Let's say you are "king of the world" and this question comes up, so you make the obvious decision to implement technology which will accomplish this end. You are immediately directly and personally responsible for X deaths per year on an ongoing and unending basis. You would be a murderer since it is an easily predictable outcome of your choice. In the opposite scenario, responsibility for Y deaths remains the responsibility of idiots driving while using a cellphone.
When the people who want to make our choices for us are this comfortable having blood on their hands, it strikes me as reason enough why they should not get to make our choices for us.
"Banning all collaboration whether good or 'bad' isn't the answer."
Hedwards, to whom you originally replied, carefully distinguished between good and bad collaboration, so I assumed that you would be able to comprehend the fact that I was not referring to permitted and/or required collaborative efforts. My apologies for this erroneous assumption.
US Federal Government revenue, as a percentage of GDP has been fairly static in the post WWII period, ranging from a high of 21% of GDP to a low of 15% of GDP with upward and downward fluctuations throughout the period. However, absolute revenues have increased from 46 billion in 1946 to 2104.5 billion in 2009. Your post assumes that the increase in GDP that permits the fed to collect vastly increasing revenues over this period has no relation to the drastically reduced taxes (which, curiously, are not reflected in the available data) to which you refer.
If said cheating is done in secondary school and helps one to get a tertiary placement in preference to someone who did not cheat, it doesn't matter to the displaced scholar that the person who displaced them got found out or failed the course later on.
Similarly, if a person obtains employment on the strength of academic results which aren't valid, not only does the person they displace get impacted potentially hampering them at the start of their career, the reputation of the cheats educational qualification will be damaged, affecting every student who completes their qualification honestly.
It's this last which should motivate educational institutions to ensure that their students complete their qualifications honestly.
Asked to respond to the claims by the three telcos that the amendments would be imposing, McDonald (Geoff McDonald, Attorney Generals department's national law and policy first assistant secretary) said: "They're wrong, wrong, wrong."
"They must think we want them to provide a whole prospectus or something like that. It's the most general description about what they are doing — it's there to help them."
He's from the government and he's here to help you! [/me shudders]
"Is there or is there not a clear correlation between gun ownership and intentional deaths by means of guns? There is. You seem to conveniently ignore that in your argument."
No, I don't ignore it. I've already covered it and I'm not going back over it. Read my previous posts again if you're having trouble.
"In theory, those people will be schooled, monitored and need to keep tabs on every single bullet they fire. This is more, or less, true depending on where you live."
None of which cannot be accomplished by people who don't wear uniforms. Take the uniform off them and they're just as naked as the rest of us.
"Finally, the thing is _you are not protecting yourself_! You are raising the stakes for both sides"
This is incorrect. Criminals choose their victims on the basis of fairly rational criteria (those who don't, don't last long, criminal activity is ruthlessly darwinian), preferring those who are both unprepared to meet violence with violence and/or who are unable to counter the amount of force that the criminal is able to apply. This means that females, the young, small males as well as those who are obviously insufficiently self confident to resist acts of violence are far more likely to be victims of violent crime... so long as they are unable to arm themselves such that even the smallest person can resist the violence of the largest thug. Gun control, or, worse, gun removal would reduce any confrontation between a citizen and a criminal to a question of brute force. A contest the criminal will always win because the criminal gets to choose opponents who will not be able to resist effectively. What actually happens when the citizenry is permitted to arm themselves is that criminals choose not to compete on this level playing field and commit crimes against property rather than crimes against persons or, alternatively, they target people who they know will not be armed (people leaving an airport are a particular favorite: they are likely to be carrying cash and almost certainly not carrying a weapon). This shift of focus on the part of criminals has been demonstrated many times in the US when various states have loosened their gun control laws to permit citizens to protect themselves.
Also, the criminals do not need to protect themselves from overzealous home-owners
Someone protecting their home, their family and their possessions in their own home, no less, should never be described as "overzealous". Someone who busts into anothers home with malicious intent has no business whining about a few grams of lead passing through their chest.
Your argument would make more sense if the average kill rate in the other countries came even close to the one gun-happy first-world nations.
Both Canada and Switzerland have widespread availability of guns without Americas crime problem. Obviously, the cause of Americas violence is not the widespread availability of firearms common to all three nations
And before you start citing Switzerland: Once you were in the Swiss military you become, in theory, a reserve soldier
Uh huh. So what is it about military or police uniforms that the people who wear them can be trusted with guns where people without magical uniform mojo cannot?
If someone wants to kill themselves, depriving them of one means to that end isn't going to stop them. I'm certainly not going to give up my right to protect myself effectively for the nonexistent possibility that someone might not choose to kill themselves.
"My link points to a strong correlation (not causation) between gun ownership and _intentional_ gun-related deaths.
I'm pretty sure a corpse doesn't care if it was killed by a bullet, a knife, a club or a fist. I know I don't. Funny how hoplophobes like to track gun related deaths so much and yet are not nearly so interested in total violent deaths. I wonder why...
People "running around" with guns isn't a social impact. If someone "runs around" with a gun, that's no skin of my nose and neither is it any skin off yours, regardless of how hysterical it might make you feel. In a free society, making choices for other people is reserved for choices with serious social consequences. Hoplophobia doesn't qualify.
No one used the word "need" except you. The post you replied to stated: "I'm all for hunting for food, but hunting for sport just seems gratuitous and disrespectful to nature." without any reference to a need to hunt.
We should not be arguing about cost/benefit of want either, we should be arguing about whether you get to make those choices for other people
The PETA nuts are hypocrites too. Or hadn't you noticed that they're a lot more vocal about the evils of rich women wearing fur than that of burly bikers wearing leather?
What does it matter that one doesn't need to hunt for food if one wants to hunt for food? Free societies usually contain people who make choices that you neither understand nor approve of. For a society to remain free, however, you have to tolerate people making choices that you don't understand or approve of. I neither understand nor approve of someone wanting to wear a hijab. If I were to legislate to outlaw the hijab, however, I would be making my society less free: something I disapprove of with considerably more passion.
Sure it does. As you note, the US is heavily polarized, particularly on the issue of guns. If there was a test you had to pass to exercise an enumerated right, the anti gun folks would immediately move to make the test arbitrarily difficult. It's a lot easier for the pro gun folk to prevent a test from being imposed than to prevent an existing test from containing irrelevant questions/criteria whose only purpose is to increase the failure rate.
You misunderstand what rights are. They are not things government must provide you with (clean water, justice, housing, food, hookers etc. etc. etc.), they are things government may not take from you (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness). Defining it in such a way that government gets to decide what rights you have and how you may exercise them as you just did is fundamentally incompatible with the freedom to make ones own choices and to order ones own life as one sees fit.
If you do business in a country then you are subject to its laws to the extent that you do business there. What the speech act does is 1: protect businesses that don't do business in a libel tourism destination and 2: protect businesses that do business in libel tourism destinations to the extent that they don't do business there.
I consider this to be a goal worthy of emulation elsewhere and an excellent example of the legitimate use of government authority: protecting those under its authority.
Slashdot Mirror
Let's say you are "king of the world" and this question comes up, so you make the obvious decision to implement technology which will accomplish this end. You are immediately directly and personally responsible for X deaths per year on an ongoing and unending basis. You would be a murderer since it is an easily predictable outcome of your choice. In the opposite scenario, responsibility for Y deaths remains the responsibility of idiots driving while using a cellphone.
When the people who want to make our choices for us are this comfortable having blood on their hands, it strikes me as reason enough why they should not get to make our choices for us.
So your answer to the question "would you kill 1 innocent person to save ten others" would be "yes"?
"Banning all collaboration whether good or 'bad' isn't the answer." Hedwards, to whom you originally replied, carefully distinguished between good and bad collaboration, so I assumed that you would be able to comprehend the fact that I was not referring to permitted and/or required collaborative efforts. My apologies for this erroneous assumption.
US Federal Government revenue, as a percentage of GDP has been fairly static in the post WWII period, ranging from a high of 21% of GDP to a low of 15% of GDP with upward and downward fluctuations throughout the period. However, absolute revenues have increased from 46 billion in 1946 to 2104.5 billion in 2009. Your post assumes that the increase in GDP that permits the fed to collect vastly increasing revenues over this period has no relation to the drastically reduced taxes (which, curiously, are not reflected in the available data) to which you refer.
If said cheating is done in secondary school and helps one to get a tertiary placement in preference to someone who did not cheat, it doesn't matter to the displaced scholar that the person who displaced them got found out or failed the course later on.
Similarly, if a person obtains employment on the strength of academic results which aren't valid, not only does the person they displace get impacted potentially hampering them at the start of their career, the reputation of the cheats educational qualification will be damaged, affecting every student who completes their qualification honestly.
It's this last which should motivate educational institutions to ensure that their students complete their qualifications honestly.
I seem to have missed the part where she was convicted of anything?
He's from the government and he's here to help you! [/me shudders]
until the next scandal... It'll be called [scandal]gategate
I tried looking it up, but it just said the same thing your post does.
Interesting theory... why don't you borrow my motorcycle (gratis) and test it. I'll be sure to send flowers to the funeral.
No, I don't ignore it. I've already covered it and I'm not going back over it. Read my previous posts again if you're having trouble.
None of which cannot be accomplished by people who don't wear uniforms. Take the uniform off them and they're just as naked as the rest of us.
This is incorrect. Criminals choose their victims on the basis of fairly rational criteria (those who don't, don't last long, criminal activity is ruthlessly darwinian), preferring those who are both unprepared to meet violence with violence and/or who are unable to counter the amount of force that the criminal is able to apply. This means that females, the young, small males as well as those who are obviously insufficiently self confident to resist acts of violence are far more likely to be victims of violent crime... so long as they are unable to arm themselves such that even the smallest person can resist the violence of the largest thug. Gun control, or, worse, gun removal would reduce any confrontation between a citizen and a criminal to a question of brute force. A contest the criminal will always win because the criminal gets to choose opponents who will not be able to resist effectively. What actually happens when the citizenry is permitted to arm themselves is that criminals choose not to compete on this level playing field and commit crimes against property rather than crimes against persons or, alternatively, they target people who they know will not be armed (people leaving an airport are a particular favorite: they are likely to be carrying cash and almost certainly not carrying a weapon). This shift of focus on the part of criminals has been demonstrated many times in the US when various states have loosened their gun control laws to permit citizens to protect themselves.
It has also been demonstrated in the opposite direction by Washington DCs illegal 3 decade handgun ban, "During the years in which the D.C. handgun ban and trigger lock law was in effect, the Washington, D.C. murder rate averaged 73% higher than it was at the outset of the law, while the U.S. murder rate averaged 11% lower"
Someone protecting their home, their family and their possessions in their own home, no less, should never be described as "overzealous". Someone who busts into anothers home with malicious intent has no business whining about a few grams of lead passing through their chest.
Both Canada and Switzerland have widespread availability of guns without Americas crime problem. Obviously, the cause of Americas violence is not the widespread availability of firearms common to all three nations
Uh huh. So what is it about military or police uniforms that the people who wear them can be trusted with guns where people without magical uniform mojo cannot?
If someone wants to kill themselves, depriving them of one means to that end isn't going to stop them. I'm certainly not going to give up my right to protect myself effectively for the nonexistent possibility that someone might not choose to kill themselves.
I'm pretty sure a corpse doesn't care if it was killed by a bullet, a knife, a club or a fist. I know I don't. Funny how hoplophobes like to track gun related deaths so much and yet are not nearly so interested in total violent deaths. I wonder why...
a link for a link
That was fun. shall we keep exchanging contradictory data or do you want to have a discussion
People "running around" with guns isn't a social impact. If someone "runs around" with a gun, that's no skin of my nose and neither is it any skin off yours, regardless of how hysterical it might make you feel. In a free society, making choices for other people is reserved for choices with serious social consequences. Hoplophobia doesn't qualify.
No one used the word "need" except you. The post you replied to stated: "I'm all for hunting for food, but hunting for sport just seems gratuitous and disrespectful to nature." without any reference to a need to hunt.
We should not be arguing about cost/benefit of want either, we should be arguing about whether you get to make those choices for other people
If they're hitting the cable by luck, they would have hit the insulator far more often for the same reason.
The PETA nuts are hypocrites too. Or hadn't you noticed that they're a lot more vocal about the evils of rich women wearing fur than that of burly bikers wearing leather?
What does it matter that one doesn't need to hunt for food if one wants to hunt for food? Free societies usually contain people who make choices that you neither understand nor approve of. For a society to remain free, however, you have to tolerate people making choices that you don't understand or approve of. I neither understand nor approve of someone wanting to wear a hijab. If I were to legislate to outlaw the hijab, however, I would be making my society less free: something I disapprove of with considerably more passion.
Sure it does. As you note, the US is heavily polarized, particularly on the issue of guns. If there was a test you had to pass to exercise an enumerated right, the anti gun folks would immediately move to make the test arbitrarily difficult. It's a lot easier for the pro gun folk to prevent a test from being imposed than to prevent an existing test from containing irrelevant questions/criteria whose only purpose is to increase the failure rate.
You misunderstand what rights are. They are not things government must provide you with (clean water, justice, housing, food, hookers etc. etc. etc.), they are things government may not take from you (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness). Defining it in such a way that government gets to decide what rights you have and how you may exercise them as you just did is fundamentally incompatible with the freedom to make ones own choices and to order ones own life as one sees fit.
Unfortunately, it is the nature of law that the place where the line actually gets drawn only moves in one direction.
"Society has many laws designed specifically to 'nanny' people"
This is not necessarily a good thing.
If you acquire 12 demerit points within 3 years, you lose your license to drive.
If you do business in a country then you are subject to its laws to the extent that you do business there. What the speech act does is 1: protect businesses that don't do business in a libel tourism destination and 2: protect businesses that do business in libel tourism destinations to the extent that they don't do business there.
I consider this to be a goal worthy of emulation elsewhere and an excellent example of the legitimate use of government authority: protecting those under its authority.