The article is describing them in relation to the twitter account, which, it seems, was primarily used for racial justice activism. I've never heard of this person before either, but I could give two shits if the actual person is a plumber or a mailman the rest of the day. The story is about the twitter account.
If you vote in a twin who does the same, vote them out too. Eventually, the lesson that acting against the interest of your constituents will not get you reelected will sink in.
I have a better solution. No matter who you are or where you live, vote out your sitting congressman and senator. If you're not willing to do this, then you aren't as upset with the status quo as you're pretending to be.
You're very right about how the current system is screwed, but it's also exactly the reason the guns and bullets solution is likely to fail. The same money that buys politicians will also buy a lot more guns and ammo than the opposition can muster. And replacing "money makes right" with "might makes right" doesn't seem like a step forward to me.
Even as undereducated as we are, we need to find a better way.
I'm pretty sure commanding real armies is much more intresting than playing with plastic toysoldiers with neighbour, or nowadays owning computer and trying to dominate others virtually:D
Speak for yourself. Strategy war games are one of my favorite genres, but I have zero interest in the real thing. I'd prefer to live in a world where holding the viewpoint you suggest is enough to get you a DSM classification.
I'd love to see you just try to ride a bicycle on a sidewalk in Manhattan. Could make a great youtube video, and maybe even give you a shot at a Darwin Award.
Jay Rosen, media critic and a professor of journalism at New York University, said: Trying to kill a publication you don't like by funding lawsuits against them isn't very libertarian, is it?
Huh? It's not? Especially when they turn out to be valid lawsuits, it seems a very libertarian thing to do. If a company is wronging people in a way that lawsuits would succeed against them, but aren't normally pressed because those being wronged don't have the money for lawyers, sure, you can fund them.
Hell, I donate to a couple funds for doing just that.
Funding a lawsuit to stop a wrong from being done is nothing at all the same as funding a lawsuit with the intent of stopping unrelated behavior that you just happen to not like.
I thought that, in theory, libertarians believed in liberty. Or is that only for themselves, and it's ok to suppress everyone else's? I mean, if he were openly funding the lawsuits, you might have half a libertarian leg to stand on.
No correlation found. Firstly, no single individual tried to silence or remove Eich. I'll leave the reasons why this matters as a though exercise for those who obviously don't get enough. Second, Brendan Eich is still completely free to espouse whatever opinions he wants, in whatever medium he chooses.
The other golden rule, he who has the gold makes the rules.
This is what we have now, yeah?
Two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.
This will become a problem when the number of powerful is greater than the number of powerless. We're a safe way off from that happening. Or did you not notice that all of your examples were 1 wolf and 10 sheep deciding what's for dinner?
You're completely missing your own point. In making rules (regardless of "fairness"), we are deciding on what the game itself is, and what constitutes "winning". I think as a species we can do better than running a who has the biggest yacht contest.
The term disposable income keeps getting tossed around, and it's never made any sense to me, and the linked graph doesn't provide any explanation. So I looked it up. Turns out, the economic definition of disposable income is : " total personal income minus personal current taxes." Nothing at all about cost of living. All the chart shows is that tax rates have gone down, especially for those with more money. I think we already knew that.
In short, the chart linked above is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
That is called capitalism. and it is why Canada, and the USA have a lot more money than other systems.
We spread resources around to those who can pay the most for them. It isn't the most efficient system but it is at least fair. In the sense that everyone is equal in who can do the buying. maybe not having the cash to buy, but that is another story.
It's not at all another story. Unless all participants begin the game from the same starting position, any definition of "fair" is going to be complete and utter nonsense. Of course, fair is not a possibility anyway. Some people are born with greater or lesser skills on one area or another. Some people are born with higher risk of heart disease. Some people are born with cleft palates. Some people are born with cancer.
Maybe your mama told you this: Life isn't fair. So maybe it's time for societies to stop clinging to a 5 year old's vision of fairness and instead decide what result is wanted, and how to best get that result.
Soooo.. how does inheritance play into that? Or land ownership? Or the fact that, under most capitalist systems, the majority of the money generated by labor does not go to the laborers?
Here's another possibility: UBI gives labor the capital to invest in itself. Everyone is both capitalist and worker at once. It's much more efficient to have a cycle that feeds itself than the current system that siphons everything to the top where it just sits and does nothing productive.
Well, yeah, the percentage of American families that can actually afford a "middle class" lifestyle is about 12%. http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
I suspect the percentage of American families who grew up living that lifestyle, and are trying to live it themselves, is quite a bit higher.
A surprising number of posters here seem to be OK with there being fewer Americans capable of living at or above a middle class lifestyle than a generation ago. Maybe it makes them feel better about themselves. I hope not, because then they're just dicks.
But socialism as a political system requires high levels of taking at the barrel of a gun.
I'm not certain it requires it, though it's certainly an option.The option isn't unique to socialism. Supposedly capitalist entities have been doing so for centuries.
Well, there was Richard Reid (poor misunderstood guy who was just trying to put some Dr Scholls in his shoes)
There's 100% certain, and there's 100% stupid. What if the guy HAD been an arabic muslim, writing in arabic or whatever. What is the % chance that his handwriting is a magic spell that's going to blow up the plane?
Richard Reid wasn't Arabic at all, so any system of targeting by racial profile would have given him a pass.
There are a number of perfectly legal and non tax related reasons for hiding business activity from competitors or parasitic 'investors'. Prove on a case by case basis that these people were cheating on taxes before trying them in the court of public opinion.
There's also absolutely nothing preventing a corporation, which happens to be using these methods for perfectly legitimate reasons, from also at the same time using the self same method to avoid taxes. I can think of zero rational reasons to believe that, under such a circumstance, any corporation would not do so.
F minus minus. Go back and read Plato's Republic. Freedom is always compromised by inequality. It is also impossible to ever reach or maintain a perfect equilibrium. Constant vigilance etc., etc.
Nope. What's kinda the thing is the "whatever that means" part. For example, some people seem to think capitalism is a synonym for free markets. I don't.
This summary makes it sound like we've traded a generation of knee-jerk pro capitalism propagandists for a generation of knee-jerk anti-capitalism propagandists. (Of course, the truth is that we are probably most often getting our news from propagandists on one side or the other.)
Capitalism is a tool. Socialism is a tool. There are probably other economic tools which remain to be invented. It is always a bad idea to let a tool be the master. Oh, and what's that saying about the craftsman who only has one tool?
Slashdot Mirror
The article is describing them in relation to the twitter account, which, it seems, was primarily used for racial justice activism. I've never heard of this person before either, but I could give two shits if the actual person is a plumber or a mailman the rest of the day. The story is about the twitter account.
If you vote in a twin who does the same, vote them out too. Eventually, the lesson that acting against the interest of your constituents will not get you reelected will sink in.
I have a better solution. No matter who you are or where you live, vote out your sitting congressman and senator. If you're not willing to do this, then you aren't as upset with the status quo as you're pretending to be.
You're very right about how the current system is screwed, but it's also exactly the reason the guns and bullets solution is likely to fail. The same money that buys politicians will also buy a lot more guns and ammo than the opposition can muster. And replacing "money makes right" with "might makes right" doesn't seem like a step forward to me.
Even as undereducated as we are, we need to find a better way.
I'm pretty sure commanding real armies is much more intresting than playing with plastic toysoldiers with neighbour, or nowadays owning computer and trying to dominate others virtually :D
Speak for yourself. Strategy war games are one of my favorite genres, but I have zero interest in the real thing. I'd prefer to live in a world where holding the viewpoint you suggest is enough to get you a DSM classification.
I'd love to see you just try to ride a bicycle on a sidewalk in Manhattan. Could make a great youtube video, and maybe even give you a shot at a Darwin Award.
Worse. One has to account for how you were lucky enough to be a simulation created in a world that has only a 1 in a billion chance of being real!
I wish I knew if this was intended as irony or a libertarian admitting that they are in favor of tyranny.
Jay Rosen, media critic and a professor of journalism at New York University, said: Trying to kill a publication you don't like by funding lawsuits against them isn't very libertarian, is it?
Huh? It's not? Especially when they turn out to be valid lawsuits, it seems a very libertarian thing to do. If a company is wronging people in a way that lawsuits would succeed against them, but aren't normally pressed because those being wronged don't have the money for lawyers, sure, you can fund them.
Hell, I donate to a couple funds for doing just that.
Funding a lawsuit to stop a wrong from being done is nothing at all the same as funding a lawsuit with the intent of stopping unrelated behavior that you just happen to not like.
I thought that, in theory, libertarians believed in liberty. Or is that only for themselves, and it's ok to suppress everyone else's? I mean, if he were openly funding the lawsuits, you might have half a libertarian leg to stand on.
No correlation found.
Firstly, no single individual tried to silence or remove Eich. I'll leave the reasons why this matters as a though exercise for those who obviously don't get enough.
Second, Brendan Eich is still completely free to espouse whatever opinions he wants, in whatever medium he chooses.
Ironically, some people are being ironic, even when they didn't mean to be.
The other golden rule, he who has the gold makes the rules.
This is what we have now, yeah?
Two wolves and a sheep deciding what's for dinner.
This will become a problem when the number of powerful is greater than the number of powerless. We're a safe way off from that happening. Or did you not notice that all of your examples were 1 wolf and 10 sheep deciding what's for dinner?
You're completely missing your own point. In making rules (regardless of "fairness"), we are deciding on what the game itself is, and what constitutes "winning". I think as a species we can do better than running a who has the biggest yacht contest.
The term disposable income keeps getting tossed around, and it's never made any sense to me, and the linked graph doesn't provide any explanation. So I looked it up.
Turns out, the economic definition of disposable income is : " total personal income minus personal current taxes." Nothing at all about cost of living. All the chart shows is that tax rates have gone down, especially for those with more money. I think we already knew that.
In short, the chart linked above is completely irrelevant to the discussion at hand.
The fact is, about 1 in 8 American families can afford what, a generations ago, was considered a middle class lifestyle. I don't think an iPhone and an occassional Starbucks coffess is tipping the scale here.
That is called capitalism. and it is why Canada, and the USA have a lot more money than other systems.
We spread resources around to those who can pay the most for them. It isn't the most efficient system but it is at least fair. In the sense that everyone is equal in who can do the buying. maybe not having the cash to buy, but that is another story.
It's not at all another story. Unless all participants begin the game from the same starting position, any definition of "fair" is going to be complete and utter nonsense. Of course, fair is not a possibility anyway. Some people are born with greater or lesser skills on one area or another. Some people are born with higher risk of heart disease. Some people are born with cleft palates. Some people are born with cancer.
Maybe your mama told you this: Life isn't fair. So maybe it's time for societies to stop clinging to a 5 year old's vision of fairness and instead decide what result is wanted, and how to best get that result.
Money is a proxy for labor. Full stop.
Soooo.. how does inheritance play into that? Or land ownership? Or the fact that, under most capitalist systems, the majority of the money generated by labor does not go to the laborers?
Here's another possibility: UBI gives labor the capital to invest in itself. Everyone is both capitalist and worker at once. It's much more efficient to have a cycle that feeds itself than the current system that siphons everything to the top where it just sits and does nothing productive.
Well, yeah, the percentage of American families that can actually afford a "middle class" lifestyle is about 12%.
http://www.usatoday.com/story/...
I suspect the percentage of American families who grew up living that lifestyle, and are trying to live it themselves, is quite a bit higher.
A surprising number of posters here seem to be OK with there being fewer Americans capable of living at or above a middle class lifestyle than a generation ago. Maybe it makes them feel better about themselves. I hope not, because then they're just dicks.
If someone is using Bing for search, they've already been scammed once.
But socialism as a political system requires high levels of taking at the barrel of a gun.
I'm not certain it requires it, though it's certainly an option.The option isn't unique to socialism. Supposedly capitalist entities have been doing so for centuries.
You could be planning a drive-by shooting every time you get in your car.
Perhaps you have a better idea than I do of how a shooting will leave behind no evidence.
In other words, your non sequitur is irrelevant.
Well, there was Richard Reid (poor misunderstood guy who was just trying to put some Dr Scholls in his shoes)
There's 100% certain, and there's 100% stupid. What if the guy HAD been an arabic muslim, writing in arabic or whatever. What is the % chance that his handwriting is a magic spell that's going to blow up the plane?
Richard Reid wasn't Arabic at all, so any system of targeting by racial profile would have given him a pass.
There are a number of perfectly legal and non tax related reasons for hiding business activity from competitors or parasitic 'investors'. Prove on a case by case basis that these people were cheating on taxes before trying them in the court of public opinion.
There's also absolutely nothing preventing a corporation, which happens to be using these methods for perfectly legitimate reasons, from also at the same time using the self same method to avoid taxes. I can think of zero rational reasons to believe that, under such a circumstance, any corporation would not do so.
F minus minus. Go back and read Plato's Republic. Freedom is always compromised by inequality. It is also impossible to ever reach or maintain a perfect equilibrium. Constant vigilance etc., etc.
Nope. What's kinda the thing is the "whatever that means" part.
For example, some people seem to think capitalism is a synonym for free markets. I don't.
This summary makes it sound like we've traded a generation of knee-jerk pro capitalism propagandists for a generation of knee-jerk anti-capitalism propagandists. (Of course, the truth is that we are probably most often getting our news from propagandists on one side or the other.)
Capitalism is a tool. Socialism is a tool. There are probably other economic tools which remain to be invented. It is always a bad idea to let a tool be the master.
Oh, and what's that saying about the craftsman who only has one tool?
DNA absolutely specifies sex for the vast majority (around 99.9% last I looked) of the people out there. XY is male, XX is female.
Let's assume you're right. I guess that also means you're right to tell about 7 million people in the world fuck off, go shit in the woods.