All I know is that I rent now, and due to the small amount of time I plan to live here, that makes the most sense for me. I suppose you plan to add some weird exemption for people living in a place for less than x months (24 maybe). Then property owners would just say that you couldn't stay longer than whatever time you required. At any rate, the point is that whatever artificial system you conceive, it probably won't solve the problem(and would probably make it worse).
You use the word greed a lot. I don't think it's fair to call someone greedy just because they are trying to make money.
"the lesser the effort you put into your own government the greater your resposibility for it's failure"
I tend to feel that the decisions we make personally about sending money indicate what we care about more than how we vote.
This is really quite simple. In a capitalist system resources are allocated to people depending on their value to society. We measure value in currency. If someone has no value to society, they are entitled to no resources. Some people think that everyone has value. I don't think it's fair to promote government legislation to provide resources to everyone, since not everyone agrees that everyone has value. The way I figure it, if you care about bums on the street so much, you can take care of them, and I'll decide for myself if I feel they're worth it.
"multi-generational accumulation of wealth"
This is not as much of a problem as you think. A fool and his money are soon parted.
"If you are unemployed how do you spend money on housing that you can't afford."
Get a job. It's surprisingly easy, in the US at least.
"They see themslves as being divorced from the repercussion of their actions as they see no future in their lives."
Please, these are selfish assholes who've given into mob mentality. You can tell because they're destroying random shit, instead of doing something proactive like getting out of that hellhole, or looking for a job.
"there only lies greed and profits"
Why do you characterize people trying to make a living for themselves as greedy? The poor aren't the only people who need to provide for themselves (to the extent that they actually need to do that).
"good start is the active discouragment in residential rental investments via a full range fiscal penalties"
This is probably the best idea for making housing inaccessible to the poor I've ever heard.
"After all those who purchase to rent should pay by far higher taxes as the greater the proportion of rental properties the worse the quality of the neighbourhood, not worse people, they just have less to loose because they don't own."
Actually, the renters who are destructive to property should pay far higher taxes, because they're the ones who sour the neighborhood. I don't see how it's fair to blame the property owners because the people they rent to don't care about the neighborhood. It's also not fair to punish people who rent the property, because not all of them are destructive to the neighborhood, only some of them are.
"but carefully controlled and created by government to ensure the assistance goes to where it is needed"
Is this a description of how the government does business? I'm starting to wonder if your whole comment is some sort of twisted, sarcastic joke. You should see your immediately preceding line:
"the politcal influence of the greedy minority"
and stop imaging that government can be anything other than what it is.
"utilizing a crude and unreliable tool called money"
You find me a better measure.
"Self-sufficient means not only producing more or equal to one's needs but also consuming only what one produces."
Obviously, if you consume more than you produce you are not self-sufficient. I'm not sure what your argument here is.
"For example: a con-man having successfully swindled many people of their money, and yet who was careful to stay nominally "legal", according to your "measure" is a great "producer" who is entitled to great levels of consumption. A jobless cocaine junkie billionaire heir to some fortune is equally a great "producer", while passed out in some whore-house."
Of course, no system is perfect. Again, you let me know if you find a better one. By the way, the billionaire heir is a producer, since whoever left him the money found so much value in his existence that they left them with all that money. You can question whether it was worth it, but the person with the money gets to decide how they spend it.
"Utter, immoral bullshit. Otherwise, children and those born with debilitating diseases should be all left to die, which is the way of aminals."
We take care of people because want to. These people have value to us because we hare happier to take care of them and keep them alive than to let them die. It makes no sense to argue that these people have no monetary value, since people are willing to spend so much money to keep them alive.
"By the way, that last sentence marks you as a Spencerite (i.e. a vicious, selfish, bloodthirsty animal, an enemy of everyone but himself, best put down like a rabid dog before he causes untold suffering to others) and thus not someone with whom an enlightened discussion can be had, lest it was about the "divine nature of greed"."
This last paragraph marks you as an elitist no-nothing. You can tell because you start by introducing a fancy word, and then degenerate into personal insults and name-calling. Yeah, you're definitely the kind of person "with whom an enlightened discussion can be had".
"extra $10 a year in taxes, your ability to build, say, an apartment complex has been negatively impacted?"
No, what he is saying is that if the government takes $10 from you in taxes, your ability to spend that particular $10 in the manner you wish is negatively impacted. It's a fact, and it is easy to see that every dollar the government spends is a dollar that is not spent in the private sector.
Someone else already said this, but just to reiterate, self-sufficient means that you produce at least as much value as you consume. In a capitalist society, we measure value in units of currency, and we say that every member of society must produce as much value as they consume. If you produce more than you consume, you accumulate wealth, and can consume more at a later date, or pass that wealth on to you children, or donate it to whatever cause. On the other hand, if you produce less than you consume, you are just a worthless mooch, and the rest of us would be better off if you died.
But why should you expect them to become French? These people cam to France looking for economic prosperity, not because they wanted to eat horse-meat. If they can live in France and be economically productive, both them and the French will benefit. This is a good thing.
While I agree with that these rioters are out of line and should be severely punished, I don't agree that they bring nothing to the country. In the US (a nation of immigrants by the way) they make our low-cost agriculture possible. They also perform a host of menial tasks which the rest of us are unwilling to perform. This increases our quality of life, while increasing theirs as well.
I don't think you should expect people to abandon their culture entirely. Every culture has good aspects and bad aspects, if you mix two together, I think the bad ones will die out and be replaced by the good ones. In the case of mexicans, I can say that I am very happy to have the food (I know it's Tex-Mex, again this is an example of where mixing two cultures results in a one better than either of the two). So if you're afraid of your culture being replaced, bear in mind that if that happens it will be replaced with a better one.
"Why are you moving to a new country if you don't want to abandon your old one?"
That's simple, they want to abandon some aspects of their country while retaining others. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Look, poor people need housing, and they will spend their own money to get it if they have to. This means that low income housing is a market. Government operations do not need to be profitable, and this gives them an advantage against private housing providers. This is why you you see very few private organizations trying to provide low-income housing. It's not because there would be no housing for the poor without government intervention. It's because the government has pushed the private sector out of the market.
That's a good point, and I don't blame you for posting a comment like that anonymously on this forum.
There are a couple reasons the crime rate goes up. The first one is the racial tensions that naturally arise because people like to form exclusive groups, and fear people who are different. The second is that poor people are more likely to commit crimes because they are envious of richer people and feel entitled, or simply because they feel that they need to be criminals in order to survive.
In any case, the crime problem is usually overstated, and I find that people often blame members of a particular race for crime without a good reason to do so. It is also a transitional problem which will disappear as immigrants accumulate wealth and integrate into the larger society.
"You are making about as much sense as he usually does."
This is not rocket science. If the government decides how to spend your money for you, you no longer have the ability to choose how spend your money. It's a fact, accept it.
"If you think it would make financial sense to build low-income housing with your own money, go ahead and do it. The problem is, trying to make money from people who don't have any money is not a good business plan."
This is simply not true. What you do is provide lower quality goods at a lower price. This kind of market segmentation allows producers to sell items at a higher price to those who can afford it while still selling at a lower price to the people who can't afford the higher price. You see this a lot, a company will sell multiple versions of essentially the same vehicle. The "higher end" models have more value added features and cost more, and will earn the company a higer profit margain. However, it is still good to sell a lower priced version of the car with fewer features at a lower profit margian. This is because sellers wish to maximize their total profit from all sales, rather than just the magianl profit from each sale. Of course, they won't sell at a loss, but they still sell to poor people.
"My point is most people in this situation are abusing the system leaving the people who really need it out in the cold."
A bad system promotes abuse. Usually the people who really need these programs know enough not to get into them into the first place. There's something to be said for self-sufficiency, and people who strive for it are never in a bad situation for long.
Government spending crowds out private spending, thereby reducing options. Not to mention rules and regulations, like zoning rules, which specifically prevent certain land uses in certain places (this is not necessary bad).
"Oh, and a last thing: you mix up african and north-african (arabic) culture."
This is a somewhat subjective issure. The fact of the matter is that the people in question are africans (or north Africans, if you prefer), and the parent was only trying to say that they are treated as second citizens in France. From what I understand this is the case. You'll find a similar attitude in Europe against Turks. I'll never understand why so many people have a problem with poor immigrants moving into their country, but it is an attitude you will find anywhere in the world, and it is usually based on some sort of racial prejudice against the people in question. People say that they're afraid of loosing jobs, but if they really wanted the kind of jobs the immigrants work, they wouldn't be in danger of loosing them. The truth is that people just don't like to see poor immigrants around.
"Those buildings are owned by the gouvernment, but they are rented for a very cheap price to families who would not be able to afford to rent a place otherwise."
One may suspect that with less government involvement in the matter, there might be more options for the immigrants. In the US, politicians like to use the justification that these people "would not be able to afford to rent a place otherwise" in order to build low quality projects where they can put all of the poor people so they won't have to see them. Their quality of life isn't really improved, and the problem is self perpetuating since if fosters a sense of helplessness and dependence on the part of people living there. This way people don't have to look at poor people, and they can tell themselves that the poor are looked after. That makes everything seem nice and pretty, until something like this happens.
The problem is that people see this kind of thing on the news, and they think (rightly) that the people rioting are selfish, lazy and violent. What's worse, the only people calling for action are usually saying that more government intervention is necessary, when that is what caused the problem in the first place.
Not only that, but research alone is not necessarily patent infringement. It's often only infringement when you use that research to make money yourself, often by using a patent. So a lot of research that is stopped by patents likely wouldn't have been possible with-ought patents in the first place. Clearly what is needed here is a better patent system, not no patent system.
Patents exist to make more research possible. Therefore, in order to determine whether they do that, one must compare the number of research projects inhibited by patents to the number of research projects made possible by them. Just saying "1/5" are prevented by them is not enough information, especially if the other 4/5 wouldn't have been possible with-ought patents. Then there's the issue of which research is important. . .
If we are going to have a fair discuccion of the merits of Intellegent Design, people should at least understand what says. It is not a rejection of evolution.
That's right, unfair treatment of opposing views is a tactic, not a moral failing on your part. It's time to start torching churches, this ID thing must be stopped at all costs.
I think kids like this are similar to child actors. Sure, this is their time to shine, but ten years from now they'll be washed up drug attics wishing they could have their childhood back. It's not fair.
"All that would do is create a layer of suckups and lobbyists who's sole responsibility is to write proposals for funds." Sounds like you're a bit too familiar with the academic world. Nearest I can tell, the "principle investigators" spend the vast majority of their time talking up the importance of their work in an effort to get funds.
This is basically how the government works, you politick and network or else you will not succeed. Anyone doing real work will not be successful because they don't spend enough time advocating themselves. This is also true in the the corporate environment, the bigger the company is, the more you have to politick and network to get things done and the less real work gets done. The difference is that in the business world, these inefficiencies will eventually get bad enough that the company will no longer be competitive (except through anti-competive practices, usually, but not always, involving government intervention).
So with the proposal mentioned in the summary, it would probably start out as $2 billion, and have good results. Then as time went on, more bureaucracy would develop, managers would become entrenched, and the cost would balloon as quality would diminish. Soon, no good software would ever be released, and it would essentially turn into a welfare program for developers. This is the point NASA is at today. The US military is not far behind, but the government seems to be intent on tearing down the established military complex and rebuilding it from scratch, hoping to start over at the point were it is relatively efficient.
Right, but when they release the new round of HD equipment and BD or HD-DVD drives, they'll all have this protection. Being the tech-savvy types, the people you refer to will want to have the new equipment. One of the bad things about a developing market is how quickly things become obsolescent.
"independent views could be drowned out with politically financed astro-turfing."
Well that sounds good, I don't thin that's an accurate portrayal of how people view information on the internet. We don't view every page on the internet, or type random URLs until we find something like. We are linked from one site to another. We use search engines to find the pages we are interested in, and we don't read the pages that don't strike us as being relevant. Apart from googlebombing, I don't think it's really possible to crowd out other peoples speech on the internet. On television, or in print it is possible to buy up all of the advertising space and crowd out other viewpoints, but it seems much harder to do on the internet.
Slashdot Mirror
All I know is that I rent now, and due to the small amount of time I plan to live here, that makes the most sense for me. I suppose you plan to add some weird exemption for people living in a place for less than x months (24 maybe). Then property owners would just say that you couldn't stay longer than whatever time you required. At any rate, the point is that whatever artificial system you conceive, it probably won't solve the problem(and would probably make it worse).
You use the word greed a lot. I don't think it's fair to call someone greedy just because they are trying to make money.
"the lesser the effort you put into your own government the greater your resposibility for it's failure"
I tend to feel that the decisions we make personally about sending money indicate what we care about more than how we vote.
"Could you try to make some sense?"
This is really quite simple. In a capitalist system resources are allocated to people depending on their value to society. We measure value in currency. If someone has no value to society, they are entitled to no resources. Some people think that everyone has value. I don't think it's fair to promote government legislation to provide resources to everyone, since not everyone agrees that everyone has value. The way I figure it, if you care about bums on the street so much, you can take care of them, and I'll decide for myself if I feel they're worth it.
"multi-generational accumulation of wealth"
This is not as much of a problem as you think. A fool and his money are soon parted.
"If you are unemployed how do you spend money on housing that you can't afford."
Get a job. It's surprisingly easy, in the US at least.
"They see themslves as being divorced from the repercussion of their actions as they see no future in their lives."
Please, these are selfish assholes who've given into mob mentality. You can tell because they're destroying random shit, instead of doing something proactive like getting out of that hellhole, or looking for a job.
"there only lies greed and profits"
Why do you characterize people trying to make a living for themselves as greedy? The poor aren't the only people who need to provide for themselves (to the extent that they actually need to do that).
"good start is the active discouragment in residential rental investments via a full range fiscal penalties"
This is probably the best idea for making housing inaccessible to the poor I've ever heard.
"After all those who purchase to rent should pay by far higher taxes as the greater the proportion of rental properties the worse the quality of the neighbourhood, not worse people, they just have less to loose because they don't own."
Actually, the renters who are destructive to property should pay far higher taxes, because they're the ones who sour the neighborhood. I don't see how it's fair to blame the property owners because the people they rent to don't care about the neighborhood. It's also not fair to punish people who rent the property, because not all of them are destructive to the neighborhood, only some of them are.
"but carefully controlled and created by government to ensure the assistance goes to where it is needed"
Is this a description of how the government does business? I'm starting to wonder if your whole comment is some sort of twisted, sarcastic joke. You should see your immediately preceding line:
"the politcal influence of the greedy minority"
and stop imaging that government can be anything other than what it is.
"utilizing a crude and unreliable tool called money"
You find me a better measure.
"Self-sufficient means not only producing more or equal to one's needs but also consuming only what one produces."
Obviously, if you consume more than you produce you are not self-sufficient. I'm not sure what your argument here is.
"For example: a con-man having successfully swindled many people of their money, and yet who was careful to stay nominally "legal", according to your "measure" is a great "producer" who is entitled to great levels of consumption. A jobless cocaine junkie billionaire heir to some fortune is equally a great "producer", while passed out in some whore-house."
Of course, no system is perfect. Again, you let me know if you find a better one. By the way, the billionaire heir is a producer, since whoever left him the money found so much value in his existence that they left them with all that money. You can question whether it was worth it, but the person with the money gets to decide how they spend it.
"Utter, immoral bullshit. Otherwise, children and those born with debilitating diseases should be all left to die, which is the way of aminals."
We take care of people because want to. These people have value to us because we hare happier to take care of them and keep them alive than to let them die. It makes no sense to argue that these people have no monetary value, since people are willing to spend so much money to keep them alive.
"By the way, that last sentence marks you as a Spencerite (i.e. a vicious, selfish, bloodthirsty animal, an enemy of everyone but himself, best put down like a rabid dog before he causes untold suffering to others) and thus not someone with whom an enlightened discussion can be had, lest it was about the "divine nature of greed"."
This last paragraph marks you as an elitist no-nothing. You can tell because you start by introducing a fancy word, and then degenerate into personal insults and name-calling. Yeah, you're definitely the kind of person "with whom an enlightened discussion can be had".
"extra $10 a year in taxes, your ability to build, say, an apartment complex has been negatively impacted?" No, what he is saying is that if the government takes $10 from you in taxes, your ability to spend that particular $10 in the manner you wish is negatively impacted. It's a fact, and it is easy to see that every dollar the government spends is a dollar that is not spent in the private sector.
Someone else already said this, but just to reiterate, self-sufficient means that you produce at least as much value as you consume. In a capitalist society, we measure value in units of currency, and we say that every member of society must produce as much value as they consume. If you produce more than you consume, you accumulate wealth, and can consume more at a later date, or pass that wealth on to you children, or donate it to whatever cause. On the other hand, if you produce less than you consume, you are just a worthless mooch, and the rest of us would be better off if you died.
But why should you expect them to become French? These people cam to France looking for economic prosperity, not because they wanted to eat horse-meat. If they can live in France and be economically productive, both them and the French will benefit. This is a good thing.
"they bring nothing to your country"
While I agree with that these rioters are out of line and should be severely punished, I don't agree that they bring nothing to the country. In the US (a nation of immigrants by the way) they make our low-cost agriculture possible. They also perform a host of menial tasks which the rest of us are unwilling to perform. This increases our quality of life, while increasing theirs as well.
I don't think you should expect people to abandon their culture entirely. Every culture has good aspects and bad aspects, if you mix two together, I think the bad ones will die out and be replaced by the good ones. In the case of mexicans, I can say that I am very happy to have the food (I know it's Tex-Mex, again this is an example of where mixing two cultures results in a one better than either of the two). So if you're afraid of your culture being replaced, bear in mind that if that happens it will be replaced with a better one.
"Why are you moving to a new country if you don't want to abandon your old one?"
That's simple, they want to abandon some aspects of their country while retaining others. I don't think there's anything wrong with that.
Look, poor people need housing, and they will spend their own money to get it if they have to. This means that low income housing is a market. Government operations do not need to be profitable, and this gives them an advantage against private housing providers. This is why you you see very few private organizations trying to provide low-income housing. It's not because there would be no housing for the poor without government intervention. It's because the government has pushed the private sector out of the market.
That's a good point, and I don't blame you for posting a comment like that anonymously on this forum.
There are a couple reasons the crime rate goes up. The first one is the racial tensions that naturally arise because people like to form exclusive groups, and fear people who are different. The second is that poor people are more likely to commit crimes because they are envious of richer people and feel entitled, or simply because they feel that they need to be criminals in order to survive.
In any case, the crime problem is usually overstated, and I find that people often blame members of a particular race for crime without a good reason to do so. It is also a transitional problem which will disappear as immigrants accumulate wealth and integrate into the larger society.
"You are making about as much sense as he usually does."
This is not rocket science. If the government decides how to spend your money for you, you no longer have the ability to choose how spend your money. It's a fact, accept it.
"If you think it would make financial sense to build low-income housing with your own money, go ahead and do it. The problem is, trying to make money from people who don't have any money is not a good business plan."
This is simply not true. What you do is provide lower quality goods at a lower price. This kind of market segmentation allows producers to sell items at a higher price to those who can afford it while still selling at a lower price to the people who can't afford the higher price. You see this a lot, a company will sell multiple versions of essentially the same vehicle. The "higher end" models have more value added features and cost more, and will earn the company a higer profit margain. However, it is still good to sell a lower priced version of the car with fewer features at a lower profit margian. This is because sellers wish to maximize their total profit from all sales, rather than just the magianl profit from each sale. Of course, they won't sell at a loss, but they still sell to poor people.
"My point is most people in this situation are abusing the system leaving the people who really need it out in the cold."
A bad system promotes abuse. Usually the people who really need these programs know enough not to get into them into the first place. There's something to be said for self-sufficiency, and people who strive for it are never in a bad situation for long.
Government spending crowds out private spending, thereby reducing options. Not to mention rules and regulations, like zoning rules, which specifically prevent certain land uses in certain places (this is not necessary bad).
"Oh, and a last thing: you mix up african and north-african (arabic) culture."
This is a somewhat subjective issure. The fact of the matter is that the people in question are africans (or north Africans, if you prefer), and the parent was only trying to say that they are treated as second citizens in France. From what I understand this is the case. You'll find a similar attitude in Europe against Turks. I'll never understand why so many people have a problem with poor immigrants moving into their country, but it is an attitude you will find anywhere in the world, and it is usually based on some sort of racial prejudice against the people in question. People say that they're afraid of loosing jobs, but if they really wanted the kind of jobs the immigrants work, they wouldn't be in danger of loosing them. The truth is that people just don't like to see poor immigrants around.
"Those buildings are owned by the gouvernment, but they are rented for a very cheap price to families who would not be able to afford to rent a place otherwise."
One may suspect that with less government involvement in the matter, there might be more options for the immigrants. In the US, politicians like to use the justification that these people "would not be able to afford to rent a place otherwise" in order to build low quality projects where they can put all of the poor people so they won't have to see them. Their quality of life isn't really improved, and the problem is self perpetuating since if fosters a sense of helplessness and dependence on the part of people living there. This way people don't have to look at poor people, and they can tell themselves that the poor are looked after. That makes everything seem nice and pretty, until something like this happens.
The problem is that people see this kind of thing on the news, and they think (rightly) that the people rioting are selfish, lazy and violent. What's worse, the only people calling for action are usually saying that more government intervention is necessary, when that is what caused the problem in the first place.
Not only that, but research alone is not necessarily patent infringement. It's often only infringement when you use that research to make money yourself, often by using a patent. So a lot of research that is stopped by patents likely wouldn't have been possible with-ought patents in the first place. Clearly what is needed here is a better patent system, not no patent system.
Patents exist to make more research possible. Therefore, in order to determine whether they do that, one must compare the number of research projects inhibited by patents to the number of research projects made possible by them. Just saying "1/5" are prevented by them is not enough information, especially if the other 4/5 wouldn't have been possible with-ought patents. Then there's the issue of which research is important. . .
If we are going to have a fair discuccion of the merits of Intellegent Design, people should at least understand what says. It is not a rejection of evolution.
That's right, unfair treatment of opposing views is a tactic, not a moral failing on your part. It's time to start torching churches, this ID thing must be stopped at all costs.
I think kids like this are similar to child actors. Sure, this is their time to shine, but ten years from now they'll be washed up drug attics wishing they could have their childhood back. It's not fair.
"The interview was conducted mainly with the senior Song since Yoo-geun is lacking in his ability to communicate with adults."
Something tells me that he might no be ready for college just yet. . .
"All that would do is create a layer of suckups and lobbyists who's sole responsibility is to write proposals for funds." Sounds like you're a bit too familiar with the academic world. Nearest I can tell, the "principle investigators" spend the vast majority of their time talking up the importance of their work in an effort to get funds.
This is basically how the government works, you politick and network or else you will not succeed. Anyone doing real work will not be successful because they don't spend enough time advocating themselves. This is also true in the the corporate environment, the bigger the company is, the more you have to politick and network to get things done and the less real work gets done. The difference is that in the business world, these inefficiencies will eventually get bad enough that the company will no longer be competitive (except through anti-competive practices, usually, but not always, involving government intervention).
So with the proposal mentioned in the summary, it would probably start out as $2 billion, and have good results. Then as time went on, more bureaucracy would develop, managers would become entrenched, and the cost would balloon as quality would diminish. Soon, no good software would ever be released, and it would essentially turn into a welfare program for developers. This is the point NASA is at today. The US military is not far behind, but the government seems to be intent on tearing down the established military complex and rebuilding it from scratch, hoping to start over at the point were it is relatively efficient.
That's 15 years.
Right, but when they release the new round of HD equipment and BD or HD-DVD drives, they'll all have this protection. Being the tech-savvy types, the people you refer to will want to have the new equipment. One of the bad things about a developing market is how quickly things become obsolescent.
That other article discussed the same thing, but it was weak on details and heavy on ranting. This one is much more meaningful.
"independent views could be drowned out with politically financed astro-turfing."
Well that sounds good, I don't thin that's an accurate portrayal of how people view information on the internet. We don't view every page on the internet, or type random URLs until we find something like. We are linked from one site to another. We use search engines to find the pages we are interested in, and we don't read the pages that don't strike us as being relevant. Apart from googlebombing, I don't think it's really possible to crowd out other peoples speech on the internet. On television, or in print it is possible to buy up all of the advertising space and crowd out other viewpoints, but it seems much harder to do on the internet.