There is no profit shark at the government, they have no interest in turning a profit, being efficient or saving money, if it's not efficient so what? The government can't go broke they just tax, print, borrow
You seem unaware of how government works. Divisions have set budgets, they can't just overrun those budgets at will. They also have to justify those budgets to the accounting body. Sure, there is waste and some division heads are better at playing the game than others. Just like in private organizations. Individual departments have budgets they have to abide by and justify, but often there is no incentive to save money. Have you never heard a department head say "We need to spend $X by the end of the quarter in order to avoid a budget cut next quarter"? Large bureaucratic organizations all suffer from this, it has nothing to do with public vs. private.
If a private company had a 401K plan like the government has social security, and the CEO borrowed money from the 401Ks like the government constantly borrows from SS, the CEOs would be in federal prison for a very long time.
I was going to post refutations to your arguments that highlighted the logical fallacies and historical counterfactuals that disprove your assertions. However, you would simply ignore them or handwave away the apparent market failures as somehow being attributable to government market distortion (inconveniently failing to elucidate the mechanism by which these failures can be attributed to government). No, you simply don't believe a business would ever do something destructive that had short term benefits they could amass, as long as the long term costs would be spread out amongst everyone, thus giving the business a positive reward/risk scenario. I don't have any idea why you think that won't happen, but I can't argue with that sort of zealous faith in the free market fairy. Instead, I'll focus on this statement:
If you can't afford it, you don't deserve a single drop of water from it.
Even if your philosophy wasn't fundamentally flawed in it's assumptions, THIS is why I and most people would still find it repugnant. You place no value on human life. A person's worth is measured only by their bank account. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by that. In the simple market economics of supply and demand, human life is the cheapest most abundant most infinitely replaceable commodity there is. What makes this particular attitude (which all free market advocates share - I should credit you with being willing to state it aloud, unlike most) even more reprehensible is my near certainty that you exempt yourself and those you care about from this particular calculation. MY life is worth nothing to you unless I can contribute to your economic gain; YOUR life (I assume) is infinitely valuable to you. And yet you wonder why no one seems interested in forming your ideal society.
So only currently wealthy private entities will be allowed to control the resources that we all depend on for survival. Awesome. So they can charge me for water they get for free every time it rains. That certainly sounds fair. I don't suppose you'd be in favor of regulation governing this monopoly? Cause in a free market, the sweet point of price vs market means those at the lower end of the spectrum can't afford your product. Which in this case means they die. Or how about some laws saying they can't drain the lake? Sure, there is a financial incentive to sell water to people. Doesn't mean there won't be a greater financial incentive to drain the lake for some other purpose.
Gov't is the biggest 'owner' of property, which is an oxymoron, gov't can't really own it, nobody owns it, anything 'owned' by gov't is really not owned in any meaningful way.
And that's your problem right there - collective ownership is meaningless in your worldview b/c it can't be monetized. It isn't meaningless at all, it just acknowledges that the point of society is for people to live together and share resources. Not squeezing the last drop of "efficiency", which has simply become profit in our modern systems, out of every resource. You can't charge me for the air produced by trees, but you can cut them down and sell the wood. So the world would be better off if we chopped down all the trees, right?
What? So how does that work, first private entity to file gets to claim the local lake that 10s of thousands of people rely on for drinking water? And since it's private property, if the owner wants to drain the lake and build a golf course, we should all just figure out another way to not die? I realize you believe the free market fairy will come along and solve all problems if government would just stop interfering, but do you have any actual concrete plans for how your ludicrous suggestion would actually play out? In a way that doesn't involve thousands of people dying as a "market correction"?
I really don't understand this attitude. The government puts a program in place that tries to enable everyone, regardless of circumstances, to get an education. This seems to me to be solid public policy - we need an educated populace to advance our society. Since talent and ability can appear in every socio-economic sector, we want to enable the development of disadvantaged talent to as great a degree as possible. However, the government failed to properly control the unethical (although legal) behavior of lending organizations, These organizations then take advantage of this program, that could have positive benefits on society, and instead turn it into a program that is having a negative impact on society. But the banks aren't to blame for being sociopathic leeches, it's the government's fault for trying to do something positive and not stopping the sociopaths from ruining it?
This is not true. How many millions of American households live on less than $5,000/year? How many on less than $10,000/year?
Fewer today than 50 years ago, and thats adjusting for inflation.
I see you didn't bother to do any research, just kept right on with the truthiness. The Census Bureau doesn't have back to 50 years that I can find, but let's go back to 1995. $5000 today is about $3500 in 1995. But they don't have that category, so we'll just compare $5000 to $5000. In 1995, that was 3.65 million households. In 2010, that was 4.17 million households. So in the last 15 years, more people are trying to feed their families on less than $5000/year at the same time that $5000 doesn't buy what it used to. You think they feel better that the overall standard of living has increased?
We the rational American observe that our standard of living is near the theoretical maximum value, that is has continually grown, and that its 4th in the world. We don't dwell on petty jealousy statistics that mean nothing.
The fact that you equate statistics pointing out how many people in this country are living at the desperate edge of survival as "petty jealousy statistics" doesn't make you rational, it makes you a self-absorbed asshole. Seriously, you claim the poor are just jealous, not really poor. I point out those at the bottom can barely survive, you point out the standard of living is going up for everyone else. You don't think there is something wrong with one group (that gets slightly smaller each year) of Americans prospering while another group (that gets slightly larger each year) of Americans lives in poverty conditions - real poverty, not your made-up American poverty crap? Your argument is that as long as the non-poor keep getting better lives (except for those that become the poor, as we see by the increasing numbers), fuck the poor and their "petty" desire to feed and clothe their families?
Americans that are considered "poor" are mainly only "poor" by American standards, which is a ridiculous standard to be using when trying to formulate how "fair" things are. Our "poor" are way ahead of the majority of the people on the planet in terms of general welfare and other meaningful metrics. Our "poor" have gotten wealthy but either don't know it or wont admit it.
This is not true. How many millions of American households live on less than $5,000/year? How many on less than $10,000/year? How many people in America rely on government subsidies for food to prevent them from starving? You don't know? It's b/c you haven't bothered to find out - these are easily discoverable statistics, compiled by various government agencies. But you'd rather just repeat this tired idea that the "poor" in America are just a bunch of whiners that don't appreciate how good they have it. After all, you saw someone talking on a cellphone once while cashing a Welfare check!
You see, history has shown that the rich will continue to deprive, deprave, and destroy the common person and when the common person gets tired of it and rises up... the rich just move.
So we must rely on the government to balance the rich attempts to rape our resources, our country, and our common person for their profits and then leave vs the common persons need to survive.
How does "we need government to protect us from being raped by the rich" turn into "fleece the rich"? What fundamental right are we denying the rich and powerful when we decide that government (as a representative of the people) needs to set limits on the amount of influence they are allowed to exert via their wealth? Wealth represents resources - if our current system allows too few people to control too many of the resources that everyone on the planet has to share, why should we just shrug and allow that system to continue unchecked? B/c the people that have benefited most by this current system wouldn't benefit as much from a slightly different system?
My understanding of the slavery thing is that it comes not out of any moral philosophy, but a practical response to historical occurrences. Imagine just after the Civil War if voluntary slavery were still allowed. What practical manner could you use to determine if a slave were voluntarily a slave or involuntarily? Even today, how could you? A slave is, by definition, in an incredibly vulnerable position. Even if he says he went into the contract willingly and yes, that is his signature, how can you be sure he isn't being coerced somehow? Or wasn't coerced prior? Look at indentured servitude and the abuses that spawned historically.
And of course, once slavery was outlawed, there was simply no political will to reintroduce it even in a very limited form.
Or maybe it was b/c these four Senators specifically broke away from the Democratic party and labeling them IDC would confuse most people? Or maybe it's just fucking TechDirt, who apparently don't bother with that custom?
I knew you were a Republican as soon as you started crying about the "Liberal Media". It's funny, the wimps (D) are usually the biggest whiners (R) in real life, but not in politics.
In theory, it's great. Even in practice, it is sometimes fine. Too often in practice, it's less "donating to like-minded candidates" more "donating to every candidate to make sure whoever wins is like-minded". It has become little more than legal bribery to candidates, just another business strategy available to those with the capital. Especially at all of the state and county levels that I have paid attention to.
My suspicion is that most people don't see the internet as a necessity.
I didn't mean most people view the internet as a necessity, I meant most people agree that it is proper for government to force utility companies to provide electricity to everyone, even if certain areas are unprofitable. Or so it appears to me - I've not conducted thorough surveys on public opinion. But it's pretty rare to hear someone suggest otherwise.
Also, in the US, you have the little obstacle of the US Constitution to deal with.
Yeah, that's the framework I mentioned. If we want to (as a society) we can change the Constitution. We've done so in ways that fundamentally altered how our government works, on occasion. I'm not suggesting it is always a good idea, I'm just saying that the "proper role of government" is not a universal law. The morality of using government to force small groups of private citizens to interact with the rest of society in a manner the rest of society deems proper is a fuzzy place. Most people agree I shouldn't be allowed to go out and take anything I want, most people agree society shouldn't be allowed to take everything I own and leave me starving on the streets. But defining the appropriate middle ground is pretty tricky.
Except that we as a society have decided exactly that: it is a function of government to regulate certain vital markets in order to compensate for those markets' failures to distribute resources to all citizens. You can argue that Internet shouldn't be considered vital enough to deserve that protection. I suppose you can argue that YOU don't think government should force "them" to provide everyone with electricity, but it seems most people disagree with that. Within a certain framework that we as a society agreed to, government's responsibility is whatever we as a society decide it is. And if that framework chafes too much, we as a society can agree to change that, too. Any company (or citizen) that doesn't want to play by the rules set by society is welcome to not play.
You live in an area so remote that you dont even have a cable company.
This isnt a failure of the market
That depends - is broadband internet a necessary utility for a middle-class lifestyle? I would argue yes. In which case, it is a classic example of market failure - failure to provide a necessary service to a population b/c it is unprofitable to do so. Replace Internet with electricity (yeah, I know, not exactly the same thing, but still) and you get the situation we had 50-60 years ago which led to regulation of that industry.
Right, b/c nothing immoral has ever been done in the name of science. Of course, YOU didn't commit these acts and they should in no way impinge on any pursuit of science you personally approve of. But any religious person trying to distance themselves from the atrocious acts of other religious persons is obviously just a hypocrite.
I'm sure there are people that are in poverty b/c of their choices, just as their are people that are rich despite their choices. But I find it very difficult to believe that someone making less than $10,000/year really has a lot of upward mobility available to them, barring a few exceptional cases. Someone making less than $5000/year is probably close to starving, especially in a metro area. So we're talking 3.5 million households that are on the desperate edge, another 6 million that probably have little hope of a brighter future. And that's actually households, not individuals. So some of those making $10,000 might be supporting a family of four. Sure, there are people in complete shit-holes around the world that are worse off, but that sounds bad enough to me to deserve a little help and sympathy.
As for the violence, I'm sure you're right (I've never lived anywhere that was truly poor in that sense). But rather than just condemning these people b/c of this, it makes more sense to me to look at the factors that lead to poor people being so much more likely to engage in these behaviors and doing what we can to offset those factors (lack of education and true opportunity spring to mind). It seems a bit too easy to simply wave away the correlation between poverty and crime as saying "people that make poor choices that lead to poverty are more likely to be the kind of person that engages in crime". Especially considering that the poverty levels are rising - what percentage of the population can we just wave off as being ignorant thugs responsible for their own lack of success?
Well, I said you are either exceptionally talented, dedicated or lucky. Or some combination of the three. Don't let it go to your head:-)
I think the current situation of everybody thinking a college degree is necessary is a result of A) a feedback loop and B) lazy HR. There was a time in America where a college degree really was a ticket to the middle class. So more people began getting college degrees. As the pool of applicants with college degrees grew, HR could screen based on a degree. It became an easy first cut for applications. So then you really did need a degree, not to do the job, but to get past HR. Rinse and repeat.
In all of the grants I have worked on, salary support is factored into the grant. So even the researcher's paycheck isn't necessarily coming out of the university's pocket. Plus the very common practice of charging a flat "overhead" percentage of every grant, regardless of how much actual support the department provides that particular research project. If research faculty are costing a university more money than the non research faculty, they're doing it wrong.
Oscar Pistorius is a world class runner. He has no legs. This in no way suggests that anyone can become a world class runner without legs. Stating that exceptionally talented/dedicated/lucky people can accomplish something in no way invalidates the idea that the average person can not. As you say, a college degree is an easier path to a decent career. The thing is, how many people are actually capable of succeeding on the harder path? Most people are not exceptional. If we start making the easier, established path less accessible, it is going to disenfranchise a certain segment of the population.
Which part of your response explains how these actions protect American households? And as an aside, it's amazing how caring and humanitarian people get when it comes time to fund a huge war machine for the sake of the poor oppressed people "over there". Generally, these are the same people that have far less sympathy when it comes to funding less expensive programs designed to help the poor over here.
People who are disagreeable to the system, but go along with anyway it to avoid being killed, are not sociopaths.
My point, belief, whatever, is that there really aren't many people like this; maybe some, a general Rule 34 for life sort of thing, but not enough to say it is the basis of society. Yes, government will resort to violence if you buck the system hard enough. They have to b/c there will always be those few assholes that respect nothing but force. But I don't think most people make compromises with society out of fear of death. Look at all the social compromises people make that are not supported by the force of law, merely by the force of social contract. There are certainly some actions I (and others) curtail that we wouldn't if they were legal, but I see that more as a compromise than a fear based reaction. I put the toilet seat down as a compromise with my girlfriend rather than out of fear of her reaction if I don't. If I lived alone, I wouldn't.
Be glad. You received a polite, informative, ANONYMOUS response concerning a somewhat obscure piece of Linux knowledge. On the Internet. I can only assume a unicorn is about to knock on your door and offer you a winning lottery ticket.
Taxation is the assertion that my body, my labor and the product of it, are not my own. It is slavery.
No, taxation is the assertion that you have benefited from society and as such are obligated to return something to society. I realize people like you prefer the delusion that you got everything you have based on your own merit, but you didn't. You would not have what you have today without the support of society. And it is specifically b/c of people that refuse to acknowledge that debt that we as a society have to force you to give something back. Or kick you out of our society.
Doesn't the middle class have more products for living a good life than they did 10 years ago?
Yes, there are more goods available, but it costs me a greater percentage of my time (as measured in money earned) to be able to afford even the necessary basics. The middle class has stagnated in terms of buying power, the elite has grown. You still sound like you think the peons should be grateful we still get some crumbs, while your cake gets bigger and better.
I wouldn't hesitate to give to a good charity that addressed these issues, if they were real.
Over half a million homeless in the US, 3.5 million children at risk of malnutrition, and of course the fact that wealth is directly correlated to life expectancy. But you're right, the poor in America are really just upset b/c they don't have as many shiny toys as the rich.
Because most of you spend dozens of hours a week in front of the boob tube, playing video games, social networking and doing other unproductive things with your free time rather than educating yourself or finding more ways to enrich your lives.
I'm sure there are some people stuck in poverty b/c they won't make the effort to get out. Just as there are some that were fortunate enough to get out via luck and hard work. But assuming that everyone stuck at or below the poverty level is just some lazy slob simply isn't true. There are many many studies documenting the reduced class mobility available to the poor and even the middle class.
There is unarguably a growing income disparity in our country. Wealth has an unarguable impact on quality and quantity of life. If you are unaware of these things, it's b/c you prefer to sit around and justify your greed and self-centeredness with wild fantasies about how free markets automagically correlate righteousness with wealth. Hell, you even pretend all advancement is thanks to your pet religion, free market capitalism. Ignoring the many many advancements in technology and societal infrastructure that have come about b/c of government. Space program, Internet, fundamental medical research? Government. You admit that capitalism relies on marketability, without acknowledging that this is a fundamental weakness when it comes to the basic research necessary to promote science. You ignore that the rewards of capitalism are more often than not negatively correlated with ethics. You ignore that capitalism as mixed with human nature is inherently bad at self-regulation and long term sustainability. You ignore the inability to properly deal with externalities. Capitalism is a wonderful tool, but it has strengths and weaknesses. Utilizing a separate tool, government, to offset some of those weakness is neither immoral nor foolish.
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There is no profit shark at the government, they have no interest in turning a profit, being efficient or saving money, if it's not efficient so what? The government can't go broke they just tax, print, borrow
You seem unaware of how government works. Divisions have set budgets, they can't just overrun those budgets at will. They also have to justify those budgets to the accounting body. Sure, there is waste and some division heads are better at playing the game than others. Just like in private organizations. Individual departments have budgets they have to abide by and justify, but often there is no incentive to save money. Have you never heard a department head say "We need to spend $X by the end of the quarter in order to avoid a budget cut next quarter"? Large bureaucratic organizations all suffer from this, it has nothing to do with public vs. private.
If a private company had a 401K plan like the government has social security, and the CEO borrowed money from the 401Ks like the government constantly borrows from SS, the CEOs would be in federal prison for a very long time.
Not if they are clever about it.
I was going to post refutations to your arguments that highlighted the logical fallacies and historical counterfactuals that disprove your assertions. However, you would simply ignore them or handwave away the apparent market failures as somehow being attributable to government market distortion (inconveniently failing to elucidate the mechanism by which these failures can be attributed to government). No, you simply don't believe a business would ever do something destructive that had short term benefits they could amass, as long as the long term costs would be spread out amongst everyone, thus giving the business a positive reward/risk scenario. I don't have any idea why you think that won't happen, but I can't argue with that sort of zealous faith in the free market fairy. Instead, I'll focus on this statement:
If you can't afford it, you don't deserve a single drop of water from it.
Even if your philosophy wasn't fundamentally flawed in it's assumptions, THIS is why I and most people would still find it repugnant. You place no value on human life. A person's worth is measured only by their bank account. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised by that. In the simple market economics of supply and demand, human life is the cheapest most abundant most infinitely replaceable commodity there is. What makes this particular attitude (which all free market advocates share - I should credit you with being willing to state it aloud, unlike most) even more reprehensible is my near certainty that you exempt yourself and those you care about from this particular calculation. MY life is worth nothing to you unless I can contribute to your economic gain; YOUR life (I assume) is infinitely valuable to you. And yet you wonder why no one seems interested in forming your ideal society.
So only currently wealthy private entities will be allowed to control the resources that we all depend on for survival. Awesome. So they can charge me for water they get for free every time it rains. That certainly sounds fair. I don't suppose you'd be in favor of regulation governing this monopoly? Cause in a free market, the sweet point of price vs market means those at the lower end of the spectrum can't afford your product. Which in this case means they die. Or how about some laws saying they can't drain the lake? Sure, there is a financial incentive to sell water to people. Doesn't mean there won't be a greater financial incentive to drain the lake for some other purpose.
Gov't is the biggest 'owner' of property, which is an oxymoron, gov't can't really own it, nobody owns it, anything 'owned' by gov't is really not owned in any meaningful way.
And that's your problem right there - collective ownership is meaningless in your worldview b/c it can't be monetized. It isn't meaningless at all, it just acknowledges that the point of society is for people to live together and share resources. Not squeezing the last drop of "efficiency", which has simply become profit in our modern systems, out of every resource. You can't charge me for the air produced by trees, but you can cut them down and sell the wood. So the world would be better off if we chopped down all the trees, right?
There shouldn't be any public property
What? So how does that work, first private entity to file gets to claim the local lake that 10s of thousands of people rely on for drinking water? And since it's private property, if the owner wants to drain the lake and build a golf course, we should all just figure out another way to not die? I realize you believe the free market fairy will come along and solve all problems if government would just stop interfering, but do you have any actual concrete plans for how your ludicrous suggestion would actually play out? In a way that doesn't involve thousands of people dying as a "market correction"?
I really don't understand this attitude. The government puts a program in place that tries to enable everyone, regardless of circumstances, to get an education. This seems to me to be solid public policy - we need an educated populace to advance our society. Since talent and ability can appear in every socio-economic sector, we want to enable the development of disadvantaged talent to as great a degree as possible. However, the government failed to properly control the unethical (although legal) behavior of lending organizations, These organizations then take advantage of this program, that could have positive benefits on society, and instead turn it into a program that is having a negative impact on society. But the banks aren't to blame for being sociopathic leeches, it's the government's fault for trying to do something positive and not stopping the sociopaths from ruining it?
This is not true. How many millions of American households live on less than $5,000/year? How many on less than $10,000/year?
Fewer today than 50 years ago, and thats adjusting for inflation.
I see you didn't bother to do any research, just kept right on with the truthiness. The Census Bureau doesn't have back to 50 years that I can find, but let's go back to 1995. $5000 today is about $3500 in 1995. But they don't have that category, so we'll just compare $5000 to $5000. In 1995, that was 3.65 million households. In 2010, that was 4.17 million households. So in the last 15 years, more people are trying to feed their families on less than $5000/year at the same time that $5000 doesn't buy what it used to. You think they feel better that the overall standard of living has increased?
We the rational American observe that our standard of living is near the theoretical maximum value, that is has continually grown, and that its 4th in the world. We don't dwell on petty jealousy statistics that mean nothing.
The fact that you equate statistics pointing out how many people in this country are living at the desperate edge of survival as "petty jealousy statistics" doesn't make you rational, it makes you a self-absorbed asshole. Seriously, you claim the poor are just jealous, not really poor. I point out those at the bottom can barely survive, you point out the standard of living is going up for everyone else. You don't think there is something wrong with one group (that gets slightly smaller each year) of Americans prospering while another group (that gets slightly larger each year) of Americans lives in poverty conditions - real poverty, not your made-up American poverty crap? Your argument is that as long as the non-poor keep getting better lives (except for those that become the poor, as we see by the increasing numbers), fuck the poor and their "petty" desire to feed and clothe their families?
Americans that are considered "poor" are mainly only "poor" by American standards, which is a ridiculous standard to be using when trying to formulate how "fair" things are. Our "poor" are way ahead of the majority of the people on the planet in terms of general welfare and other meaningful metrics. Our "poor" have gotten wealthy but either don't know it or wont admit it.
This is not true. How many millions of American households live on less than $5,000/year? How many on less than $10,000/year? How many people in America rely on government subsidies for food to prevent them from starving? You don't know? It's b/c you haven't bothered to find out - these are easily discoverable statistics, compiled by various government agencies. But you'd rather just repeat this tired idea that the "poor" in America are just a bunch of whiners that don't appreciate how good they have it. After all, you saw someone talking on a cellphone once while cashing a Welfare check!
You see, history has shown that the rich will continue to deprive, deprave, and destroy the common person and when the common person gets tired of it and rises up... the rich just move. So we must rely on the government to balance the rich attempts to rape our resources, our country, and our common person for their profits and then leave vs the common persons need to survive.
How does "we need government to protect us from being raped by the rich" turn into "fleece the rich"? What fundamental right are we denying the rich and powerful when we decide that government (as a representative of the people) needs to set limits on the amount of influence they are allowed to exert via their wealth? Wealth represents resources - if our current system allows too few people to control too many of the resources that everyone on the planet has to share, why should we just shrug and allow that system to continue unchecked? B/c the people that have benefited most by this current system wouldn't benefit as much from a slightly different system?
I know things about pigeons.
Definitely not ironically. Irony is when the opposite of what you expect happens, not when exactly what you expect happens.
My understanding of the slavery thing is that it comes not out of any moral philosophy, but a practical response to historical occurrences. Imagine just after the Civil War if voluntary slavery were still allowed. What practical manner could you use to determine if a slave were voluntarily a slave or involuntarily? Even today, how could you? A slave is, by definition, in an incredibly vulnerable position. Even if he says he went into the contract willingly and yes, that is his signature, how can you be sure he isn't being coerced somehow? Or wasn't coerced prior? Look at indentured servitude and the abuses that spawned historically.
And of course, once slavery was outlawed, there was simply no political will to reintroduce it even in a very limited form.
Or maybe it was b/c these four Senators specifically broke away from the Democratic party and labeling them IDC would confuse most people? Or maybe it's just fucking TechDirt, who apparently don't bother with that custom?
I knew you were a Republican as soon as you started crying about the "Liberal Media". It's funny, the wimps (D) are usually the biggest whiners (R) in real life, but not in politics.
In theory, it's great. Even in practice, it is sometimes fine. Too often in practice, it's less "donating to like-minded candidates" more "donating to every candidate to make sure whoever wins is like-minded". It has become little more than legal bribery to candidates, just another business strategy available to those with the capital. Especially at all of the state and county levels that I have paid attention to.
My suspicion is that most people don't see the internet as a necessity.
I didn't mean most people view the internet as a necessity, I meant most people agree that it is proper for government to force utility companies to provide electricity to everyone, even if certain areas are unprofitable. Or so it appears to me - I've not conducted thorough surveys on public opinion. But it's pretty rare to hear someone suggest otherwise.
Also, in the US, you have the little obstacle of the US Constitution to deal with.
Yeah, that's the framework I mentioned. If we want to (as a society) we can change the Constitution. We've done so in ways that fundamentally altered how our government works, on occasion. I'm not suggesting it is always a good idea, I'm just saying that the "proper role of government" is not a universal law. The morality of using government to force small groups of private citizens to interact with the rest of society in a manner the rest of society deems proper is a fuzzy place. Most people agree I shouldn't be allowed to go out and take anything I want, most people agree society shouldn't be allowed to take everything I own and leave me starving on the streets. But defining the appropriate middle ground is pretty tricky.
Except that we as a society have decided exactly that: it is a function of government to regulate certain vital markets in order to compensate for those markets' failures to distribute resources to all citizens. You can argue that Internet shouldn't be considered vital enough to deserve that protection. I suppose you can argue that YOU don't think government should force "them" to provide everyone with electricity, but it seems most people disagree with that. Within a certain framework that we as a society agreed to, government's responsibility is whatever we as a society decide it is. And if that framework chafes too much, we as a society can agree to change that, too. Any company (or citizen) that doesn't want to play by the rules set by society is welcome to not play.
You live in an area so remote that you dont even have a cable company. This isnt a failure of the market
That depends - is broadband internet a necessary utility for a middle-class lifestyle? I would argue yes. In which case, it is a classic example of market failure - failure to provide a necessary service to a population b/c it is unprofitable to do so. Replace Internet with electricity (yeah, I know, not exactly the same thing, but still) and you get the situation we had 50-60 years ago which led to regulation of that industry.
Right, b/c nothing immoral has ever been done in the name of science. Of course, YOU didn't commit these acts and they should in no way impinge on any pursuit of science you personally approve of. But any religious person trying to distance themselves from the atrocious acts of other religious persons is obviously just a hypocrite.
I'm sure there are people that are in poverty b/c of their choices, just as their are people that are rich despite their choices. But I find it very difficult to believe that someone making less than $10,000/year really has a lot of upward mobility available to them, barring a few exceptional cases. Someone making less than $5000/year is probably close to starving, especially in a metro area. So we're talking 3.5 million households that are on the desperate edge, another 6 million that probably have little hope of a brighter future. And that's actually households, not individuals. So some of those making $10,000 might be supporting a family of four. Sure, there are people in complete shit-holes around the world that are worse off, but that sounds bad enough to me to deserve a little help and sympathy.
As for the violence, I'm sure you're right (I've never lived anywhere that was truly poor in that sense). But rather than just condemning these people b/c of this, it makes more sense to me to look at the factors that lead to poor people being so much more likely to engage in these behaviors and doing what we can to offset those factors (lack of education and true opportunity spring to mind). It seems a bit too easy to simply wave away the correlation between poverty and crime as saying "people that make poor choices that lead to poverty are more likely to be the kind of person that engages in crime". Especially considering that the poverty levels are rising - what percentage of the population can we just wave off as being ignorant thugs responsible for their own lack of success?
Well, I said you are either exceptionally talented, dedicated or lucky. Or some combination of the three. Don't let it go to your head :-)
I think the current situation of everybody thinking a college degree is necessary is a result of A) a feedback loop and B) lazy HR. There was a time in America where a college degree really was a ticket to the middle class. So more people began getting college degrees. As the pool of applicants with college degrees grew, HR could screen based on a degree. It became an easy first cut for applications. So then you really did need a degree, not to do the job, but to get past HR. Rinse and repeat.
In all of the grants I have worked on, salary support is factored into the grant. So even the researcher's paycheck isn't necessarily coming out of the university's pocket. Plus the very common practice of charging a flat "overhead" percentage of every grant, regardless of how much actual support the department provides that particular research project. If research faculty are costing a university more money than the non research faculty, they're doing it wrong.
Oscar Pistorius is a world class runner. He has no legs. This in no way suggests that anyone can become a world class runner without legs. Stating that exceptionally talented/dedicated/lucky people can accomplish something in no way invalidates the idea that the average person can not. As you say, a college degree is an easier path to a decent career. The thing is, how many people are actually capable of succeeding on the harder path? Most people are not exceptional. If we start making the easier, established path less accessible, it is going to disenfranchise a certain segment of the population.
Which part of your response explains how these actions protect American households? And as an aside, it's amazing how caring and humanitarian people get when it comes time to fund a huge war machine for the sake of the poor oppressed people "over there". Generally, these are the same people that have far less sympathy when it comes to funding less expensive programs designed to help the poor over here.
People who are disagreeable to the system, but go along with anyway it to avoid being killed, are not sociopaths.
My point, belief, whatever, is that there really aren't many people like this; maybe some, a general Rule 34 for life sort of thing, but not enough to say it is the basis of society. Yes, government will resort to violence if you buck the system hard enough. They have to b/c there will always be those few assholes that respect nothing but force. But I don't think most people make compromises with society out of fear of death. Look at all the social compromises people make that are not supported by the force of law, merely by the force of social contract. There are certainly some actions I (and others) curtail that we wouldn't if they were legal, but I see that more as a compromise than a fear based reaction. I put the toilet seat down as a compromise with my girlfriend rather than out of fear of her reaction if I don't. If I lived alone, I wouldn't.
Be glad. You received a polite, informative, ANONYMOUS response concerning a somewhat obscure piece of Linux knowledge. On the Internet. I can only assume a unicorn is about to knock on your door and offer you a winning lottery ticket.
Taxation is the assertion that my body, my labor and the product of it, are not my own. It is slavery.
No, taxation is the assertion that you have benefited from society and as such are obligated to return something to society. I realize people like you prefer the delusion that you got everything you have based on your own merit, but you didn't. You would not have what you have today without the support of society. And it is specifically b/c of people that refuse to acknowledge that debt that we as a society have to force you to give something back. Or kick you out of our society.
Doesn't the middle class have more products for living a good life than they did 10 years ago?
Yes, there are more goods available, but it costs me a greater percentage of my time (as measured in money earned) to be able to afford even the necessary basics. The middle class has stagnated in terms of buying power, the elite has grown. You still sound like you think the peons should be grateful we still get some crumbs, while your cake gets bigger and better.
I wouldn't hesitate to give to a good charity that addressed these issues, if they were real.
Over half a million homeless in the US, 3.5 million children at risk of malnutrition, and of course the fact that wealth is directly correlated to life expectancy. But you're right, the poor in America are really just upset b/c they don't have as many shiny toys as the rich.
Because most of you spend dozens of hours a week in front of the boob tube, playing video games, social networking and doing other unproductive things with your free time rather than educating yourself or finding more ways to enrich your lives.
I'm sure there are some people stuck in poverty b/c they won't make the effort to get out. Just as there are some that were fortunate enough to get out via luck and hard work. But assuming that everyone stuck at or below the poverty level is just some lazy slob simply isn't true. There are many many studies documenting the reduced class mobility available to the poor and even the middle class.
There is unarguably a growing income disparity in our country. Wealth has an unarguable impact on quality and quantity of life. If you are unaware of these things, it's b/c you prefer to sit around and justify your greed and self-centeredness with wild fantasies about how free markets automagically correlate righteousness with wealth. Hell, you even pretend all advancement is thanks to your pet religion, free market capitalism. Ignoring the many many advancements in technology and societal infrastructure that have come about b/c of government. Space program, Internet, fundamental medical research? Government. You admit that capitalism relies on marketability, without acknowledging that this is a fundamental weakness when it comes to the basic research necessary to promote science. You ignore that the rewards of capitalism are more often than not negatively correlated with ethics. You ignore that capitalism as mixed with human nature is inherently bad at self-regulation and long term sustainability. You ignore the inability to properly deal with externalities. Capitalism is a wonderful tool, but it has strengths and weaknesses. Utilizing a separate tool, government, to offset some of those weakness is neither immoral nor foolish.