy-ass nonsense as science, they stop being paid attention to."
From my understanding, there are a number of steps you go through proving something before you present papers on it at a conference.
Then again, HIV/AIDS is a charged subject; but, on the other hand, one example is not a trend.
Still, I'd be willing to read this description, if you can point me to it; although I'd certainly also like to see the conference organizer's rationale for why he was turned down.
You've caught a loophole in my analogy, but not a problem with my argument. Assume that the end of the sentence was "car's engine," and move on.
Ha!
Which shows the problem with throwing around all these analogies - it invites criticism and attacks on the fine points of the analogies, rather than actual engagement with the meat of the argument.