The argument isn't that most people don't need math, it's that they don't need any more than the basics (arithmetic, probability, basic statistics). Certainly not calculus. Off the top of my head, my friends are: electrical engineer, physical therapist, librarian, restaurant manager, architect, corporate internal relations manager, runs her own daycare out of her house, business analyst for a health care practice, nurse, genetics researcher, state disabilities claim evaluator, lawyer, editor for local news outfit and graphic designer. Out of these 14 occupations, I see electrical engineer, architect, business analyst as the only 3 that would probably require more than basic math (the genetics researcher doesn't; I was quite surprised when I had that conversation with him). Why would any of the others ever need calculus?
That explains the convenience and practicality of individual property, not the basis of the "right" to individual property. There are other practical methods of apportioning property use that don't utilize private property rights. One may be more convenient or productive than the other, but there is no demonstrable basis that one is more "right", or more natural than the other.
A grad student working with my project is TAing a class this semester. She told me last summer that she might be "a couple weeks" behind on a project for me b/c she was going to update the coursework for the class, AKA rewrite all the lectures, problems. tests.
I laughed and quietly wrote off any idea of getting results our of her till the end of the fall semester. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised to see some progress this month. Turns out, she decided the "outdated" lesson plan would work after all....
Of course it matters, private vs state. Maybe I want my child to go to Catholic school and be taught Catholic values (I don't, but for the sake of argument). However, I also recognize that state supported religion is a bad idea, so wouldn't want state schools to teach Catholic values. This seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable position.
I've never worked for the Federal gov't, but I have worked for State gov't. I imagine there are similarities. What you are describing would require someone (not the President) to cut funding to that department. It would then be up to the discretion of the department head (or whatever the title is) to decide how to run his department under that budget. It would be practically impossible for anyone else to target positions for elimination. And I'm not sure that would fly, even with the department head on board. Specifically b/c "too often the trick is used to get rid of people with long careers with the" previous administration/political flunky. As such, there are lots of protections put in place to prevent this. Every trick you want to try to improve the efficiency and get rid of dead weight could also be used to get rid of someone whose politics weren't the right flavor this week. As such, most of these tricks are not allowed in the public sector. Cronyism in the public sector is much more highly frowned on than in the private.
And the career bureaucrats are exactly those folks that can do absolutely nothing while appearing to be doing everything to comply. You can't fire a guy for being a little behind schedule, for "unforeseen circumstances", for interdepartmental lack of cooperation, etc. No bureaucrat with more than a few years service would ever offer open insubordination.
Possibly, if this held true across the board in companies. I haven't done the math (not even sure I could), but it seems possible to me that my standard of living would go up in this scenario. If our society doesn't have to support the upper echelon at such great heights, that wealth doesn't just disappear, it goes back into the system somehow. If McDonalds doesn't have to pay quite as outrageous executive compensation, maybe my cheeseburgers become cheaper.
I don't know this specific place in Tennessee, but sometimes the answer to your question is population density. Some areas of the country are just so sparsely populated, there is no way to support the overhead of a local government. And in this particular case, it sounded like the neighboring districts government was willing to provide emergency services, as long as the people that didn't pay them any taxes paid fees for the privilege. Imagine Finland didn't have any fire services; that is more analogous to this situation. THEN what happens in the hypothetical scenario put forth earlier?
So, in case of war, citizens can be forced to give their time and life in defense of the country. Corporations can only be forced to participate in profitable business transactions. This seems equitable?
As an American, I tend to summarize the two parties thusly: The problem with the Democrats is that they just suck at implementing their good ideas, the problem with the Republicans is that they are really really good at implementing their awful ideas.
Risk assessment. The guy with one store only has one store. If someone steals his server, he is tits up till he replaces it. If someone steals one of the servers out of one of the 1000 stores, there are still 999 making money for the company.
Citizens own corporations. The corporation's interest is their interest.
No, the corporations represents a portion of the stockholders financial interests. These financial interests may or may not be in conflict with other equally important interests. In fact, allowing corporations to pursue their interests with the same legal rights as individuals can easily result in the interesting situation where the corporation, under the guidance of a few majority shareholders, is acting against the best interests of 90% of the owners. Because corporations have no need to weigh actual human interests against the profit motive. Because corporations aren't people. I have never heard a philosophic argument for corporations having the same rights as people (why should the corporation you and I own have any rights beyond the car we own?); there are many practical arguments for limiting corporations (just look at the mess that is America's political system).
Our country has been united many times, especially during times of adversity.
Care to give some examples? And I mean the WHOLE country, not just some segment that claimed to represent the country. And we're talking principle and values, not goals like "Defeat the Nazis".
Life, Liberty, Justice and Freedom are the principles that every American should be able to stand behind and cheer for.
Define your terms. Life? Certainly we are not united - abortion, death penalty, war are all issues that bear directly on life and divide opinions. Liberty - constant battle over which liberties for whom. Justice - I'm pretty sure the millions of people in jail for drug charges have a different idea of what means Justice than some others. That's just one example. Freedom - not sure how that differs from Liberty. Same problem - which Freedoms for whom?
That's my point - these people want to congregate and reflect on the values and principles that unite them and pretend that back in the good ole days, everyone agreed with them. They never did.
Come on, you don't have to have "liberal hate" to think someone is an idiot, even if that person happens to be a popular conservative politician. It is entirely possible to disapprove of someone that has opposing political views for reasons that have nothing to do with those political views. I don't know Sarah Palin, never met her, so can't really comment on her mental capacities. But she certainly comes across as an idiot in the media. The fact that she was elected to a position of authority doesn't strike me as counter evidence.
I think this is probably the most cogent argument in favor of intellectual property protection I've heard. Arguments concerning an inability to monetize your creation in the manner to which you are accustomed inspire no sympathy in me. However, losing the ability to control how you are reflected publicly via your creation is a serious consideration. In your example, you lose the moral high ground b/c you have sold off your rights to your story - if the purchasing organization chose to further sell that story, you would not have any standing for complaint. The fact that your story was most likely "stolen" from the purchasing organization doesn't really offer you, personally, any moral authority. But the general principle is sound, and a valid reason to offer IP protections.
They were a group of people gathered together to reflect and be reminded of the values and principles that used to unite this country, and wanted to celebrate that fact.
See, that right there is what makes me very suspicious of these people. Maybe I am just bitter and cynical, but I sure as hell don't remember a time, nor can I find one in any history books, where this country was united by a shared set of principles and values. Attempting to "restore" something that never existed is either naive or disingenuous.
and I don't support forcing people to buy healthcare,
Just FYI, we already force everyone to buy health care. We do it via Medicare/Medicaid taxes (for everyone) and by raising the price of health care for the paying consumer. I don't know if Obamacare will be cheaper or better or what, but the forcing people to buy health care is simply making the fact explicit. You and I and everyone that pays taxes or pays for their health care at all are already supporting the people that don't pay.
My immediate goal on any given day, to make as much money as humanly possible
If the only criteria you have for your actions is that they maximize your wealth (well, and be achievable by a member of your species), then you almost inevitably will do something evil.
Amazing. You disagree with their politics (or is it their sense of humor?), you assume they will be slobs, and then further extrapolate this assumption of how they might will have behaved in the future to further support your negative opinion of them. I don't claim to know what is going on in this country, but I can see what is going on in your post.
Out of curiosity, if I asked you what color shirt I am wearing right now, would you think you were "relinquishing responsibility for thinking further about it" to say "I don't know and can never know". Seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable response. And you can't cry false equivalency - if God does not exist, deciding whether he does or not is exactly as important as the color shirt I am wearing right now. That is, not at all.
I have no problem with the stated ideas of the Tea Party. Perfectly reasonable, even laudable goals. The fact that I suspect powerful people with ulterior motives to be behind the whole thing, however, means I don't trust them to implement their stated goals, the goals I would support. I suspect they would in fact implement other goals, goals I don't believe I would support. That is why I believe the Tea Party movement, if supported, will lead to a worse future.
Just because there are powerful people with ulterior motives doesn't mean that we have to abandon relatively sound ideas.
And just b/c powerful people with hidden agendas say they stand for one thing, supporting them does not mean you are in reality supporting what they claim to stand for.
Presumably, they think the tea party movement will lead to a worse future. Why?
B/c I simply don't believe that the Tea Party movement's stated aims are their actual aims. This many people did not suddenly wake up and realize what has been going on in this country since WWII and get riled up enough to form a political movement. Nope, something else is motivating these people. Based on the timing and apparent source of this movement, I suspect those motivations aren't ones I think will lead to a healthier country.
I'm honored to debate someone like you, sir. I wasn't even aware anyone alive remembered pre-civil war America.
This. I can't understand why I'm expected to believe the Tea Party is just a spontaneous group of people that suddenly realized the way the country has been run the last 150 years or so. I remember hearing people just a few weeks after Obama was elected crying about how they "just wanted to take their country back". And when you ask "Back from whom, what do you mean by your country?", they began to stammer about exactly what the Tea Party now pretends is their political concerns. OF COURSE they didn't mean they (white people) wanted it "back" from all those non-white people as represented by the non-white President. The Tea Party strikes me as exactly the same people, just slightly more sophisticated in their pretense.
Atheism is not a religion, but there are militantly dogmatic atheists that are just as annoying about shoving their belief about the existence of a deity in your face as any religious person. I always figure "atheism is a religion" to be a shorthand way of expressing this idea.
Same here (same most places, I believe). And yet, when a pedestrian steps in the road 2 feet in front of a car going 25 miles an hour, well, physics is a bitch. Hard to say it's the driver's fault, he should have been able to stop, or predict that the person standing on the side of the road talking on their phone for the last 15 seconds is going to choose NOW to step out. Or even that some moron is going to sprint into the road against the light, trying to beat traffic moving at 35 mph. Happens in my local college town every couple of years or so, occasionally more frequently.
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The argument isn't that most people don't need math, it's that they don't need any more than the basics (arithmetic, probability, basic statistics). Certainly not calculus. Off the top of my head, my friends are: electrical engineer, physical therapist, librarian, restaurant manager, architect, corporate internal relations manager, runs her own daycare out of her house, business analyst for a health care practice, nurse, genetics researcher, state disabilities claim evaluator, lawyer, editor for local news outfit and graphic designer. Out of these 14 occupations, I see electrical engineer, architect, business analyst as the only 3 that would probably require more than basic math (the genetics researcher doesn't; I was quite surprised when I had that conversation with him). Why would any of the others ever need calculus?
That explains the convenience and practicality of individual property, not the basis of the "right" to individual property. There are other practical methods of apportioning property use that don't utilize private property rights. One may be more convenient or productive than the other, but there is no demonstrable basis that one is more "right", or more natural than the other.
A grad student working with my project is TAing a class this semester. She told me last summer that she might be "a couple weeks" behind on a project for me b/c she was going to update the coursework for the class, AKA rewrite all the lectures, problems. tests.
I laughed and quietly wrote off any idea of getting results our of her till the end of the fall semester. Actually, I was pleasantly surprised to see some progress this month. Turns out, she decided the "outdated" lesson plan would work after all....
Of course it matters, private vs state. Maybe I want my child to go to Catholic school and be taught Catholic values (I don't, but for the sake of argument). However, I also recognize that state supported religion is a bad idea, so wouldn't want state schools to teach Catholic values. This seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable position.
I've never worked for the Federal gov't, but I have worked for State gov't. I imagine there are similarities. What you are describing would require someone (not the President) to cut funding to that department. It would then be up to the discretion of the department head (or whatever the title is) to decide how to run his department under that budget. It would be practically impossible for anyone else to target positions for elimination. And I'm not sure that would fly, even with the department head on board. Specifically b/c "too often the trick is used to get rid of people with long careers with the" previous administration/political flunky . As such, there are lots of protections put in place to prevent this. Every trick you want to try to improve the efficiency and get rid of dead weight could also be used to get rid of someone whose politics weren't the right flavor this week. As such, most of these tricks are not allowed in the public sector. Cronyism in the public sector is much more highly frowned on than in the private.
open insubordination
And the career bureaucrats are exactly those folks that can do absolutely nothing while appearing to be doing everything to comply. You can't fire a guy for being a little behind schedule, for "unforeseen circumstances", for interdepartmental lack of cooperation, etc. No bureaucrat with more than a few years service would ever offer open insubordination.
Possibly, if this held true across the board in companies. I haven't done the math (not even sure I could), but it seems possible to me that my standard of living would go up in this scenario. If our society doesn't have to support the upper echelon at such great heights, that wealth doesn't just disappear, it goes back into the system somehow. If McDonalds doesn't have to pay quite as outrageous executive compensation, maybe my cheeseburgers become cheaper.
I don't know this specific place in Tennessee, but sometimes the answer to your question is population density. Some areas of the country are just so sparsely populated, there is no way to support the overhead of a local government. And in this particular case, it sounded like the neighboring districts government was willing to provide emergency services, as long as the people that didn't pay them any taxes paid fees for the privilege. Imagine Finland didn't have any fire services; that is more analogous to this situation. THEN what happens in the hypothetical scenario put forth earlier?
So, in case of war, citizens can be forced to give their time and life in defense of the country. Corporations can only be forced to participate in profitable business transactions. This seems equitable?
As an American, I tend to summarize the two parties thusly: The problem with the Democrats is that they just suck at implementing their good ideas, the problem with the Republicans is that they are really really good at implementing their awful ideas.
Risk assessment. The guy with one store only has one store. If someone steals his server, he is tits up till he replaces it. If someone steals one of the servers out of one of the 1000 stores, there are still 999 making money for the company.
Citizens own corporations. The corporation's interest is their interest.
No, the corporations represents a portion of the stockholders financial interests. These financial interests may or may not be in conflict with other equally important interests. In fact, allowing corporations to pursue their interests with the same legal rights as individuals can easily result in the interesting situation where the corporation, under the guidance of a few majority shareholders, is acting against the best interests of 90% of the owners. Because corporations have no need to weigh actual human interests against the profit motive. Because corporations aren't people. I have never heard a philosophic argument for corporations having the same rights as people (why should the corporation you and I own have any rights beyond the car we own?); there are many practical arguments for limiting corporations (just look at the mess that is America's political system).
Our country has been united many times, especially during times of adversity.
Care to give some examples? And I mean the WHOLE country, not just some segment that claimed to represent the country. And we're talking principle and values, not goals like "Defeat the Nazis".
Life, Liberty, Justice and Freedom are the principles that every American should be able to stand behind and cheer for.
Define your terms. Life? Certainly we are not united - abortion, death penalty, war are all issues that bear directly on life and divide opinions. Liberty - constant battle over which liberties for whom. Justice - I'm pretty sure the millions of people in jail for drug charges have a different idea of what means Justice than some others. That's just one example. Freedom - not sure how that differs from Liberty. Same problem - which Freedoms for whom?
That's my point - these people want to congregate and reflect on the values and principles that unite them and pretend that back in the good ole days, everyone agreed with them. They never did.
Come on, you don't have to have "liberal hate" to think someone is an idiot, even if that person happens to be a popular conservative politician. It is entirely possible to disapprove of someone that has opposing political views for reasons that have nothing to do with those political views. I don't know Sarah Palin, never met her, so can't really comment on her mental capacities. But she certainly comes across as an idiot in the media. The fact that she was elected to a position of authority doesn't strike me as counter evidence.
I think this is probably the most cogent argument in favor of intellectual property protection I've heard. Arguments concerning an inability to monetize your creation in the manner to which you are accustomed inspire no sympathy in me. However, losing the ability to control how you are reflected publicly via your creation is a serious consideration. In your example, you lose the moral high ground b/c you have sold off your rights to your story - if the purchasing organization chose to further sell that story, you would not have any standing for complaint. The fact that your story was most likely "stolen" from the purchasing organization doesn't really offer you, personally, any moral authority. But the general principle is sound, and a valid reason to offer IP protections.
They were a group of people gathered together to reflect and be reminded of the values and principles that used to unite this country, and wanted to celebrate that fact.
See, that right there is what makes me very suspicious of these people. Maybe I am just bitter and cynical, but I sure as hell don't remember a time, nor can I find one in any history books, where this country was united by a shared set of principles and values. Attempting to "restore" something that never existed is either naive or disingenuous.
and I don't support forcing people to buy healthcare,
Just FYI, we already force everyone to buy health care. We do it via Medicare/Medicaid taxes (for everyone) and by raising the price of health care for the paying consumer. I don't know if Obamacare will be cheaper or better or what, but the forcing people to buy health care is simply making the fact explicit. You and I and everyone that pays taxes or pays for their health care at all are already supporting the people that don't pay.
My immediate goal on any given day, to make as much money as humanly possible
If the only criteria you have for your actions is that they maximize your wealth (well, and be achievable by a member of your species), then you almost inevitably will do something evil.
Amazing. You disagree with their politics (or is it their sense of humor?), you assume they will be slobs, and then further extrapolate this assumption of how they might will have behaved in the future to further support your negative opinion of them. I don't claim to know what is going on in this country, but I can see what is going on in your post.
Out of curiosity, if I asked you what color shirt I am wearing right now, would you think you were "relinquishing responsibility for thinking further about it" to say "I don't know and can never know". Seems to me to be a perfectly reasonable response. And you can't cry false equivalency - if God does not exist, deciding whether he does or not is exactly as important as the color shirt I am wearing right now. That is, not at all.
I have no problem with the stated ideas of the Tea Party. Perfectly reasonable, even laudable goals. The fact that I suspect powerful people with ulterior motives to be behind the whole thing, however, means I don't trust them to implement their stated goals, the goals I would support. I suspect they would in fact implement other goals, goals I don't believe I would support. That is why I believe the Tea Party movement, if supported, will lead to a worse future.
Just because there are powerful people with ulterior motives doesn't mean that we have to abandon relatively sound ideas.
And just b/c powerful people with hidden agendas say they stand for one thing, supporting them does not mean you are in reality supporting what they claim to stand for.
Presumably, they think the tea party movement will lead to a worse future. Why?
B/c I simply don't believe that the Tea Party movement's stated aims are their actual aims. This many people did not suddenly wake up and realize what has been going on in this country since WWII and get riled up enough to form a political movement. Nope, something else is motivating these people. Based on the timing and apparent source of this movement, I suspect those motivations aren't ones I think will lead to a healthier country.
I'm honored to debate someone like you, sir. I wasn't even aware anyone alive remembered pre-civil war America.
This. I can't understand why I'm expected to believe the Tea Party is just a spontaneous group of people that suddenly realized the way the country has been run the last 150 years or so. I remember hearing people just a few weeks after Obama was elected crying about how they "just wanted to take their country back". And when you ask "Back from whom, what do you mean by your country?", they began to stammer about exactly what the Tea Party now pretends is their political concerns. OF COURSE they didn't mean they (white people) wanted it "back" from all those non-white people as represented by the non-white President. The Tea Party strikes me as exactly the same people, just slightly more sophisticated in their pretense.
Atheism is not a religion, but there are militantly dogmatic atheists that are just as annoying about shoving their belief about the existence of a deity in your face as any religious person. I always figure "atheism is a religion" to be a shorthand way of expressing this idea.
Same here (same most places, I believe). And yet, when a pedestrian steps in the road 2 feet in front of a car going 25 miles an hour, well, physics is a bitch. Hard to say it's the driver's fault, he should have been able to stop, or predict that the person standing on the side of the road talking on their phone for the last 15 seconds is going to choose NOW to step out. Or even that some moron is going to sprint into the road against the light, trying to beat traffic moving at 35 mph. Happens in my local college town every couple of years or so, occasionally more frequently.