I think the individual freedom argument applies fully to schooling. Why -are- we teaching every single 13 year old the history of Henry VII?
1) Countries with public, secular and compulsory schooling (that's actually enforced) have considerably higher standards of living than those that do not.
The need for a compulsory schooling system is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If you oppose this, you're opposing the Western values that keep our society out of of the Dark Ages.
That so far the grocery chains are declining to introduce 'house' brands of energy drinks just adds more weight to the suspicion that the margin is considerably lower.
I am an energy drink addict and I travel regularly among several EU countries. The supermarket chains here do have their own house-brand energy drinks (curiously they are mostly produced in Holland), and these cost one half to one quarter as much as Red Bull or Monster. There's definitely money to be made.
So what do we lack?... The novel basically starts with our tech level.
The machines described at the beginning of Red Mars which can essentially transmute matter without complication are more or less fictional. Sure, they might be feasible in the future (Red Mars opens in 2024), but they are beyond our tech level. The spacefaring in the novel also depended on a large amount of empty hulls left in orbit over the previous two decades, which hasn't even started.
Learn more about interplanetary colonization and the technology needed.
I have read, extensively. The technology is vastly beyond what we have right now. I think it's much more reasonable to stay put on Earth until genetic engineering improves or the human body is merged with machines, which even those skeptical of Kurzweil-esque Singularity talk could see happening within a century. Then, colonizing space will be much easier.
Or instead of colonizing space, we could lock ourselves into a virtual reality here on Earth, which many thinkers believe would be just as fulfilling for the human race in the long term. Or we could decide that propagation of the human race is no longer desirable and voluntarily go extinct.
There are several paths open and I don't understand why trying to colonize space right this minute is so imperative.
OpenOffice.org was originally called OpenOffice, but then it turned out that someone already had rights to the name. At this point, OpenOffice.org already had the website and had done an enormous amount of advertising, so it seemed like the best option was just to officially call the project "OpenOffice.org" while everyone still colloquially used the name "OpenOffice".
Don't bother. Science fiction has rarely made for great literature (notwithstanding a few works that are IMHO true contributions to the literary canon), but Baen was like the dregs of the genre.
Then the principal should retain the right to fire them for not working.
Hiring and firing ultimately lies with the school board, not the principal. In any event, the administration may have the right to fire striking teachers, but where is it going to get a schoolfull of teachers at short notice? You can always bring substitutes, but even the best substitutes would need considerable time to become familiar with the curriculum and the students.
Your comments about publicly supported music ring true in the jazz and classical genres. I doubt if we're going to see subsidies to support music in other areas because there are no education bodies with an interest in that.
Local pop acts are already subsidized to some degree in many European countries.
Another thing is, even if (according to another poster) I own a computer so I should be able to produce music at just as high quality as anyone has ever produced, if I'm burning CD-Rs and handing them out at shows for $5, what does that really do for music in our cultural consciousness? Is an album great if no one ever hears it?
The musical scene has already been fragmented into numerous disparate cultures after the advent of recording in the first half of the 20th century. There's no longer a single canon that a society can relate to. As John Cage said about just classical music, the river of the Western tradition has already passed into a delta.
Kind Of Blue may still have been great as performed even if the performers were nobodies, but if no one had ever heard the record, what would it have meant?
Bad example. I've gained a great deal of anecdotal evidence that while Kind of Blue is frequently bought since it is touted as being so great, it doesn't impress the average listener much and the record remains truly loved only by a fairly small group of jazz afficionados.
I just don't think some of the greatest records would have ever been recorded in the current and future system.
I listen to a lot of jazz and classical music. So much of the great recordings in these genres were produced by state arts subsidies, private patronage, or recording labels subsidizing their many less popular acts by their handful of big successes. Even if very few people were expected to go out and pay for these recordings, they still got made for decades and decades. There's no reason that can't continue to happen. Yes, some acts might not be able to make it, but there's no reason to claim that it's the end of music.
Maybe when we stop pretending a public sector job should be 'the same' as a private sector job, we can get somewhere.
So you favour militarizing American schools? Seems like an awfully drastic measure, and probably an unnecessary one, because other countries that are beating the US in student achievement (e.g. Finland) have a union tradition that is just as strong, if not stronger, than in the US.
The reason for ensuring that public sector employees retain their full rights to freedom of speech and association is so that they can keep their jobs when a different political party than the one they personally support comes to power.
It's a government provided service, and you are a public servant.
Public servants retain the right to freely association and decide not to show up for work on the same day as their colleagues.
You don't just get to 'get your way'. If you don't like the way things are going, you appeal to the public.
While you may wish that to happen, you cannot stop teachers from maintaining unions and calling strikes without violating the freedoms that all Americans enjoy.
Don't allow them to hold school systems hostage when they don't get their way.
A common means by which they get their way is to agree among themselves to strike at a certain time. How do you intend to stop that without violating their right to free association?
The US doesn't support the humanities at the expense of the sciences. Music and art classes in American schools have been cut back over the last couple of decades. At the height of American Cold War innovation, there was a healthy balance of science and the humanities in schools.
All I can ask for at this point is a citation, some sort of evidence for this ridiculous claim.
Unemployment figures in the Nordic countries are considerably lower than 50%. How's that for a citation?
Another slashdotter mentions that people continue to go to work because the benefits of being able to buy stuff outweigh the unpleasantries of work. I don't deny that. But my assertion still holds: in spite of the OP's claim that in a welfare state no one would choose to work and the state would soon devolve into one person working and 99 others leeching, in the real world the majority of residents of welfare states do maintain careers.
f these two things aren't followed, I would argue that a society cannot function.
That's a peculiar assertion, as the majority of human societies over the eons have worked on a "might makes right" principle and the ideal society of e.g. Libertarians is a theoretical construct that has never lasted in the real world.
It is not acceptable for one individual to compel another to do something, or to stop doing something, unless there is a danger to others.
Societies can find plenty of ways to define danger to others. Many religious societies, for example, limit freedom of speech because they feel blasphemous talk would lead the devout astray. The vast majority of the Muslim world feels major curbs on free speech are necessary, so your claim that "it's not acceptable to..." doesn't square with the expectations of a massive slice of humanity. Why are you right and they are wrong?
I personally find the traditional American expression of natural rights theory to be untenable in public debates because it is based on rights endowed by a Creator. Since many people in the contemporary world no longer believe in a person-like Creator (even the fairly inactive Deist one of the Founders), then who endows rights? I am personally a theist, but when it comes down to it, I understand that a large portion of the population is only going to view rights as artificial constructs created by society, and we just have to deal with that view.
(Reposting under the right comment, sorry).
I personally find the traditional American expression of natural rights theory to be untenable in public debates because it is based on rights endowed by a Creator. Since many people in the contemporary world no longer believe in a person-like Creator (even the fairly inactive Deist one of the Founders), then who endows rights? I am personally a theist, but when it comes down to it, I understand that a large portion of the population is only going to view rights as artificial constructs created by society, and we just have to deal with that view.
That Wikipedia link only shows that there are multiple and conflicting views of what natural rights are. Political philosophies differ in whether natural rights exist or not. The matter is not resolved and set in stone, so your writing "full stop" is foolish.
It's really rather simple, and I think you already get it even if you'd rather pretend you didn't. You have the right to your food. You do not have the right to my food. Full stop.
And the other 100 people sitting on their asses expect those 3 to provide for them as well..
Even in the most comfortable welfare states, the vast majority of people get up and go to work every day without complaint. This claim that no one would work in a welfare state doesn't square with decades of real-world practice.
Most of the developed world has cheap plans with unlimited data. In Romania, not a paragon of development in many other respects, I pay 20 euro a month for unlimited data and dependable high speeds. The US is the odd one out in its extremely expensive data plans.
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1) Countries with public, secular and compulsory schooling (that's actually enforced) have considerably higher standards of living than those that do not.
The need for a compulsory schooling system is recognized in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. If you oppose this, you're opposing the Western values that keep our society out of of the Dark Ages.
I am an energy drink addict and I travel regularly among several EU countries. The supermarket chains here do have their own house-brand energy drinks (curiously they are mostly produced in Holland), and these cost one half to one quarter as much as Red Bull or Monster. There's definitely money to be made.
No, it was William Blake in his poem "Jerusalem".
The machines described at the beginning of Red Mars which can essentially transmute matter without complication are more or less fictional. Sure, they might be feasible in the future (Red Mars opens in 2024), but they are beyond our tech level. The spacefaring in the novel also depended on a large amount of empty hulls left in orbit over the previous two decades, which hasn't even started.
I have read, extensively. The technology is vastly beyond what we have right now. I think it's much more reasonable to stay put on Earth until genetic engineering improves or the human body is merged with machines, which even those skeptical of Kurzweil-esque Singularity talk could see happening within a century. Then, colonizing space will be much easier.
Or instead of colonizing space, we could lock ourselves into a virtual reality here on Earth, which many thinkers believe would be just as fulfilling for the human race in the long term. Or we could decide that propagation of the human race is no longer desirable and voluntarily go extinct.
There are several paths open and I don't understand why trying to colonize space right this minute is so imperative.
What's the point of going to Mars? All you can do is walk around and then, if you're lucky, leave again.
Independent record shops tend to promote music from labels not affiliated with the RIAA.
OpenOffice.org was originally called OpenOffice, but then it turned out that someone already had rights to the name. At this point, OpenOffice.org already had the website and had done an enormous amount of advertising, so it seemed like the best option was just to officially call the project "OpenOffice.org" while everyone still colloquially used the name "OpenOffice".
Don't bother. Science fiction has rarely made for great literature (notwithstanding a few works that are IMHO true contributions to the literary canon), but Baen was like the dregs of the genre.
Hiring and firing ultimately lies with the school board, not the principal. In any event, the administration may have the right to fire striking teachers, but where is it going to get a schoolfull of teachers at short notice? You can always bring substitutes, but even the best substitutes would need considerable time to become familiar with the curriculum and the students.
Local pop acts are already subsidized to some degree in many European countries.
The musical scene has already been fragmented into numerous disparate cultures after the advent of recording in the first half of the 20th century. There's no longer a single canon that a society can relate to. As John Cage said about just classical music, the river of the Western tradition has already passed into a delta.
Bad example. I've gained a great deal of anecdotal evidence that while Kind of Blue is frequently bought since it is touted as being so great, it doesn't impress the average listener much and the record remains truly loved only by a fairly small group of jazz afficionados.
I listen to a lot of jazz and classical music. So much of the great recordings in these genres were produced by state arts subsidies, private patronage, or recording labels subsidizing their many less popular acts by their handful of big successes. Even if very few people were expected to go out and pay for these recordings, they still got made for decades and decades. There's no reason that can't continue to happen. Yes, some acts might not be able to make it, but there's no reason to claim that it's the end of music.
So you favour militarizing American schools? Seems like an awfully drastic measure, and probably an unnecessary one, because other countries that are beating the US in student achievement (e.g. Finland) have a union tradition that is just as strong, if not stronger, than in the US.
The reason for ensuring that public sector employees retain their full rights to freedom of speech and association is so that they can keep their jobs when a different political party than the one they personally support comes to power.
Public servants retain the right to freely association and decide not to show up for work on the same day as their colleagues.
While you may wish that to happen, you cannot stop teachers from maintaining unions and calling strikes without violating the freedoms that all Americans enjoy.
A common means by which they get their way is to agree among themselves to strike at a certain time. How do you intend to stop that without violating their right to free association?
How do you propose doing that without violating a person's right to free association?
The US doesn't support the humanities at the expense of the sciences. Music and art classes in American schools have been cut back over the last couple of decades. At the height of American Cold War innovation, there was a healthy balance of science and the humanities in schools.
Unemployment figures in the Nordic countries are considerably lower than 50%. How's that for a citation?
Another slashdotter mentions that people continue to go to work because the benefits of being able to buy stuff outweigh the unpleasantries of work. I don't deny that. But my assertion still holds: in spite of the OP's claim that in a welfare state no one would choose to work and the state would soon devolve into one person working and 99 others leeching, in the real world the majority of residents of welfare states do maintain careers.
That's a peculiar assertion, as the majority of human societies over the eons have worked on a "might makes right" principle and the ideal society of e.g. Libertarians is a theoretical construct that has never lasted in the real world.
It is not acceptable for one individual to compel another to do something, or to stop doing something, unless there is a danger to others.
Societies can find plenty of ways to define danger to others. Many religious societies, for example, limit freedom of speech because they feel blasphemous talk would lead the devout astray. The vast majority of the Muslim world feels major curbs on free speech are necessary, so your claim that "it's not acceptable to..." doesn't square with the expectations of a massive slice of humanity. Why are you right and they are wrong?
I personally find the traditional American expression of natural rights theory to be untenable in public debates because it is based on rights endowed by a Creator. Since many people in the contemporary world no longer believe in a person-like Creator (even the fairly inactive Deist one of the Founders), then who endows rights? I am personally a theist, but when it comes down to it, I understand that a large portion of the population is only going to view rights as artificial constructs created by society, and we just have to deal with that view. (Reposting under the right comment, sorry).
I personally find the traditional American expression of natural rights theory to be untenable in public debates because it is based on rights endowed by a Creator. Since many people in the contemporary world no longer believe in a person-like Creator (even the fairly inactive Deist one of the Founders), then who endows rights? I am personally a theist, but when it comes down to it, I understand that a large portion of the population is only going to view rights as artificial constructs created by society, and we just have to deal with that view.
That Wikipedia link only shows that there are multiple and conflicting views of what natural rights are. Political philosophies differ in whether natural rights exist or not. The matter is not resolved and set in stone, so your writing "full stop" is foolish.
[Citation needed]
Even in the most comfortable welfare states, the vast majority of people get up and go to work every day without complaint. This claim that no one would work in a welfare state doesn't square with decades of real-world practice.
Most of the developed world has cheap plans with unlimited data. In Romania, not a paragon of development in many other respects, I pay 20 euro a month for unlimited data and dependable high speeds. The US is the odd one out in its extremely expensive data plans.