Do you not see a slight difference between cameras in public spaces, usually put there at the insistance of residents, and government mandated survailence in peoples homes? The eventual goal is survailence in homes. But people react better if changes are made in small, incremental steps, as opposed to all at once. There needs to be time for you to get used to the cameras in public first, for you to be desensitized to survailence.
But, Cameras on the street already means the government can see who is coming to your home, at what times, when you live, where you go, etc. It means that they can look into your house through the windows (and if you keep blinds closed, then they know you are doing something suspect). There is plenty of opportunity for violation of privacy without cameras in your home.
All of these suffer from the fact that we don't have any laws that protect privacy, since privacy has always been guaranteed by the physical difficulty of violating it How are laws to protect privacy going to protect you from the government? Yes, you can have privacy laws that protect your privacy from buisnesses and other non-government entities - but there is no way you can expect the government to enforce privacy restrictions on itself any more than you can expect Microsoft to enforce anti-monopoly rules on itself.
Because if you believe government is good and helps people, then it only makes sense that you expand government limitlessly (so you can help people limitlessly). If you believe that the government has an activist role to play in structuring peoples lives and protecting them (including from themselves), then it only makes sense you take it as far as possible.
If the brains of all the policemen were wired together into a huge network, and everything they saw was recorded and stored, it might be.
But, there is also the effect of the policeman being recognized, having to look you in the eye, having to deal with people face to face every day. The policeman is less likely to be a dickhead, than some disembodied voice behind a camera which you will never see.
I am sure you understood that it was simply a modest proposal I was making.
But, U.S. immigration is far more restrictive now than it ever was. There was a time when immigration was far greater in proportion to population size than today. If something is killing the middle class, it is not immigration.
The U.S. has always allowed education people to come to our country to work. In fact, the greatest minds in America of the 20th Century (Einstien, Von Newman, Tesla, Bell, Fermi, Von Braun) were immigrants to the U.S.. The U.S. would have lost WWII and the Cold War if it wasn't for granting Visas to foreigners. Clearly it isn't visas that are destroying the middle class.
Outsourcing? Canada has a higher minimum wage and higher taxes than the United States, yet U.S. jobs are being outsourced to Canada (more so than India). Why? Clearly there has to be something more at work here than a "race to the bottom" that everyone pretends. Can you think of a reason why U.S. companies would want to outsource to a country with a higher minimum wage and higher taxes? Think of the answer to that, and it will give you an idea of why outsourcing is becoming so popular.
But the Lou Dobbs Yellow Journalism Xenophobic "Damn Furiners and Biznessmin" Theory is not the reason for the decline of the middle class.
All those people you mention were European. Europeans, in general, are fairly easy to assimilate into American culture, as America springs from European origins.
Hordes of Latinos and Asians are coming these days, and they are not assimilating. Millions of Africans are coming, and they are not assimilating. I know it's liberal dogma that race and culture don't matter, but reality cares nothing for your dogmas.
It's okay... mod me troll, and repeat over and over "he's a racist, he's a racist, he's a racist, I can ignore him, he's a racist..." Just like the Catholic with their prayer beads, and just as empty, but oh so soothing and you don't have to think... Well, first of all, this Slashdot post was about H-1B visas, which are for highly skilled professionals, not the hords of poor people which you imply, so your comment doesn't even make sense.
But in regards to immigration in general - Did you know that the KKK established in the north as a reaction to Irish and Italian immigration? That the same stuff said about Muslims now were said about Catholics and Jews? Do a google search on the anti-Catholic and anti-Irish propoganda, and you can see that all of the complaints you have now about non-Europeans were being used against Europeans.
Did you know that the percentage of people who speak English as a first language in the U.S. has been steadily INCREASING!!!? Back in the late 1700s and early 1800s there were entire towns that spoke German, Italian, Dutch... At one point in the late 1800s, there were more people who spoke Dutch as a first language in the U.S. than in Holland?! (in the real "old west", people where more likely to have a European accent than the southern style drawl you hear in the Hollywood version) Even in the 1950s it was not uncommon for second or third generation Americans to be somewhat fluent in their parent's or grandparent's language. If anything, English is spoken too much - most Americans nowadays are monolingual.
You do realise, also, that many Europeans didn't totally assimilate into American culture - American culture assimilated those cultures. Do you celebrate St. Patricks day (an Irish Catholic holiday)? Do you ever call someone a "schmuck", or talk about a computer "glitch", or go to a party to "shmooze", or go to a "shlock" horror film, or eat a "bagel"? (Well, then you are speaking Yiddish!). Do you enjoy rock music, or jazz music? (Then you enjoy African rhythm! They aren't even European!!!). Those things just seem "American" to you because YOU have been assimilated into those cultures as much as those cultures were assimilated into America.
And if I do none of the above? If I walk everywhere, raise cotton and weave my own clothes, live in a log cabin and replant trees to replace the ones used, grow my own vegetables using compost, snare just enough meat to feed myself and give up the computer and live off of the electric grid, does everyone else's pollution just stop at the border to my property? Setting aside whether I'm a hypocrite or not, this line of argument is pointless: even if a person took absolutely no action to consent to pollution, the pollution of others would still affect them against their will. In that rare case that you mentioned, you would be an innocent victim... However, you wouldn't be anywhere near as big a victim as someone being nalpalmed in a war, you wouldn't be as big of a victim as a non-violent drug offender serving a life sentence for selling weed... you wouldn't be a victim the way a teenage girl who ends up getting pregnant or AIDS, because the government restricted birth control is a victim. And I am only talking about U.S. government abuses, I am not even bringing up Hitler, or Mao, or Stalin, or those who would victimize people even worse.
Your worst case hypothetical victimization is nowhere as bad as real victimization done by the U.S. government, every day... let alone the far worse victimization done by other governments throughout history.
If I am forced between choosing your right not to have pollution remotly touch you, or other peoples rights not to be killed, tortured, bankrupted, have their privacy violated, etc., I side with them. Some vauge promise that the EPA will protect me from pollution is not enough for me to support a political system that eats people alive. If the government was really interested in protecting the enviornment, all they would have to do is stop subsidizing oil, both directly and though other means such as road funding, foriegn oil wars, etc. The U.S. government was responsible for destroying the passenger rail system in the U.S., is responsible for building the highway system that makes suburbization and wasteful commuting possible, is responsible for creating cost-prohibitive regulations such that only a handful of multinational corporations can afford to make cars - And you expect the same people who created the enviornmental crises to solve the problem? Why don't you ask John Wayne Gasey to start a day-care center while you are at it.
See my other branch of the thread for how I would take responsibility for the pollution I "create": by forcing the actual producers to pay for it and pass that cost to consumers, I can make responsible choices based on cost that reduce that pollution. If company A's widget-making-process emits enough toxins to cause 1/1,000,000th of a sickness causing $x to treat while company B's widget-making process can do it in 1/10,000,000th of a case, B's widget will be cheaper by that much, and people will buy B's widgets. What if the government required that all items be labeled with the amount of CO2 (or other pollution) they produce, the same way food has nutritional information on the package (except this would apply to all goods and services)? But the government didn't actually collect any money?
Or if the government set a minimum price for an item, based on it's CO2 production (or other pollution), but the government didn't actually collect any money?
Even these solutions are open for abuse (the EPA could, for example, overestimate CO2 production for buisness owners if they critize the President - intimidating free speech). But it would eliminate a lot of potential for government abuse. Would you supporting something like that?
Remember the nightmare, back before the U.S. restricted immigration!?!?!
We had the scurge of people like Einstien, and John von Neumann! We had the evil of people like Enrico Fermi, and Nicoli Tesla, and Alexander Graham Bell, stealing up all those jobs that should have gone to hard working Americans! And it is about time we kick that evil job-stealing bastard Linus Torvalds from this great U.S. of A. to whatever Scandinavian hell-hole he is from!!!
Think how much more advanced and successful the U.S. economy would be if it wasn't for these people ruining everything!
The people who are against allowing foreign workers and immigrants into the United States claim they are not racists or xenophobes. They claim that by increasing the labor pool for a certain job, that it lowers the wage for that job - And they are just trying to "protect American workers". They feel that these workers are "stealing jobs" from Americans.
Fine. In that case, lets ban childbirth! Every year, millions of babies are born in the United States, and grow up to compete with the existing labor force! Our population is increasing and increasing and increasing! That of course means there are millions of more people competing for the same jobs!
Now, I know what you are saying... people get old, they retire, they die. Of course. I am not saying that a few selected people won't be allowed to have children - Perhaps there could be some sort of national childbirth lottery. But if we don't do something about all those job-stealing babies being born, we aren't going to have a country left!
Yes, I agree, some may say that we are sacrificing our tradition of freedom by taking away people's right to procreate. Sure, but we are also sacrificing our tradition of being a country of immigrants by restricting immigration (ever heard of "give me your tired, give me your poor"? Probably not. Lets just say that unless your skin is red, you are the product of immigration). The freedom-loving person would want to be free to hire whoever they want, not to be told who they have to hire. This sacrifice in freedom is nessicary to protect our economy!
Fascinating position to hold in a thread about the EPA, which was ostensibly created because corporations were forcing chemicals into people's bodies against their will. The "evil corporations" don't poison people against their will. People have decided that they want the goods and services that can only be produced through industrial processes that produce contaminants... Every time you buy a computer, every time you buy a plastic container, every time you purchase soaps and detergent, every time you wrap your sandwich in plastic wrap, every time you buy a food product sealed in plastic, every time you drive your car or take a trip on an airplane, every hour that you run your computer, or leave the lights on... every one of these actions gives consent for pollution - because they can only be produced WITH pollution.
Corporations have no ideological commitment to producing pollution. Corporations produce pollution producing goods and services that people demand. If people didn't demand those goods and services, then the corporation wouldn't produce that pollution. If people demanded less polluting manufacturing methods, corporations would be more than happy to provide them.
There is no conspiracy by corporations to poison you. Corporations pollute on your behalf! Corporations are proxie polluters! YOU are the real polluter.
The trouble is, you don't want to accept responsibility for pollution you create - you want to blame some evil boogie man. You want a Satan figure that is ultimately responsible for your "original sin"... and you feel if you give a god-king (some all powerful political leader) total control over society, he will punish the evil Satan that is responsible for pollution and will lead us all to the green promise-land. It is simply a re-invention of Christian mythology, superimposed on secular political rhetoric - but extremely dangerous nonetheless.
There is nothing about industrialization that requires toxic emissions. Virtually every human action has an enviornmental footprint. We can minimize emissions, significantly... but we can't eliminate them altogether.
By the producers paying the cost of it themselves. Just so you know, producers don't pay the cost of anything. Consumers pay all costs. The cost of lower emissions (zero emissions is impossible) will be passed on to the consumer. If it costs a company twice as much to make a good or service as it did before, that item will be twice as expensive for consumers.
Do you think any politician is going to intentionally pass a law that will significantly reduce the standard of living for the voters? People support enviornmental restrictions, because they imagine that it is all caused by the rich, or people in different countries, or people other than themselves. No-one actually thinks that they are going to have to reduce their consumption.
Apparently you are under the impression that your government is independent from the corporations ? If the government is under the control of corporations, then it is only rational to assume that adding more government regulation is just about the stupidest most self-defeatest way to fight the corporations.
If the corporations own the government, then it means that corporations need the government to thrive (otherwise, why bother taking over the government) - Therefore fighting big government is fighting big corporations.
Of course, what you are saying is totally irrelevent, because there is no such thing as "the corporations" as a singular entity. There are tens of thousands of corporations, each with their own conflicting agendas and interests. What is good for one corporation, may be disasterous for another, so to assume that they are working together for one goal is paranoid insanity.
No, it is time to face the fact that if you are for big-government, you are for big-corporation. If you are for small-government, you are against the corporations.
Star Wars isn't science fiction - It is a space opera fairy tale. While Serenity wasn't "hard" science fiction, Serenity actually deals with scientific and technological dillemas (such as the morality of using chemicals to modify human behavior). It is mostly an adventure story, but it at least makes some attempt at being science fiction.
No, the constitution is not the gospel... which is why there is a clearly defined process for ammending the constitution!
You don't think that the constitution addresses air pollution? Fine, then create an amendment that gives the federal government the power to regulate air pollution! What is so crazy about actually following a democratic process in order to give new powers to the federal government?
But instead of using a democratic process, people want to argue that the Commerce Clause gives the executive branch virtually limitless powers to do just about anything. I know you are under the illusion that by giving the executive branch unchecked power to do whatever you want, good things will happen... and that the only problem with dictatorship is that we have a bad dictator, and as soon as we elect a Democrat dictator everything will be good.
But please admit you support facism, and not constitutional democracy. Admit that you feel a proper constitutional democracy is not responsive enough, and that we have to scrap democracy for popular dictatorship. But don't pretend to support democracy when you really support facism! Even if you support facism for "good" reasons, it is facism. Understand?
And what about corporations ? Shouldn't they have limited power ? Heck, they aren't even chosen by the people. I have never been threatened with violence or imprisonment by a corporation... corporations don't have the ability to tax my income... corporations don't have the ability to censor my speech... corporations don't invade foriegn countries... corporations aren't concerned with my religious affiliation, what chemicals I put in my body, how I raise my children. Corporations don't tell me how to live my life. Corporations don't search me when I enter or leave the country. Corporations don't pull me over and search my car and give me a ticket.
I mean, aside from the fact that the modern regulatory structure CREATED the modern corporation, and that corporations tend to support more government regulation and not less - It is crazy to suggest that a violent, agressive, oppressive institution like government is the way to keep corporations in check. Corporations are like the bully down the street, and government is like Stalin... I can fight my own battles against the corporations without sadistic authoritarians such as yourself helping me out, thanks!
Don't tell me poison is the cost of progress, either, unless the corporate executives are offering to pay the price themselves instead of forcing it on everyone else. How exactly do you plan to run an industrial society, without creating pollution?
It surprises me how a website full of otherwise apparently intelligent people can display such ignorance.
The Bush administration has consistently governed favoring crony-ism, special interests, and religious wackos, instead of science.
And it suprises me how a website of otherwise apparently intelligent people such as yourself can display such ignorance...
Ever heard of natrual selection? When you put politicians in charge of science, the politicians who manipulate the science to promote their agenda are going to do better politically than those who don't manipulate science to promote their agenda. Candidates, parties, and political systems who manipulate science to their advantage, have an inherent advantage in the evolution of the political system.
Leaders manipulating science is the inevitable and unavoidable result of merging science and the state. Every successful politican MUST manipulate science! Science MUST be kept strictly seperated from the state if it is to be untarnished by politics.
Some of us are interested in science, which is a study of how the real world works.
If you were interested in the real world, you would realize that the ever increasing control of science by the political class is a danger to science. Bush isn't the problem, he is just a symptom of the problem. If science is going to survive, there needs to be a strict seperation of science and the state the same way there is supposed to be a strict seperation between the church and the state.
Unfortunatly, scientists are more worried about getting an easy federal grant than they are about the long term future of science.
They can be made to work in the US, but only by forcing people to stop running away from the problems that cities currently have and instead fix them.
Actually, it is the attitude of people like you which has been causing a lot of the problems in the first place. Big city official in the U.S. LOVE to force people to do stuff - They have been using all sorts of authoritarian methods to try to force people to live according to whatever European design is popular. They love to tax, love to regulate, love to dictate. They can't get enough of it.
The trouble is that people (at least Americans), don't want to be told how to live their lives. It is the idea that people should be forced (as you suggested) to live a certain way that people are running away from when they go to the suburbs! A tax on gas won't do anything, because people will gladly pay a lot more for gas, in order to pay less property tax, in order to paint their house the color they want, in order to eat the kinds of foods they want without the government banning it, in order to be able to have a fenced in backyard without the fear of some urban planner telling them "Fences create barriers! We are going to force everyone to remove their fences to create a greater sense community!" because that is the fashionable thing to do at the time.
Perhaps Europeans are more comfortable being micromanaged by the state because their long history of monarchy and imperialism created a culture where people are more conformist and obedient - it wasn't a big step from your feudal lord issuing commands, to your local planning board issuing commands. But in the U.S., where the culture evolved around independent, self-sufficient, middle class rural farmers - Well in the 1960s in the U.S. when the role of city planners was changed from worrying about zoning, sanitation, and safety, to worrying about lifestyle, culture, and social justice, and the city planners took a much more European social engineering approach, American rebelled and moved to the suburbs.
Most successful U.S. cities, are cities where the government has decided to focus on issues like waste disposal, sanitation, public safety, etc., and not about banning trans-fats and goose-livers, building a "cultural identity", or whatever social issue is fashionable to dictate about. Americans traditionally want a government that stays out of their private lives, and that is why the suburbs are so attractive.
Yes, but the increased property taxes improve the schools, police, and city infrastructure, which helps the lower income people. Also, some of the low-income people are home owners, and make out quite well (the house they paid $5000 for in the early 90s now going for $200,000+).
Gentrification is really more a problem for two groups of people:
1. The gentrifiers themselves - They want to think of themselves as the cool "urban pioneer". When the neighborhood then gets filled with upper middle class white professionals with obnoxious dogs, who like to walk to the organic "fair-trade" coffee shop and the local Whole Foods market... well the whole urban pioneer hipster image is ruined.
The yuppies who worry about gentrification are the folks who gentrify a neighberhood. They want to move to a neighborhood, and then "conserve" some of the "lower income" people as if they were the local flora and fauna, to give the neighborhood "a little color". And it isn't hard for them, with all their money and resources, and thier limitless sense of self-rightiousness, to find a few local "low-come" people to side with them.
2. Socialists who want to see everyone living in government run public housing, of course hate market-oriented urban renewal.
For most people living in a neighborhood, gentrification only brings benifits.
An alternative argument would be that if Canadian culture is so great, it will preserve itself. Another arguement would be that there is no real Canadian culture - there is Quebec culture, Newfoundland culture, Alberta culture, First Nations culture, Chinese immigrant culture, etc. - and that attempts to promote an imaginary single catch-all "Canadian" culture actually destroy the many real cultures (plural) of Canada.
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Perhaps you could get together with people from the local community, to clean the litter?
But, Cameras on the street already means the government can see who is coming to your home, at what times, when you live, where you go, etc. It means that they can look into your house through the windows (and if you keep blinds closed, then they know you are doing something suspect). There is plenty of opportunity for violation of privacy without cameras in your home.
You have to do something BEFORE it becomes a totalitarian state - because once it becomes a totalitarian state, there is going to be no protesting.
In Switzerland, the civilian population is heavily armed. In England, the population is completly disarmed.
The Swiss can DEMAND privacy, the English can only beg for it.
Because if you believe government is good and helps people, then it only makes sense that you expand government limitlessly (so you can help people limitlessly). If you believe that the government has an activist role to play in structuring peoples lives and protecting them (including from themselves), then it only makes sense you take it as far as possible.
If the brains of all the policemen were wired together into a huge network, and everything they saw was recorded and stored, it might be.
But, there is also the effect of the policeman being recognized, having to look you in the eye, having to deal with people face to face every day. The policeman is less likely to be a dickhead, than some disembodied voice behind a camera which you will never see.
I am sure you understood that it was simply a modest proposal I was making.
But, U.S. immigration is far more restrictive now than it ever was. There was a time when immigration was far greater in proportion to population size than today. If something is killing the middle class, it is not immigration.
The U.S. has always allowed education people to come to our country to work. In fact, the greatest minds in America of the 20th Century (Einstien, Von Newman, Tesla, Bell, Fermi, Von Braun) were immigrants to the U.S.. The U.S. would have lost WWII and the Cold War if it wasn't for granting Visas to foreigners. Clearly it isn't visas that are destroying the middle class.
Outsourcing? Canada has a higher minimum wage and higher taxes than the United States, yet U.S. jobs are being outsourced to Canada (more so than India). Why? Clearly there has to be something more at work here than a "race to the bottom" that everyone pretends. Can you think of a reason why U.S. companies would want to outsource to a country with a higher minimum wage and higher taxes? Think of the answer to that, and it will give you an idea of why outsourcing is becoming so popular.
But the Lou Dobbs Yellow Journalism Xenophobic "Damn Furiners and Biznessmin" Theory is not the reason for the decline of the middle class.
Hordes of Latinos and Asians are coming these days, and they are not assimilating. Millions of Africans are coming, and they are not assimilating. I know it's liberal dogma that race and culture don't matter, but reality cares nothing for your dogmas.
It's okay... mod me troll, and repeat over and over "he's a racist, he's a racist, he's a racist, I can ignore him, he's a racist..." Just like the Catholic with their prayer beads, and just as empty, but oh so soothing and you don't have to think... Well, first of all, this Slashdot post was about H-1B visas, which are for highly skilled professionals, not the hords of poor people which you imply, so your comment doesn't even make sense.
But in regards to immigration in general - Did you know that the KKK established in the north as a reaction to Irish and Italian immigration? That the same stuff said about Muslims now were said about Catholics and Jews? Do a google search on the anti-Catholic and anti-Irish propoganda, and you can see that all of the complaints you have now about non-Europeans were being used against Europeans.
Did you know that the percentage of people who speak English as a first language in the U.S. has been steadily INCREASING!!!? Back in the late 1700s and early 1800s there were entire towns that spoke German, Italian, Dutch... At one point in the late 1800s, there were more people who spoke Dutch as a first language in the U.S. than in Holland?! (in the real "old west", people where more likely to have a European accent than the southern style drawl you hear in the Hollywood version) Even in the 1950s it was not uncommon for second or third generation Americans to be somewhat fluent in their parent's or grandparent's language. If anything, English is spoken too much - most Americans nowadays are monolingual.
You do realise, also, that many Europeans didn't totally assimilate into American culture - American culture assimilated those cultures. Do you celebrate St. Patricks day (an Irish Catholic holiday)? Do you ever call someone a "schmuck", or talk about a computer "glitch", or go to a party to "shmooze", or go to a "shlock" horror film, or eat a "bagel"? (Well, then you are speaking Yiddish!). Do you enjoy rock music, or jazz music? (Then you enjoy African rhythm! They aren't even European!!!). Those things just seem "American" to you because YOU have been assimilated into those cultures as much as those cultures were assimilated into America.
Your worst case hypothetical victimization is nowhere as bad as real victimization done by the U.S. government, every day... let alone the far worse victimization done by other governments throughout history.
If I am forced between choosing your right not to have pollution remotly touch you, or other peoples rights not to be killed, tortured, bankrupted, have their privacy violated, etc., I side with them. Some vauge promise that the EPA will protect me from pollution is not enough for me to support a political system that eats people alive. If the government was really interested in protecting the enviornment, all they would have to do is stop subsidizing oil, both directly and though other means such as road funding, foriegn oil wars, etc. The U.S. government was responsible for destroying the passenger rail system in the U.S., is responsible for building the highway system that makes suburbization and wasteful commuting possible, is responsible for creating cost-prohibitive regulations such that only a handful of multinational corporations can afford to make cars - And you expect the same people who created the enviornmental crises to solve the problem? Why don't you ask John Wayne Gasey to start a day-care center while you are at it. See my other branch of the thread for how I would take responsibility for the pollution I "create": by forcing the actual producers to pay for it and pass that cost to consumers, I can make responsible choices based on cost that reduce that pollution. If company A's widget-making-process emits enough toxins to cause 1/1,000,000th of a sickness causing $x to treat while company B's widget-making process can do it in 1/10,000,000th of a case, B's widget will be cheaper by that much, and people will buy B's widgets. What if the government required that all items be labeled with the amount of CO2 (or other pollution) they produce, the same way food has nutritional information on the package (except this would apply to all goods and services)? But the government didn't actually collect any money?
Or if the government set a minimum price for an item, based on it's CO2 production (or other pollution), but the government didn't actually collect any money?
Even these solutions are open for abuse (the EPA could, for example, overestimate CO2 production for buisness owners if they critize the President - intimidating free speech). But it would eliminate a lot of potential for government abuse. Would you supporting something like that?
Remember the nightmare, back before the U.S. restricted immigration!?!?!
We had the scurge of people like Einstien, and John von Neumann! We had the evil of people like Enrico Fermi, and Nicoli Tesla, and Alexander Graham Bell, stealing up all those jobs that should have gone to hard working Americans! And it is about time we kick that evil job-stealing bastard Linus Torvalds from this great U.S. of A. to whatever Scandinavian hell-hole he is from!!!
Think how much more advanced and successful the U.S. economy would be if it wasn't for these people ruining everything!
The people who are against allowing foreign workers and immigrants into the United States claim they are not racists or xenophobes. They claim that by increasing the labor pool for a certain job, that it lowers the wage for that job - And they are just trying to "protect American workers". They feel that these workers are "stealing jobs" from Americans.
Fine. In that case, lets ban childbirth! Every year, millions of babies are born in the United States, and grow up to compete with the existing labor force! Our population is increasing and increasing and increasing! That of course means there are millions of more people competing for the same jobs!
Now, I know what you are saying... people get old, they retire, they die. Of course. I am not saying that a few selected people won't be allowed to have children - Perhaps there could be some sort of national childbirth lottery. But if we don't do something about all those job-stealing babies being born, we aren't going to have a country left!
Yes, I agree, some may say that we are sacrificing our tradition of freedom by taking away people's right to procreate. Sure, but we are also sacrificing our tradition of being a country of immigrants by restricting immigration (ever heard of "give me your tired, give me your poor"? Probably not. Lets just say that unless your skin is red, you are the product of immigration). The freedom-loving person would want to be free to hire whoever they want, not to be told who they have to hire. This sacrifice in freedom is nessicary to protect our economy!
Corporations have no ideological commitment to producing pollution. Corporations produce pollution producing goods and services that people demand. If people didn't demand those goods and services, then the corporation wouldn't produce that pollution. If people demanded less polluting manufacturing methods, corporations would be more than happy to provide them.
There is no conspiracy by corporations to poison you. Corporations pollute on your behalf! Corporations are proxie polluters! YOU are the real polluter.
The trouble is, you don't want to accept responsibility for pollution you create - you want to blame some evil boogie man. You want a Satan figure that is ultimately responsible for your "original sin"... and you feel if you give a god-king (some all powerful political leader) total control over society, he will punish the evil Satan that is responsible for pollution and will lead us all to the green promise-land. It is simply a re-invention of Christian mythology, superimposed on secular political rhetoric - but extremely dangerous nonetheless.
Do you think any politician is going to intentionally pass a law that will significantly reduce the standard of living for the voters? People support enviornmental restrictions, because they imagine that it is all caused by the rich, or people in different countries, or people other than themselves. No-one actually thinks that they are going to have to reduce their consumption.
Perhaps I replied to the wrong comment... Sorry if that was intended for the wrong person! :)
If the corporations own the government, then it means that corporations need the government to thrive (otherwise, why bother taking over the government) - Therefore fighting big government is fighting big corporations.
Of course, what you are saying is totally irrelevent, because there is no such thing as "the corporations" as a singular entity. There are tens of thousands of corporations, each with their own conflicting agendas and interests. What is good for one corporation, may be disasterous for another, so to assume that they are working together for one goal is paranoid insanity.
No, it is time to face the fact that if you are for big-government, you are for big-corporation. If you are for small-government, you are against the corporations.
Star Wars isn't science fiction - It is a space opera fairy tale. While Serenity wasn't "hard" science fiction, Serenity actually deals with scientific and technological dillemas (such as the morality of using chemicals to modify human behavior). It is mostly an adventure story, but it at least makes some attempt at being science fiction.
No, the constitution is not the gospel... which is why there is a clearly defined process for ammending the constitution!
You don't think that the constitution addresses air pollution? Fine, then create an amendment that gives the federal government the power to regulate air pollution! What is so crazy about actually following a democratic process in order to give new powers to the federal government?
But instead of using a democratic process, people want to argue that the Commerce Clause gives the executive branch virtually limitless powers to do just about anything. I know you are under the illusion that by giving the executive branch unchecked power to do whatever you want, good things will happen... and that the only problem with dictatorship is that we have a bad dictator, and as soon as we elect a Democrat dictator everything will be good.
But please admit you support facism, and not constitutional democracy. Admit that you feel a proper constitutional democracy is not responsive enough, and that we have to scrap democracy for popular dictatorship. But don't pretend to support democracy when you really support facism! Even if you support facism for "good" reasons, it is facism. Understand?
I mean, aside from the fact that the modern regulatory structure CREATED the modern corporation, and that corporations tend to support more government regulation and not less - It is crazy to suggest that a violent, agressive, oppressive institution like government is the way to keep corporations in check. Corporations are like the bully down the street, and government is like Stalin... I can fight my own battles against the corporations without sadistic authoritarians such as yourself helping me out, thanks!
No, all human activity causes damage to the enviornment. It can be minimized, but never completly stopped.
It surprises me how a website full of otherwise apparently intelligent people can display such ignorance.
The Bush administration has consistently governed favoring crony-ism, special interests, and religious wackos, instead of science.
And it suprises me how a website of otherwise apparently intelligent people such as yourself can display such ignorance...
Ever heard of natrual selection? When you put politicians in charge of science, the politicians who manipulate the science to promote their agenda are going to do better politically than those who don't manipulate science to promote their agenda. Candidates, parties, and political systems who manipulate science to their advantage, have an inherent advantage in the evolution of the political system.
Leaders manipulating science is the inevitable and unavoidable result of merging science and the state. Every successful politican MUST manipulate science! Science MUST be kept strictly seperated from the state if it is to be untarnished by politics.
Some of us are interested in science, which is a study of how the real world works.
If you were interested in the real world, you would realize that the ever increasing control of science by the political class is a danger to science. Bush isn't the problem, he is just a symptom of the problem. If science is going to survive, there needs to be a strict seperation of science and the state the same way there is supposed to be a strict seperation between the church and the state.
Unfortunatly, scientists are more worried about getting an easy federal grant than they are about the long term future of science.
They can be made to work in the US, but only by forcing people to stop running away from the problems that cities currently have and instead fix them.
Actually, it is the attitude of people like you which has been causing a lot of the problems in the first place. Big city official in the U.S. LOVE to force people to do stuff - They have been using all sorts of authoritarian methods to try to force people to live according to whatever European design is popular. They love to tax, love to regulate, love to dictate. They can't get enough of it.
The trouble is that people (at least Americans), don't want to be told how to live their lives. It is the idea that people should be forced (as you suggested) to live a certain way that people are running away from when they go to the suburbs! A tax on gas won't do anything, because people will gladly pay a lot more for gas, in order to pay less property tax, in order to paint their house the color they want, in order to eat the kinds of foods they want without the government banning it, in order to be able to have a fenced in backyard without the fear of some urban planner telling them "Fences create barriers! We are going to force everyone to remove their fences to create a greater sense community!" because that is the fashionable thing to do at the time.
Perhaps Europeans are more comfortable being micromanaged by the state because their long history of monarchy and imperialism created a culture where people are more conformist and obedient - it wasn't a big step from your feudal lord issuing commands, to your local planning board issuing commands. But in the U.S., where the culture evolved around independent, self-sufficient, middle class rural farmers - Well in the 1960s in the U.S. when the role of city planners was changed from worrying about zoning, sanitation, and safety, to worrying about lifestyle, culture, and social justice, and the city planners took a much more European social engineering approach, American rebelled and moved to the suburbs.
Most successful U.S. cities, are cities where the government has decided to focus on issues like waste disposal, sanitation, public safety, etc., and not about banning trans-fats and goose-livers, building a "cultural identity", or whatever social issue is fashionable to dictate about. Americans traditionally want a government that stays out of their private lives, and that is why the suburbs are so attractive.
Yes, but the increased property taxes improve the schools, police, and city infrastructure, which helps the lower income people. Also, some of the low-income people are home owners, and make out quite well (the house they paid $5000 for in the early 90s now going for $200,000+).
Gentrification is really more a problem for two groups of people:
1. The gentrifiers themselves - They want to think of themselves as the cool "urban pioneer". When the neighborhood then gets filled with upper middle class white professionals with obnoxious dogs, who like to walk to the organic "fair-trade" coffee shop and the local Whole Foods market... well the whole urban pioneer hipster image is ruined.
The yuppies who worry about gentrification are the folks who gentrify a neighberhood. They want to move to a neighborhood, and then "conserve" some of the "lower income" people as if they were the local flora and fauna, to give the neighborhood "a little color". And it isn't hard for them, with all their money and resources, and thier limitless sense of self-rightiousness, to find a few local "low-come" people to side with them.
2. Socialists who want to see everyone living in government run public housing, of course hate market-oriented urban renewal.
For most people living in a neighborhood, gentrification only brings benifits.