Money is NOT "control over other people", and it differs from a whip and shackles in that I can tell you to take your money and stuff it.
Of course you can tell your slavemaster to take his whip and shackles and stuff it. You'll simply get whipped for that. In the case of chattel slavery the whip is made of leather, in the case of our glorious capitalist system it's made of poverty. Either way you'll keep your mouth shut and do what you're told, after a few sessions at the whipping post if not from the start.
Countries covered with snow a large part of the year have an annual reminder that sloth leads to death, and it's strongly ingrained in the cultures of many It's harder to destroy their work ethic, but nevertheless it's still happening.
I live in Finland, and I've never even heard of this association. No, the reason for Nordic work ethic is simply that society is seen as a shared project where everyone does what they can for the common good. If you're lazy and do just the bare minimum you must, you aren't stiffing just your employer, you're stiffing your country and everyone who lives in it. That's also why Nordic countries are relatively non-corrupted.
And yes, this work ethic is dying, not because of socialism but because intrusion of the right-wing idea that everyone is responsible only for themselves, not for other people or for their society.
Oh really? So Joe gets paid $500 on Sunday as wages from his job. He spends $300 on booze and lobster at a strip club on Monday. He then gets mugged attempting to by weed on Tuesday and loses $200. He's starting to get pretty hungry by Thursday, and on Friday his landlord is getting pretty anxious about his rent. Question: do we let Joe go die? No? Then letting people make economic choices is a pipe dream.
Fixed that for you.
Pass UBI without the backbone to let people Darwin themselves and Joes might come out of the woodwork. Hell, I might be one.
Right. So how comes you are not dead yet? Or do strip clubs only admit people on welfare where you live?
If given a choice between sitting on your ass and getting paid and working and getting paid, the _majority_ will sit on their ass.
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that that's true. Let's further assume that it makes a difference, that the economy needs these unmotivated people to do jobs they hate and will do worse without them. With those assumptions made... Which one is more important, Freedom or economic efficiency? Because you can't have them both.
Trump is an incompetent, pompous ass and a political newcomer, hated by both Democrats and Republicans. He is lucky if Congress doesn't cut the White House kitchen budget just out of spite. What Trump wants is pretty much irrelevant since he isn't going to get it.
And yet Trump won the primary and got the Republican nomination. When the Rancor goes down, maybe it's time to stop underestimating the weird kid with a lightsaber?
To be fair though it certainly seems like people now are much more willing to give up opportunity and freedom for the illusion of security (Economic and otherwise) and to be removed from the list of responsible parties for their lives.
As the world continues getting more interconnected that list keeps growing longer. Your fortunes are ever more dependent on what other people do, the current economic crisis being an excellent example. Nor can this trend be reversed because advanced technology depends on specialization. In such a world being responsible for yourself means abandoning the pleasant fantasy that you depend on no one, and seeking to influence the forces that shape your world to make them take your needs into account.
It's kind of like the streets in your neighborhood. Everyone knows what reasonable use of those roads is. But what about the family with a dozen cars taking up all the street parking?
No, it's not like the public streets, it's like if you pay for a parking lot and then get told you may not keep your car there because the parking company wants to rent each space to multiple people.
Except the piss goes on them, and all of them paid handsomely with their dignity.
So does this mean anyone who has a pee fetish is unworthy of respect? What other sexual practices disqualify one from having dignity - anything except missionary position for the sole purpose of procreation with the lights off?
Or is the real issue here that, after the piss goes on them, they take a shower and get on with their lives, having suffered no actual harm whatsoever, and that insults your sense of propriety?
No. The problem is that it's socially undesirable (whether as a provider or customer), even in places where it is legal. This allows the hooker to simply extort when times are hard.
The same cultural memes which make such extortion viable also lower the bar to simply murdering the extorting prostitute. It relies on the idea that sex is sinful and diminishes those practicing it.
And so does your unstated premise that a prostitute is any more likely to be criminally inclined than any other professional who might learn embarassing secrets about you. After all, normal honest people aren't going to extort someone just because an opportunity arises.
What part of "Even though they are, for some reason, a member of the EU" is so difficult to understand?
The part where their reasons aren't completely obvious:
1) Economic benefits from a common market.
2) Protection against Russia.
3) Protection against Germany.
Poland is in the EU both because it benefits them and because their alternative is being sitting ducks between the continent's natural leader and worst enemy.
Poland is already a NATO member, they should have stayed out of the EU. They don't belong in the EU. They have voted for an anti-EU government for several times.
NATO is a military alliance which was born in a specific geopolitical situation and will eventually dissolve. EU, on the other hand, could potentially evolve into a real federation, solving Europe's internal problems for good and allowing it to compete in a world that's quickly catching up. There's currently a strong anti-EU sentiment due to the current migrant crisis, economic mismanagement and various nationalist demagogues seizing the opportunity, but with luck we can weather the storm and continue building "The United States of Europe" we need to have a future in the modern world.
Correct, it's all about you defending your own property
Please explain what makes some land your property? Because you say so? Why should anyone else care about that? Because you'll kill them if they don't?
Everybody defending their own property, some people doing it on their own, some hiring companies to do it for them.
So basically, whoever has the most resources can hire the largest private army to capture - excuse me, "defend his claim to" - more? Because, in the absence of a government, what's stopping them?
Also, I guess those unlucky enough to not own - or be able to afford a private army to protect - any land will starve to death, unless the new nobility are generous enough to allow them to voluntarily enter a slavery contract with them.
I do not see any government as legitimate at all, just for the record here.
No, you want to have all the benefits of a lawful society without carrying any of the duties, which is what taxation is ultimately about.
My position is easy to understand if you realise that there is something called voluntarism. Voluntary participation is the defining metric.
And yet you want the government to enforce contracts. Entering contracts is no more voluntary than obeying someone with a knife on your neck: sure, you can opt out, but then you die, either by having your throat cut or through starvation.
Using group violence to force participation and of-course the inherit taxation that comes with such participation is the key difference between a government and a private activity.
Whereas forcing participation by locking away all the resources one might use to sustain oneself and using group violence against anyone who tries to use them without first entering a "voluntary" contract with the owners - which, of course, is also enforced through group violence - is fine.
The only world where voluntarism is more than propaganda is a socialist paradise where everyone can simply take what they need - and won't take more than that - without needing anyone's permission, and contributes according to their abilities from the goodness of their heart.
If a physical system is chaotic, as most natural ones tend to be, it's future behaviour is not predictable with 100% certainty unless you have an exact analytical solution to the equations governing its behaviour - and those simply don't exist in the general case. So no, determinism doesn't imply predictability.
It's the "train will derail and kill everyone if you do nothing, train will be saved if you switch it to a different track but it will run over a child walking on the tracks" conundrum. People really dislike an innocent death happening as a consequence of their direct action, so much so that they'll prefer inaction even if it results in more deaths, and they'll criticize decisions by others to reduce the net fatality count at the cost of a few innocents.
The problem with applying Philosophy 101 to real life is that in real life decisions have more effects than just immediate ones. For example, if you convince people it's okay to kill innocents for a worthy cause, you're making terrorist recruiter's mission far easier - after all, they then just have to convince a potential recruit that theirs is such a cause.
Countries like Saudi Arabia, UAE, Quatar? They're funding extrimism in our own backyards by paying for the institutional buildings to spread that type of hate.
So what do you think they're trying to accomplish? All that effort can't hope to cause enough damage to weaken Europe militarily. But it can give our nationalists just enough help to succeed in tearing EU apart, and if at all possible to give up liberty so it won't tempt their subjects anymore. After that, all they have to do is wait for the continent to blow itself up again, and watch Russia conquer the remains.
Deporting all Muslims is the only way to save western civilization.
Don't be an idiot. Having the West give up freedom of religion is precisely the point of these attacks. ISIS is losing, such angry and unthinking actions on our part are their only hope.
This is war. Fight with your brain, not your heart, least you aid your enemy. We don't even know if this had anything to do with Islam rather than an unhinged petty criminal with a history of violence finally going over the edge.
And then we have fucked up people who think it's okay to shame people and mock them for being fat. It's awful to do that to any person, but it's also counterproductive and leads to self esteem issues that can lead to becoming even more obese.
They aren't "fucked up", they're bullies who simply latch into any excusable target since political correctness is making those so rare nowadays. From their point of view harming you is a good thing both because they get their kicks from it and because it keeps you where they can continue kicking you.
I'm not a French lawyer but even free services where there is some consumer element are usually protected in the EU.
I'm not a lawyer either, but I have a hard time believing somebody offering a free service can't simply discontinue it at will. Consider: if you publish a program under GPL on your homepage, and have ads there, are you obligated to keep maintaining it? How about all those ad-supported mobile apps?
If a shop has a community billboard to entice customers, as many do, do you have grounds to sue when they take it down?
It doesn't work, and it cannot work. It has to be done at home, and there are few parents left with the ability to do it properly. We're screwed.
If by "we" you meant whatever political or religious cult you wished to have those children indoctrinated to support, then yes you are. The children, on the other hand, will be better off for seeing there's a wider world out there with far more futures to choose from than just ones consistent with your ideology. So will the country and humanity, for that matter.
For being such a high-tech company, their contact page is remarkably bereft of any way to, you know, actually contact someone who works there.
Nothing remarkable about it. After all, Google's entire business is knowing what you want even before you do. You don't need to contact Google, for Google already knows you heart's desires.
Because we are humans and not machines and, as such, we are capable of understanding limiting principles that are fuzzy and imprecise.
However, there's nothing fuzzy or imprecise about "unlimited". It means you can use as much as you want. "About 15 megabytes" would be fuzzy.
To give a practical example, coffee shops are happy to offer "Free WiFi", often having a large sign to that effect. But if buy a small regular coffee and proceed to download/serve dozens of Linux ISOs at max bandwidth over Bittorrent (and degrade the service of everyone else in the shop), you will be asked to leave. It's implicit that "Free WiFi" here is understood in the context of things that normal people do in a coffee shop.
Right. So if that coffee shop specifically advertizes "Free WiFi With Unlimited Bandwidth", and is not a coffee shop but a multibillion dollar IT company with a dedicated department of lawyers going over every detail of the deals they offer, what's the implied meaning of "Unlimited Bandwidth"?
TLDR: Summarized succinctly in a single-pane webcomic.
That guy is the one making the offer, not the one taking it.
Any rational person *knows* there is a point where "taking advantage of this generous offer" becomes "being a pain in the ass that breaks it for everyone" because they ruin the product's sustainability.
A rational person has every reason to think a decades-old multibillion dollar IT company knows exactly how much disk space they can afford to offer their customers at what price.
But it won't. Because unlike Westminster, no other European capitals are insane enough to let parts of their countries split off and instantly have EU membership, so will veto Scotland's attempt to do so.
Are those other countries leaving the EU? Are their parts trying to split off specifically to stay in? There is plenty of ground to back Scotland yet deny other separatists due to the circumstances being completely different.
After all, from the EU's point of view it would be the English half of the (former) UK splitting off and leaving, not Scottish.
Slashdot Mirror
Of course you can tell your slavemaster to take his whip and shackles and stuff it. You'll simply get whipped for that. In the case of chattel slavery the whip is made of leather, in the case of our glorious capitalist system it's made of poverty. Either way you'll keep your mouth shut and do what you're told, after a few sessions at the whipping post if not from the start.
I live in Finland, and I've never even heard of this association. No, the reason for Nordic work ethic is simply that society is seen as a shared project where everyone does what they can for the common good. If you're lazy and do just the bare minimum you must, you aren't stiffing just your employer, you're stiffing your country and everyone who lives in it. That's also why Nordic countries are relatively non-corrupted.
And yes, this work ethic is dying, not because of socialism but because intrusion of the right-wing idea that everyone is responsible only for themselves, not for other people or for their society.
Fixed that for you.
Right. So how comes you are not dead yet? Or do strip clubs only admit people on welfare where you live?
Let's assume, for the sake of argument, that that's true. Let's further assume that it makes a difference, that the economy needs these unmotivated people to do jobs they hate and will do worse without them. With those assumptions made... Which one is more important, Freedom or economic efficiency? Because you can't have them both.
And yet Trump won the primary and got the Republican nomination. When the Rancor goes down, maybe it's time to stop underestimating the weird kid with a lightsaber?
As the world continues getting more interconnected that list keeps growing longer. Your fortunes are ever more dependent on what other people do, the current economic crisis being an excellent example. Nor can this trend be reversed because advanced technology depends on specialization. In such a world being responsible for yourself means abandoning the pleasant fantasy that you depend on no one, and seeking to influence the forces that shape your world to make them take your needs into account.
No, it's not like the public streets, it's like if you pay for a parking lot and then get told you may not keep your car there because the parking company wants to rent each space to multiple people.
So does this mean anyone who has a pee fetish is unworthy of respect? What other sexual practices disqualify one from having dignity - anything except missionary position for the sole purpose of procreation with the lights off?
Or is the real issue here that, after the piss goes on them, they take a shower and get on with their lives, having suffered no actual harm whatsoever, and that insults your sense of propriety?
The same cultural memes which make such extortion viable also lower the bar to simply murdering the extorting prostitute. It relies on the idea that sex is sinful and diminishes those practicing it.
And so does your unstated premise that a prostitute is any more likely to be criminally inclined than any other professional who might learn embarassing secrets about you. After all, normal honest people aren't going to extort someone just because an opportunity arises.
The part where their reasons aren't completely obvious:
1) Economic benefits from a common market.
2) Protection against Russia.
3) Protection against Germany.
Poland is in the EU both because it benefits them and because their alternative is being sitting ducks between the continent's natural leader and worst enemy.
NATO is a military alliance which was born in a specific geopolitical situation and will eventually dissolve. EU, on the other hand, could potentially evolve into a real federation, solving Europe's internal problems for good and allowing it to compete in a world that's quickly catching up. There's currently a strong anti-EU sentiment due to the current migrant crisis, economic mismanagement and various nationalist demagogues seizing the opportunity, but with luck we can weather the storm and continue building "The United States of Europe" we need to have a future in the modern world.
Please explain what makes some land your property? Because you say so? Why should anyone else care about that? Because you'll kill them if they don't?
So basically, whoever has the most resources can hire the largest private army to capture - excuse me, "defend his claim to" - more? Because, in the absence of a government, what's stopping them?
Also, I guess those unlucky enough to not own - or be able to afford a private army to protect - any land will starve to death, unless the new nobility are generous enough to allow them to voluntarily enter a slavery contract with them.
No, you want to have all the benefits of a lawful society without carrying any of the duties, which is what taxation is ultimately about.
And yet you want the government to enforce contracts. Entering contracts is no more voluntary than obeying someone with a knife on your neck: sure, you can opt out, but then you die, either by having your throat cut or through starvation.
Whereas forcing participation by locking away all the resources one might use to sustain oneself and using group violence against anyone who tries to use them without first entering a "voluntary" contract with the owners - which, of course, is also enforced through group violence - is fine.
The only world where voluntarism is more than propaganda is a socialist paradise where everyone can simply take what they need - and won't take more than that - without needing anyone's permission, and contributes according to their abilities from the goodness of their heart.
"Chaos: When the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future."
If a physical system is chaotic, as most natural ones tend to be, it's future behaviour is not predictable with 100% certainty unless you have an exact analytical solution to the equations governing its behaviour - and those simply don't exist in the general case. So no, determinism doesn't imply predictability.
Not if memory serves: Netscape Navigator 4 was such awful garbage that even IE was better.
The problem with applying Philosophy 101 to real life is that in real life decisions have more effects than just immediate ones. For example, if you convince people it's okay to kill innocents for a worthy cause, you're making terrorist recruiter's mission far easier - after all, they then just have to convince a potential recruit that theirs is such a cause.
It was gallows humor. You still used dead children to reaffirm your political identity. Well congratulations, mission accomplished.
So what do you think they're trying to accomplish? All that effort can't hope to cause enough damage to weaken Europe militarily. But it can give our nationalists just enough help to succeed in tearing EU apart, and if at all possible to give up liberty so it won't tempt their subjects anymore. After that, all they have to do is wait for the continent to blow itself up again, and watch Russia conquer the remains.
Calm down and stop aiding the enemy.
Don't be an idiot. Having the West give up freedom of religion is precisely the point of these attacks. ISIS is losing, such angry and unthinking actions on our part are their only hope.
This is war. Fight with your brain, not your heart, least you aid your enemy. We don't even know if this had anything to do with Islam rather than an unhinged petty criminal with a history of violence finally going over the edge.
They aren't "fucked up", they're bullies who simply latch into any excusable target since political correctness is making those so rare nowadays. From their point of view harming you is a good thing both because they get their kicks from it and because it keeps you where they can continue kicking you.
I'm not a lawyer either, but I have a hard time believing somebody offering a free service can't simply discontinue it at will. Consider: if you publish a program under GPL on your homepage, and have ads there, are you obligated to keep maintaining it? How about all those ad-supported mobile apps?
If a shop has a community billboard to entice customers, as many do, do you have grounds to sue when they take it down?
If by "we" you meant whatever political or religious cult you wished to have those children indoctrinated to support, then yes you are. The children, on the other hand, will be better off for seeing there's a wider world out there with far more futures to choose from than just ones consistent with your ideology. So will the country and humanity, for that matter.
Nothing remarkable about it. After all, Google's entire business is knowing what you want even before you do. You don't need to contact Google, for Google already knows you heart's desires.
However, there's nothing fuzzy or imprecise about "unlimited". It means you can use as much as you want. "About 15 megabytes" would be fuzzy.
Right. So if that coffee shop specifically advertizes "Free WiFi With Unlimited Bandwidth", and is not a coffee shop but a multibillion dollar IT company with a dedicated department of lawyers going over every detail of the deals they offer, what's the implied meaning of "Unlimited Bandwidth"?
That guy is the one making the offer, not the one taking it.
A rational person has every reason to think a decades-old multibillion dollar IT company knows exactly how much disk space they can afford to offer their customers at what price.
Are those other countries leaving the EU? Are their parts trying to split off specifically to stay in? There is plenty of ground to back Scotland yet deny other separatists due to the circumstances being completely different.
After all, from the EU's point of view it would be the English half of the (former) UK splitting off and leaving, not Scottish.