Technology and freedom are the most important tools to achieving abundant habitation & agriculture.
Not to mention temperature. We need the sustained high temperatures of the last 6000 years of interglacial to persist. (Most of the last 1/2 a million years was spent in ice ages; all of civilization developed during the current interglacial)
My guess is that you've only seen bad philosophies, and have thus turned away from the subject matter. However, nobody can escape philosophy.
When you look out at the world and make decisions about how to direct your life's actions, you are being guided by philosophy, whether implicitly or explicitly.
Questions like: "Is science valid?", "Is the universe knowable?", "What should I do now?" are all philosophical questions.
If you discover a profitable business model for TV/movies that doesn't require commercials, you would be providing a valuable service to people, and you would become rich. That would be heroic (as opposed to simply bitching and moaning *Gimme Gimme... I want... I want*)
Religion is merely a primitive form of philosophy, of attempting to understand the nature of the universe and man's place in it.
As such, it was important in the evolution of civilization - a necessary evil - but mankind has long evolved past the need for it's primitive approach to metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.
The stories of invisible beings in mystical dimensions that guide us frightened know-nothings were made obsolete when Aristotle identified the foundations of reason and logic.
Today, religion is at best a disease-ridden security blanket, and at worst a dominant force to control man's mind, to subjugate his body, and to obliterate his capacity for rational thought (i.e. his means of survival).
The difference is that evolution is subject to investigation and falsification through a process of looking at the world and reasoning about it, whereas religion is a faith-based belief system.
Whether or not a given textbook is accurate or not has no bearing on the issue.
Quoting Popper (or Kuhn, or Feyerabend) doesn't help your claim - they do not speak for science or reason, they are merely little Kantians trying to secularize the religious assault on man's capacity to deal with truth.
Name one, just one example, of an ISP privately negotiating right-of-way easements of any significant number in the USA.
Can you give me a list of ISPs that don't operate under government franchise, license, or subsidy?
I could walk around personally and get all the right-of-way agreements, but would I then be legally allowed to build the infrastructure? No, because government has a monopoly on infrastructure.
The fact that you lack the vision of how free people could live doesn't prove that free people would huddle in hovels without utilities and entertainment.
Not only would free people have cable, but the whole spectrum of entertainment options would blow the shit hole out of forced government network provisioning
As long as connectivity providers are also application providers, any application they don't like is a potential candidate for connectivity problems.
As long as ISPs face potential competition, any connectivity problem is a potential candidate for "losing-customers" problems.
Of course, that depends on ISPs not being entrenched in their crony capitalist markets through special licensing, franchises, and subsidies - as bequeathed by your bipartisan fascist overlords.
does not mean that access to the Iraqi oilfields was not a major consideration in the decision to invade Iraq.
Since Iraq was not a major source of intellectual or financial support for Totalitarian Islam (the enemy), I can't say that I have a good argument against your theory - although it needs some rigor to really back it up.
Even if your weather-control dreams came true - if you could bring the state of the environment into your perfect vision of a never-changing climate utopia...
Even then...
The "poor who lack the means" will still die. Your grandiose visions of utopian climate equilibrium will not cause the poor to ascend into carefree joy.
What the poor need is not a never-changing climate (which has never existed and never will exist) - what they need is the freedom to pursue profit, and a philosophy that teaches them how to do it.
It wasn't an unchanging climate that led to the wealth of the West, and it is not a changing climate that prevents poor countries from becoming wealthy.
And it is wealth that poor countries need to deal with all of life's issues. If you really give a damn about poor people in poor countries, you should be advocating for capitalism and its' life-giving benefits.
Every international company has to obey laws for that country, or not do business in that country.
The only thing you have to do is die.
Rosa Parks broke the law to give up her seat on the bus, and that's a good thing.
There is a distinction between the legal and the moral, especially when the former is not based on the latter.
Foreign governments don't have a right to impose their coercive whims on their citizens, and we don't have to, a priori, respect the legitimacy of such oppressive regimes.
I understand your point entirely. I'm just pointing out that rights are not determined by governments. Rights are sanctions of human action, and must be discovered through an intellectual process.
Rights actually subordinate governments to their proper role, since a government may not violate an individual's rights
That is ridiculous. Do you believe people have a right to food, clothes, a home, entertainment, sex, a car, utilities, and a meaningful job at a decent wage?
There can be no so-called right to force other people to give you things.
Any legal enforcement of master-slave relationships is immoral.
The concept right is a bridge between ethics and politics - it connects the ideas of "what people should do" (to succeed in life) to "what kind of society should there be (that supports a person's achievement of that success)?
The only way a monopoly could happen under freedom is by giving people the values they want at a reasonable price.
On the other hand, governments create coercive monopolies through licensing, franchises, subsidies, and outright nationalization. These monopolies do not need to give people the value they want, nor does the price need to be competitive.
Ellisons refusal to spin it off is the strongest indication that the purpose of acquiring MySQL as part of the deal is anti-competitive.
You actually have it completely backwards. Ellison is, in fact, being competitive through the acquisition. It is the EU who is being anti-competitive, by wielding government force against what would otherwise be a voluntary, mutually agreed upon transaction.
The problem is that burning it blows carbon-oxygen atoms out tailpipes, where they pollute, and ultimately cause atmospheric damage. You can't tell me all of that soot is a good thing.
Damn straight I can.
The process of life requires pollution. Not to be graphic, but life literally sustains itself by converting the environment (air, water, food) into pollution. On top of that, creating our comforts and pleasures require additional pollution.
The countries that pollute the least in the world are the countries with the shortest lifespans and the harshest living conditions.
The trick is not to eliminate pollution, but just remove it so it doesn't harm people. We are already quite effective at that. (And when we aren't it's usually due to a lack of property rights)
The longer and more comfortable a human life is, the more pollution is required.
The only way to eliminate pollution is to eliminate life itself.
Slashdot Mirror
Technology and freedom are the most important tools to achieving abundant habitation & agriculture. Not to mention temperature. We need the sustained high temperatures of the last 6000 years of interglacial to persist. (Most of the last 1/2 a million years was spent in ice ages; all of civilization developed during the current interglacial)
Hear, Hear!
When you look out at the world and make decisions about how to direct your life's actions, you are being guided by philosophy, whether implicitly or explicitly.
Questions like: "Is science valid?", "Is the universe knowable?", "What should I do now?" are all philosophical questions.
If you discover a profitable business model for TV/movies that doesn't require commercials, you would be providing a valuable service to people, and you would become rich. That would be heroic (as opposed to simply bitching and moaning *Gimme Gimme ... I want ... I want*)
Religion is merely a primitive form of philosophy, of attempting to understand the nature of the universe and man's place in it.
As such, it was important in the evolution of civilization - a necessary evil - but mankind has long evolved past the need for it's primitive approach to metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.
The stories of invisible beings in mystical dimensions that guide us frightened know-nothings were made obsolete when Aristotle identified the foundations of reason and logic.
Today, religion is at best a disease-ridden security blanket, and at worst a dominant force to control man's mind, to subjugate his body, and to obliterate his capacity for rational thought (i.e. his means of survival).
Evolution is not a religion, it is a theory.
The difference is that evolution is subject to investigation and falsification through a process of looking at the world and reasoning about it, whereas religion is a faith-based belief system.
Whether or not a given textbook is accurate or not has no bearing on the issue.
Quoting Popper (or Kuhn, or Feyerabend) doesn't help your claim - they do not speak for science or reason, they are merely little Kantians trying to secularize the religious assault on man's capacity to deal with truth.
Name one, just one example, of an ISP privately negotiating right-of-way easements of any significant number in the USA.
Can you give me a list of ISPs that don't operate under government franchise, license, or subsidy?
I could walk around personally and get all the right-of-way agreements, but would I then be legally allowed to build the infrastructure? No, because government has a monopoly on infrastructure.
The fact that you lack the vision of how free people could live doesn't prove that free people would huddle in hovels without utilities and entertainment.
Not only would free people have cable, but the whole spectrum of entertainment options would blow the shit hole out of forced government network provisioning
landlines require right-of-way easements across large numbers of private properties in order to achieve reasonable levels of coverage.
Which rational people seeking value will gladly work out privately (except you, apparently.)
As long as connectivity providers are also application providers, any application they don't like is a potential candidate for connectivity problems.
As long as ISPs face potential competition, any connectivity problem is a potential candidate for "losing-customers" problems.
Of course, that depends on ISPs not being entrenched in their crony capitalist markets through special licensing, franchises, and subsidies - as bequeathed by your bipartisan fascist overlords.
does not mean that access to the Iraqi oilfields was not a major consideration in the decision to invade Iraq.
Since Iraq was not a major source of intellectual or financial support for Totalitarian Islam (the enemy), I can't say that I have a good argument against your theory - although it needs some rigor to really back it up.
Even if your weather-control dreams came true - if you could bring the state of the environment into your perfect vision of a never-changing climate utopia ...
Even then...
The "poor who lack the means" will still die. Your grandiose visions of utopian climate equilibrium will not cause the poor to ascend into carefree joy.
What the poor need is not a never-changing climate (which has never existed and never will exist) - what they need is the freedom to pursue profit, and a philosophy that teaches them how to do it.
It wasn't an unchanging climate that led to the wealth of the West, and it is not a changing climate that prevents poor countries from becoming wealthy.
And it is wealth that poor countries need to deal with all of life's issues. If you really give a damn about poor people in poor countries, you should be advocating for capitalism and its' life-giving benefits.
Actually, changing from "global warming" to "climate change" has the nice advantage that it applies no matter what:
Just spread fear about change as such, and the scared sheep will run.
Every international company has to obey laws for that country, or not do business in that country.
The only thing you have to do is die.
Rosa Parks broke the law to give up her seat on the bus, and that's a good thing.
There is a distinction between the legal and the moral, especially when the former is not based on the latter.
Foreign governments don't have a right to impose their coercive whims on their citizens, and we don't have to, a priori, respect the legitimacy of such oppressive regimes.
why would anyone choose an OS that only runs a web browser?
The whole point of a personal computer is the applications
If a person could get the applications they want through a web browser, why wouldn't they want an OS that only runs a web browser?
If you're using a web-based operating system, you do not want to be stuck with 0.05 Mbps.
Forget that. If you're using a web-based operating system, then that is cooler than shit - can you come show me it?
I understand your point entirely. I'm just pointing out that rights are not determined by governments. Rights are sanctions of human action, and must be discovered through an intellectual process.
Rights actually subordinate governments to their proper role, since a government may not violate an individual's rights
Rights come before governments, hierarchically.
That is ridiculous. Do you believe people have a right to food, clothes, a home, entertainment, sex, a car, utilities, and a meaningful job at a decent wage?
There can be no so-called right to force other people to give you things.
Any legal enforcement of master-slave relationships is immoral.
The concept right is a bridge between ethics and politics - it connects the ideas of "what people should do" (to succeed in life) to "what kind of society should there be (that supports a person's achievement of that success)?
Morality has nothing to do with a diety
People need electricity, food, entertainment, education, sex, clothes, friends and video games to "properly participate in the nation".
But that does not make the haves slaves to the have-nots.
There cannot be a right that requires someone else to give you something. Any so-called right that legalizes master-slave relationships is immoral.
This just in: the government launches an investigation into certain online charges and fees!
In other news, the government takes half your money.
The only way a monopoly could happen under freedom is by giving people the values they want at a reasonable price.
On the other hand, governments create coercive monopolies through licensing, franchises, subsidies, and outright nationalization. These monopolies do not need to give people the value they want, nor does the price need to be competitive.
Ellisons refusal to spin it off is the strongest indication that the purpose of acquiring MySQL as part of the deal is anti-competitive.
You actually have it completely backwards. Ellison is, in fact, being competitive through the acquisition. It is the EU who is being anti-competitive, by wielding government force against what would otherwise be a voluntary, mutually agreed upon transaction.
The problem is that burning it blows carbon-oxygen atoms out tailpipes, where they pollute, and ultimately cause atmospheric damage. You can't tell me all of that soot is a good thing.
Damn straight I can.
The process of life requires pollution. Not to be graphic, but life literally sustains itself by converting the environment (air, water, food) into pollution. On top of that, creating our comforts and pleasures require additional pollution.
The countries that pollute the least in the world are the countries with the shortest lifespans and the harshest living conditions.
The trick is not to eliminate pollution, but just remove it so it doesn't harm people. We are already quite effective at that. (And when we aren't it's usually due to a lack of property rights)
The longer and more comfortable a human life is, the more pollution is required.
The only way to eliminate pollution is to eliminate life itself.
The proper philosophic stack for the right is (reason, individualism, capitalism).
Unfortunately, many on the right believe they can do (mysticism, altruism, capitalism) - but of course, that does not work.