So what you are saying is that Kos bans people. Now lets see the speed and ratio of these bans... all of the posters mentioned stayed there for months and years before they managed to rile up enough people to get banned.
A typical life-time of a dissenter on, say, RedState, is measured in minutes.
That might be true but then it simply means she is an unprincipled opportunist. Saying what you think your audience wants you to say instead of what your principles are should pretty much disqualify you from running for office irrespective of what party are you in.
Your argument is invalid even if true because it is position independent(*). Take anything anyone has said about anything and you can make their argument sound silly by replacing the nouns just as you have. This is a form of begging the question (because it relies on an implicit analogy who's validity depends on the conclusion), with a touch of ad-hominem and a dab of snobbery (by assuming that alternative conclusions can only be reached by ignorance).
No it is not since I did not replace the terms at random. I did replace Creationism with another equally scientifically discredited "theory". Not some random view.
While it sounds like a witty and compelling recrimination of flat earth believers, it can be used against anyone by inserting "round earth believer", "religious", "atheist" or whatever
That only applies to random and unwarranted substitutions.
(*) Positions independence implies truth independence since some positions are true and others false in a non-trivial consistent logic. Unfortunately I haven't been able to find the formal name for this fallacy.
That is because such fallacy does not exist. The validity depends on what you are substituting with what.
Although it may garner some lolz from those who agree with you, associating your opponent's stance with straw men does not make your argument any stronger.
I did nothing of the sort. Flat Earth nutbars and Creationist nutbars have equal weight in the realm of science. Flat Earth Theory and Crationism are nearly identical in their lack of evidence in support of these "theories" and their opposition theories have veritable mountains of evidence on their side, cross-referenced across a multitude of scientific disciplines.
The only difference between Creationism and Flat Earth is that the most proponents of Flat Earth simply died out, cluctching to their "Truth" until their last breath, leaving a pitiful band of lunatics to carry their mantle. Creationists are still abundant and their bone-headed fight with the rock of the obvious still goes on. But, as such things go, it will be their skulls which crack before the rock gives out, just as it was for the Flat Earthers...
The reason I did such a substitution is because Creationists abhor when they are being exposed for what they are, and will do everything in their power to cloak themselves in pretense of "respectability", as if such posturing somehow gave weight to their abject lunacy.
A) Because KOS is a far left hate mongering propaganda site? You didn't know this?
Says who? Dwellers of the "right wing hate mongering propaganda sites?". Is this how one evaluates all information?
B) No they were not. The ORIGINAL source has totally denied the story.
Huh? The link you posted is to some random blog whereby someone, with no evidence and no involvement in the library in question, simply just said that. Is this now a new standard for "evidence"?
C) Puuulease.
Say what? You mean librarians do not order from "Books In Print" catalogues, most, if not all, of which contain "upcoming" releases for the year they are printed?
You try and see what happens. Why would anyone make an effort to go someplace just to get kicked out?
It is not me making the claim, you know. The onus is on those who do.
Name the books for which you think that to be the case.
There is so many, and the practice is so common, that most publishers publish special catalogues for "upcoming books". The needs of librarians are such that there are even commercial enterprises who specialize in such information. Like this one. Note the words "forthcoming books" in the description.
Riiight - and the list of books supposedly banned includes books that *hadn't been published* at the time of the alleged incident (1996).
A) If that is so, why didn't you go on Kos to point it out, specifically which ones? They are not like a typical right-wing site, they do not insta-ban people just for voicing dissent. If you are not obnoxious or insulting, you have nothing to fear.
B) They were quoting the Mayor and the Time Magazine. These are the original sources of the information, not Kos.
C) It is quite possible, very common in fact, that unprinted yet books can be on order for a library and that their contents can be widely anticipated a priori.
Sounds like she understands basic science and theory just fine. Also she seems to have a grasp on that "separation of church and state" thing.
Err... no.
Let me put this in a way you might understand, since you too apparently have a difficulty with grasping this "basic science and theory":
"Palin has not pushed Flat Earth Theory science as governor"
"As a candidate for governor, Sarah Palin called for teaching Flat Earth Theory alongside evolution in public schools. But after Alaska voters elected her, Palin, now Republican John McCain's presidential running mate, kept her campaign pledge to not push the idea in the schools."
"When asked during a televised debate in 2006 about Earth being spherical and Flat Earth Theory, Palin said, according to the Anchorage Daily News: "Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both.""
"In a subsequent interview with the Daily News, Palin said discussion of alternative views on the shape of the Earth should be allowed in Alaska classrooms. "I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn't have to be part of the curriculum," she said."
"Palin said during her 2006 gubernatorial campaign that if she were elected, she would not push the state Board of Education to add Flatness-based alternatives to the state's required curriculum, or look for Flat Earth Society members when she appointed board members."
"Palin's children attend public schools and Palin has made no push to have Flat Earth Theory taught in them."
"Neither have Palin's socially conservative personal views on issues like abortion and gay marriage been translated into policies during her 20 months as Alaska's chief executive. It reflects a hands-off attitude toward mixing government and religion by most Alaskans."... right, pull my other one!
As opposed to 12-16 old workers being exploited by prostitution rings out or street beggars.
This of course applies to 3-12 year olds also!
Why, I see you are quoting from the Divine Book of Anarcho-Capitalist Boundless Universe-Devouring Avarice. And it says within: "You shallt not stop until 16 hour work day at a mining facility is granted for every of ye 3 year olds, as is their right, for it is ordained by our Lord Mammon that the only conceivable in a pious land alternative be... brothels and street panhandling! So sayeth we! Verily!"
Why, if it weren't for the enterprising Priests of Limitless Greed, we would all be ruined by our childhoods of prostitution, having never tasted the glorious privilege of back-destroying labor at a ripe age of 6. What would we ever do without our Magnanimous Capitalist Benefactors of Trickle Down Economy?!
All your requests require that a society built on a certain government monopoly service be fixed almost overnight through private endeavor, with no inconvenience to existing customers - the same people who built their lives on a need for that monopoly. I never suggested any of these requirements would be realizable - my only concern is that individual rights not be violated.
Do not even bother trying such a blatant dodge. The conditions remain completely unchanged irrespective if these rules of road ownership were to be put in place overnight in existing cities or if they were in place when the cities were built. The thing is simply impossible. One cannot establish a network of roads of any kind without communal ownership of the land they are on. For it takes only a few strategically positioned jackals to take the entire area hostage. Also since all such land is private, one cannot guarantee any continuity, that is even if the city denizens somehow managed to ensure strategic land ownership by "trusted" owners at the outset, their grand-children might turn out to be a tad more greedy and not so "trusted" and proceed to extricate themselves from such an arrangement.
That is at the core of your folly. The requirement for all things to be private property logically, inevitably and completely destroys any physical connectivity in a society (amongst many, many other things). There is simply no way out of it, short of StarTrek-style teleporters.
As to "individual rights", you tell me if being boxed on all sides by other land owners hostile to you and who demand a killer fee for crossing their property, but who otherwise take no action against you, violates these "individual rights".
Besides that, your requests also assume that no other modes of transportation can exist between two points.
All of which require physical access to either the land in question, the airspace above it or the ground below it. Save the magical StarTrek teleporter, that is. It would not surprise me however if pre-existence of some make-believe device in this vain were one of the pre-requisite miracles required for the fabled Libertarian society to "work"...
Now your turn:
No it is not. You blatantly attempted to evade addressing the terminal, show-stopping failure of your proposed societal model. Until you rectify it, I refuse to even bother with the rest as it is a waste of time. akin to an in-depth discussion of "how many angels can fit on a tip of a pin"....
1. Explain to me how a private road owner who artificially inflates his prices can maintain his road despite driving away almost all of his customers, including people who are willing to persuade existing and prospective customers to go on "strike"?
Ok, I will grant you this. The answer is simple: the entire value of their property and in effect their livelihoods (if, as most people, they must commute and their house is the bulk of their assets) are hostage to his whim. He can afford to wait as long as it takes to break them, for they have no escape. They can't leave without crossing his land nor they can sell their property for no one can take possession of it (and they still can't leave). The end result of such a "stike" is starvation, followed by them being forced to try to cross the road anyway or die, following which the owner of the road simply takes possession of all of their property as part of the debt incurred by their final desperate attempt to live, following which, depending on how magnanimous he feels, he might let them live on their former property in effective indentured servitude, paying him "rent" which continuously increases what they owe him every month.
The deal has no need for new "customers", merely creating a sufficient ambush condition for an existing, numerous enough group. To that effect the road owne
According to what? Are we just supposed to assume that if a single private road demands people to pay exorbitant prices for use, that nobody would be interested in providing a cheaper alternative?
Sigh. Are you for real? Describe a practical process of installing a "new" road in a typical suburban neighborhood, which does not involve either razing of 1/2 of all buildings in it or crossing the existing "private" road in any way! For bonus points, describe a practically feasible process of installing a new, parallel road in say, downtown Manhattan, with the same pre-requisites (i.e. assuming that all the north-south and east-west surrounding streets and avenues are already property of some owner). Then, when you have done that, describe what exactly would keep the owner of that new road from coming into an agreement with the other guy and charging exactly the same, or better yet selling his road to him, thus prompting construction of a third road with astronomically more impossible topological requirements (I think we are talking space-time continuum warping at this point)... lather, rinse, repeat.
I will even make it simpler for you. Describe a process of circumventing an owner of just one road running through a city from one end to another (and some 20 miles past each end), via its downtown. This effectively divides the city in half and demands that everyone who crosses the boundary pays a fee for doing so. You cannot go over as the airspace over private property is also private property, and for the same reason you cannot go under it (governments today use the "eminent domain" to get around it). And this is just one road. Never mind what would happen if every greedy fuck rushed to buy himself another road in the same area...
Do that and I will take you seriously.
It would also help if you got rid of those oversized red shoes and the wig.
I will not even bother to respond to the rest of your time wasting inanities that follow in your post until you do this.
Net result: there is no such thing as objective science.
Absolutely! 2+2=7 forevah! Down with the multiplication tables! Out with the "influences of outside forces"! See ya at the next Flat Earth Society annual conference featuring UFO abductee cabaret and tin-foil hat fashion show!
Who would pay that much? If someone demanded that amount to use their road, wouldn't there be a huge incentive for a neighboring property-owner to construct a road at a much cheaper fee, given the desire of most individuals for transportation?
You are of course missing the point entirely. Roads, unlike many other silly "capitalist" products for which the "model" of "free market" is semi-functional (think: plastic mouse-traps), are bound by geographical limitations. Therefore no alternative roads can be built in majority of locations, not by "neighboring property owner", nor by anyone at all. In cases where it is physically feasible, another devastating limitation occurs: no one can have 10 highways running in parallel, nor 4 sub-urban roads to every cul-de-sac. "Competition" in road building is simply not practical, irrespective of wacky make-believe economic "models". And I will not even delve into the game theory background of such scenarios, whereby the optimal outcome for all the "neighboring property owners" is collusion or outright consolidation to maximize profits on their captive (literally!) "customers".
Keeping on the subject of roads - where do the current roads come from? How are they maintained? Is it magic? Or are you already paying for them through taxation? In addition, what incentive is there for the government to provide the most efficient services at the lowest cost to the public? Does the government have any competition in that market?
Presently roads are not subject to competition, nor are they subject to "free market". They are a communal property, managed on behalf of the society by the government, which in order to achieve this goal must be exempt from the rules of the "free market".... and thus are one of the "basic necessities" about which all that Libertarian whining of yours was about. In fact, this is why we have roads today, for they were always in the realm of the "basic necessities" for which the state was responsible, beginning somewhere with Egyptian Pharaohs.
Which was the whole point of my reply: I simply described what would have happened if you had it your way and the government was to be excluded from providing such "basic necessities" to the society, exemplified by roads.
Incidentally, this is also why even the very notion of a "toll road" is a vicious travesty which goes against the very foundations of the society. It forcibly deprives everyone in the society from their common rights, while transferring control of what is in essence a communal requirement for societal cohesion into the hands of some arbitrary private entity. The shorter version of this idea is: Privatized Corporate Profits, Socialized Corporate Expenses.
Can you provide any evidence that such a reality would not only be inevitable but sustainable?
Sure. It is called: History. In the past, the core Libertarian principles were actually put in motion (in very early stages of human civilization) and were quickly (and inevitably) transformed into their natural end-product: the feudal order. The final stage equivalent of my hypothetical Mega Roads Inc was simply: His Mighty Lord Sovereign's Highways (after the most "successful" members of the Libertarian order took the final logical step and transformed themselves into "nobility").
The fundamental implication of Libertarianism is that property (note that enforcing the rules of property is the main responsibility of the Libertarian state) is far more important then people. The natural consequence is of course the immediate implication that the only people who count are those with property, more important more property they amass and control. This of course results in unchecked (as Libertarians do not believe in inheritance taxation) dynastical accumulation of wealth by some, coupled with dynastical impoverishment of others (as there is no esc
Except that none of these are the responsibility of a properly-functioning government. There is no right to "basic services". There is only the right to your life and your property, the protection of
which is the function of the government.
Sure. Every road a private toll-road, with $100 entry fee. I mean at the end of your driveway. Every driveway in the country. If there is no public roads, they are all private, owned by Mega Super Monopoly Roads Inc. You have an option to pay... or die. Btw, the airspace above the road and below it is also private property. If you build your house on land not already connected by roads owned by Mega Super Monopoly Roads Inc, the company (which has trillions of cash reserves) simply buys the area around your house for a the price very few will be able to resist, over which you have no control. And even if they could not, which they will, the road of your little patch of land has to be connected to the Maga Super Roads toll-road to get anywhere. They have no problem spending a fortune on this because the available land for urban development is quite finite and the return on investment from the indentured slaves... err.. "home owners" is guaranteed as they have literally no where else to go to escape. No competition can also occur since no feasible alternatives to the company-owned roads are available, period. The only "competitive" option is to abandon all dwellings and live a nomad life on bark and grass in the mountains... after payng due fees to the owner of the said forest.
This is just one example out of literally, millions. You see, these crazy Libertarian dystopias fall apart as soon as one looks at them in any depth or practical detail.
Why can't there be a middle ground, where government are required to fully disclose any actions they are actually taking and any money they spend or accept?
Because that idea has stopped working back when the government was composed of 50 individuals and its entire communications was still carried out on parchment.
The truth is that in modern times most government actions are utterly inscrutable without vast, time-consuming, labour-intensive cross-referencing and other analysis, far beyond the means of average citizenry. This is particularly applicable in the area of expenditures where obscurity, "privacy" and other smoke-screens are especially desirable to various crooks, and so a byzantine complexity of epic proportions was erected to ensure that the general public has no clue as to what is going on.
Add to this the fact that modern corporate "media" is malleable in the extreme by the political establishment members, to the point that confusion, uncertainty and doubt can be spread so effectively as whip entire nations into an unthinking blood frenzy over non-existent "weapons of mass destruction".
And if the government want national security get-outs on those releases, they should have to at least convince an independent panel, preferably a randomly selected citizen jury just like you'd get at a trial, who are entitled to see absolutely everything
See above. They were able to brain-fuck a majority of supposedly "free" and "educated" populace. A few easily threatened and in other ways manipulated individuals are a laughable obstacle.
And, on the other side, having any aspects of governance that could be made arbitrarily secret (because those governing decide what does and what does not infringe on their "privacy") is oh so conductive to preventing back-room machinations involving CEOs of mega-corporate friends of the politicians and other the like-minded cash-bearing chums, meetings in, say, the White House with, say, the Vice President, where, completely hypothetically, plans of invasions of foreign lands aimed at securing resources, say, oil, which somehow ended up under the sand owned by some undeserving brown-skinned "barbarians" are made. It also completely prevents authoritarian sociopaths with God complexes, who "just know better then you what us good for you and you do not need to know what it is for reasons of 'state security' and that is why you are on a secret no-fly list" from participating, no?
Moreover, making arbitrary government communications secret is well known to encourage honest and corruption-free government operations, leading to senior policy makers making well considered decisions in the best interests of those the government is supposed to represent and no possibility whatsoever of such a scenario aiding aiding decision making for their personal gain, that of their buddies, or for their most "charming" lobbyists, certainly?
Look, between the two "evils" of utterly stripping public officials and the government itself from any "privacy" and granting them "privacy" (which is by definition arbitrarily defined and subjective) to hide behind, it is clear that the former choice is orders of magnitude better.
Reasonable people can disagree over whether or not basic needs like health care are rights, but Internet access?!! That's nuts.
Not really. If the society moves to the stage where all essential services, government included, are on the Internet and inaccessible in a timely manner otherwise, Internet, like roads, become a necessity for living, only slightly less important then shelter or medical care. Telephones, for example, have long since crossed that line. In North America some means of long-range transportation (read: a car or some alternative) are pretty much a must in many cities if one wishes to obtain any employment at all, and thus sustenance and shelter.
Should these things be free/subsidized? That is an argument between Communism, Socialism, Capitalism and other socio-economic systems and far outside the scope of this disucssion. But irrespective of your take, it is pretty obvious that telecommunications/transportation are not in the same category as tourism or bar-hopping and are far closer to shelter/medical care, and getting closer every day.
You obviously have no idea how a company works. They can't just say "oh too bad about this Christmas, maybe we'll get our stuff ready for next year. Happens. Let's just sit around for a year and hope Google can finish all those great features!" A real company needs to sell stuff, and needs to milk Christmas as much as possible to have money to spend on R&D, etc. Skipping Christmas will kill a
company, even a large one.
Right, because a typical well-run company depends on 100% of its revenue to come from an insane annual retail feeding frenzy, followed by 60% returns of opened items. And a particularly robust and well managed company would arrange things so that a singular occasion on which a flood of brainless posturing on TV desperately imploring the brainless masses to buy crap they never needed or wanted happens to fail to work would break such a company, surely?
If you believe that this is how businesses out to be run then you have been thoroughly duped by the snake-oil salesmen running Wall Street and have absolutely no clue what makes a company survive long term. Hint: putting slow long-term growth ahead of a frenzied short term gain at the expense of exorbitant risks and no provisions for the future so that some idiot investment bankers, MBA VPs and the CEO's-of-the-week golfing buddies get theirs before it all inevitably falls apart is not the way to go.
Speaking of Google, one of the key elements at the core of their success is the fact that their business is not seasonal and has no idiotic deadlines forcing them to release half-baked "products" only so that some ridiculous date was met.
This isn't some CowboyNeal nonsense, this is about getting a product out in time for the Christmas buying frenzy. They have to get things done on time or there won't be any sales.
Absolutely! All these nay-sayers are acting like they did not know that Christmas 2008 is the last Christmas ever! I am being told that everyone who God is talking to daily in a loud voice (or even a chorus of voices) knows that there will be no sales after that, ever again!
Btw, ghoti, since this is Slashdot I gotta ask: do you have a modern LED "Repent! Nigh is near (2009 at the latest)!" sign to hold up on your lonely vigil at the street corner or are you still using the old but tried-and-true unintelligible scrawl on an unevenly ripped out cardboard-box side ever so fashionable amongst the true believers?
The GP, just like you, is talking about perpetual copyright. Many things never become "abandonware" or do so after centuries of use, only when they become utterly useless. The point of copyright is not to let the authors to ride the gravy train until their works become so useless as to be irellevant, but to set a finite limit on the authors monopoly (and thus the efforts of the society to protect such monopoly) so that the society can enjoy the works free of charge when they are still useful. Otherwise the copyright is pointless from the point of view of "promotion of arts and sciences" and becomes merely a tool of greedy idiots who wish to lock down the entirety of useful human knowledge as their personal property, no matter how harmful to the progress of arts, science and civilization in general.
If you had it your way, you will be still paying royalties to the Italians for the Latin alphabet and to the Arabs for the numerals, as the descendants of descendants of descendants etc of the original author would still find it profitable to collect them.
They would have gotten at least extended to 28 years. Hell, Nintendo is STILL selling them. People are STILL buying them. IMO they deserve those sales when they manage to make something that stays relevant for such a long time. Most games just fade into obscurity within maybe 3 years.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding about what the whole "copyright" regime is supposed to be for. It is not to "work once and make oodles and oodles of cash, like, foreveah!" (and the very fact that you seem to think so and others here agree with you is a sad testimony as to how far the whole idea has been corrupted by greed-mongering mega-corporations).
The purpose of copyrights is to "promote arts and sciences". To that effect the public grants a (naturally non-existant) temporary privilege to the artist for a time-limited monopoly on his works. In exchange for that monopoly, the time limitation (which is supposed to be wholly unrelated to how much money is the dude making) was originally set to expire after a sane period and the works were to enter the public domain.
Unlimited (for practical purposes) copyrights are a perversion of this idea and serve no communal purpose. A never-ending copyright has no societal justification (and in fact it is extremely dangerous to the society - just imagine someone still holding copyright on this thing called "the Latin alphabet" and charging everyone per word, which would be the case if copyrights were based on "sales" and "money earned" as you seem to suggest).
Any attempts to extend the copyright warrant only one sane response from the society: abolishment of the vast and unjustifiable privilege of copyrights. Facing utter corruption by the money resulting from abuse of copyrights of the responsible for this mess officials, a fully justifiable and righteous response by the society is to ignore copyrights (after all it is the society which grants such extravagant privileges to the authors), which is what is happening at a global scale, represented by phenomena such as the mass scale proliferation of P2P networks.
Just so you know, China's economy will have to grow at its current rate for the next 97 years to catch up to the US at the current growth rate (which is currently terrible)
Hmmm...
China's GDP in 2007 was $3.3 billion growing at 11%, US $14 billion growing at 0.9%. My back of the napkin calculation indicates that China will be at $15 billion in 15 years or so (3.3 billion * 1.11 to the 15th power), the US will be then at $16 billion. In 16 years, assuming the same growth rates, China will surpass the GDP of the USA nearly by a billion dollars or so.
Fascism is, economically, rooted in Socialism. It is basically Socialism with Nationalism overtones....
That is presumably why Hitler was backed by "socialists" like the Krupp dynasty and German aristocracy domestically and various other tycoons and robber barons internationally, no?
Slashdot Mirror
So what you are saying is that Kos bans people. Now lets see the speed and ratio of these bans... all of the posters mentioned stayed there for months and years before they managed to rile up enough people to get banned.
A typical life-time of a dissenter on, say, RedState, is measured in minutes.
That might be true but then it simply means she is an unprincipled opportunist. Saying what you think your audience wants you to say instead of what your principles are should pretty much disqualify you from running for office irrespective of what party are you in.
No it is not since I did not replace the terms at random. I did replace Creationism with another equally scientifically discredited "theory". Not some random view.
That only applies to random and unwarranted substitutions.
That is because such fallacy does not exist. The validity depends on what you are substituting with what.
I did nothing of the sort. Flat Earth nutbars and Creationist nutbars have equal weight in the realm of science. Flat Earth Theory and Crationism are nearly identical in their lack of evidence in support of these "theories" and their opposition theories have veritable mountains of evidence on their side, cross-referenced across a multitude of scientific disciplines.
The only difference between Creationism and Flat Earth is that the most proponents of Flat Earth simply died out, cluctching to their "Truth" until their last breath, leaving a pitiful band of lunatics to carry their mantle. Creationists are still abundant and their bone-headed fight with the rock of the obvious still goes on. But, as such things go, it will be their skulls which crack before the rock gives out, just as it was for the Flat Earthers ...
The reason I did such a substitution is because Creationists abhor when they are being exposed for what they are, and will do everything in their power to cloak themselves in pretense of "respectability", as if such posturing somehow gave weight to their abject lunacy.
Says who? Dwellers of the "right wing hate mongering propaganda sites?". Is this how one evaluates all information?
Huh? The link you posted is to some random blog whereby someone, with no evidence and no involvement in the library in question, simply just said that. Is this now a new standard for "evidence"?
Say what? You mean librarians do not order from "Books In Print" catalogues, most, if not all, of which contain "upcoming" releases for the year they are printed?
It is not me making the claim, you know. The onus is on those who do.
There is so many, and the practice is so common, that most publishers publish special catalogues for "upcoming books". The needs of librarians are such that there are even commercial enterprises who specialize in such information. Like this one. Note the words "forthcoming books" in the description.
A) If that is so, why didn't you go on Kos to point it out, specifically which ones? They are not like a typical right-wing site, they do not insta-ban people just for voicing dissent. If you are not obnoxious or insulting, you have nothing to fear.
B) They were quoting the Mayor and the Time Magazine. These are the original sources of the information, not Kos.
C) It is quite possible, very common in fact, that unprinted yet books can be on order for a library and that their contents can be widely anticipated a priori.
Err... no.
Let me put this in a way you might understand, since you too apparently have a difficulty with grasping this "basic science and theory":
... right, pull my other one!
"Palin has not pushed Flat Earth Theory science as governor"
"As a candidate for governor, Sarah Palin called for teaching Flat Earth Theory alongside evolution in public schools. But after Alaska voters elected her, Palin, now Republican John McCain's presidential running mate, kept her campaign pledge to not push the idea in the schools."
"When asked during a televised debate in 2006 about Earth being spherical and Flat Earth Theory, Palin said, according to the Anchorage Daily News: "Teach both. You know, don't be afraid of information. Healthy debate is so important, and it's so valuable in our schools. I am a proponent of teaching both.""
"In a subsequent interview with the Daily News, Palin said discussion of alternative views on the shape of the Earth should be allowed in Alaska classrooms. "I don't think there should be a prohibition against debate if it comes up in class. It doesn't have to be part of the curriculum," she said."
"Palin said during her 2006 gubernatorial campaign that if she were elected, she would not push the state Board of Education to add Flatness-based alternatives to the state's required curriculum, or look for Flat Earth Society members when she appointed board members."
"Palin's children attend public schools and Palin has made no push to have Flat Earth Theory taught in them."
"Neither have Palin's socially conservative personal views on issues like abortion and gay marriage been translated into policies during her 20 months as Alaska's chief executive. It reflects a hands-off attitude toward mixing government and religion by most Alaskans."
There, I hope this gets through better.
How so? They quoted both the former Mayor and the Time magazine, who interviewed other people.
This of course applies to 3-12 year olds also!
Why, I see you are quoting from the Divine Book of Anarcho-Capitalist Boundless Universe-Devouring Avarice. And it says within: "You shallt not stop until 16 hour work day at a mining facility is granted for every of ye 3 year olds, as is their right, for it is ordained by our Lord Mammon that the only conceivable in a pious land alternative be ... brothels and street panhandling! So sayeth we! Verily!"
Why, if it weren't for the enterprising Priests of Limitless Greed, we would all be ruined by our childhoods of prostitution, having never tasted the glorious privilege of back-destroying labor at a ripe age of 6. What would we ever do without our Magnanimous Capitalist Benefactors of Trickle Down Economy?!
Do not even bother trying such a blatant dodge. The conditions remain completely unchanged irrespective if these rules of road ownership were to be put in place overnight in existing cities or if they were in place when the cities were built. The thing is simply impossible. One cannot establish a network of roads of any kind without communal ownership of the land they are on. For it takes only a few strategically positioned jackals to take the entire area hostage. Also since all such land is private, one cannot guarantee any continuity, that is even if the city denizens somehow managed to ensure strategic land ownership by "trusted" owners at the outset, their grand-children might turn out to be a tad more greedy and not so "trusted" and proceed to extricate themselves from such an arrangement.
That is at the core of your folly. The requirement for all things to be private property logically, inevitably and completely destroys any physical connectivity in a society (amongst many, many other things). There is simply no way out of it, short of StarTrek-style teleporters.
As to "individual rights", you tell me if being boxed on all sides by other land owners hostile to you and who demand a killer fee for crossing their property, but who otherwise take no action against you, violates these "individual rights".
All of which require physical access to either the land in question, the airspace above it or the ground below it. Save the magical StarTrek teleporter, that is. It would not surprise me however if pre-existence of some make-believe device in this vain were one of the pre-requisite miracles required for the fabled Libertarian society to "work" ...
No it is not. You blatantly attempted to evade addressing the terminal, show-stopping failure of your proposed societal model. Until you rectify it, I refuse to even bother with the rest as it is a waste of time. akin to an in-depth discussion of "how many angels can fit on a tip of a pin" ....
Ok, I will grant you this. The answer is simple: the entire value of their property and in effect their livelihoods (if, as most people, they must commute and their house is the bulk of their assets) are hostage to his whim. He can afford to wait as long as it takes to break them, for they have no escape. They can't leave without crossing his land nor they can sell their property for no one can take possession of it (and they still can't leave). The end result of such a "stike" is starvation, followed by them being forced to try to cross the road anyway or die, following which the owner of the road simply takes possession of all of their property as part of the debt incurred by their final desperate attempt to live, following which, depending on how magnanimous he feels, he might let them live on their former property in effective indentured servitude, paying him "rent" which continuously increases what they owe him every month.
The deal has no need for new "customers", merely creating a sufficient ambush condition for an existing, numerous enough group. To that effect the road owne
Sigh. Are you for real? Describe a practical process of installing a "new" road in a typical suburban neighborhood, which does not involve either razing of 1/2 of all buildings in it or crossing the existing "private" road in any way! For bonus points, describe a practically feasible process of installing a new, parallel road in say, downtown Manhattan, with the same pre-requisites (i.e. assuming that all the north-south and east-west surrounding streets and avenues are already property of some owner). Then, when you have done that, describe what exactly would keep the owner of that new road from coming into an agreement with the other guy and charging exactly the same, or better yet selling his road to him, thus prompting construction of a third road with astronomically more impossible topological requirements (I think we are talking space-time continuum warping at this point) ... lather, rinse, repeat.
I will even make it simpler for you. Describe a process of circumventing an owner of just one road running through a city from one end to another (and some 20 miles past each end), via its downtown. This effectively divides the city in half and demands that everyone who crosses the boundary pays a fee for doing so. You cannot go over as the airspace over private property is also private property, and for the same reason you cannot go under it (governments today use the "eminent domain" to get around it). And this is just one road. Never mind what would happen if every greedy fuck rushed to buy himself another road in the same area...
Do that and I will take you seriously.
It would also help if you got rid of those oversized red shoes and the wig.
I will not even bother to respond to the rest of your time wasting inanities that follow in your post until you do this.
Absolutely! 2+2=7 forevah! Down with the multiplication tables! Out with the "influences of outside forces"! See ya at the next Flat Earth Society annual conference featuring UFO abductee cabaret and tin-foil hat fashion show!
You are of course missing the point entirely. Roads, unlike many other silly "capitalist" products for which the "model" of "free market" is semi-functional (think: plastic mouse-traps), are bound by geographical limitations. Therefore no alternative roads can be built in majority of locations, not by "neighboring property owner", nor by anyone at all. In cases where it is physically feasible, another devastating limitation occurs: no one can have 10 highways running in parallel, nor 4 sub-urban roads to every cul-de-sac. "Competition" in road building is simply not practical, irrespective of wacky make-believe economic "models". And I will not even delve into the game theory background of such scenarios, whereby the optimal outcome for all the "neighboring property owners" is collusion or outright consolidation to maximize profits on their captive (literally!) "customers".
Presently roads are not subject to competition, nor are they subject to "free market". They are a communal property, managed on behalf of the society by the government, which in order to achieve this goal must be exempt from the rules of the "free market" .... and thus are one of the "basic necessities" about which all that Libertarian whining of yours was about. In fact, this is why we have roads today, for they were always in the realm of the "basic necessities" for which the state was responsible, beginning somewhere with Egyptian Pharaohs.
Which was the whole point of my reply: I simply described what would have happened if you had it your way and the government was to be excluded from providing such "basic necessities" to the society, exemplified by roads.
Incidentally, this is also why even the very notion of a "toll road" is a vicious travesty which goes against the very foundations of the society. It forcibly deprives everyone in the society from their common rights, while transferring control of what is in essence a communal requirement for societal cohesion into the hands of some arbitrary private entity. The shorter version of this idea is: Privatized Corporate Profits, Socialized Corporate Expenses.
Sure. It is called: History. In the past, the core Libertarian principles were actually put in motion (in very early stages of human civilization) and were quickly (and inevitably) transformed into their natural end-product: the feudal order. The final stage equivalent of my hypothetical Mega Roads Inc was simply: His Mighty Lord Sovereign's Highways (after the most "successful" members of the Libertarian order took the final logical step and transformed themselves into "nobility").
The fundamental implication of Libertarianism is that property (note that enforcing the rules of property is the main responsibility of the Libertarian state) is far more important then people. The natural consequence is of course the immediate implication that the only people who count are those with property, more important more property they amass and control. This of course results in unchecked (as Libertarians do not believe in inheritance taxation) dynastical accumulation of wealth by some, coupled with dynastical impoverishment of others (as there is no esc
Sure. Every road a private toll-road, with $100 entry fee. I mean at the end of your driveway. Every driveway in the country. If there is no public roads, they are all private, owned by Mega Super Monopoly Roads Inc. You have an option to pay ... or die. Btw, the airspace above the road and below it is also private property. If you build your house on land not already connected by roads owned by Mega Super Monopoly Roads Inc, the company (which has trillions of cash reserves) simply buys the area around your house for a the price very few will be able to resist, over which you have no control. And even if they could not, which they will, the road of your little patch of land has to be connected to the Maga Super Roads toll-road to get anywhere. They have no problem spending a fortune on this because the available land for urban development is quite finite and the return on investment from the indentured slaves ... err .. "home owners" is guaranteed as they have literally no where else to go to escape. No competition can also occur since no feasible alternatives to the company-owned roads are available, period. The only "competitive" option is to abandon all dwellings and live a nomad life on bark and grass in the mountains ... after payng due fees to the owner of the said forest.
This is just one example out of literally, millions. You see, these crazy Libertarian dystopias fall apart as soon as one looks at them in any depth or practical detail.
Because that idea has stopped working back when the government was composed of 50 individuals and its entire communications was still carried out on parchment.
The truth is that in modern times most government actions are utterly inscrutable without vast, time-consuming, labour-intensive cross-referencing and other analysis, far beyond the means of average citizenry. This is particularly applicable in the area of expenditures where obscurity, "privacy" and other smoke-screens are especially desirable to various crooks, and so a byzantine complexity of epic proportions was erected to ensure that the general public has no clue as to what is going on.
Add to this the fact that modern corporate "media" is malleable in the extreme by the political establishment members, to the point that confusion, uncertainty and doubt can be spread so effectively as whip entire nations into an unthinking blood frenzy over non-existent "weapons of mass destruction".
See above. They were able to brain-fuck a majority of supposedly "free" and "educated" populace. A few easily threatened and in other ways manipulated individuals are a laughable obstacle.
And, on the other side, having any aspects of governance that could be made arbitrarily secret (because those governing decide what does and what does not infringe on their "privacy") is oh so conductive to preventing back-room machinations involving CEOs of mega-corporate friends of the politicians and other the like-minded cash-bearing chums, meetings in, say, the White House with, say, the Vice President, where, completely hypothetically, plans of invasions of foreign lands aimed at securing resources, say, oil, which somehow ended up under the sand owned by some undeserving brown-skinned "barbarians" are made. It also completely prevents authoritarian sociopaths with God complexes, who "just know better then you what us good for you and you do not need to know what it is for reasons of 'state security' and that is why you are on a secret no-fly list" from participating, no?
Moreover, making arbitrary government communications secret is well known to encourage honest and corruption-free government operations, leading to senior policy makers making well considered decisions in the best interests of those the government is supposed to represent and no possibility whatsoever of such a scenario aiding aiding decision making for their personal gain, that of their buddies, or for their most "charming" lobbyists, certainly?
Look, between the two "evils" of utterly stripping public officials and the government itself from any "privacy" and granting them "privacy" (which is by definition arbitrarily defined and subjective) to hide behind, it is clear that the former choice is orders of magnitude better.
Not really. If the society moves to the stage where all essential services, government included, are on the Internet and inaccessible in a timely manner otherwise, Internet, like roads, become a necessity for living, only slightly less important then shelter or medical care. Telephones, for example, have long since crossed that line. In North America some means of long-range transportation (read: a car or some alternative) are pretty much a must in many cities if one wishes to obtain any employment at all, and thus sustenance and shelter.
Should these things be free/subsidized? That is an argument between Communism, Socialism, Capitalism and other socio-economic systems and far outside the scope of this disucssion. But irrespective of your take, it is pretty obvious that telecommunications/transportation are not in the same category as tourism or bar-hopping and are far closer to shelter/medical care, and getting closer every day.
Right, because a typical well-run company depends on 100% of its revenue to come from an insane annual retail feeding frenzy, followed by 60% returns of opened items. And a particularly robust and well managed company would arrange things so that a singular occasion on which a flood of brainless posturing on TV desperately imploring the brainless masses to buy crap they never needed or wanted happens to fail to work would break such a company, surely?
If you believe that this is how businesses out to be run then you have been thoroughly duped by the snake-oil salesmen running Wall Street and have absolutely no clue what makes a company survive long term. Hint: putting slow long-term growth ahead of a frenzied short term gain at the expense of exorbitant risks and no provisions for the future so that some idiot investment bankers, MBA VPs and the CEO's-of-the-week golfing buddies get theirs before it all inevitably falls apart is not the way to go.
Speaking of Google, one of the key elements at the core of their success is the fact that their business is not seasonal and has no idiotic deadlines forcing them to release half-baked "products" only so that some ridiculous date was met.
Absolutely! All these nay-sayers are acting like they did not know that Christmas 2008 is the last Christmas ever! I am being told that everyone who God is talking to daily in a loud voice (or even a chorus of voices) knows that there will be no sales after that, ever again!
Btw, ghoti, since this is Slashdot I gotta ask: do you have a modern LED "Repent! Nigh is near (2009 at the latest)!" sign to hold up on your lonely vigil at the street corner or are you still using the old but tried-and-true unintelligible scrawl on an unevenly ripped out cardboard-box side ever so fashionable amongst the true believers?
The GP, just like you, is talking about perpetual copyright. Many things never become "abandonware" or do so after centuries of use, only when they become utterly useless. The point of copyright is not to let the authors to ride the gravy train until their works become so useless as to be irellevant, but to set a finite limit on the authors monopoly (and thus the efforts of the society to protect such monopoly) so that the society can enjoy the works free of charge when they are still useful. Otherwise the copyright is pointless from the point of view of "promotion of arts and sciences" and becomes merely a tool of greedy idiots who wish to lock down the entirety of useful human knowledge as their personal property, no matter how harmful to the progress of arts, science and civilization in general.
If you had it your way, you will be still paying royalties to the Italians for the Latin alphabet and to the Arabs for the numerals, as the descendants of descendants of descendants etc of the original author would still find it profitable to collect them.
You have a fundamental misunderstanding about what the whole "copyright" regime is supposed to be for. It is not to "work once and make oodles and oodles of cash, like, foreveah!" (and the very fact that you seem to think so and others here agree with you is a sad testimony as to how far the whole idea has been corrupted by greed-mongering mega-corporations).
The purpose of copyrights is to "promote arts and sciences". To that effect the public grants a (naturally non-existant) temporary privilege to the artist for a time-limited monopoly on his works. In exchange for that monopoly, the time limitation (which is supposed to be wholly unrelated to how much money is the dude making) was originally set to expire after a sane period and the works were to enter the public domain.
Unlimited (for practical purposes) copyrights are a perversion of this idea and serve no communal purpose. A never-ending copyright has no societal justification (and in fact it is extremely dangerous to the society - just imagine someone still holding copyright on this thing called "the Latin alphabet" and charging everyone per word, which would be the case if copyrights were based on "sales" and "money earned" as you seem to suggest).
Any attempts to extend the copyright warrant only one sane response from the society: abolishment of the vast and unjustifiable privilege of copyrights. Facing utter corruption by the money resulting from abuse of copyrights of the responsible for this mess officials, a fully justifiable and righteous response by the society is to ignore copyrights (after all it is the society which grants such extravagant privileges to the authors), which is what is happening at a global scale, represented by phenomena such as the mass scale proliferation of P2P networks.
Oops.
In my previous reply replace "billions" with "trillions". The gist of the calculation remains the same.
Hmmm...
China's GDP in 2007 was $3.3 billion growing at 11%, US $14 billion growing at 0.9%. My back of the napkin calculation indicates that China will be at $15 billion in 15 years or so (3.3 billion * 1.11 to the 15th power), the US will be then at $16 billion. In 16 years, assuming the same growth rates, China will surpass the GDP of the USA nearly by a billion dollars or so.
That is presumably why Hitler was backed by "socialists" like the Krupp dynasty and German aristocracy domestically and various other tycoons and robber barons internationally, no?