There are a lot of other differences as well but it would seem you are not likely to be predisposed to pay them any heed in your rush to establish moral equivalence.
Dunno about moral equivalence, but the numbers certainly seem to suggest that what's going on in Mexico is a civil war.
The status quo requires you to pay for the road whether you're using it or not, and you'll be made a prisoner if you refuse to pay. Why do you find that more acceptable than paying for what you use?
For three reasons:
Unmetered utilities, that is, utilities that pay a certain fixed sum per some time interval, mean I don't have to try to limit my usage to some bare minimum. It also means that the provider can't simply rise the prices to the point where I can only afford to use those utilities for the barest minimum. This is why fixed-cost Internet is so popular.
As is, I pay my share of all maintenance of society, from roads to police to fire department to army to social security. The size of this share is based on the size of my benefit from society, which in turn is roughly equal to the size of society's resources I have access to - in other words, my income and property. This is fairer that making everyone pay the same, regardless of how much they benefit.
Under status quo, I can afford to pay, and am guaranteed to be able to no matter how my income evolves, since the payment is proportional to my income. In libertarian wonderland there is no such guarantee.
When you have a good work environment and make good money, you do not need a union.
Problem is, if you don't have the bargaining power to defend these, you don't have them for long. And the chances are that you don't have it, no matter what delusions of grandeur about your own prowess you might harbour.
It should be up to the actors whether or not they want to work on a non-union film. But I guess this is what happens when you make megaliths like corporations... there has to be counter-balancing force like the union, and the citizen gets squashed in the middle.
Pretty much, yeah. I consider that to be one of the defining challenges of this century: can we fix the economic system so that us that people can take control of their own destinies, or will they continue to be squeezed by various borderline criminal organizations? History has plenty of rather unpleasant tales about what happens when such squeeze goes too far...
The information may have been merely copied, but it is being used to facilitate actual theft in the form of taxes.
Taxes aren't theft. They are a perfectly legal and justified redirection of some of society's economic activity to its maintenance. I, for one, am quite happy if some rich assholes who are trying to weasel out of paying their share get caught and forced to pay what they owe the rest of us.
Libertarianism is pathetic in general and this particular argument is the amongst its most stupid ones. Grow up.
Well that's daft because I can't see much difference in real value whether you have 5000 karma points or 5,000,000 'points' unless you know of a way to convert that to cash.
Points let you level up, upgrading your abilities and attributes, while karma points let you select a more powerful base class on your next playthrough.
Mostly they are moving away from that idea, even in Sweden, not due to the obvious injustice in forcing one man to work for the benefit of another (as I would like them to do) but because it doesn't work in practice.
Actually, it has worked just fine for decades. The reason they are moving away from it is because the owning class has been using its influence to push the restoration of feudalism. Current financial crisis is one of the byproducts of that.
And it's capitalism that makes one man work for the benefit of another, to have the fruits of someone's labour be taken by a capitalist who did nothing to earn them. Socialism tries to avoid precisely that.
It reduces incentive to produce and innovate without which an advanced country is doomed, and increases the incentive to be passive and lazy and live at others expense.
There is no such incentive under pure capitalism. You are a minimum wage employee for Wal-Mart or McDonald's, and have no capital or time to fund any innovations you might have (that's why it's called capitalism in the first place).
Oh, sorry, I misspoke: there is no minimum wage under pure capitalism, so you work for whatever wage the most desperate person settles at. That's likely to be below starvation level, BTW. Enjoy your capitalist utopia.
It was mostly European scientists who won WWII for the Americans, thanks to their development of nuclear technology.
Um, what? Nuclear technology was used in the very last days of the war, to give the final KO to an enemy that had already been beaten beyond any hope of recovery, where the only things in question was how much the last attack would cost and what the terms of surrender would be.
Iran has stated that they want to "wipe Israel off the face of the earth"
And considering Israel's history of attacking and occupying its neighbours and shooting rockets at residential buildings, suppressing all criticism with accusations of antisemitism, and likely being the initiators of this virus, who can blame Iran?
I wouldn't want Israel to be next door to me either; would you?
*sigh* You're one of those people who don't understand property rights.
Property rights don't trump all other rights.
You do NOT have the right to someone else's money.
The society, however, does have that right, on the account that money is really just a means of keeping score of who has right to how many of its resources.
It doesn't matter if a politician passes a law saying it's ok for person X to steal a certain amount from person Y because person Y makes more money - it's still person Y's money and no one else has the right to it.
Wrong. The society has the right to take back some of the resources it has allocated to person Y. This can happen through outright confiscation, or by printing more money and thus devaluing Y's money, or by taxation - that is, assigning a fee to some financial transactions.
If you disagree, then you need to explain what you consider to be the source of property rights, and why they would trump all other rights, especially any other division of property. After all, you simply stating "this is mine" in no way trumps me from stating "no, it's ours instead".
You know, time and again I'm surprised at how most more fanatical libertarians would be worse off than they are today if a party representing their platform ever came to power.
I think that most libertarians realize, deep down, that their party will never hold power, precisely because their platform is completely psychopathic. That lets them indulge in delusions of grandieur - "I could be John Galt, if the evil Government didn't opress me!" - without reaping the consequences of their platform. In other words, they are being extremely irresponsible while pretending to be responsible individualists.
It's not even funny. It's just sad.
As you said yourself, it's mostly a party of losers. Losers need these fantasies, just like alcoholics need wine, and for the same reasons. You're right, it's sad; but as long as we can prevent them from having any real power, let them indulge themselves and get what small comfort they can from such delusions. And they do tend to sabotage their own efforts; I suspect it's precisely because they do realize on some level that their platform is best left a fantasy.
Your snotty dismissal ignores the fact that government is not the only means for building roads or plumbing. It does not follow that because some product or service is provided through the threat of violence today, that it can't be done otherwise.
Okay, so how can it be done without government intervention? Please note: if your answer requires me to pay a fee whenever I'm traveling at that road, making me a de facto prisoner in my own home, it's not acceptable. Plumbing could be privatized, though, since I happen to live at the top of a hill, so I could simply ditch my garbage into a ditch and let gravity take care of it with no government regulation to stop me.
Fear the Libertarians! If they get their way, the government will leave your local robber baron alone, free to oppress you! Oh, the Horror!
Starting and running a business, especially in a new field, requires an unusual amount of initiative and savvy. I can't think of any PhD program that's designed to foster entrepreneurship and initiative.
And why would they be? You said yourself that it takes unusual attributes to become a succesful enterpreneur. A PhD is usual, and quickly becoming required. It simply doesn't make any sense to tailor the programs for something that's only relevant to a tiny percent of their participants.
Smart people are more likely than stupid people to earn a degree, land a job, start a business, recognize an opportunity.
And turning in ten lottery coupons means you're more likely to win than turning in just one, but that doesn't mean that you should bet your future on that.
So the ISP wins by collecting money without having to provide any service to their "customers".
Is this legal, even in the US? I realize that he who has the gold makes the rules, and it's a corporation versus a mere mortal, but even so this seems to be going a bit far.
whether or not the color I see as red is someone else's green
It might be. However, once you and that someone else communicate, you can probably decide what you call "red" or "green" in your communication. After all, that's what red or green is: a name given for a certain perception of light hitting your eyes. Simply because your personal experience is different doesn't change the fact that you can undestand the concept of someone else perceiving a certain electromagnetic spectrum input as green.
why I am me and not someone else,
Because you can't remember your past lives as the high priest of the Great Cthulhu.
why I feel as if my consciousness is in my head rather than my liver,
Because your brain is located in your head and not your stomach, as are your primary sensory organs (eyes and ears).
or whether my liver actually is conscious at all.
Of course it is. For example, it's conscious of your blood sugar levels, and does whatever it takes to balance those.
What the great-grandparent is getting at is that though the thing may give output similar to the output of a human being it lacks the experience that comes from being human, and particularly in this case daydreaming.
While this is obviously true (since a machine doesn't have experince about being human), it's also true of a dog and a newborn baby, both of which quite obviously do dream.
In other words: we should understand that modern computers have approximately the computing power of a particularly clever bee, and scale our expectations accordingly. We aren't going to have a human-level computing until we have a human-level physical system, and that's still far off.
As such, it'd be the most targeted network imaginable, with any entity (China Iran Venezuela, N. Korea, Cowboy Neal, al Qaeda, IRA, Libya..)
Of this list, only China and Al-Qaeda are likely to attack the US's infrastructure. Iran and Venezuela have nothing to gain from such a stunt, and would simply be giving the US an excuse to invade. The same is true of North Korea, who's leader cares only about his own life of luxury. Al-Qaeda is nuts, while China is a rival for world power, so they might do it. Dunno about Libya. And Cowboy Neal is unlikely to saw off the branch he's sitting on.
and you make no connections whatsoever between this and The Connected Internet.
And the larger your network grows, the harder this becomes to enforce. A single laptop connecting to a nearby open Wi-Fi port is sufficient to compromise you. So is someone using a mobile data connection or something to check their e-mail. And of course, if your network is big enough, an attacker can simply physically intersect the cables.
No, it's best to assume that any network will be compromised and design accordingly. Don't network the most critical control systems at all, isolate the semi-critical ones, let people connect to the public Internet from their desk/laptop computers, because they will anyway so you have to treat them as if they were, so they can as well get the convenience of a real connection.
Slashdot Mirror
Dunno about moral equivalence, but the numbers certainly seem to suggest that what's going on in Mexico is a civil war.
How about not caring either way? A crime is a crime, regardless of what substance(s) you may or may not have in your body.
And more totalitarian.
So does working or eating at McDonald's yet they're allowed to keep operating.
You're saying we should all bow down for the Philosopher Kings with unchecked power?
It was directly answerable to and feared the nobility, then called Citizens. The ordinary people had far less power then than now.
And you want to see how many other pages get taken down in the hunt for the fake.
Good troll, bro :).
But the Chinese might, just as long as Pentagon is willing to do them a similar favour in return...
"Come to the Dark Side, Uncle Sam. It is your destiny."
For three reasons:
Problem is, if you don't have the bargaining power to defend these, you don't have them for long. And the chances are that you don't have it, no matter what delusions of grandeur about your own prowess you might harbour.
Pretty much, yeah. I consider that to be one of the defining challenges of this century: can we fix the economic system so that us that people can take control of their own destinies, or will they continue to be squeezed by various borderline criminal organizations? History has plenty of rather unpleasant tales about what happens when such squeeze goes too far...
Taxes aren't theft. They are a perfectly legal and justified redirection of some of society's economic activity to its maintenance. I, for one, am quite happy if some rich assholes who are trying to weasel out of paying their share get caught and forced to pay what they owe the rest of us.
Libertarianism is pathetic in general and this particular argument is the amongst its most stupid ones. Grow up.
Points let you level up, upgrading your abilities and attributes, while karma points let you select a more powerful base class on your next playthrough.
Actually, it has worked just fine for decades. The reason they are moving away from it is because the owning class has been using its influence to push the restoration of feudalism. Current financial crisis is one of the byproducts of that.
And it's capitalism that makes one man work for the benefit of another, to have the fruits of someone's labour be taken by a capitalist who did nothing to earn them. Socialism tries to avoid precisely that.
There is no such incentive under pure capitalism. You are a minimum wage employee for Wal-Mart or McDonald's, and have no capital or time to fund any innovations you might have (that's why it's called capitalism in the first place).
Oh, sorry, I misspoke: there is no minimum wage under pure capitalism, so you work for whatever wage the most desperate person settles at. That's likely to be below starvation level, BTW. Enjoy your capitalist utopia.
Um, what? Nuclear technology was used in the very last days of the war, to give the final KO to an enemy that had already been beaten beyond any hope of recovery, where the only things in question was how much the last attack would cost and what the terms of surrender would be.
And considering Israel's history of attacking and occupying its neighbours and shooting rockets at residential buildings, suppressing all criticism with accusations of antisemitism, and likely being the initiators of this virus, who can blame Iran?
I wouldn't want Israel to be next door to me either; would you?
Property rights don't trump all other rights.
The society, however, does have that right, on the account that money is really just a means of keeping score of who has right to how many of its resources.
Wrong. The society has the right to take back some of the resources it has allocated to person Y. This can happen through outright confiscation, or by printing more money and thus devaluing Y's money, or by taxation - that is, assigning a fee to some financial transactions.
If you disagree, then you need to explain what you consider to be the source of property rights, and why they would trump all other rights, especially any other division of property. After all, you simply stating "this is mine" in no way trumps me from stating "no, it's ours instead".
I think that most libertarians realize, deep down, that their party will never hold power, precisely because their platform is completely psychopathic. That lets them indulge in delusions of grandieur - "I could be John Galt, if the evil Government didn't opress me!" - without reaping the consequences of their platform. In other words, they are being extremely irresponsible while pretending to be responsible individualists.
As you said yourself, it's mostly a party of losers. Losers need these fantasies, just like alcoholics need wine, and for the same reasons. You're right, it's sad; but as long as we can prevent them from having any real power, let them indulge themselves and get what small comfort they can from such delusions. And they do tend to sabotage their own efforts; I suspect it's precisely because they do realize on some level that their platform is best left a fantasy.
Okay, so how can it be done without government intervention? Please note: if your answer requires me to pay a fee whenever I'm traveling at that road, making me a de facto prisoner in my own home, it's not acceptable. Plumbing could be privatized, though, since I happen to live at the top of a hill, so I could simply ditch my garbage into a ditch and let gravity take care of it with no government regulation to stop me.
Fixed that for you.
Nothing was stolen here. Some information was copied without authorization. And it was done by a private person.
And why would they be? You said yourself that it takes unusual attributes to become a succesful enterpreneur. A PhD is usual, and quickly becoming required. It simply doesn't make any sense to tailor the programs for something that's only relevant to a tiny percent of their participants.
And turning in ten lottery coupons means you're more likely to win than turning in just one, but that doesn't mean that you should bet your future on that.
Is this legal, even in the US? I realize that he who has the gold makes the rules, and it's a corporation versus a mere mortal, but even so this seems to be going a bit far.
Actually, it does fell like a lever (or a series of levers), just like very other limb of mine. Just how do you people perceive your bodies?
It might be. However, once you and that someone else communicate, you can probably decide what you call "red" or "green" in your communication. After all, that's what red or green is: a name given for a certain perception of light hitting your eyes. Simply because your personal experience is different doesn't change the fact that you can undestand the concept of someone else perceiving a certain electromagnetic spectrum input as green.
Because you can't remember your past lives as the high priest of the Great Cthulhu.
Because your brain is located in your head and not your stomach, as are your primary sensory organs (eyes and ears).
Of course it is. For example, it's conscious of your blood sugar levels, and does whatever it takes to balance those.
While this is obviously true (since a machine doesn't have experince about being human), it's also true of a dog and a newborn baby, both of which quite obviously do dream.
In other words: we should understand that modern computers have approximately the computing power of a particularly clever bee, and scale our expectations accordingly. We aren't going to have a human-level computing until we have a human-level physical system, and that's still far off.
Of this list, only China and Al-Qaeda are likely to attack the US's infrastructure. Iran and Venezuela have nothing to gain from such a stunt, and would simply be giving the US an excuse to invade. The same is true of North Korea, who's leader cares only about his own life of luxury. Al-Qaeda is nuts, while China is a rival for world power, so they might do it. Dunno about Libya. And Cowboy Neal is unlikely to saw off the branch he's sitting on.
Stop making up boogeymen, OK?
And the larger your network grows, the harder this becomes to enforce. A single laptop connecting to a nearby open Wi-Fi port is sufficient to compromise you. So is someone using a mobile data connection or something to check their e-mail. And of course, if your network is big enough, an attacker can simply physically intersect the cables.
No, it's best to assume that any network will be compromised and design accordingly. Don't network the most critical control systems at all, isolate the semi-critical ones, let people connect to the public Internet from their desk/laptop computers, because they will anyway so you have to treat them as if they were, so they can as well get the convenience of a real connection.