It is true that correlation != causation... in a rational discussion. But if demigogs are looking to fuel hysteria so they can get elected on some issue, correlation is all you need.
The big goal, right now, is to claim that there are "health issues" with regulating video games, so the government can regulate video games the same way it does drugs, or guns, or automobiles. That way they can bypass the whole First Amendment Free Speech arguement.
In the evil capitalist system, a corporate giant like Walmart uses it's enourmous power and natural monopoly to exploit the people by driving out competition and lowering prices... and it also gives it the power to sqeeze suppliers and control content of media products.
Where as in the socialist utopia, a government owned corporation uses it's enourmous power and monopoly to free the people from oppression, by lowering prices, driving out exploitive capitalist competition... sqeezing suppliers into charging the people low prices, and ensuring that the government corporation censors media for exploitive and counter-revolutionary material.
Oh, that is right, the socialist system is less exploitive because "we have power"... we get to vote... every couple years... from a small list of parties... who are highly regulated by those in power... and subject to strict requirements written by those in power... and campaigns are funded by those in power... and in which we recieve information about the election from those in power. How could there be anything exploitive like that.
Drive 20 miles, you lazy bastard! There are kids in China who were were not afraid to stop a column of tanks by standing in front of it, and you are so feeble about whining about driving 20 miles to a store! "HELP - WE NEED THE GOVERNMENT TO HELP PROTECT US FROM $19.99 DISH SETS MADE IN CHINA!!!". How bad do you think the government is going to screw you if you can't even get off your lazy ass to stand up to Walmart!?
Land of the free and home of the brave? Bullshit. Americans are just a bunch of lazy French style socialists, except that France actually makes some pretty good cheese and wine.
Wal-Mart is EVIL, aggressive, and far too powerful for anyone's good.
I would agree, but unfortunatly people's solution to the problem... i.e. get the government involved... is worse than the problem.
If Wal-Mart is EVIL, agressive, and far too powerful for anyone's good, because it lowers prices on Rubbermaid trash cans, then what does that make the government?
Building roads, coordination building in cities, etc., are things that the government has a legit mandate to do. Those are things governments usually have some constitutional authority over, and they have long been accepted as legit functions of government all the way back to ancient times. While I would like to see less government involvement, and experment with local control, emergent system, and decentralization - building roads and sewers is a big jump from planning social engineering.
We are moving into really scary territory when the government is going to have any active policy on Intelligent Design (other than not teaching it in schools). To "discourage" belief in Intelligent Design is an act of social engineering - controling education, media, creating propoganda, etc., in order to discourage an idea - an idea the government has no constitutional mandate to do anything about. The government shouldn't be doing anything more on Intelligent Design than it should be doing something on the Flying Spagettii Monster.
As long as the government isn't activly promoting Intelligent Design, there is no reason for the government to make any policy decisions that have anything to do with it. And there is no reason to spend my money to study it.
FDA regulations make things more expensive, and the FDA is one of the most zealous, compared to other governments, regulatory agency in the world.
Take, for example, the time it takes to comply with regulation on pharmaceuticals... it takes, on average, 10 years and 1 billion dollars to get a new drug approved in the U.S.... This is the highest anywhere in the world. In the 1960s, when the FDA instituted it's strict requirements, the average cost to develop a drug went up by 1600 percent. Most drugs are approved for use in Western Europe long before they are ever approved in the United States. All this information is publicly available, do a Google search on it.
If you are arguing that the FDA plays down risks in order to allow buisnesses to sell dangerous products, that is just not true.
If you are arguing that the FDA overregulates industry in order to raise the costs of goods, and drive smaller competitors out of the market, and that is how it helps buisness, you might very well be on to something. But that is not the point that the first poster was trying to make.
I asked how the government arrives at "safe" levels. He said in effect that "your starting point is that you need to let people run their business". In other words, standards are set by working backwards from what the industry feels they can (just about) accept. "Acceptable" standards are NOT set based on years or decades of study of whether any ill effects arise in humans. (For one thing, such studies would be unethical. For another, decade-long studies would be extremely expensive.)"
So, please understand the reality of the FDA. They have an established history of put businesses first, and people's safety second.
You make a much smarter arguement than the last guy!:) But was you are saying is not true, or so subjective as to not have a lot of meaning.
If microwave oven standards were such that they were not economic to manufacture and sell, there would not be microwave ovens. You aren't really enforcing safety standards, you are banning any piece of technology that has safety risks (which is virtually all technology). I don't really see how it would be possible to approve anything if we insisted on maximum safety regardless of cost - because anything can be made safer if we are willing to spend prohibitive amounts of money on the item.
And, I hardly see why this is an issue with Capitalism or corporations, either. The same decision would be made in a state run Socialist economy. The government economic planning boad would decide how much a microwave has to cost in order to be economical to provide to members of the general public, and safety considerations would have to come second to that limit if you plan to provide the product to society. The limits of supply and production and the conservation of matter and energy must be obeyed, even in Socialist economies.
So I don't see how the FDA is putting corporations first, so much as acting within the limits of reality. A safety standard that is economicly unviable, isn't a safety standard - it is either an outright ban on a technology, or a joke restriction than everyone ignores.
Real science can't refute Intelligent Design... just like it can't refute the Flying Spagetti Monster. It is not the purpose of science to refute every meta-explaination anyone has for the universe. The purpose of science is to understand and predict natural phenomena.
Intelligent Design is not science, because there is no way to test it. If I have a hypothesis that life evolved from simple protiens and chemicals, I can do experiments to show how it is possible to create life from simple protiens in the lab. I can also examine the geological evidence to show that those simple protiens and chemicals existed on earth at one time before life. And, if someone disagrees, they can do research to contradict that. Our understanding of the topic is based on consensus, and that will change over time.
However, if I have a hypothesis that God caused the universe to come into existance, how do I even begin to do an experiment to prove that? God, by definition, is all powerful and beyond the understanding of man. How would I even begin to do an experiment to prove that God does or doesn't exist? And even if I could prove that God didn't exist, is that something you would want me to do?
Listen, if you want to believe that God created the universe, that if fine! There is no problem with that. But don't try to call it science. Religion is great, and all people should be free to practice it without persecution or shame, but it is not science.
If you believe that praying can protect people from getting into a car crash, that is fine. But if we teach students that are learning automotive engineering about prayer, that is totally inappropriate. It is not that we know for sure that prayer doesn't stop accidents, it is that prayer is not a part of engineering practice, by definition. Prayer != Engineering. What is so hard to understand about it?
In no way, shape, or form, is Intelligent Design scientific! It has nothing to do with science! It is religion, trying to mascarade as science.
Do you have any idea how much of your daily life is impacted by government and bureaucratic policy decisions? I didn't think so.
Policy makers who are acting in good faith (OK, maybe that's rare, just to be cynical) rely on studies like this. It is anything but useless, it's crucial.
Wouldn't it be better if my life WAS NOT impacted by government and bureaurcratic policy decisions?
The proponents of Intelligent Design are a tiny but vocal minority, who have virtually no influence on real science whatsoever. Intelligent Design might be a stupid idea, but it certainly is not the most dangerous or widely accepted stupid idea going around nowadays.
Most of the attention on Intelligent Design comes from people posturing against it.
And seriously, if you are gonna get money for studying Intelligent Design, then you should be reasonably able to refute it.
I don't think that you could call a vast government beurocracy which costs industry billions every year and has almost absolute power to dictate policy to buisnesses a capitalist organization. I realize it is the fashion for Socialists to call anything they don't like "Capitalist", in the same way Pat Roberson and the Christian Right call anything they don't like "Satanist", but really your definition of "Capitalism" makes the word meaningless. Why not call things you are against "Badism", and say you are a "Goodist"... that would say about as much.
The FDA, in particular, is considered a bit overzealous if anything. Many drugs, food products, etc., which are totally legal most places in the world, get banned in the U.S. by the FDA. The usual critism is not that the FDA doesn't go far enough in regulation, but that it goes too far compared with places like Western Europe.
Actually, that is a good thing. It means that climate science will not be tainted by politics. Politicians cannot "intimidate" climatologists, if the climatologists are not getting funding from the government.
Other than maybe launching weather satalites (which costs hundreds of millions of dollars), there is no reason climate research cannot be done without government funding - and the results will be far more trustworthy and less influenced by politics.
You wouldn't trust a church to do research about evolutionary science, would you? You wouldn't trust a company to research the flaws of their own product, would you (or at least not make those flaws public)? It is only because we have been conditioned by a government controlled media and educational systems that we don't see the conflict of interest when government (or government funded) agencies do research that directly effects government policy.
But really, are child molestors more of a boogy man than a real threat? Yes, I am aware that there are actually some real child molestors out there, but I would think that as a percentage of the population it would be very small. I mean, there are serial killers out there too, but we are much more likely to be killed by a spouse or neighbor, and much much much more likely to die of a heart attack or auto accident, than to be skinned alive by Hannible Lector.
I have a hard time believing there is an army of psychos out there scheming to go after kids... and are going to conspire to hack our mobile phone system as some big evil pedophile master plan.
I think things like teen pregnancy, or experimenting with drugs, or getting hit by someone driving a big SUV and talking on their cell phone, is the real threat to kids. Perfectly ordinary, everyday things that don't make the TV news. And some of those things (when Sally says she is spending the night at her friends house, but is really going to a party with her boyfriend... when Bobby cuts class to play basketball...), could be helped by these devices.
I am not aware of any Lionhead Studio games that have been available on any other console than the Xbox. Lionhead pretty much makes PC games, and I think there is only one game (Fable), that was converted to the Xbox.
So it is not like there is some significant change in how Lionhead does buisness.
But, I do agree with you, console exclusive games are annoying. But don't worry, Sony will compete the same way (that is why all the GTA games come out on Playstation 2 years before they are released for other platforms).
Why do we have the seperation between Church and State? We have it because when Church and State are merged, religion will be exploited to further the goals of those in charge of the state... and those that disagree with the religion of the ruling class will be persecuted.
Most people (OK, not everyone) agrees that a seperation between Church and State is good, but that is because nowadays religion has become irrelevant. Sure, it is easy to keep the Church seperated from the State, because the Church is no longer the defining belief of our society.
Our society is now defined by the science (and the media, but that is irrelevent for this conversation). The danger that once existed when we had State Religion, now exists when we have State Science. This kind of political pressure on scientists is inevitable when the government is the largest financial supporter of science in the country.
Science will always be clouded by politics, unless we insist on the complete seperation of Science and State, the same way that we do the Church and State! I know that doesn't appeal to the socialists here, who want the government to be in charge of everything. But sorry, government involvement in science means bad science.
And the only added difficulty you would see in getting games with legally-enforced age restrictions is having to have an ID handy to buy them. Big freakin' deal. This is not a small thing:
1. By giving them personal identification, like a licence, they now can send me all kinds of marketing crap, track my purchases to create a marketing profile on me, etc.
2. There is an increased chance of identity theft, because now I got minimum wage clerks looking over my ID.
3. Now there is a way to link my purchases to my identity. Hillary Clinton is claiming that video games cause violence. What happens when they start looking up to see if you purchased GTA if you want to get a pilots licence, or a licence to own a gun, or go to get your passport renewed?
If you say that they don't nessicarily have to record your ID information... there might not be that requirement directly in the law, but all game stores are going to do it so that they can prove to regulators that they only sell to adults.
If a store sold alcohol to minors 35% of the time they'd be fined, lose their license, and have to shut down. It does not represent a "good faith effort" on their part.
Your analogy doesn't work. Alcohol is not a form of expression, and not protected by the First Amendment. But that being said, there are many countries were minors are allowed to purchase alcohol and they have a lot less problem with it than in the U.S.
But a more accurate analogy would be if you had to be 18, and show a licence, in order to purchase a bible or religious material. Athiests, Muslims, Jews, etc., wouldn't want their kids purchasing Bibles, now would they? Don't they have as much right to protect their kids from that, as they do GTA? Surely, the Bible is much more likely to inspire someone to convert to Christianity, than GTA would be to inspire someone to kill cops? Would you support restricting the Bible from minors, and giving big fines and even criminal penalties to those who distribute the Bible?
And don't tell me that the Bible isn't full of sex and violence!!!
So your kid might be able to get a hold of GTA? Big fucking deal. Your kid can probably get a hold of illegal drugs just as easy as a video game if he really wanted to, and look at all the insane stuff governments do to restrict that. Your kid can probably have sex just as easy as he can get ahold of the Hot Coffee Mod for GTA, so is the government supposed to require kids to wear chastity belts? Do you think your kid wouldn't be able to get a hold of some beer, or ciggarettes, or porn magazines, if that is what he wanted.
The video game industry and the retailers are already doing a reasonable job in making sure video games stay out of the hands of minors. We don't need a police state to make it difficult for grown adults to purchase video games, or more expensive, which is what you want to happen.
Of course on the PC there is Starforce copy protection, installing a rootkit if you want to play a game... or worrying about games that are shipped as beta because there is no quality control requirements, and not being able to play it until a month later and they release a patch. Or having to reinstall drivers on a machine because the current drivers are incompatible with a game. Or not being able to sell a game back to the store for nearly half of what I paid for it! Or buying a game that runs like crap because they totally underestimated what the minimum game specs should be! Or having to run Windows, even though OSX or Linux would be better, because a lot of games are Windows only. Or having to buy a desktop computer instead of a laptop so you can upgrade your graphics card every 6 months.
I used to be a hardcore PC gamer, but now I will never buy a PC game again (unless Infocom starts releasing text adventures again:) ). Consoles are now powerful enough to have very fun games, and they save you all kinds of hassle and trouble.
A company charges extra money, for giving you an extra benifit!? The next thing you know, they will be charging people extra to give them bigger seats and better service on airplanes. The next thing you know, they will be charging people extra when they buy a car for luxuries like XM radio, or a more powerful engine! Where will it end? I am afraid it won't end until people who purchase a $2.50 combo meal at McDonalds do not get the same service or quality that they would spending $300 at a top resterant! WHEN WILL THE MADNESS END!!!!???????
People have a basic human right to have armor on their hourses in video games! It is time we nationalize the gaming industry, like we do health care, education, and all vital industries, so we make sure this kind of oppression is eliminated. The government certainly wouldn't exploit us like this!
If it takes a 10 year legal battle to get a site approved for a nuclear reactor, that slows things down (not to mention the payments on the 20 year bond for building the thing are now 5 times as much because of compound interest). I am not aware of any nuclear reactor that was built in the last 50 years that didn't have to deal with protracted NIBYism. Then, when the laws governing the reactor change 20 times during construction, requiring the thing to be modified each time mid construction... then, when the pencils and pens used in the offices at the place, and the discarded potato chip back in the lunch room, are considered "low level nuclear waste" and have to be handled appropriatly, that adds expenses. Then you can't ship the waste out of the reactor to be disposed of, because some NIMBY fight going on for the last 20 years somewhere else, so now the nuclear facility is also where you are storing the waste. Combine it with the fact that it is illegal to recycle nuclear material.
If coal or oil was regulated, restricted, and faught every step of the way that nuclear is, it too would be economically unviable.
But France seems to be using nuclear without any of the problems that we have in the U.S. (probably because in France they are proud of their nuclear power, and consider nuclear power a vital part of their indepenence as a nation). A university in Berlin developed a system for a pebble bed reactor that fits into a cargo container, and can be shipped off to the third world to provide super cheap energy (it would work in the first world too, but no-one would be having it). A Japanese company is developing a reactor for a small town in Alaska. The power for the town will be FREE for everyone, and the company is even paying the full cost of construction... the Japanese company will charge a flat fee for running and maintaining the reactor.
Those environmentalists are some strong, they must be in it with the Freemasons. No, but they ARE in with the oil companies. Oil companies fund a lot of the anti-nuclear movement... after all, the enviornmentalists may not like oil, but we need energy, solar and wind can't provide it yet, and if we dont have nuclear it has to come from oil. They know the enviornmentalists will never ban fossil fuels so long as we need them to not freeze in the winter, or to get food from the farm to our supermarkets. But they CAN get the enviornmentalists to stop nuclear power, because it is not yet been established as a powerful industry yet. Look at where Greenpeace U.S. gets its money (they are required to publish their sources of funding as a non-profit), and look at some of the foundations that give them money, and then look up where those foundations get THIER money (they are non-profits, so they have to publish the sources of funding), and you can see that Greenpeace U.S. is getting FAT PAID from oil companies.
1. Kyoto Protocol doesn't count emmisions reduced by replacing fossil fuels with nuclear power. So if the U.S. replaced fossil fuels and reduced it's emmissions by 90% tommorow, we would not have fufilled our "obligation" to the treaty. We don't need to be part of any kind of treaty that discourages viable forms of alternative energy.
2. Kyoto Protocol doesn't count emmissions offset by increasing green plants and conservation of forests. There are political reasons for wanting to tell people the U.S. to be the highest producer of CO2. When you start including CO2 absorbed by forest, the U.S. starts becoming comparible with most European countries (who have virtually destroyed what was left of any real forests, and have a much higher population density and less plants throughout). Conservation of forests, planting of trees, etc., can't eliminate all our emmissions, but it CAN help, and has very good seconday benifits (like protecting the habitat of animals).
3. Kyoto Protocal doesn't apply to developing nations. While the U.S. has hit it's peak of CO2 output, and it is now increasing in proportion to our population, C02 emmisions are increasing exponentially in China and India. China and India will soon surpass the U.S., if they haven't already (there is reason to believe they underestimate their CO2 emmisions, and there are types of CO2 emmisions that aren't counted as C02 emmisions, like burning dung or wood). China and Inda are going to be the biggest producers of C02, yet they are totally unrestricted. Even their internal enviornmental laws are a lot less restrictive. Which means that the U.S. and other countries will reduce their C02 emmissions by exporting factories to China and India, where the factories will still pollute more than they would if they stayed in the U.S....
The Kyoto Protocol is retarded. There was a whole bunch of political reasons for the Kyoto Protocal, but reducing global warming was not one of them.
The Kyoto Protocal:
1. Discourages CO2 free energy sources, like nuclear. 2. Discourages conservation. 3. Encourages more polution, and hurts our economy, by creating artificial incentives for companies to move to where there are no enviornmental restrictions.
And, to put the icing on the cake, there is absolutly no teeth to the Protocal. The U.S., which didn't sign the protocal and is taking no measures to meet the requirements, is actually doing a better job than countries like Canada, which signed the document and claim to support it. There is no penalty for not meeting the Kyoto requirements, and very few countries have met their obligations. The countries that DID meet their obligations are former Communist block countries that saw a collapse in their economy, and a dramatic decrease in industry, and have nothing to do with enviornmental politcy.
Reducing consumption is a short term stop-gap measure, not a long term solution. Here is why:
A) Most people enjoy having a high standard of living. If you tell people that we are going to have to go back to the lifestyle we had in 1900, or people have in the third world, people aren't going to go for it. It won't be politically viable. I can see something like that happening accidentally because of extreme incompentence in the government, or intentionally in a dictatorship, but you are fooling yourself if you think people in a Democracy are gonna vote themselves a lower standard of living.
B) Billions of people now are living in urban or semi-urban areas, dependent on industrial agriculture, and modern transport, modern heating, refridgeration, etc. We can reduce energy consumption by something like 10%, 20% maybe. Maybe even 50% depending on what sacrafices are made. But human populations increase exponentially. In the end, we would just be slowing down global warming, not stopping it or reversing it. We would have to let billions of people die, restrict people from having children and have things like forced steralization to in order for conservation to work in the long term.
C) Prosperous societies are more likely to develop a long term solution, or to care about a long term solution. At one time, people were very worried that the population was growing faster, and the need for energy growing quicker, than the limited resource of wood could provide energy for, or that "modern" agriculture of the day could provide food for. Of course, we developed the technology to overcome those limitations. But, if we are not prosperous enough to develop new technology and energy sources, we could be doing worse damage to the enviornment. Think what would happen if the population continued increasing, and instead we went to a system of rationing wood as fuel, and continued using 18th century agriculture techniques. In the long run, we would have no forest and most land would be covered in very inefficent farms.
I know there is a secondary political element to the whole enviornmental debate, as you mentioned in your post... people percieve that enviornmental destruction is caused by "Capitalist Greed", and so there is a political and estetic element to forgoing certain luxuries in order to "conserve". (of course, people tend to forget about the enourmous enviornmental damage and waste of the Soviet Union, Communist China, and the complete failure of central planning in efficent use of resources... but hey, Socialism is more of a religion than an economic system nowadays).
Actually, people call any disagreement with the "end of the world", "we must nationalize all industry" type alarmists as some sort of Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
But, I have seen very little information from real scientific magazines, journals, etc., about global warming being the world ending disaster that people like you say. There is lots of political sites that fear monger about global warming... And sometimes that fear mongering reaches the mainstream press.
But, the scientific community is really conservative about global warming. Yes, it is happening, and yes, we know that CO2 emmisions are a significant contributer to global warming. And yes, it would be a very smart idea to significantly reduce our CO2 emmissions. And yes, it might cause big problems if we don't. But beyond what I just mentioned, there is no argreement.
The idea that is being put forth by the Enviornmentalist Movement that we will be living in a Mad Max type world of post-enviornmental destruction is just silly. And that fear is being exploited by a bunch of former-Marxists who are trying to use the enviornment as an excuse for central-planning and failed 20th century economics. The solution to global warming is pretty damn easy, and acceptable politically to those who you call "Right": Nuclear Power. But solving the global warmming issue easily and efficently is not in their interests... in the minds of people like you "Capitalism" is the cause of Global Warming and any solution that doesn't involve massive state control, and an end to "Capitalist Greed" as you percieve it, is not viable.
If there is any one group of people who *I* blame for Global Warming, it is the so-called "Enviornmentalists" who have made technology like nuclear power politically unviable. It is because years of fearmongering about nuclear power that it is not politically viable, and that reasearch into cleaner, safer, and more efficent nuclear power has been non-existant.
When enviornmentalists start accepting nuclear power as a viable solution to global warming, that is when I will start really taking the whole thing seriously.
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It is true that correlation != causation... in a rational discussion. But if demigogs are looking to fuel hysteria so they can get elected on some issue, correlation is all you need.
The big goal, right now, is to claim that there are "health issues" with regulating video games, so the government can regulate video games the same way it does drugs, or guns, or automobiles. That way they can bypass the whole First Amendment Free Speech arguement.
In the evil capitalist system, a corporate giant like Walmart uses it's enourmous power and natural monopoly to exploit the people by driving out competition and lowering prices... and it also gives it the power to sqeeze suppliers and control content of media products.
Where as in the socialist utopia, a government owned corporation uses it's enourmous power and monopoly to free the people from oppression, by lowering prices, driving out exploitive capitalist competition... sqeezing suppliers into charging the people low prices, and ensuring that the government corporation censors media for exploitive and counter-revolutionary material.
Oh, that is right, the socialist system is less exploitive because "we have power"... we get to vote... every couple years... from a small list of parties... who are highly regulated by those in power... and subject to strict requirements written by those in power... and campaigns are funded by those in power... and in which we recieve information about the election from those in power. How could there be anything exploitive like that.
Drive 20 miles, you lazy bastard! There are kids in China who were were not afraid to stop a column of tanks by standing in front of it, and you are so feeble about whining about driving 20 miles to a store! "HELP - WE NEED THE GOVERNMENT TO HELP PROTECT US FROM $19.99 DISH SETS MADE IN CHINA!!!". How bad do you think the government is going to screw you if you can't even get off your lazy ass to stand up to Walmart!?
Land of the free and home of the brave? Bullshit. Americans are just a bunch of lazy French style socialists, except that France actually makes some pretty good cheese and wine.
Wal-Mart is EVIL, aggressive, and far too powerful for anyone's good.
I would agree, but unfortunatly people's solution to the problem... i.e. get the government involved... is worse than the problem.
If Wal-Mart is EVIL, agressive, and far too powerful for anyone's good, because it lowers prices on Rubbermaid trash cans, then what does that make the government?
Building roads, coordination building in cities, etc., are things that the government has a legit mandate to do. Those are things governments usually have some constitutional authority over, and they have long been accepted as legit functions of government all the way back to ancient times. While I would like to see less government involvement, and experment with local control, emergent system, and decentralization - building roads and sewers is a big jump from planning social engineering.
We are moving into really scary territory when the government is going to have any active policy on Intelligent Design (other than not teaching it in schools). To "discourage" belief in Intelligent Design is an act of social engineering - controling education, media, creating propoganda, etc., in order to discourage an idea - an idea the government has no constitutional mandate to do anything about. The government shouldn't be doing anything more on Intelligent Design than it should be doing something on the Flying Spagettii Monster.
As long as the government isn't activly promoting Intelligent Design, there is no reason for the government to make any policy decisions that have anything to do with it. And there is no reason to spend my money to study it.
FDA regulations make things more expensive, and the FDA is one of the most zealous, compared to other governments, regulatory agency in the world.
... This is the highest anywhere in the world. In the 1960s, when the FDA instituted it's strict requirements, the average cost to develop a drug went up by 1600 percent. Most drugs are approved for use in Western Europe long before they are ever approved in the United States. All this information is publicly available, do a Google search on it.
Take, for example, the time it takes to comply with regulation on pharmaceuticals... it takes, on average, 10 years and 1 billion dollars to get a new drug approved in the U.S.
If you are arguing that the FDA plays down risks in order to allow buisnesses to sell dangerous products, that is just not true.
If you are arguing that the FDA overregulates industry in order to raise the costs of goods, and drive smaller competitors out of the market, and that is how it helps buisness, you might very well be on to something. But that is not the point that the first poster was trying to make.
I asked how the government arrives at "safe" levels. He said in effect that "your starting point is that you need to let people run their business". In other words, standards are set by working backwards from what the industry feels they can (just about) accept. "Acceptable" standards are NOT set based on years or decades of study of whether any ill effects arise in humans. (For one thing, such studies would be unethical. For another, decade-long studies would be extremely expensive.)"
:) But was you are saying is not true, or so subjective as to not have a lot of meaning.
So, please understand the reality of the FDA. They have an established history of put businesses first, and people's safety second.
You make a much smarter arguement than the last guy!
If microwave oven standards were such that they were not economic to manufacture and sell, there would not be microwave ovens. You aren't really enforcing safety standards, you are banning any piece of technology that has safety risks (which is virtually all technology). I don't really see how it would be possible to approve anything if we insisted on maximum safety regardless of cost - because anything can be made safer if we are willing to spend prohibitive amounts of money on the item.
And, I hardly see why this is an issue with Capitalism or corporations, either. The same decision would be made in a state run Socialist economy. The government economic planning boad would decide how much a microwave has to cost in order to be economical to provide to members of the general public, and safety considerations would have to come second to that limit if you plan to provide the product to society. The limits of supply and production and the conservation of matter and energy must be obeyed, even in Socialist economies.
So I don't see how the FDA is putting corporations first, so much as acting within the limits of reality. A safety standard that is economicly unviable, isn't a safety standard - it is either an outright ban on a technology, or a joke restriction than everyone ignores.
Real science can't refute Intelligent Design... just like it can't refute the Flying Spagetti Monster. It is not the purpose of science to refute every meta-explaination anyone has for the universe. The purpose of science is to understand and predict natural phenomena.
Intelligent Design is not science, because there is no way to test it. If I have a hypothesis that life evolved from simple protiens and chemicals, I can do experiments to show how it is possible to create life from simple protiens in the lab. I can also examine the geological evidence to show that those simple protiens and chemicals existed on earth at one time before life. And, if someone disagrees, they can do research to contradict that. Our understanding of the topic is based on consensus, and that will change over time.
However, if I have a hypothesis that God caused the universe to come into existance, how do I even begin to do an experiment to prove that? God, by definition, is all powerful and beyond the understanding of man. How would I even begin to do an experiment to prove that God does or doesn't exist? And even if I could prove that God didn't exist, is that something you would want me to do?
Listen, if you want to believe that God created the universe, that if fine! There is no problem with that. But don't try to call it science. Religion is great, and all people should be free to practice it without persecution or shame, but it is not science.
If you believe that praying can protect people from getting into a car crash, that is fine. But if we teach students that are learning automotive engineering about prayer, that is totally inappropriate. It is not that we know for sure that prayer doesn't stop accidents, it is that prayer is not a part of engineering practice, by definition. Prayer != Engineering. What is so hard to understand about it?
In no way, shape, or form, is Intelligent Design scientific! It has nothing to do with science! It is religion, trying to mascarade as science.
Do you have any idea how much of your daily life is impacted by government and bureaucratic policy decisions? I didn't think so.
Policy makers who are acting in good faith (OK, maybe that's rare, just to be cynical) rely on studies like this. It is anything but useless, it's crucial.
Wouldn't it be better if my life WAS NOT impacted by government and bureaurcratic policy decisions?
The proponents of Intelligent Design are a tiny but vocal minority, who have virtually no influence on real science whatsoever. Intelligent Design might be a stupid idea, but it certainly is not the most dangerous or widely accepted stupid idea going around nowadays.
Most of the attention on Intelligent Design comes from people posturing against it.
And seriously, if you are gonna get money for studying Intelligent Design, then you should be reasonably able to refute it.
Remember, if you lose full use of your thumb, then you are no better than any other primate out there!
I don't think that you could call a vast government beurocracy which costs industry billions every year and has almost absolute power to dictate policy to buisnesses a capitalist organization. I realize it is the fashion for Socialists to call anything they don't like "Capitalist", in the same way Pat Roberson and the Christian Right call anything they don't like "Satanist", but really your definition of "Capitalism" makes the word meaningless. Why not call things you are against "Badism", and say you are a "Goodist"... that would say about as much.
The FDA, in particular, is considered a bit overzealous if anything. Many drugs, food products, etc., which are totally legal most places in the world, get banned in the U.S. by the FDA. The usual critism is not that the FDA doesn't go far enough in regulation, but that it goes too far compared with places like Western Europe.
Actually, that is a good thing. It means that climate science will not be tainted by politics. Politicians cannot "intimidate" climatologists, if the climatologists are not getting funding from the government.
Other than maybe launching weather satalites (which costs hundreds of millions of dollars), there is no reason climate research cannot be done without government funding - and the results will be far more trustworthy and less influenced by politics.
You wouldn't trust a church to do research about evolutionary science, would you? You wouldn't trust a company to research the flaws of their own product, would you (or at least not make those flaws public)? It is only because we have been conditioned by a government controlled media and educational systems that we don't see the conflict of interest when government (or government funded) agencies do research that directly effects government policy.
But really, are child molestors more of a boogy man than a real threat? Yes, I am aware that there are actually some real child molestors out there, but I would think that as a percentage of the population it would be very small. I mean, there are serial killers out there too, but we are much more likely to be killed by a spouse or neighbor, and much much much more likely to die of a heart attack or auto accident, than to be skinned alive by Hannible Lector.
I have a hard time believing there is an army of psychos out there scheming to go after kids... and are going to conspire to hack our mobile phone system as some big evil pedophile master plan.
I think things like teen pregnancy, or experimenting with drugs, or getting hit by someone driving a big SUV and talking on their cell phone, is the real threat to kids. Perfectly ordinary, everyday things that don't make the TV news. And some of those things (when Sally says she is spending the night at her friends house, but is really going to a party with her boyfriend... when Bobby cuts class to play basketball...), could be helped by these devices.
I am not aware of any Lionhead Studio games that have been available on any other console than the Xbox. Lionhead pretty much makes PC games, and I think there is only one game (Fable), that was converted to the Xbox.
So it is not like there is some significant change in how Lionhead does buisness.
But, I do agree with you, console exclusive games are annoying. But don't worry, Sony will compete the same way (that is why all the GTA games come out on Playstation 2 years before they are released for other platforms).
Why do we have the seperation between Church and State? We have it because when Church and State are merged, religion will be exploited to further the goals of those in charge of the state... and those that disagree with the religion of the ruling class will be persecuted.
Most people (OK, not everyone) agrees that a seperation between Church and State is good, but that is because nowadays religion has become irrelevant. Sure, it is easy to keep the Church seperated from the State, because the Church is no longer the defining belief of our society.
Our society is now defined by the science (and the media, but that is irrelevent for this conversation). The danger that once existed when we had State Religion, now exists when we have State Science. This kind of political pressure on scientists is inevitable when the government is the largest financial supporter of science in the country.
Science will always be clouded by politics, unless we insist on the complete seperation of Science and State, the same way that we do the Church and State! I know that doesn't appeal to the socialists here, who want the government to be in charge of everything. But sorry, government involvement in science means bad science.
And the only added difficulty you would see in getting games with legally-enforced age restrictions is having to have an ID handy to buy them. Big freakin' deal.
This is not a small thing:
1. By giving them personal identification, like a licence, they now can send me all kinds of marketing crap, track my purchases to create a marketing profile on me, etc.
2. There is an increased chance of identity theft, because now I got minimum wage clerks looking over my ID.
3. Now there is a way to link my purchases to my identity. Hillary Clinton is claiming that video games cause violence. What happens when they start looking up to see if you purchased GTA if you want to get a pilots licence, or a licence to own a gun, or go to get your passport renewed?
If you say that they don't nessicarily have to record your ID information... there might not be that requirement directly in the law, but all game stores are going to do it so that they can prove to regulators that they only sell to adults.
If a store sold alcohol to minors 35% of the time they'd be fined, lose their license, and have to shut down. It does not represent a "good faith effort" on their part.
Your analogy doesn't work. Alcohol is not a form of expression, and not protected by the First Amendment. But that being said, there are many countries were minors are allowed to purchase alcohol and they have a lot less problem with it than in the U.S.
But a more accurate analogy would be if you had to be 18, and show a licence, in order to purchase a bible or religious material. Athiests, Muslims, Jews, etc., wouldn't want their kids purchasing Bibles, now would they? Don't they have as much right to protect their kids from that, as they do GTA? Surely, the Bible is much more likely to inspire someone to convert to Christianity, than GTA would be to inspire someone to kill cops? Would you support restricting the Bible from minors, and giving big fines and even criminal penalties to those who distribute the Bible?
And don't tell me that the Bible isn't full of sex and violence!!!
So your kid might be able to get a hold of GTA? Big fucking deal. Your kid can probably get a hold of illegal drugs just as easy as a video game if he really wanted to, and look at all the insane stuff governments do to restrict that. Your kid can probably have sex just as easy as he can get ahold of the Hot Coffee Mod for GTA, so is the government supposed to require kids to wear chastity belts? Do you think your kid wouldn't be able to get a hold of some beer, or ciggarettes, or porn magazines, if that is what he wanted.
The video game industry and the retailers are already doing a reasonable job in making sure video games stay out of the hands of minors. We don't need a police state to make it difficult for grown adults to purchase video games, or more expensive, which is what you want to happen.
Of course on the PC there is Starforce copy protection, installing a rootkit if you want to play a game... or worrying about games that are shipped as beta because there is no quality control requirements, and not being able to play it until a month later and they release a patch. Or having to reinstall drivers on a machine because the current drivers are incompatible with a game. Or not being able to sell a game back to the store for nearly half of what I paid for it! Or buying a game that runs like crap because they totally underestimated what the minimum game specs should be! Or having to run Windows, even though OSX or Linux would be better, because a lot of games are Windows only. Or having to buy a desktop computer instead of a laptop so you can upgrade your graphics card every 6 months.
:) ). Consoles are now powerful enough to have very fun games, and they save you all kinds of hassle and trouble.
I used to be a hardcore PC gamer, but now I will never buy a PC game again (unless Infocom starts releasing text adventures again
Except that PC gamers have to pay extra too.
A company charges extra money, for giving you an extra benifit!? The next thing you know, they will be charging people extra to give them bigger seats and better service on airplanes. The next thing you know, they will be charging people extra when they buy a car for luxuries like XM radio, or a more powerful engine! Where will it end? I am afraid it won't end until people who purchase a $2.50 combo meal at McDonalds do not get the same service or quality that they would spending $300 at a top resterant! WHEN WILL THE MADNESS END!!!!???????
People have a basic human right to have armor on their hourses in video games! It is time we nationalize the gaming industry, like we do health care, education, and all vital industries, so we make sure this kind of oppression is eliminated. The government certainly wouldn't exploit us like this!
If it takes a 10 year legal battle to get a site approved for a nuclear reactor, that slows things down (not to mention the payments on the 20 year bond for building the thing are now 5 times as much because of compound interest). I am not aware of any nuclear reactor that was built in the last 50 years that didn't have to deal with protracted NIBYism. Then, when the laws governing the reactor change 20 times during construction, requiring the thing to be modified each time mid construction... then, when the pencils and pens used in the offices at the place, and the discarded potato chip back in the lunch room, are considered "low level nuclear waste" and have to be handled appropriatly, that adds expenses. Then you can't ship the waste out of the reactor to be disposed of, because some NIMBY fight going on for the last 20 years somewhere else, so now the nuclear facility is also where you are storing the waste. Combine it with the fact that it is illegal to recycle nuclear material.
If coal or oil was regulated, restricted, and faught every step of the way that nuclear is, it too would be economically unviable.
But France seems to be using nuclear without any of the problems that we have in the U.S. (probably because in France they are proud of their nuclear power, and consider nuclear power a vital part of their indepenence as a nation). A university in Berlin developed a system for a pebble bed reactor that fits into a cargo container, and can be shipped off to the third world to provide super cheap energy (it would work in the first world too, but no-one would be having it). A Japanese company is developing a reactor for a small town in Alaska. The power for the town will be FREE for everyone, and the company is even paying the full cost of construction... the Japanese company will charge a flat fee for running and maintaining the reactor.
Those environmentalists are some strong, they must be in it with the Freemasons.
No, but they ARE in with the oil companies. Oil companies fund a lot of the anti-nuclear movement... after all, the enviornmentalists may not like oil, but we need energy, solar and wind can't provide it yet, and if we dont have nuclear it has to come from oil. They know the enviornmentalists will never ban fossil fuels so long as we need them to not freeze in the winter, or to get food from the farm to our supermarkets. But they CAN get the enviornmentalists to stop nuclear power, because it is not yet been established as a powerful industry yet. Look at where Greenpeace U.S. gets its money (they are required to publish their sources of funding as a non-profit), and look at some of the foundations that give them money, and then look up where those foundations get THIER money (they are non-profits, so they have to publish the sources of funding), and you can see that Greenpeace U.S. is getting FAT PAID from oil companies.
Two words:Kyoto Protocol
...
Two Words: It Sucks!
1. Kyoto Protocol doesn't count emmisions reduced by replacing fossil fuels with nuclear power. So if the U.S. replaced fossil fuels and reduced it's emmissions by 90% tommorow, we would not have fufilled our "obligation" to the treaty. We don't need to be part of any kind of treaty that discourages viable forms of alternative energy.
2. Kyoto Protocol doesn't count emmissions offset by increasing green plants and conservation of forests. There are political reasons for wanting to tell people the U.S. to be the highest producer of CO2. When you start including CO2 absorbed by forest, the U.S. starts becoming comparible with most European countries (who have virtually destroyed what was left of any real forests, and have a much higher population density and less plants throughout). Conservation of forests, planting of trees, etc., can't eliminate all our emmissions, but it CAN help, and has very good seconday benifits (like protecting the habitat of animals).
3. Kyoto Protocal doesn't apply to developing nations. While the U.S. has hit it's peak of CO2 output, and it is now increasing in proportion to our population, C02 emmisions are increasing exponentially in China and India. China and India will soon surpass the U.S., if they haven't already (there is reason to believe they underestimate their CO2 emmisions, and there are types of CO2 emmisions that aren't counted as C02 emmisions, like burning dung or wood). China and Inda are going to be the biggest producers of C02, yet they are totally unrestricted. Even their internal enviornmental laws are a lot less restrictive. Which means that the U.S. and other countries will reduce their C02 emmissions by exporting factories to China and India, where the factories will still pollute more than they would if they stayed in the U.S.
The Kyoto Protocol is retarded. There was a whole bunch of political reasons for the Kyoto Protocal, but reducing global warming was not one of them.
The Kyoto Protocal:
1. Discourages CO2 free energy sources, like nuclear.
2. Discourages conservation.
3. Encourages more polution, and hurts our economy, by creating artificial incentives for companies to move to where there are no enviornmental restrictions.
And, to put the icing on the cake, there is absolutly no teeth to the Protocal. The U.S., which didn't sign the protocal and is taking no measures to meet the requirements, is actually doing a better job than countries like Canada, which signed the document and claim to support it. There is no penalty for not meeting the Kyoto requirements, and very few countries have met their obligations. The countries that DID meet their obligations are former Communist block countries that saw a collapse in their economy, and a dramatic decrease in industry, and have nothing to do with enviornmental politcy.
Reducing consumption is a short term stop-gap measure, not a long term solution. Here is why:
A) Most people enjoy having a high standard of living. If you tell people that we are going to have to go back to the lifestyle we had in 1900, or people have in the third world, people aren't going to go for it. It won't be politically viable. I can see something like that happening accidentally because of extreme incompentence in the government, or intentionally in a dictatorship, but you are fooling yourself if you think people in a Democracy are gonna vote themselves a lower standard of living.
B) Billions of people now are living in urban or semi-urban areas, dependent on industrial agriculture, and modern transport, modern heating, refridgeration, etc. We can reduce energy consumption by something like 10%, 20% maybe. Maybe even 50% depending on what sacrafices are made. But human populations increase exponentially. In the end, we would just be slowing down global warming, not stopping it or reversing it. We would have to let billions of people die, restrict people from having children and have things like forced steralization to in order for conservation to work in the long term.
C) Prosperous societies are more likely to develop a long term solution, or to care about a long term solution. At one time, people were very worried that the population was growing faster, and the need for energy growing quicker, than the limited resource of wood could provide energy for, or that "modern" agriculture of the day could provide food for. Of course, we developed the technology to overcome those limitations. But, if we are not prosperous enough to develop new technology and energy sources, we could be doing worse damage to the enviornment. Think what would happen if the population continued increasing, and instead we went to a system of rationing wood as fuel, and continued using 18th century agriculture techniques. In the long run, we would have no forest and most land would be covered in very inefficent farms.
I know there is a secondary political element to the whole enviornmental debate, as you mentioned in your post... people percieve that enviornmental destruction is caused by "Capitalist Greed", and so there is a political and estetic element to forgoing certain luxuries in order to "conserve". (of course, people tend to forget about the enourmous enviornmental damage and waste of the Soviet Union, Communist China, and the complete failure of central planning in efficent use of resources... but hey, Socialism is more of a religion than an economic system nowadays).
Actually, people call any disagreement with the "end of the world", "we must nationalize all industry" type alarmists as some sort of Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.
But, I have seen very little information from real scientific magazines, journals, etc., about global warming being the world ending disaster that people like you say. There is lots of political sites that fear monger about global warming... And sometimes that fear mongering reaches the mainstream press.
But, the scientific community is really conservative about global warming. Yes, it is happening, and yes, we know that CO2 emmisions are a significant contributer to global warming. And yes, it would be a very smart idea to significantly reduce our CO2 emmissions. And yes, it might cause big problems if we don't. But beyond what I just mentioned, there is no argreement.
The idea that is being put forth by the Enviornmentalist Movement that we will be living in a Mad Max type world of post-enviornmental destruction is just silly. And that fear is being exploited by a bunch of former-Marxists who are trying to use the enviornment as an excuse for central-planning and failed 20th century economics. The solution to global warming is pretty damn easy, and acceptable politically to those who you call "Right": Nuclear Power. But solving the global warmming issue easily and efficently is not in their interests... in the minds of people like you "Capitalism" is the cause of Global Warming and any solution that doesn't involve massive state control, and an end to "Capitalist Greed" as you percieve it, is not viable.
If there is any one group of people who *I* blame for Global Warming, it is the so-called "Enviornmentalists" who have made technology like nuclear power politically unviable. It is because years of fearmongering about nuclear power that it is not politically viable, and that reasearch into cleaner, safer, and more efficent nuclear power has been non-existant.
When enviornmentalists start accepting nuclear power as a viable solution to global warming, that is when I will start really taking the whole thing seriously.