You mean like the horrible death that so many Americans die every month, because "health" insurance companies only "insure" you, when you don't need it, and tell you to GTFO, as soon as you actually need them, thereby running a giant fraud on all of you?
I mean, helloooo... you *bought* a service, that pays for your (totally out of its actual worth) medical bills. And they won't pay. Which is a breach of contract. Except that the fine print is written in a way, that actually excludes everything, and if translated, states that you just pay for getting nothing at all. Which would be criminal if written in plain English.
Then you go to a "doctor" who gets payed only as long as you are sick. And whose information on what to do is based on fake magazines from the pharma industry. Who also only makes money if you are sick. So he gives you pills that don't do much. Just hide the symptoms a bit. And make sure they all come back right after you stopped taking them. Which would also being the criminal offense of drugging people. Except of course if you buy some senators. Which is really cheap nowadays.
I wonder how you people even survive. I wish I could see the faces of those people who oppose a health care bill that kicks the "health" industry's ass, when they then get denied coverage, and have to die. Slowly. And painfully. (They should look happy. After all there is no government death panel involved. Just plain old death-by-market.:P)
Wow... You really believe the entire health care/insurance industry is a super massive conspiracy? Really?
Cash for Clunkers? Yes, that was a total failure. It's like when the government promises to create 2 million jobs in 3 years, and then those jobs are CREATED IN TWO MONTHS!! Oh my god, they can't get anything right!
Note that I don't really like the CfC idea, but it's ridiculous to say it failed because it worked too well.
2 million jobs in 2 months? Put down the crack pipe and pull out a reference for a claim like that.
Who produces more for society: a factory worker who puts cars together, or an investor who makes money by short selling and dealing in derivatives? Now, who is more likely to afford a heart transplant?
I hate to sound cruel and I know it's real popular to toss rocks at investors and such but the implied answer to your question is wrong. The factory worker does put cars together, so could a robot. Factory workers don't drive the economy, investments do. Who produces more for society? Obviously it's the investor. Where do you think the money for those factory jobs came from initially? Thin air? It came from people pooling their money and.... investing it in that company.
The final vote was a lot closer: 220 to 215. Which seems like a mid-20th century vote total. It really is quite remarkable that, in 2009, in the United States, there's still widespread debate and disagreement over the proposition that health care should not be rationed on the basis of ability to pay.
Perhaps, because in this country large numbers of people don't yet look to Mommy and Daddy government to solve every problem in existence? Perhaps, we still remember that there is no such thing as "free" and that the only difference between rationing care based on the ability to pay, and this proposal is who is doing the rationing and on what basis. The government will have to ration care or else costs will spiral out of control even more than they will anyway. Despite claims to the contrary this will result in people having care denied, or at best delayed. At least in the current system you can strive for a better job, make more money, and get better care. Under this new system sure, everyone will have "something". For certain values of "something."
Maybe the US will finally join the rest of the industrialized world in actually providing medical care to its citizens, instead of taking the, "find your own care" attitude.
Not bloody likely. At least, not with this bill.
But thank you for the kind thoughts. Check in again a a decade or so, maybe we will have managed to drop to third world status by then and even Congress will realize that something drastic needs to be done.
Health care in this country is about the best in the world. What you're lamenting is that the government isn't providing a "free" system to everyone. Never mind that there is no such thing as "free" government anything, why exactly should the government provide this? Should they start handing out "free" cars next? How about more "free" government housing? As a poster above said, this blind faith in the existence of a free lunch is nothing short of astounding. Governments are instituted to protect the rights of individuals. Nothing more. Do you wish to say that "health care" is a "right"? If so, who will be compelled by law to provide this "right" to you?
Whether the book was tedious or not, the idea that one should be self-sufficient and not demand that others provide for you is sound. Unless, of course, you mean to advocate for Mother and Father government to take care of us? If that is the case, why is it that/. gets all up in arms when the government wants to regulate the internet, or free speech, or any of that stuff and yet when the.gov wants to muck about with healthcare or other social services it's all "yay!! spend zillions of dollars and regulate the hell out of it!"
And this is why Ayn Rand was a useless bitch. Take your broken pop philosophy somewhere else, please; the adults are trying to make things better.
If you're going to toss around words like "useless bitch" you really need something more to back it up than "the adults are trying to make things better." You can start by explaining how a multi-trillion dollar government program is going to make things better. Perhaps, you can cite the dozens or perhaps hundreds of other programs the government has run that efficiently made things better? You can also elaborate on exactly how trying to make health care/insurance a government mandated "right" doesn't effectively enslave those who provide such services?
In short, if all you've got are insults, you need to take your socialist government loving self somewhere else. Real adults take care of themselves and don't look to the government for handouts. Understood?
>There have been fewer than 15 murders proven to have been committed with NFA weapons in the 75 years this harsh regulation has existed. There was no sound justification to ban the items again in 1986.
Cause and effect. If it wasnt for the ban that number would be higher.
Not necessarily. Machine guns are a terrible choice of weapon for almost any situation, outside of a battle field. They're expensive to run, hard to control, and usually large (outside of machine pistols of course). Aside from all that, even were the 1986 ban not passed could you really see your neighborhood gangbanger filling out NFA paper work and paying a tax? If criminals don't have machine guns, it isn't because of the law. It's because even illegal ones aren't practical for crime.
Thats pretty funny... you think the tax slowed anyone down? The only people it slowed down were the people that weren't really all that interested in the first place.
All a $200 tax on something like a machine gun does is make it more of a dangerous situation because the sale goes underground.
Arms dealers don't pay taxes and they have no problem not reporting anything going on.
The more you go out of your way to 'ban' or 'tax' things like this, the harder it becomes for the government to monitor because they people will ALWAYS take the easiest/safest path for themselves, which won't be the legal one... which instantly means they can no longer be honest.
You can't 'ban' something a significant portion of the population wants, well you can, just won't be very effective.
You are, of course, 100% correct. I didn't say it slowed down ownership by the criminal element. In fact, I said it made no difference in crime. As is always the case with any such law, as you pointed out, only the law abiding were harmed by it. The criminals went right ahead and did what they wanted anyway.
Of course, this is the problem with any type of ban, no?
Just look at the effect the National Firearms Act of 1934 had on the sales of Machine Guns, Suppressors and Short Barreled Rifles and Shotguns. A $200.00 tax at that time was effectively a ban for all but the rich. This was admitted at the time and was the stated goal. Congress cannot outright ban the sale of such items, so they simply used their taxing power to ensure that only the well off, or more importantly a smaller portion of the population, could continue to buy and sell such items. Of course, this had pretty much the same effect on crime as all gun control laws. Nearly zero.
As the man said "An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy"
But you need to understand what George Taylor's job was. His job was not a purely academic one. His job was to help advise the governor of Oregon on climate related issues effecting the state, and indirectly to help set climate policy in Oregon State. His disbelief in Global Warming made it impossible for him to act as a trusted advisor to the governor in that context.
From what I can find, Mr. Taylor seems to have retired, but he doesn't seem to be spending all his time fishing... He was a speaker at a anti-global-warming conference in New York this year. For some reason, I doubt that his appearance was pro bono. Also note (at the same link above) that the book that Taylor wrote arguing against global warming was funded by a publishing house funded in part by ExxonMobil.
Why is a belief in global warming required to be an adviser on the climate? Is belief in the accepted religion required to say that pollution is bad? Must you be a true believer before you can say that perhaps clean water is good? What you're really saying here is that the heretic must be driven out of the halls of power. Period.
The analogy isn't perfect, but it's still apt, perhaps even more so because of your point. Before the Internet a kiddie porn producer might take a picture and distribute it to a couple dozen interested parties, for a fee. Today a kiddie porn producer might have tens of thousands of customers for any given image, and his distribution channel gives him a much greater degree of anonymity. That makes discouraging the customers more important, not less.
I have to ask.. Who pays for porn these days? Even this kind of porn? I'm sure there are sites out there that provide this stuff free just like there is for every other bloody thing.
That's the alternative to capitalism. The only one.
Hahaha
"Everything has a price" is a consequence of scarcity economics and greed.
Really? You have access to an infinite energy machine? No? Well then.. I suppose scarcity exists and isn't an invention of evil capitalists to put down the proletariat. Since scarcity exists then that means there is a price to produce anything, and that fact is where "everything has a price" comes from. To seriously believe otherwise is to not only deny basic economics, but our current understanding of physics. TANSTAAFL
Hey, Carlos Norris wants to be the president of Texas. I say, let him have it. And then watch the Mexican drug lords eat his lunch for him without federal troops from Washington.
Because Texas wouldn't have any troops of it's own would they?
Although, it should be noted that the government created and enforced the market in the first place. So, one could argue that the companies in fact didn't really have a choice. Either bid, or go out of business. Do it or die. Is a do foo or die choice, really a choice? Sure, they could change businesses. Again, is it really a choice when another entity forces you to do it? Would you say you chose to give the robber all your money when he pulled a gun on you or you were forced to?
This of course isn't all that different to the idea that you 'willingly' submit to searches at the airport that would otherwise be a clear 5th amendment violation. Sure, you willingly went there if you were going on vacation or just visiting friends. In those instances you did have a practical choice of how to travel. On the other hand, if your boss says you have to be 2000 miles away the next day, you don't have a practical choice. In this case, did you willingly submit or did you submit because if you didn't you would have to quit or get fired?
but it's worse, because the poor and the rich will pay the same amount.
Please explain to me why that's "worse". Do you honestly believe that the rich should pay more for cellular phone service just because they can? Do you also think that your phone company should get a copy of your W-2 so they can implement a progressive sliding scale of E-911 fees? Maybe SMS charges should be based on your income as well?
Clearly that's exactly what he thinks. Screw the "rich" and all that, no?
The government is selling a managed spectrum for what its worth. Period.
Why is it a tax if the government provides a service (which it is) but if a business provides a service its called a service?
Because, I end up paying for government services I have never used and will never use. A company's services are only paid for by me if I use them. A tax is basically armed robbery. If I don't pay, men with guns show up at my home and either force me (through the courts) to pay or they take me to jail. If I refuse both of those options, they shoot me. If I refuse to partake of a company's services, they don't send men to my home to force me. Clear now?
The reason bills and such have gotten so large is that government itself has gotten far too large and intrusive. If government was concerned with protecting the rights of individuals and defending the country, the sole legitimate aims of government, we wouldn't "need" super huge bills. Admittedly there is some wiggle room in "protecting the rights of individuals", but I'm pretty sure most sane people can agree that building a new art gallery or whatever has nothing to do with protecting anyone's legitimate rights.
If you have guns and ammo, you can get food and water. The opposite is not true.
The opposite IS true, I can grow my own food without guns or ammo.
On the other hand, you cannot defend same without guns and ammo.
Sure I can. I know how to make traps and trapped animals as a teen. And unless the person has antibiotics they won't live long once they step in an Apache foot trap dipped in human feces. In the army my MOS, Military Occupation Speciality, was 11B, infantry, and I loved setting up booby traps. Though it's been years I used to practice archery and would like to learn to make bows and arrows. I would also like to learn metallurgy and make blade weapons. Prior to moving years ago I was a member of the local kingdom of the Society of Creative Anachronism where I lived.
Even if I couldn't do these things though I could make arrangements with people who could provide defense in exchange for food. Besides if all a person knows is how to shoot once their firearm is inoperable or they're out of ammo, they're out of food too. There are no tools I can't make myself that I need to grow food or trap animals. On top of that, I could fast, go without eating food. I used to be in the natural and health food scene and for health reasons I'd fast occasionally, anywhere from days to weeks. How much strength would many people have after not eating for two or three weeks? Even those weeks I did fast I still rode my bike 200+ miles a week. I admit all this is unusual but for as long as I can recall I've tried to be self-sufficient. Actually now, I'd rather be dead than continue living as I have the past years.
Falcon
What you're saying remains true so long as those who are attacking you are either small in number, or not particularly persistent. You are correct that an infected wound, caused by a trap, will kill without antibiotics. However, that may not immediately incapacitate them. They may still retain the ability to attack. In short, a defender without firearms will likely be defeated by attackers with firearms. If not in the first encounter, it will happen soon there after.
As to the assertion that a person who only knows how to shoot will run out of food when they run out of ammo, all things being equal you are correct. Thus, firearms and ammo are not a survival strategy by themselves. They do on the other hand greatly enhance one's ability to survive and to retain the other supplies they have stockpiled or are actively producing.
In short, depending on the particular survival profile, firearms should primarily be used for defense, as you are correct that traps and gardens are more efficient at food procurement. That defense angle should not be underestimated.
So I'm guessing from your posts that you are a gun owner. Is running a food slave plantation your plan, then?
It's an obligation you undertake when you fill out the license application. Or if you get someone who can read and write to fill out the application for you, and just affix your mark to it.
License application? What license application do you speak of?
Certain elements of the community that developed here, unfortunately, creep me out.
I am not familiar with the community at Technocrat or the site itself for that matter. Anyone care to elaborate?
I don't know what elements creeped Bruce out but I thought there was a fairly strong right wing undercurrent among the regulars. Perhaps a few libertarians. Bruce seems to be a strong Democrat supporter so maybe that was it.
Nailed in one. Bruce is obviously fairly left wing, and deep "in the tank" for Obama. He lept at the chance to post non-verified anti-Palin stories more worthy of the tabloids than a serious site. He ended up with a ton of egg on his face when those stories were proven to be the tripe any thinking person should have known they were. Admittedly I do no know this for fact, so take this with a bucket of salt: It is my opinion that he expected, consciously or not, that a tech site would tend to swing left and when it instead went right, he wasn't comfortable and pulled the plug. Most unfortunate if true.
Exactly. Comparing the US with almost any other country and trying to derive useful information from it is a waste of time. This is also probably true for any sufficiently different countries. One could probably compare certain EU countries to others in the EU and gather somewhat useful data. Hell, it isn't even wise to compare various States in the US to each other for the same reason. The population of Kansas and Nevada aren't all that far apart. However, I suspect comparing them would be a waste of time for some pretty obvious reasons. Wichita is a nice place, but it isn't Las Vegas.
Slashdot Mirror
You mean like the horrible death that so many Americans die every month, because "health" insurance companies only "insure" you, when you don't need it, and tell you to GTFO, as soon as you actually need them, thereby running a giant fraud on all of you?
I mean, helloooo... you *bought* a service, that pays for your (totally out of its actual worth) medical bills. And they won't pay. Which is a breach of contract. Except that the fine print is written in a way, that actually excludes everything, and if translated, states that you just pay for getting nothing at all. Which would be criminal if written in plain English.
Then you go to a "doctor" who gets payed only as long as you are sick. And whose information on what to do is based on fake magazines from the pharma industry. Who also only makes money if you are sick. So he gives you pills that don't do much. Just hide the symptoms a bit. And make sure they all come back right after you stopped taking them. Which would also being the criminal offense of drugging people. Except of course if you buy some senators. Which is really cheap nowadays.
I wonder how you people even survive. I wish I could see the faces of those people who oppose a health care bill that kicks the "health" industry's ass, when they then get denied coverage, and have to die. Slowly. And painfully. (They should look happy. After all there is no government death panel involved. Just plain old death-by-market. :P)
Wow... You really believe the entire health care/insurance industry is a super massive conspiracy? Really?
Cash for Clunkers? Yes, that was a total failure. It's like when the government promises to create 2 million jobs in 3 years, and then those jobs are CREATED IN TWO MONTHS!! Oh my god, they can't get anything right! Note that I don't really like the CfC idea, but it's ridiculous to say it failed because it worked too well.
2 million jobs in 2 months? Put down the crack pipe and pull out a reference for a claim like that.
Who produces more for society: a factory worker who puts cars together, or an investor who makes money by short selling and dealing in derivatives? Now, who is more likely to afford a heart transplant?
I hate to sound cruel and I know it's real popular to toss rocks at investors and such but the implied answer to your question is wrong. The factory worker does put cars together, so could a robot. Factory workers don't drive the economy, investments do. Who produces more for society? Obviously it's the investor. Where do you think the money for those factory jobs came from initially? Thin air? It came from people pooling their money and.... investing it in that company.
The final vote was a lot closer: 220 to 215. Which seems like a mid-20th century vote total. It really is quite remarkable that, in 2009, in the United States, there's still widespread debate and disagreement over the proposition that health care should not be rationed on the basis of ability to pay.
Perhaps, because in this country large numbers of people don't yet look to Mommy and Daddy government to solve every problem in existence? Perhaps, we still remember that there is no such thing as "free" and that the only difference between rationing care based on the ability to pay, and this proposal is who is doing the rationing and on what basis. The government will have to ration care or else costs will spiral out of control even more than they will anyway. Despite claims to the contrary this will result in people having care denied, or at best delayed. At least in the current system you can strive for a better job, make more money, and get better care. Under this new system sure, everyone will have "something". For certain values of "something."
Not bloody likely. At least, not with this bill. But thank you for the kind thoughts. Check in again a a decade or so, maybe we will have managed to drop to third world status by then and even Congress will realize that something drastic needs to be done.
Health care in this country is about the best in the world. What you're lamenting is that the government isn't providing a "free" system to everyone. Never mind that there is no such thing as "free" government anything, why exactly should the government provide this? Should they start handing out "free" cars next? How about more "free" government housing? As a poster above said, this blind faith in the existence of a free lunch is nothing short of astounding. Governments are instituted to protect the rights of individuals. Nothing more. Do you wish to say that "health care" is a "right"? If so, who will be compelled by law to provide this "right" to you?
Quoting a tedious, bad sci-fi novel again, eh?
Whether the book was tedious or not, the idea that one should be self-sufficient and not demand that others provide for you is sound. Unless, of course, you mean to advocate for Mother and Father government to take care of us? If that is the case, why is it that /. gets all up in arms when the government wants to regulate the internet, or free speech, or any of that stuff and yet when the .gov wants to muck about with healthcare or other social services it's all "yay!! spend zillions of dollars and regulate the hell out of it!"
And this is why Ayn Rand was a useless bitch. Take your broken pop philosophy somewhere else, please; the adults are trying to make things better.
If you're going to toss around words like "useless bitch" you really need something more to back it up than "the adults are trying to make things better." You can start by explaining how a multi-trillion dollar government program is going to make things better. Perhaps, you can cite the dozens or perhaps hundreds of other programs the government has run that efficiently made things better? You can also elaborate on exactly how trying to make health care/insurance a government mandated "right" doesn't effectively enslave those who provide such services?
In short, if all you've got are insults, you need to take your socialist government loving self somewhere else. Real adults take care of themselves and don't look to the government for handouts. Understood?
>There have been fewer than 15 murders proven to have been committed with NFA weapons in the 75 years this harsh regulation has existed. There was no sound justification to ban the items again in 1986.
Cause and effect. If it wasnt for the ban that number would be higher.
Not necessarily. Machine guns are a terrible choice of weapon for almost any situation, outside of a battle field. They're expensive to run, hard to control, and usually large (outside of machine pistols of course). Aside from all that, even were the 1986 ban not passed could you really see your neighborhood gangbanger filling out NFA paper work and paying a tax? If criminals don't have machine guns, it isn't because of the law. It's because even illegal ones aren't practical for crime.
Thats pretty funny ... you think the tax slowed anyone down? The only people it slowed down were the people that weren't really all that interested in the first place.
All a $200 tax on something like a machine gun does is make it more of a dangerous situation because the sale goes underground.
Arms dealers don't pay taxes and they have no problem not reporting anything going on.
The more you go out of your way to 'ban' or 'tax' things like this, the harder it becomes for the government to monitor because they people will ALWAYS take the easiest/safest path for themselves, which won't be the legal one ... which instantly means they can no longer be honest.
You can't 'ban' something a significant portion of the population wants, well you can, just won't be very effective.
You are, of course, 100% correct. I didn't say it slowed down ownership by the criminal element. In fact, I said it made no difference in crime. As is always the case with any such law, as you pointed out, only the law abiding were harmed by it. The criminals went right ahead and did what they wanted anyway.
Of course, this is the problem with any type of ban, no?
A high enough tax is a de facto ban.
Just look at the effect the National Firearms Act of 1934 had on the sales of Machine Guns, Suppressors and Short Barreled Rifles and Shotguns. A $200.00 tax at that time was effectively a ban for all but the rich. This was admitted at the time and was the stated goal. Congress cannot outright ban the sale of such items, so they simply used their taxing power to ensure that only the well off, or more importantly a smaller portion of the population, could continue to buy and sell such items. Of course, this had pretty much the same effect on crime as all gun control laws. Nearly zero.
As the man said "An unlimited power to tax involves, necessarily, a power to destroy"
But you need to understand what George Taylor's job was. His job was not a purely academic one. His job was to help advise the governor of Oregon on climate related issues effecting the state, and indirectly to help set climate policy in Oregon State. His disbelief in Global Warming made it impossible for him to act as a trusted advisor to the governor in that context.
From what I can find, Mr. Taylor seems to have retired, but he doesn't seem to be spending all his time fishing... He was a speaker at a anti-global-warming conference in New York this year. For some reason, I doubt that his appearance was pro bono. Also note (at the same link above) that the book that Taylor wrote arguing against global warming was funded by a publishing house funded in part by ExxonMobil.
Why is a belief in global warming required to be an adviser on the climate? Is belief in the accepted religion required to say that pollution is bad? Must you be a true believer before you can say that perhaps clean water is good? What you're really saying here is that the heretic must be driven out of the halls of power. Period.
The analogy isn't perfect, but it's still apt, perhaps even more so because of your point. Before the Internet a kiddie porn producer might take a picture and distribute it to a couple dozen interested parties, for a fee. Today a kiddie porn producer might have tens of thousands of customers for any given image, and his distribution channel gives him a much greater degree of anonymity. That makes discouraging the customers more important, not less.
I have to ask.. Who pays for porn these days? Even this kind of porn? I'm sure there are sites out there that provide this stuff free just like there is for every other bloody thing.
That's the alternative to capitalism. The only one.
Hahaha
"Everything has a price" is a consequence of scarcity economics and greed.
Really? You have access to an infinite energy machine? No? Well then.. I suppose scarcity exists and isn't an invention of evil capitalists to put down the proletariat. Since scarcity exists then that means there is a price to produce anything, and that fact is where "everything has a price" comes from. To seriously believe otherwise is to not only deny basic economics, but our current understanding of physics. TANSTAAFL
Hey, Carlos Norris wants to be the president of Texas. I say, let him have it. And then watch the Mexican drug lords eat his lunch for him without federal troops from Washington.
Because Texas wouldn't have any troops of it's own would they?
Although, it should be noted that the government created and enforced the market in the first place. So, one could argue that the companies in fact didn't really have a choice. Either bid, or go out of business. Do it or die. Is a do foo or die choice, really a choice? Sure, they could change businesses. Again, is it really a choice when another entity forces you to do it? Would you say you chose to give the robber all your money when he pulled a gun on you or you were forced to?
This of course isn't all that different to the idea that you 'willingly' submit to searches at the airport that would otherwise be a clear 5th amendment violation. Sure, you willingly went there if you were going on vacation or just visiting friends. In those instances you did have a practical choice of how to travel. On the other hand, if your boss says you have to be 2000 miles away the next day, you don't have a practical choice. In this case, did you willingly submit or did you submit because if you didn't you would have to quit or get fired?
but it's worse, because the poor and the rich will pay the same amount.
Please explain to me why that's "worse". Do you honestly believe that the rich should pay more for cellular phone service just because they can? Do you also think that your phone company should get a copy of your W-2 so they can implement a progressive sliding scale of E-911 fees? Maybe SMS charges should be based on your income as well?
Clearly that's exactly what he thinks. Screw the "rich" and all that, no?
The government is selling a managed spectrum for what its worth. Period.
Why is it a tax if the government provides a service (which it is) but if a business provides a service its called a service?
Because, I end up paying for government services I have never used and will never use. A company's services are only paid for by me if I use them. A tax is basically armed robbery. If I don't pay, men with guns show up at my home and either force me (through the courts) to pay or they take me to jail. If I refuse both of those options, they shoot me. If I refuse to partake of a company's services, they don't send men to my home to force me. Clear now?
Liberate tutame ex inferis?
More or less. Government cannot save everyone from every little thing.
Nope. It's still ridiculous. Having the government regulate every little thing is silly and pointless.
The reason bills and such have gotten so large is that government itself has gotten far too large and intrusive. If government was concerned with protecting the rights of individuals and defending the country, the sole legitimate aims of government, we wouldn't "need" super huge bills. Admittedly there is some wiggle room in "protecting the rights of individuals", but I'm pretty sure most sane people can agree that building a new art gallery or whatever has nothing to do with protecting anyone's legitimate rights.
If you have guns and ammo, you can get food and water. The opposite is not true.
The opposite IS true, I can grow my own food without guns or ammo.
On the other hand, you cannot defend same without guns and ammo.
Sure I can. I know how to make traps and trapped animals as a teen. And unless the person has antibiotics they won't live long once they step in an Apache foot trap dipped in human feces. In the army my MOS, Military Occupation Speciality, was 11B, infantry, and I loved setting up booby traps. Though it's been years I used to practice archery and would like to learn to make bows and arrows. I would also like to learn metallurgy and make blade weapons. Prior to moving years ago I was a member of the local kingdom of the Society of Creative Anachronism where I lived.
Even if I couldn't do these things though I could make arrangements with people who could provide defense in exchange for food. Besides if all a person knows is how to shoot once their firearm is inoperable or they're out of ammo, they're out of food too. There are no tools I can't make myself that I need to grow food or trap animals. On top of that, I could fast, go without eating food. I used to be in the natural and health food scene and for health reasons I'd fast occasionally, anywhere from days to weeks. How much strength would many people have after not eating for two or three weeks? Even those weeks I did fast I still rode my bike 200+ miles a week. I admit all this is unusual but for as long as I can recall I've tried to be self-sufficient. Actually now, I'd rather be dead than continue living as I have the past years.
Falcon
What you're saying remains true so long as those who are attacking you are either small in number, or not particularly persistent. You are correct that an infected wound, caused by a trap, will kill without antibiotics. However, that may not immediately incapacitate them. They may still retain the ability to attack. In short, a defender without firearms will likely be defeated by attackers with firearms. If not in the first encounter, it will happen soon there after.
As to the assertion that a person who only knows how to shoot will run out of food when they run out of ammo, all things being equal you are correct. Thus, firearms and ammo are not a survival strategy by themselves. They do on the other hand greatly enhance one's ability to survive and to retain the other supplies they have stockpiled or are actively producing.
In short, depending on the particular survival profile, firearms should primarily be used for defense, as you are correct that traps and gardens are more efficient at food procurement. That defense angle should not be underestimated.
If you have guns and ammo, you can get food and water. The opposite is not true.
The opposite IS true, I can grow my own food without guns or ammo.
Falcon
On the other hand, you cannot defend same without guns and ammo.
It's an obligation you undertake when you fill out the license application. Or if you get someone who can read and write to fill out the application for you, and just affix your mark to it.
License application? What license application do you speak of?
I am not familiar with the community at Technocrat or the site itself for that matter. Anyone care to elaborate?
I don't know what elements creeped Bruce out but I thought there was a fairly strong right wing undercurrent among the regulars. Perhaps a few libertarians. Bruce seems to be a strong Democrat supporter so maybe that was it.
Nailed in one. Bruce is obviously fairly left wing, and deep "in the tank" for Obama. He lept at the chance to post non-verified anti-Palin stories more worthy of the tabloids than a serious site. He ended up with a ton of egg on his face when those stories were proven to be the tripe any thinking person should have known they were. Admittedly I do no know this for fact, so take this with a bucket of salt: It is my opinion that he expected, consciously or not, that a tech site would tend to swing left and when it instead went right, he wasn't comfortable and pulled the plug. Most unfortunate if true.
Exactly. Comparing the US with almost any other country and trying to derive useful information from it is a waste of time. This is also probably true for any sufficiently different countries. One could probably compare certain EU countries to others in the EU and gather somewhat useful data. Hell, it isn't even wise to compare various States in the US to each other for the same reason. The population of Kansas and Nevada aren't all that far apart. However, I suspect comparing them would be a waste of time for some pretty obvious reasons. Wichita is a nice place, but it isn't Las Vegas.