Why should it? What kind of cynical, defeatest mentality has lead to this belief that we must punish success? Is it envy? Resentment? The desire to continue ignoring the reality that our own apathy is the reason we're not as successful as we could be, as individuals?
You act like there's some gigantic pool of magical wealth, and anyone who works hard is granted money by the fair fairy. Here's the reality: We live in a world of limited resources. Wealth is a representation, a measure of how much of those resources we effectively control. It's not about punishing success. It's about trying to make sure everyone has a life that's not been made to be absolute hell by forces outside their control. I'd be tempted to assume that you have no experience with the poor, as you assumed I have no experience with the rich, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you've at least spent some time in a poor neighborhood with Mr. Drunk Fucker next-door that beats his kid because he can't pay his bills, or the Junk-food Twins that don't get the nutriotional opportunities to develop the kind of mind they'd otherwise have a crack at. Are these parents responsible for their actions? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't work at removing the roots of that behavior.
What could you possibly be basing that on? The truth is, you have no idea. You can't understand what it's like to have that kind of money, yet you'll happily spout off here about what it "must be like." How do you know if $22,500 is a lot of money to someone with $150,000 or not? You don't.
Actually, I say that because I do have a lot more money than I used to have, and the same $300 that used to mean the difference in whether or not I could pay the rent now means the difference in whether or not I buy a bigger hard drive. I could lose $20 and it would have practically zero impact on my life. Back then, losing $20 would have a pretty noticeable impact. Don't act like somehow life is financially hard when you're making that kind of money. I've known plenty of people that are on that end of the scale, and plenty of people on the other end. $22,500 in taxes on one of the most frivolous luxury items around is practically nothing.
Sure. It's the same rationale for abolishing capital gains tax. The money has already been taxed.
Sorry, I fail to see how that's an intrinsic evil. Giving your money to a charity is arguably more helpful to society than giving it to your relatives, and since tax is only there in the first place to provide utility to society through the financial transactions of the populace, there's no axiomatic reason re-taxing "the same money" is A Very Bad Thing.
They've sacrificed and worked hard all their lives, and if it's still a free country (is it?), why shouldn't they be "free" to give their money to their kids, if that's what they want to do?
Depends on your definition of "free country". Individuals in some countries have more personal freedom (they can smoke pot), but less abstract, essential freedom (like freedom of the press). Since our economy, our currency, is federally based, I think your attitude is a bit unwarranted. Let me put it this way: Our economy exists because the federal government effectively controls currency and enforces business- and work-related laws. If you want a governmentless economy, I think you're in for a wake-up call. That said, why is it so fundamental that people have the right to accumulate arbitrary huge economic power at the expense of others? Seems like that's against the best interest of society, and since our government is basically a social contract we enter into for the good of all of us, it also seems like an unwise policy for the government to espouse.
The fact that you're jealous doesn't change the fact that it's their money.
It's pretty rude to make negative assumptions about people you don't know. I'm not particularly jealou
I have to say, mouth-foam aside, I have a lot of respect for the guy. There's usually a kernel (heh heh) of truth to most of his arguments. He's right in this case; software patents are bad, and exempting the Linux kernel from some of them changes nothing. Sure he's off the deep end, but he's basically on the right side, and more importantly, he's incredibly straightforward. +1, Transparent agenda.
a man who has contributed much to society in the form of...
*cough*...GCC? The man may be something of a lunatic when it comes to advocacy, but don't act like he hasn't contributed immensely to open source (something I feel is a very valid contribution to society, even if it doesn't *gasp* get you paid).
Actually, he was pretty grudging about acknowledging that... I remember him saying something afterward to the effect that the KDE team should apologize for not having used GPL'd software the whole time.
How are you going to enforce collective ownership among humans?
I don't know, but the U.S. government does a pretty good job of it with national parks and roads.
In "the real world" every communist state has been authoritarian.
So? In "the real world" every U.S. president has been a white male. That doesn't mean that being the president necessarily makes you white or male.
All collective ownership does is concentrate all the power in the hands of whoever is making the decisions. If Marx couldn't see that then he was a fool.
Capitalism merely concentrates power in the hands of whoever sits at the top of the ever-steeper wealth gradient. Do you really believe money doesn't drive the U.S. government? Do you really believe millions of dollars are sunk into lobbying for nothing? Money buys power. Money is power. Calling Marx a fool for creating a system where powerful people can end up taking control is bit much. Communism may be totally impractical, but you haven't given much of an argument to support the notion, and capitalism certainly isn't without its glaring flaws.
GP never said Argentina was a communist state. He merely stated that is shows an example of non-centralized communism in action. In fact, in this case, his entire point is that it's *not* a communist state.
Treaties? Red herring. Communism is an economic method, not a governing method. Assuming Argentina was a communist state, it could still be a democracy, a republic, a dictatorship, etc.
Oh, so you mean that if an application turns out differently in practice than in theory, we can change definition of the name of the theory to match the product of the application?
Umm, that's exactly what he means. That's how this thing called "language" works.
You know what sucks? Utopia. Every attempt at creating a utopia has failed; clearly, utopia is shit.
My point is that doesn't matter. You can't claim a tax is unfair because people that have the most pay the majority of taxes. If you swallow that reasoning, then even if every really wealthy person payed 1% income tax, and everyone below $30,000 payed 30%, it would still be unfair to the rich (depending, of course, on how many poor and rich people there were). If you really *do* believe that's unfair to the rich, then we don't have any basis for discussion.
No, actually it makes less sense the more you think about it. Sales tax
...Doesn't account for the difference in impact money has depending on how wealthy you are. A low-income family that has to buy a beater car for $2,000 is probably already fucked because of the money they'll spend fixing it, and you say $300 is "practically nothing"? Where I grew up, $300 was *a lot of money*. I would say $22,500 is a lot closer to "practically nothing" for someone who has the kind of money that they can throw it away buying a cock on wheels.
...Makes no economic sense whatsoever. Sales tax hurts consumption. Basic economic theory... price goes up, consumption goes down. Progressive income tax, on the other hand (continuously progressive, none of this bracket shit) doesn't really nerf incentive to do anything. No one says, "oh fuck it, this job only pays $3,000 more than the alternative instead of $5,000 more, I don't want to make more money unless I keep all of it." As long as making more money never costs you as much as the gain, there's incentive to do it, and someone will.
Now please give me a good rationale for abolishing inheritance tax. It seems pretty goddamned obvious that in a system where it "takes money to make money", it's a slippery slope into very centralized control of the vast majority of wealth (can you see any parallels in America today?). Why should rich kids get a free ride just because they were born to rich parents? They're already going to have all the advantages associated with growing up wealthy (better nutrition, better schools... Kurt Vonnegut would describe it as them being taught at an early age to sip from the money river). Honestly, I wouldn't lose much sleep if Joe Billionaire could only make his son into Joey Millionaire. Boo hoo, he can't buy two beach houses and fifty cars.
Maybe the GP is just counting all the lost productivity due to MS software against Bill. Most welfare recipients couldn't adversely affect society to such a magnitude if they devoted their lives to it.
I remember reading somewhere that Ross Perot, through various loopholes, pays something on the order of 7% income tax. So I laugh whenever some conservative goes off about how America's wealthy are like Atlas, bearing a world of tax burdens on their weary (but capable and compassionate!) shoulders. Let's give them all a hand, and tax cuts!
Just because everyone is greedy doesn't mean that greed should be socially acceptable. In many societies it's not.
The problem with a greed-driven society is that the greediest come out on top. Example: every multi-billionaire that's still working like a dog or screwing someone over to make another buck. Yes, that's probably how he got rich in the first place (yes it's probably a he), and yes it's still compulsive behavior.
Like it or not, when you codify personal power into a monetary system, money buys anything. Groceries, murders, pay-per-view wrestling, politicians. So the bulk of the power ends up with those who want primarily just that. Insert some proverb about people who want power being the last ones that should have it.
The size of government is completely beside the point. Whereever laws are made, you will find businessmen trying to distort them to the (usually exclusive) benefit of business. Even Adam Smith warned of this in The Wealth of Nations. All smaller government does at that point is lower the price of lawmakers.
My point is that a government is never wholly good or evil.
Okay. The GP said "Our government stinks with evil", which is slightly different. It means there is a noxious odor of evil that pervades the actions of our government. It was true when we were destroying Chile and Nicaragua, it was true when we were (are?) destroying Iraq and Afghanistan. I see no reason to assume it isn't still true.
NO, this does not mean that every elected official is evil (or even necessarily the majority of them, although the jury's still out on that one). It simply means that the *organization*, if anthropomorphized, behaves like a psychopath. From M-W:
an emotionally and behaviorally disordered state characterized by clear perception of reality except for the individual's social and moral obligations and often by the pursuit of immediate personal gratification in criminal acts, drug addiction, or sexual perversion
True, but the GP was arguing that passwords are useless because any password can be brute-forced. So I'm assuming a strong password to disprove his point.
Let's see... assuming lower- and upper-case letters and numbers are the only allowed components of a password, even a machine capable of one trillion password checks per second would take about 22,337,120,292,586,187,942 years to run through all the possible twenty-character passwords.
So yes, your statement is true, but the brute-force computer you're theorizing doesn't exist, and probably won't for a long, long time.
It's pretty clear that God's kingdom takes a backseat to profits with these guys. They're not exactly where they might be as far as environmental concern goes.
Ah, I see. Thanks for clearing that up. Yeah, I agree with almost everything you said.
I more or less agree that even when legalized it's "bad", and does hurt the prostitute, but only on average. I'm sure there are prostitutes that enjoy (or at least aren't bothered by) their work, and who suffer no psychological trauma from it. But that's essentially true of most "unpleasant" professions. Generally speaking, people who work those jobs have few choices, but some may not mind it.
Instead of undermining male supremacy, prostitution actually undermines female power. If you're a wife or a girlfriend, i.e. you've made a choice of a man and you want to keep him yours, the last thing you want is him to be able to indulge himself with a string of easily available and discardable women.
I don't feel your conclusion is very solid here. Are you saying prostitution is bad because it allows men to easily obtain sex? If your wife/girlfriend is likely to be emotionally hurt because you slept with a protitute, that's because you made the choice to cheat. If you're so inclined, I find it more likely than not that you'll end up cheating at some point anyway. The participants of the actual relationship are responsible for their own fidelity, period.
If sex for sale is all it takes to stimulate betrayal, something wasn't right to begin with.
For those considering "life of the author" as a factor in copyright law, it may be interesting to consider how that may change if human lifespans are radically extended. Do we want to allow for copyright periods measured by the millenia?
Slashdot Mirror
Disclaimer: U.S.-centrism.
Why should it? What kind of cynical, defeatest mentality has lead to this belief that we must punish success? Is it envy? Resentment? The desire to continue ignoring the reality that our own apathy is the reason we're not as successful as we could be, as individuals?
You act like there's some gigantic pool of magical wealth, and anyone who works hard is granted money by the fair fairy. Here's the reality: We live in a world of limited resources. Wealth is a representation, a measure of how much of those resources we effectively control. It's not about punishing success. It's about trying to make sure everyone has a life that's not been made to be absolute hell by forces outside their control. I'd be tempted to assume that you have no experience with the poor, as you assumed I have no experience with the rich, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you've at least spent some time in a poor neighborhood with Mr. Drunk Fucker next-door that beats his kid because he can't pay his bills, or the Junk-food Twins that don't get the nutriotional opportunities to develop the kind of mind they'd otherwise have a crack at. Are these parents responsible for their actions? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't work at removing the roots of that behavior.
What could you possibly be basing that on? The truth is, you have no idea. You can't understand what it's like to have that kind of money, yet you'll happily spout off here about what it "must be like." How do you know if $22,500 is a lot of money to someone with $150,000 or not? You don't.
Actually, I say that because I do have a lot more money than I used to have, and the same $300 that used to mean the difference in whether or not I could pay the rent now means the difference in whether or not I buy a bigger hard drive. I could lose $20 and it would have practically zero impact on my life. Back then, losing $20 would have a pretty noticeable impact. Don't act like somehow life is financially hard when you're making that kind of money. I've known plenty of people that are on that end of the scale, and plenty of people on the other end. $22,500 in taxes on one of the most frivolous luxury items around is practically nothing.
Sure. It's the same rationale for abolishing capital gains tax. The money has already been taxed.
Sorry, I fail to see how that's an intrinsic evil. Giving your money to a charity is arguably more helpful to society than giving it to your relatives, and since tax is only there in the first place to provide utility to society through the financial transactions of the populace, there's no axiomatic reason re-taxing "the same money" is A Very Bad Thing.
They've sacrificed and worked hard all their lives, and if it's still a free country (is it?), why shouldn't they be "free" to give their money to their kids, if that's what they want to do?
Depends on your definition of "free country". Individuals in some countries have more personal freedom (they can smoke pot), but less abstract, essential freedom (like freedom of the press). Since our economy, our currency, is federally based, I think your attitude is a bit unwarranted. Let me put it this way: Our economy exists because the federal government effectively controls currency and enforces business- and work-related laws. If you want a governmentless economy, I think you're in for a wake-up call. That said, why is it so fundamental that people have the right to accumulate arbitrary huge economic power at the expense of others? Seems like that's against the best interest of society, and since our government is basically a social contract we enter into for the good of all of us, it also seems like an unwise policy for the government to espouse.
The fact that you're jealous doesn't change the fact that it's their money.
It's pretty rude to make negative assumptions about people you don't know. I'm not particularly jealou
I have to say, mouth-foam aside, I have a lot of respect for the guy. There's usually a kernel (heh heh) of truth to most of his arguments. He's right in this case; software patents are bad, and exempting the Linux kernel from some of them changes nothing. Sure he's off the deep end, but he's basically on the right side, and more importantly, he's incredibly straightforward. +1, Transparent agenda.
a man who has contributed much to society in the form of...
...GCC? The man may be something of a lunatic when it comes to advocacy, but don't act like he hasn't contributed immensely to open source (something I feel is a very valid contribution to society, even if it doesn't *gasp* get you paid).
*cough*
Actually, he was pretty grudging about acknowledging that... I remember him saying something afterward to the effect that the KDE team should apologize for not having used GPL'd software the whole time.
How are you going to enforce collective ownership among humans?
I don't know, but the U.S. government does a pretty good job of it with national parks and roads.
In "the real world" every communist state has been authoritarian.
So? In "the real world" every U.S. president has been a white male. That doesn't mean that being the president necessarily makes you white or male.
All collective ownership does is concentrate all the power in the hands of whoever is making the decisions. If Marx couldn't see that then he was a fool.
Capitalism merely concentrates power in the hands of whoever sits at the top of the ever-steeper wealth gradient. Do you really believe money doesn't drive the U.S. government? Do you really believe millions of dollars are sunk into lobbying for nothing? Money buys power. Money is power. Calling Marx a fool for creating a system where powerful people can end up taking control is bit much. Communism may be totally impractical, but you haven't given much of an argument to support the notion, and capitalism certainly isn't without its glaring flaws.
GP never said Argentina was a communist state. He merely stated that is shows an example of non-centralized communism in action. In fact, in this case, his entire point is that it's *not* a communist state.
Treaties? Red herring. Communism is an economic method, not a governing method. Assuming Argentina was a communist state, it could still be a democracy, a republic, a dictatorship, etc.
You know what sucks? Utopia. Every attempt at creating a utopia has failed; clearly, utopia is shit.
My point is that doesn't matter. You can't claim a tax is unfair because people that have the most pay the majority of taxes. If you swallow that reasoning, then even if every really wealthy person payed 1% income tax, and everyone below $30,000 payed 30%, it would still be unfair to the rich (depending, of course, on how many poor and rich people there were). If you really *do* believe that's unfair to the rich, then we don't have any basis for discussion.
No, actually it makes less sense the more you think about it. Sales tax
...Doesn't account for the difference in impact money has depending on how wealthy you are. A low-income family that has to buy a beater car for $2,000 is probably already fucked because of the money they'll spend fixing it, and you say $300 is "practically nothing"? Where I grew up, $300 was *a lot of money*. I would say $22,500 is a lot closer to "practically nothing" for someone who has the kind of money that they can throw it away buying a cock on wheels.
...Makes no economic sense whatsoever. Sales tax hurts consumption. Basic economic theory... price goes up, consumption goes down. Progressive income tax, on the other hand (continuously progressive, none of this bracket shit) doesn't really nerf incentive to do anything. No one says, "oh fuck it, this job only pays $3,000 more than the alternative instead of $5,000 more, I don't want to make more money unless I keep all of it." As long as making more money never costs you as much as the gain, there's incentive to do it, and someone will.
Now please give me a good rationale for abolishing inheritance tax. It seems pretty goddamned obvious that in a system where it "takes money to make money", it's a slippery slope into very centralized control of the vast majority of wealth (can you see any parallels in America today?). Why should rich kids get a free ride just because they were born to rich parents? They're already going to have all the advantages associated with growing up wealthy (better nutrition, better schools... Kurt Vonnegut would describe it as them being taught at an early age to sip from the money river). Honestly, I wouldn't lose much sleep if Joe Billionaire could only make his son into Joey Millionaire. Boo hoo, he can't buy two beach houses and fifty cars.
Sounds like it's just a matter of distribution to me.
Thanks for the data. It's a bit tangential to my post, but there it is.
Maybe the GP is just counting all the lost productivity due to MS software against Bill. Most welfare recipients couldn't adversely affect society to such a magnitude if they devoted their lives to it.
I remember reading somewhere that Ross Perot, through various loopholes, pays something on the order of 7% income tax. So I laugh whenever some conservative goes off about how America's wealthy are like Atlas, bearing a world of tax burdens on their weary (but capable and compassionate!) shoulders. Let's give them all a hand, and tax cuts!
To be equally absurd, it would cause a media sensation, the public would freak out about the viability of space travel, and NASA would get axed.
Just because everyone is greedy doesn't mean that greed should be socially acceptable. In many societies it's not.
The problem with a greed-driven society is that the greediest come out on top. Example: every multi-billionaire that's still working like a dog or screwing someone over to make another buck. Yes, that's probably how he got rich in the first place (yes it's probably a he), and yes it's still compulsive behavior.
Like it or not, when you codify personal power into a monetary system, money buys anything. Groceries, murders, pay-per-view wrestling, politicians. So the bulk of the power ends up with those who want primarily just that. Insert some proverb about people who want power being the last ones that should have it.
The size of government is completely beside the point. Whereever laws are made, you will find businessmen trying to distort them to the (usually exclusive) benefit of business. Even Adam Smith warned of this in The Wealth of Nations. All smaller government does at that point is lower the price of lawmakers.
Okay. The GP said "Our government stinks with evil", which is slightly different. It means there is a noxious odor of evil that pervades the actions of our government. It was true when we were destroying Chile and Nicaragua, it was true when we were (are?) destroying Iraq and Afghanistan. I see no reason to assume it isn't still true.
NO, this does not mean that every elected official is evil (or even necessarily the majority of them, although the jury's still out on that one). It simply means that the *organization*, if anthropomorphized, behaves like a psychopath. From M-W:
True, but the GP was arguing that passwords are useless because any password can be brute-forced. So I'm assuming a strong password to disprove his point.
Let's see... assuming lower- and upper-case letters and numbers are the only allowed components of a password, even a machine capable of one trillion password checks per second would take about 22,337,120,292,586,187,942 years to run through all the possible twenty-character passwords.
So yes, your statement is true, but the brute-force computer you're theorizing doesn't exist, and probably won't for a long, long time.
KDE's wallet manager handles this rather nicely.
Wouldn't it be great if this worked:
<script type='text/python'>
So someone hurry up and write a Firefox extension to allow this or else I'm going to have to do it myself.
It's pretty clear that God's kingdom takes a backseat to profits with these guys. They're not exactly where they might be as far as environmental concern goes.
Ah, I see. Thanks for clearing that up. Yeah, I agree with almost everything you said.
I more or less agree that even when legalized it's "bad", and does hurt the prostitute, but only on average. I'm sure there are prostitutes that enjoy (or at least aren't bothered by) their work, and who suffer no psychological trauma from it. But that's essentially true of most "unpleasant" professions. Generally speaking, people who work those jobs have few choices, but some may not mind it.
Instead of undermining male supremacy, prostitution actually undermines female power. If you're a wife or a girlfriend, i.e. you've made a choice of a man and you want to keep him yours, the last thing you want is him to be able to indulge himself with a string of easily available and discardable women.
I don't feel your conclusion is very solid here. Are you saying prostitution is bad because it allows men to easily obtain sex? If your wife/girlfriend is likely to be emotionally hurt because you slept with a protitute, that's because you made the choice to cheat. If you're so inclined, I find it more likely than not that you'll end up cheating at some point anyway. The participants of the actual relationship are responsible for their own fidelity, period.
If sex for sale is all it takes to stimulate betrayal, something wasn't right to begin with.
It's the purest form of nutrition food!
For those considering "life of the author" as a factor in copyright law, it may be interesting to consider how that may change if human lifespans are radically extended. Do we want to allow for copyright periods measured by the millenia?