Well, yeah, it's not a hate crime just cause a white guy killed a black guy. There has to be some evidence that is was a racially motivated slaying. If prosecutors can successfully prove it was racially motivated, I can't imagine that the people the message was aimed at didn't get it. Making the hate speech a separate crime would actually be worse for freedom of speech protections. Under hate crime laws, the hate speech has to be tied to some harmful action. If it were a separate offense, you could have people being prosecuted for saying things that were not tied to actions.
You believe you have the right to decide what's good for me and then to enforce it with violence
No, I believe I and my fellow citizens have the right to decide what is good for our society. When enough of us agree, that is what happens in our society (to boil an incredibly complex political system down to an overly simplistic version). All society is predicated on force, your ideal one no differently than mine. B/c no society is full of people that 100% approve of all the rules (AKA, our agreed upon compromises for all living together), so without some mechanism for enforcing the rules, a society collapses into anarchy. You don't like the implied violence of police with guns forcing you to obey society's rules, I don't like the idea of starving to death in your society b/c I am poor. Or being murdered b/c I can't afford my own bodyguards, and somebody that can decides I am in their way. Or whatever, I can't really tell b/c I don't know what your society will look like. But I do know it will have rules, and they will be enforced, at pain of imprisonment or death if I continually disregard the rules.
Well, that is basically what they do. They don't say "Bob can no longer practice his bullshit", they say "Bob can't call his bullshit chiropractic". If he wants to call it something else, as long as it doesn't actively harm people, he can practice it all he wants. He just can't defraud people by claiming it is something it is not.
While I'm perfectly willing to believe Michelle Bachman simply signed the pledge without actually reading it, i.e. bowing to a powerful political special interest with no real desire to understand what they represent, I don't find that to be a strong argument in her favor. I was much, much more impressed with Romney's refusal to sign the pledge than the other candidates' (not just Bachman) mealy mouthed back-pedaling. It at least shows his desire to think and understand the political ideology of those he gets in bed with.
As for the language itself not being racist, who knows? It's difficult not to straddle that line a bit when you are specifically attempting to pander to a demographic defined by its race. It wasn't "I hate niggers" racist, but it certainly implied that black families were, in some way, better off under slavery than they are today. Which isn't an endorsement or hankering for slavery, but is tone-deaf and insensitive to such a degree that you honestly have to wonder about the person who wrote that.
There's no issue with working with Obama to find a compromise on what to cut. For a deal to be accepted, it must not raise taxes, period. That's the sticking point
So, there's no issue working with Mr. Obama, as long as he takes the exact same ideological viewpoint of the economy as you do? This shit right here is why I dislike the Republicans slightly more than the Democrats: the cognitive dissonance required to say, with complete sincerity, that you are willing to compromise as long as the other guy gives you what you want without you giving him anything he asks for.
The argument for making "hate crimes" more severely punished is that I go kill a guy, I've committed a crime against that guy. I go kill a guy BECAUSE he's black, I've committed a crime against that guy AND a crime of intimidation against other black people. These laws come out of a history of exactly that - killing black people specifically to send a message to the rest that they better watch themselves.
Explain anything other than racism, and an appeal to racial bigotry, that could possibly lie behind this political image. Of course all Tea Partiers aren't racists, but the racists seem to be drawn to that movement.
The argument that everyone else thinks we're far right doesn't mean anything,
Right and Left as measures on the political spectrum are pretty much defined as "where people stand" on certain subjective issues. If the vast majority of the world stand subjectively to our Left, we are on the Right. It's one of those "by definition" situations. The fact that someone out there is 7' tall doesn't make a 6'8" man short.
According to Snopes, the 9/11 commission DID investigate the unusual bump in puts-to-calls ratio for American and United in the days prior to 9/11/01. And found nothing suspicious. Of course, this will do nothing to change a conspiracy theorist's mind, but it is a useful tidbit for those poor sad souls that try to throw a little sanity onto the Internet.
Even without anyone doing anything evil, incorrect charges will occasionally turn up because someone made a data entry error.
You know, that sounds reasonable, and Hanlon's Razor and all, but I noticed something. I have NEVER EVER seen one of these data entry errors result in underbilling. And I have seen it result in overbiling dozens of times.
Libertarians do not resist all government. Just that which gets in the way of personal freedom
Which is admiral, as a theoretical philosophy. As a philosophy, I support Libertarianism. In practice, however, good luck finding 3 Libertarians that agree on which are essential functions of government and which are functions that interfere with personal freedoms. The problem with Libertarianism, just as with Communism, is that it appears to be impossible to actually implement in a society full of humans.
Oh, I have none. If it is something that exists, it is likely very rare. The previous poster was just getting very confused, and rather than get bogged down arguing a tangential point (b/c I'm not CERTAIN that there is no such thing; financial markets are insane), I simply accepted it for the sake of pointing out why it is irrelevant to the discussion.
It seems to be this law that he ran afoul of. I agree that "Fraud" seems to be the wrong term for unauthorized access to a computer, but that is what the law apparently wants to call it. I guess he defrauded the computer? Anyway, reading the statute, there seem to be a couple of clauses that might be applicable, if you kind of squint. 2c and 4, specifically. You would have to interpret the Apple Store floor model as a protected computer for 2c to apply, or a person's image to be an item "of value" for 4. I'm assuming they are considering his installation of software onto the computer to be the "unauthorized access", which may or may not be realistic. I have no idea where on the "bleeding obvious to kind of nebulous" scale it is whether or not you are allowed to install software on these floor models.
I'd have some sympathy for that position, except these people had no problems with making their money by utilizing the system when it worked for them. All these wealthy people only obtained their wealth via the system we all contribute to. And now that the system is no longer working to funnel money into their hands, they suddenly want no part of it. Strikes me a lot like somebody that comes to a good party, maybe brings their own side-dish or something to contribute, has a damn good time, crashes on the couch, then leaves in the morning saying "Hey, it's your house, why should I help you pick up?"
Also, banks can't just "call in their loans" ahead of schedule
Yup. I think you will find they mostly can. Usually some reason is required, but I suggest you look at the small print.
I think you're confusing what he is saying. Yes, a bank can (sometimes) call in a loan YOU owe IT ahead of time. A bank CAN NOT cash in a US bond before its maturity date. The only thing a declining bond market does is impact the US government's ability to raise future funds via selling bonds in the future. It does not impact at all the current debt due to outstanding bonds.
I do not view banking as the same as private enterprise, since the currency they trade in is government created
Just wanna say that is an excellent point I've never considered. There really is no such thing as a free market when it comes to currency, unless you wanna go back to beaver pelts and shiny rocks.
well, obviously. As the free market economy increases the overall wealth of society, there isn't even a way to separate the poorer from the infrastructure that is built around them, so clearly the will be enjoying all those fine things, just like the rest of the society, though probably with somewhat less comfort. Again, this is wealth, and when it is increased by the free market, everybody gets to enjoy some form of it.
Sounds great in theory. In reality, that isn't what happened. Access to these things was provided by the free market where it was deemed profitable to the utility company. It wasn't until governments stepped in and subsidized and forced through regulations that access to things like electricity and running water came to certain parts of the population. This is why I accuse you and other free market advocates of an almost religious zeal. You ignore the actual examples we have had of free market failures in favor of your idealized academic model.
We found the perfect tool for increase of wealth and improvement of our lives - it's free market capitalism
It's not perfect. Read a history book. A large chunk of modern regulation was implemented in response to specific "actually it really happened" failures of the free market. You can rhapsodize all you want about how perfect free markets are. But we've tried them, and they consistently prove worse than regulated markets. You state time and again that free markets are the superior tool for generating wealth, without any real world examples or even theoretical justifications for this statement. You state that wealth generation is the single most important goal for advancing society, without any justification for the statement. Considering that on its face, free market advocacy sounds an awful lot like "I'm a selfish prick that only want to gain the benefits of society without being expected to return anything except what I generously choose", considering that we can look to history for examples of free market failures and actors behaving in manners detrimental to markets DESPITE regulations prohibiting these behaviors, you are profoundly unconvincing with your fact free, theoretical arguments.
There are no such thing as 'rights' to get things out of society that you want just because you happened not to be able to buy them on your own.
Which is why no one has problems letting poor people starve and/or bleed to death b/c they can't afford food or emergency medical attention. Oh wait, that is only in your ideal society, not the world the rest of us live in. Most of us view it as desirable to provide certain basic necessities to our fellow human beings whether they have "earned" them in the free market or not. And not just "enough to not die", either. Access to sanitation, electricity, education, communications, all sorts of things have been added to the list as the wealth of society has increased. And frankly, there are solid arguments that this sort of thing actually benefits society as a whole more so than the free market's obsession with the bottom line does.
that free market economy works much better to increase overall wealth of the entire society
A) Give some evidence for this claim - all the most successful economies are regulated and B) Irrelevant even if true. Markets and wealth are tools, not end goals. You sound like a guy with a hammer fetish that keeps shouting at everyone that wants to use the occasional screw, "because it's obvious that all that spiral motion of screwing is inefficient compared to the straight in pounding of a nail".
Well, I'd say it is hypocritical to say "Depicting this thing I find offensive (sex) is not protected by the 1st amendment, but this thing you find offensive (violence) is." Either morality concerns are sufficient to strip a subject of its 1st amendment protections or they are not (I certainly think not). Limiting it to a certain subgroup's morality concerns, to which the deciding persons happen to belong, strikes me as almost certainly hypocritical. Unless they just straight up admit "This is the way it is b/c I say so and am in a position to enforce what I say". I guess that wouldn't be hypocritical, just completely dickish.
The point is that a market need and a market supply will find a way to meet
Yet another core mantra of the pro-market types that is taken on faith that ignores real world examples that contradict this. This simply isn't true - only PROFITABLE market needs will even theoretically meet a supply. Sane societies recognize that economically disadvantaged markets (AKA poor people) have a right to certain basic necessities.
Excellent link. Wish I could mod it up - more people need to be aware that there are law enforcement and military personnel with morals and the courage to stand for them. It's too easy to see the abuse and widespread tacit acceptance of that abuse in these organizations and dismiss everyone in a uniform as corrupt. This organization counteracts that perception to a degree.
I think Freud was a brilliant man who had trouble distinguishing between his truly brilliant insights into human psychology and mere generalizations of his own neuroses. Erich Fromm, IMO, does a very good job of separating the two in his critiques of Freud's theories. This particular concept, of an insane society, is one that Fromm expanded on in "The Sane Society". If you found "Civilization and Its Discontents" interesting, I'd recommend giving "The Sane Society" a read.
They really can't afford not to in their line of work.
This simply isn't true. Police officers do not have very dangerous jobs, statistically speaking. You can look up work related fatalities (compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics); cops are no where near the top of the list. And that is just for on the job homicides. I haven't looked at them lately, but the last time I did, more fast food workers were killed in a homicide (i.e., not industrial accident) at work than police officers. While you didn't say this, the line "in their line of work" is generally used to justify an action that would result in a non-cop going to trial for murder. And the underlying assumption, that cops require this leeway in protection of their own lives, has no evidence to support it.
You say my analogy is bad, but yours is devoid of logic and absurd. You can't be half dead, either you are or you aren't, sometimes when a thing is 50% less than a different thing it really makes no difference to the final outcome, A ton will squish a bug and so will half a ton etc.
ah, true. I wasn't very clear. My objection is that, as you say, dead 300 times over or just 100 times over makes no difference to the individual. But Uranium isn't nearly as deadly to the population as that amount of cyanide is to the individual. Uranium isn't gonna provide levels of radiation 300 times the lethal dose to the surrounding population, so reducing the radiation levels there does provide some relief, unlike in your analogy. That is the problem I have with your analogy (other than the difference between a reduction in volume vs a reduction in toxicity), but I did not explicitly state it.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, yeah, it's not a hate crime just cause a white guy killed a black guy. There has to be some evidence that is was a racially motivated slaying. If prosecutors can successfully prove it was racially motivated, I can't imagine that the people the message was aimed at didn't get it. Making the hate speech a separate crime would actually be worse for freedom of speech protections. Under hate crime laws, the hate speech has to be tied to some harmful action. If it were a separate offense, you could have people being prosecuted for saying things that were not tied to actions.
You believe you have the right to decide what's good for me and then to enforce it with violence
No, I believe I and my fellow citizens have the right to decide what is good for our society. When enough of us agree, that is what happens in our society (to boil an incredibly complex political system down to an overly simplistic version). All society is predicated on force, your ideal one no differently than mine. B/c no society is full of people that 100% approve of all the rules (AKA, our agreed upon compromises for all living together), so without some mechanism for enforcing the rules, a society collapses into anarchy. You don't like the implied violence of police with guns forcing you to obey society's rules, I don't like the idea of starving to death in your society b/c I am poor. Or being murdered b/c I can't afford my own bodyguards, and somebody that can decides I am in their way. Or whatever, I can't really tell b/c I don't know what your society will look like. But I do know it will have rules, and they will be enforced, at pain of imprisonment or death if I continually disregard the rules.
Well, that is basically what they do. They don't say "Bob can no longer practice his bullshit", they say "Bob can't call his bullshit chiropractic". If he wants to call it something else, as long as it doesn't actively harm people, he can practice it all he wants. He just can't defraud people by claiming it is something it is not.
While I'm perfectly willing to believe Michelle Bachman simply signed the pledge without actually reading it, i.e. bowing to a powerful political special interest with no real desire to understand what they represent, I don't find that to be a strong argument in her favor. I was much, much more impressed with Romney's refusal to sign the pledge than the other candidates' (not just Bachman) mealy mouthed back-pedaling. It at least shows his desire to think and understand the political ideology of those he gets in bed with.
As for the language itself not being racist, who knows? It's difficult not to straddle that line a bit when you are specifically attempting to pander to a demographic defined by its race. It wasn't "I hate niggers" racist, but it certainly implied that black families were, in some way, better off under slavery than they are today. Which isn't an endorsement or hankering for slavery, but is tone-deaf and insensitive to such a degree that you honestly have to wonder about the person who wrote that.
There's no issue with working with Obama to find a compromise on what to cut.
For a deal to be accepted, it must not raise taxes, period. That's the sticking point
So, there's no issue working with Mr. Obama, as long as he takes the exact same ideological viewpoint of the economy as you do? This shit right here is why I dislike the Republicans slightly more than the Democrats: the cognitive dissonance required to say, with complete sincerity, that you are willing to compromise as long as the other guy gives you what you want without you giving him anything he asks for.
The argument for making "hate crimes" more severely punished is that I go kill a guy, I've committed a crime against that guy. I go kill a guy BECAUSE he's black, I've committed a crime against that guy AND a crime of intimidation against other black people. These laws come out of a history of exactly that - killing black people specifically to send a message to the rest that they better watch themselves.
http://tubegator.com/content/uploads/obama-care.jpg
Explain anything other than racism, and an appeal to racial bigotry, that could possibly lie behind this political image. Of course all Tea Partiers aren't racists, but the racists seem to be drawn to that movement.
The argument that everyone else thinks we're far right doesn't mean anything,
Right and Left as measures on the political spectrum are pretty much defined as "where people stand" on certain subjective issues. If the vast majority of the world stand subjectively to our Left, we are on the Right. It's one of those "by definition" situations. The fact that someone out there is 7' tall doesn't make a 6'8" man short.
According to Snopes, the 9/11 commission DID investigate the unusual bump in puts-to-calls ratio for American and United in the days prior to 9/11/01. And found nothing suspicious. Of course, this will do nothing to change a conspiracy theorist's mind, but it is a useful tidbit for those poor sad souls that try to throw a little sanity onto the Internet.
http://www.snopes.com/rumors/putcall.asp
Even without anyone doing anything evil, incorrect charges will occasionally turn up because someone made a data entry error.
You know, that sounds reasonable, and Hanlon's Razor and all, but I noticed something. I have NEVER EVER seen one of these data entry errors result in underbilling. And I have seen it result in overbiling dozens of times.
Libertarians do not resist all government. Just that which gets in the way of personal freedom
Which is admiral, as a theoretical philosophy. As a philosophy, I support Libertarianism. In practice, however, good luck finding 3 Libertarians that agree on which are essential functions of government and which are functions that interfere with personal freedoms. The problem with Libertarianism, just as with Communism, is that it appears to be impossible to actually implement in a society full of humans.
everyone who has any belief is a murderous zealot?
I can believe that.
Oh, I have none. If it is something that exists, it is likely very rare. The previous poster was just getting very confused, and rather than get bogged down arguing a tangential point (b/c I'm not CERTAIN that there is no such thing; financial markets are insane), I simply accepted it for the sake of pointing out why it is irrelevant to the discussion.
It seems to be this law that he ran afoul of. I agree that "Fraud" seems to be the wrong term for unauthorized access to a computer, but that is what the law apparently wants to call it. I guess he defrauded the computer? Anyway, reading the statute, there seem to be a couple of clauses that might be applicable, if you kind of squint. 2c and 4, specifically. You would have to interpret the Apple Store floor model as a protected computer for 2c to apply, or a person's image to be an item "of value" for 4. I'm assuming they are considering his installation of software onto the computer to be the "unauthorized access", which may or may not be realistic. I have no idea where on the "bleeding obvious to kind of nebulous" scale it is whether or not you are allowed to install software on these floor models.
I'd have some sympathy for that position, except these people had no problems with making their money by utilizing the system when it worked for them. All these wealthy people only obtained their wealth via the system we all contribute to. And now that the system is no longer working to funnel money into their hands, they suddenly want no part of it. Strikes me a lot like somebody that comes to a good party, maybe brings their own side-dish or something to contribute, has a damn good time, crashes on the couch, then leaves in the morning saying "Hey, it's your house, why should I help you pick up?"
Also, banks can't just "call in their loans" ahead of schedule
Yup. I think you will find they mostly can. Usually some reason is required, but I suggest you look at the small print.
I think you're confusing what he is saying. Yes, a bank can (sometimes) call in a loan YOU owe IT ahead of time. A bank CAN NOT cash in a US bond before its maturity date. The only thing a declining bond market does is impact the US government's ability to raise future funds via selling bonds in the future. It does not impact at all the current debt due to outstanding bonds.
I do not view banking as the same as private enterprise, since the currency they trade in is government created
Just wanna say that is an excellent point I've never considered. There really is no such thing as a free market when it comes to currency, unless you wanna go back to beaver pelts and shiny rocks.
well, obviously. As the free market economy increases the overall wealth of society, there isn't even a way to separate the poorer from the infrastructure that is built around them, so clearly the will be enjoying all those fine things, just like the rest of the society, though probably with somewhat less comfort. Again, this is wealth, and when it is increased by the free market, everybody gets to enjoy some form of it.
Sounds great in theory. In reality, that isn't what happened. Access to these things was provided by the free market where it was deemed profitable to the utility company. It wasn't until governments stepped in and subsidized and forced through regulations that access to things like electricity and running water came to certain parts of the population. This is why I accuse you and other free market advocates of an almost religious zeal. You ignore the actual examples we have had of free market failures in favor of your idealized academic model.
We found the perfect tool for increase of wealth and improvement of our lives - it's free market capitalism
It's not perfect. Read a history book. A large chunk of modern regulation was implemented in response to specific "actually it really happened" failures of the free market. You can rhapsodize all you want about how perfect free markets are. But we've tried them, and they consistently prove worse than regulated markets. You state time and again that free markets are the superior tool for generating wealth, without any real world examples or even theoretical justifications for this statement. You state that wealth generation is the single most important goal for advancing society, without any justification for the statement. Considering that on its face, free market advocacy sounds an awful lot like "I'm a selfish prick that only want to gain the benefits of society without being expected to return anything except what I generously choose", considering that we can look to history for examples of free market failures and actors behaving in manners detrimental to markets DESPITE regulations prohibiting these behaviors, you are profoundly unconvincing with your fact free, theoretical arguments.
There are no such thing as 'rights' to get things out of society that you want just because you happened not to be able to buy them on your own.
Which is why no one has problems letting poor people starve and/or bleed to death b/c they can't afford food or emergency medical attention. Oh wait, that is only in your ideal society, not the world the rest of us live in. Most of us view it as desirable to provide certain basic necessities to our fellow human beings whether they have "earned" them in the free market or not. And not just "enough to not die", either. Access to sanitation, electricity, education, communications, all sorts of things have been added to the list as the wealth of society has increased. And frankly, there are solid arguments that this sort of thing actually benefits society as a whole more so than the free market's obsession with the bottom line does.
that free market economy works much better to increase overall wealth of the entire society
A) Give some evidence for this claim - all the most successful economies are regulated and B) Irrelevant even if true. Markets and wealth are tools, not end goals. You sound like a guy with a hammer fetish that keeps shouting at everyone that wants to use the occasional screw, "because it's obvious that all that spiral motion of screwing is inefficient compared to the straight in pounding of a nail".
Well, I'd say it is hypocritical to say "Depicting this thing I find offensive (sex) is not protected by the 1st amendment, but this thing you find offensive (violence) is." Either morality concerns are sufficient to strip a subject of its 1st amendment protections or they are not (I certainly think not). Limiting it to a certain subgroup's morality concerns, to which the deciding persons happen to belong, strikes me as almost certainly hypocritical. Unless they just straight up admit "This is the way it is b/c I say so and am in a position to enforce what I say". I guess that wouldn't be hypocritical, just completely dickish.
The point is that a market need and a market supply will find a way to meet
Yet another core mantra of the pro-market types that is taken on faith that ignores real world examples that contradict this. This simply isn't true - only PROFITABLE market needs will even theoretically meet a supply. Sane societies recognize that economically disadvantaged markets (AKA poor people) have a right to certain basic necessities.
Excellent link. Wish I could mod it up - more people need to be aware that there are law enforcement and military personnel with morals and the courage to stand for them. It's too easy to see the abuse and widespread tacit acceptance of that abuse in these organizations and dismiss everyone in a uniform as corrupt. This organization counteracts that perception to a degree.
I think Freud was a brilliant man who had trouble distinguishing between his truly brilliant insights into human psychology and mere generalizations of his own neuroses. Erich Fromm, IMO, does a very good job of separating the two in his critiques of Freud's theories. This particular concept, of an insane society, is one that Fromm expanded on in "The Sane Society". If you found "Civilization and Its Discontents" interesting, I'd recommend giving "The Sane Society" a read.
They really can't afford not to in their line of work.
This simply isn't true. Police officers do not have very dangerous jobs, statistically speaking. You can look up work related fatalities (compiled by the Bureau of Labor Statistics); cops are no where near the top of the list. And that is just for on the job homicides. I haven't looked at them lately, but the last time I did, more fast food workers were killed in a homicide (i.e., not industrial accident) at work than police officers. While you didn't say this, the line "in their line of work" is generally used to justify an action that would result in a non-cop going to trial for murder. And the underlying assumption, that cops require this leeway in protection of their own lives, has no evidence to support it.
You say my analogy is bad, but yours is devoid of logic and absurd. You can't be half dead, either you are or you aren't, sometimes when a thing is 50% less than a different thing it really makes no difference to the final outcome, A ton will squish a bug and so will half a ton etc.
ah, true. I wasn't very clear. My objection is that, as you say, dead 300 times over or just 100 times over makes no difference to the individual. But Uranium isn't nearly as deadly to the population as that amount of cyanide is to the individual. Uranium isn't gonna provide levels of radiation 300 times the lethal dose to the surrounding population, so reducing the radiation levels there does provide some relief, unlike in your analogy. That is the problem I have with your analogy (other than the difference between a reduction in volume vs a reduction in toxicity), but I did not explicitly state it.