There is no reason that secure can't also be user friendly, the illusion that secure must also be difficult is part of the problem.
People don't send just send lolcats through my email they get order confirmations when they purchase something and other sensitive data. A low pay NSA Analyst could become and identity thief just as easily as any other low pay employee that can gain access to your information. So keep it secured.
If I were a guest in your house, well you wouldn't be charging me, so I'm not a guest and as a paid service I have expectations.
I appreciate and admire your intentions here, but the sad fact is: you cannot reason with this kind of narrow-mindedness.
Although, I would be glad to be proven wrong on this one.
Is that how you describe the spying, manipulation, and dehumanization in which they engage? You rate them on how effectively they do so and express your disappointment that their art has not yet been perfected as a science?
Sometimes I suspect that this civilization is lost.
what's the point of surveillance when everyone knows that you are doing it?
You never read 1984 or you didn't fully comprehend it.
The message is, "you will fall in line, or we WILL find you". The patient and therefore smart move is to set up the surveillence infrastructure first, get people used to the idea, and then become a more oppressive government. The only power governments have over their own citizens is against people who break the law.
You should never seek to make yourself helpless or at the mercy of people that know more than you do.
When you have a culture in which average people believe thinking and reasoning is a terrible burden to be avoided or offloaded at every opportunity, you naturally will observe the kind of dependency and vulnerability you point out here. It leads to people who don't want to be involved in decisions that drastically affect their own lives.
Somehow there arose this myth that you either know nothing at all, or must be a fully trained expert, that no intermediate level of knowledge, no amount of reference could ever be useful.
It amazes me that conservatives have given Obama such a free pass on all of this so far. Hopefully that changes now.
It amazes me how you or anyone else can see this happen time and time again and still believe that we have two distinct parties.
Jefferson knew what a two-party system would become and specifically warned against it. At some point they both realize they can play the voters in the middle, sort of like "good cop, bad cop". For maximum effect, switch roles once in a while. Then people support a given one for irrational, emotional, tribal, "my team" reasons and stop thinking critically. Take a hard look at the world of US politics and tell me this isn't exactly what's happening. Then make the next tiny leap and understand that someone definitely benefits from this, and it is not accidental.
... or maybe headbutting the wall a few times if the stubborn customer has insisted on actually paying for the car, thus depriving you of the finance company commission.
lol
My dad found out how to frustrate the dealership, pick out a car and plop down a credit card. Salesman is frustrated, clerk is baffled, accounting is pissed(all of a sudden that 3% fee seems to matter...) He'll pay it off when the bill comes I imagine and the only one paying finance fees are the dealer. That probably wasn't their goal:) Airline miles reward card too of course on a nearly 30k car;)
Heh I actually did this once. The credit card was only a form of payment - I had the money in the bank (otherwise, this would be immensely stupid).
The sales guy was noticably pissed off but he went through with it. He even acted professional and everything. Oh and this was after extensive haggling and (through willingness to go elsewhere) talking him down to some thin margins.
He was a likable guy and I have nothing against him. It was satisfying to see him sweat, all the same.
"Limited liability" means that the corporation's liabilities are separate from the owners' personal liabilities. If the corporation damages you, you sue the corporation, not the owners. If the owner damages you, you sue the owner, not the corporation.
Nobody escapes liabilities, but owners are only risking what assets they put into the company.
The major criticism is that creating a corporation is a way to gain personal enrichment without personal liability.
I'll not claim he made good posts, for I think that's a judgment for each reader to make and not for me to pontificate, but I will say you gave him lots of room to make the replies that he made. That's as fairly as I know how to describe what happened there.
If you think that's cheating, how about this nice fact: for at least the last 50 years, worker productivity has steadily increased and continues to do so. Meanwhile, wages (when accounting for inflation etc) have remained stagnant.
That's a masterwork of negotiation and shrewdness on the part of corporations, to be sure. Yet if by "cheating" you mean "doing something unfair/inequitable/unethical" then you must admit this fits the description. Unless, of course, you wish to argue that someone who produces more should not also be compensated more, in which case I'd be interested to hear your reasoning. I suppose while you're at it you could explain why a luxury sports car should cost the same as a rusty jalopy.
The D's tend to attract immature people who use emotion (which is easily manipulated) when they should use reason, and believe that the intensity of the emotion makes this okay. The R's tend to attract materialist business interests (which are easily manipulated) and old people who think that leaving their children and grandchildren with more debt than they could ever hope to repay is excellent parenting.
Neither represents me and I would be shocked if either represented you.
I really can't fathom how so many people don't understand what's going on. Thomas Jefferson explicitly warned against a two-party system because he knew what it would turn into. The idea is, you play "good cop, bad cop" and for maximum effectiveness, you swap roles every now and then. The result is that you play the voters in the middle. If you think that couldn't possibly be going on, it's because the parties understand strategy and you don't. Both parties benefit by doing this, just as all cell phone companies (competitors now) benefitted by overcharging for texting. It's an informal collusion that doesn't require a written arrangement. All it requires is that each entity promote their own self-interests.
It gives the illusion of choice because it de-emphasizes one critical fact of American politics: it is not a competition for the best ideas that puts a candidate into office. It is the campaign donors who do that. Now then, isn't it odd the way so many corporations donate to BOTH parties? It's as though they get their influence no matter who wins. Hmm.
Meanwhile the only differences between the parties are about useless (from the standpoint of sustaining a collapsing nation) issues like abortion and gay marriage. Both parties intend to grow the size and power and pervasiveness of the federal government. Both parties view the Bill of Rights as something to find clever ways around, usually in the name of safety or fighting terrorism. Both parties fight pointless overseas wars against foreign nations that are not a threat to the USA because the military-industrial interests demand it and because the economy would have collapsed long ago without it.
For your own sake, take a hard look at what's going on.
What you describe is true in an ideal employment environment.
The problem is, when criminal bankers knowingly make unsound loans and employ bad financial instruments like credit default swaps, and do it on a scale that it grossly harms the global economy, then jobs become more scarce and workers become more desperate. In this kind of scenario, the employer is at a clear advantage and the worker is at a clear disadvantage. This is especially true with a (multiple) state-sponsored organization that does not even have to make a profit such as this one. The usual market forces apply less and maybe don't apply at all.
This will cause people to take jobs they don't want and otherwise wouldn't take because they have families to feed and mortgages to pay and consider themselves fortunate to have work at all. The workers aren't bad negotiators or incompetent or doing a disservice to other candidate workers like you suggest. They're doing what they have to do to survive, not what they want to do in an ideal scenario.
As for causality, for all we know, he owns a business with 20 employees that he treats well, and thinks other business owners should do the same.
Whether I own a controlling share in a Fortune 500 corporation or whether I have never run a business of any kind doesn't let you escape a basic fact of life: if you believe I am wrong, the only way to correct me is to explain to me why I am wrong and why your point of view is closer to reality than mine.
Sometimes on this site I encounter someone with the intellectual honesty and the emotional maturity to do so. When that happens, I admit I was mistaken, I change my mind, and you don't hear the old viewpoint from me again. I have no problem doing that because I don't entertain some silly fantasy about always being right and always knowing everything. When I encounter someone who clearly has more knowledge than I do, I listen and learn for my own edification. It's called humility and it must be consciously practiced if you wish to develop it and enjoy its virtues.
The only real losers here are those who are clearly wrong but are too prideful to admit it, so they bicker and quibble, usually try to make it personal, and pretend like they're fooling anyone. It's childish behavior that harms the signal-to-noise ratio of the site and makes adult conversation more difficult to enjoy. I say if you really like being right so much, then you have an obligation to correct your wrongs.
You're getting all excited and you appear a bit frustrated because you are choosing to bicker about which of us owns a business and which of us has a deeper grasp and other PERSONAL MATTERS rather than fulfill the criteria in the first paragraph of this post. There is a difference between stubborn and tenacious.
Please don't read judgement into that question. It is simply something I always wonder when I hear statements like yours.
It's a transparent attempt to change an abstract discussion about labor relations into a personal matter. This is the kind of tactic used by someone who dislikes the point that was made but acknowledges that he has no real counter-point. It is strongly indicative of a weak position on your part. That you are at least being polite about it does not change this.
There is a reason you're catching flak for it in several other comments. Rhywden explained it succinctly.
So then, do you have a solid reason why you disagree with what I said?
(On that note: I really don't get why some Americans are so much in favor of a free market when it concerns goods, but very much against it when it's labor.)
The idea sadly is like this: when government and corporations exercise market power, that's the free market. When workers or average customers exercise market power, it's hippy pinko communism.
The fact is, an employer and an employee inherently have competing interests. Negotiating is a perfectly valid way to resolve competing interests by seeking a middle ground acceptable to both.
Striking just shows at they can't. Otherwise they already would have.
The flip side is that without unions and the real threat of losses caused by strikes, the next employer in that line of work will merely do the exact same thing. Consider the way that the major cell networks all charge similar rates (including overcharging in many cases for texting) when they are ostensibly competing with each other for customers. If it's not actual collusion it's similar in effect because it's based on a "market rate" which is merely a look at what everyone else is doing.
Now maybe other employers should do the same thing, I'm not giving an opinion there (for those reactive types who can't plainly see that I didn't), just that such an effect is something to consider.
People think you're saying MRSA, and they tune out. I've seen it happening over and over now.
Actually listening to what other people are saying and trying to comprehend what they do and (and most importantly) don't mean just isn't a valued part of American culture.
When you were younger, did you ever work an entry-level customer service type of job? Then you know all about it. You see this behavior even in people who are actively seeking and truly do need your advice. I think it's a form of puerile impatience (that ends up costing more time ironically enough). It could also be an attempt to show a false superiority and independence, since it is most often seen in helpless people who are unable to perform even the most basic observation and problem-solving (think Freudian projection).
and are unable to cope with reality despite possibly having high intelligence.
Both of these things being true at once seems extremely improbable.
If you really think so, it's because you don't appreciate the (massive) distinction between cleverness and wisdom.
The way I like to explain it: if you take a childish, annoying, malicious, aggressive asshole and give him greater intelligence, do you know what happens? He becomes more effective at being a childish, annoying, malicious, aggressive asshole.
There are large numbers of people who never really grew up emotionally and are unable to cope with reality despite possibly having high intelligence. It's not that they have any solid reason to doubt you (in fact it's the opposite if they bothered to look). It's that they want so badly to believe their government is not out-of-control that they're personally offended you would suggest otherwise. Of course anything that offends them must be wrong, right?
Replace "government" with "religion", "corporations" (or "the free market"), "nation", "philosophy", "software development process".
What you're describing is simply a "true believer". They come in all sorts of flavors. Some of them get attached to governments.
The problem with having them involved in government is that I can't decide not to sit in the pews of, or do business with, or adhere to the government. Government is founded on two related things: force and threat of force. You can't just ignore those.
This is well said. I have offered to explain to people why I think what I think and have had them say, "If what you're saying is true, I don't want to know."
Thank you. One definition of "psychotic" is "out of contact with reality". There are many psychotic people. In fact, I would venture that the majority of people in Western societies are psychotic. I believe forced ("public") schooling and mass media to be the two primary causes, with an almost hypnotic reverence for authority as an enabling factor.
There is a funny thing about compulsory education. Since ancient times, particularly ancient Greece and Rome, compulsory training was only for slaves. In fact the word "pedagogy" comes from an ancient word for "slave".
Ironically fear of abusers getting drugs guides things rather than legitimate, safe uses.
There are speed-like weight loss drugs that are safe and effective and used in many oyher countries. They are illegal in the US because addicts might illegally get ahold of them.
That's right. You can't get it because some addict might figure out a black market for it. I..e completely severed from your medical use.
Thanks for deciding that on our behalf.:( That our lives are worth less in legitimate use than an addict's through illegitimate.
No shit. If we are going to have a system designed to restrict the availability of drugs, one would think it would be used to prevent the over-use of antibiotics so we can stop creating these "superbugs". But no one can get high on antibiotics, and that's all government seems concerned with, so their overuse continues...
Although I can predict its moves and articulate its faults, I will never truly understand this Puritannical need to meddle in the affairs of other adults, tell them how to live, and especially to get power-hungry government into that business. It must come from completely empty, desperate lives devoid of all purpose and joy, trying so hard to fill the vacuum within themselves by feeling powerful since they couldn't do it by feeling compassion.
Schedule I drugs are not drugs with no medical use. Schedule I drugs are drugs that a particular government organization has *decided* have no medical use. This isn't a scientific claim; it's a political one.
That is a decent summary of what I stated, yes.
The most blatant example is heroin, which is Schedule I in the USA but used in much the same way as morphine in the UK.
Heroin is just a form of morphine modified to more easily cross the blood-brain barrier. Thus if morphine has a medical use in pain management (and it does), one would expect heroin to have a similar use (as an aside, the hilarious part is that heroin was invented in an attempt to treat morphine addiction - they were trying to produce something like modern methadone but ended up creating a harder drug).
In our litigious society I feel a need to say that I am not a doctor, this is not medical advice, and if you thought it was medical advice you're a fuckin' moron. It's sad that saying such a thing would ever even cross my mind but there you have it. I am weary of this idea that anyone should disclaim things that were never claimed. The fact that they were not claimed is disclaimer enough.
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
George Washington
It's not just government itself. The phenomenon I described above also explains why issues that should be factual/scientific are instead political. I'll give an example: marijuana is a Schedule I substance. Schedule I means "no medical use". Yet we have doctors prescribing it and patients using it who report relief of symptoms. We have lots of laws like this which directly contradict the available facts. It's because so many people aren't concerned with facts. They are concerned with their feelings, their fears, and with what offends them.
Don't worry. The next time you see it coming because you understand this concept of a "track record" or have read a little history, you'll still be called a tin-foil hatter.
There are large numbers of people who never really grew up emotionally and are unable to cope with reality despite possibly having high intelligence. It's not that they have any solid reason to doubt you (in fact it's the opposite if they bothered to look). It's that they want so badly to believe their government is not out-of-control that they're personally offended you would suggest otherwise. Of course anything that offends them must be wrong, right?
This is actually how the average person perceives reality. Yes it's scary. It's why so little effort is put towards prevention.
Slashdot Mirror
There is no reason that secure can't also be user friendly, the illusion that secure must also be difficult is part of the problem.
People don't send just send lolcats through my email they get order confirmations when they purchase something and other sensitive data. A low pay NSA Analyst could become and identity thief just as easily as any other low pay employee that can gain access to your information. So keep it secured.
If I were a guest in your house, well you wouldn't be charging me, so I'm not a guest and as a paid service I have expectations.
I appreciate and admire your intentions here, but the sad fact is: you cannot reason with this kind of narrow-mindedness.
Although, I would be glad to be proven wrong on this one.
They aren't introducing me
Is that how you describe the spying, manipulation, and dehumanization in which they engage? You rate them on how effectively they do so and express your disappointment that their art has not yet been perfected as a science?
Sometimes I suspect that this civilization is lost.
what's the point of surveillance when everyone knows that you are doing it?
You never read 1984 or you didn't fully comprehend it.
The message is, "you will fall in line, or we WILL find you". The patient and therefore smart move is to set up the surveillence infrastructure first, get people used to the idea, and then become a more oppressive government. The only power governments have over their own citizens is against people who break the law.
Make people think
If you do that then the marketing won't work! Why, they might even start evaluating their needs rationally...
You should never seek to make yourself helpless or at the mercy of people that know more than you do.
When you have a culture in which average people believe thinking and reasoning is a terrible burden to be avoided or offloaded at every opportunity, you naturally will observe the kind of dependency and vulnerability you point out here. It leads to people who don't want to be involved in decisions that drastically affect their own lives.
Somehow there arose this myth that you either know nothing at all, or must be a fully trained expert, that no intermediate level of knowledge, no amount of reference could ever be useful.
It amazes me that conservatives have given Obama such a free pass on all of this so far. Hopefully that changes now.
It amazes me how you or anyone else can see this happen time and time again and still believe that we have two distinct parties.
Jefferson knew what a two-party system would become and specifically warned against it. At some point they both realize they can play the voters in the middle, sort of like "good cop, bad cop". For maximum effect, switch roles once in a while. Then people support a given one for irrational, emotional, tribal, "my team" reasons and stop thinking critically. Take a hard look at the world of US politics and tell me this isn't exactly what's happening. Then make the next tiny leap and understand that someone definitely benefits from this, and it is not accidental.
... or maybe headbutting the wall a few times if the stubborn customer has insisted on actually paying for the car, thus depriving you of the finance company commission.
lol My dad found out how to frustrate the dealership, pick out a car and plop down a credit card. Salesman is frustrated, clerk is baffled, accounting is pissed(all of a sudden that 3% fee seems to matter...) He'll pay it off when the bill comes I imagine and the only one paying finance fees are the dealer. That probably wasn't their goal :) Airline miles reward card too of course on a nearly 30k car ;)
Heh I actually did this once. The credit card was only a form of payment - I had the money in the bank (otherwise, this would be immensely stupid).
The sales guy was noticably pissed off but he went through with it. He even acted professional and everything. Oh and this was after extensive haggling and (through willingness to go elsewhere) talking him down to some thin margins.
He was a likable guy and I have nothing against him. It was satisfying to see him sweat, all the same.
"Limited liability" means that the corporation's liabilities are separate from the owners' personal liabilities. If the corporation damages you, you sue the corporation, not the owners. If the owner damages you, you sue the owner, not the corporation.
Nobody escapes liabilities, but owners are only risking what assets they put into the company.
The major criticism is that creating a corporation is a way to gain personal enrichment without personal liability.
I'll not claim he made good posts, for I think that's a judgment for each reader to make and not for me to pontificate, but I will say you gave him lots of room to make the replies that he made. That's as fairly as I know how to describe what happened there.
If you think that's cheating, how about this nice fact: for at least the last 50 years, worker productivity has steadily increased and continues to do so. Meanwhile, wages (when accounting for inflation etc) have remained stagnant.
That's a masterwork of negotiation and shrewdness on the part of corporations, to be sure. Yet if by "cheating" you mean "doing something unfair/inequitable/unethical" then you must admit this fits the description. Unless, of course, you wish to argue that someone who produces more should not also be compensated more, in which case I'd be interested to hear your reasoning. I suppose while you're at it you could explain why a luxury sports car should cost the same as a rusty jalopy.
The D's tend to attract immature people who use emotion (which is easily manipulated) when they should use reason, and believe that the intensity of the emotion makes this okay. The R's tend to attract materialist business interests (which are easily manipulated) and old people who think that leaving their children and grandchildren with more debt than they could ever hope to repay is excellent parenting.
Neither represents me and I would be shocked if either represented you.
I really can't fathom how so many people don't understand what's going on. Thomas Jefferson explicitly warned against a two-party system because he knew what it would turn into. The idea is, you play "good cop, bad cop" and for maximum effectiveness, you swap roles every now and then. The result is that you play the voters in the middle. If you think that couldn't possibly be going on, it's because the parties understand strategy and you don't. Both parties benefit by doing this, just as all cell phone companies (competitors now) benefitted by overcharging for texting. It's an informal collusion that doesn't require a written arrangement. All it requires is that each entity promote their own self-interests.
It gives the illusion of choice because it de-emphasizes one critical fact of American politics: it is not a competition for the best ideas that puts a candidate into office. It is the campaign donors who do that. Now then, isn't it odd the way so many corporations donate to BOTH parties? It's as though they get their influence no matter who wins. Hmm.
Meanwhile the only differences between the parties are about useless (from the standpoint of sustaining a collapsing nation) issues like abortion and gay marriage. Both parties intend to grow the size and power and pervasiveness of the federal government. Both parties view the Bill of Rights as something to find clever ways around, usually in the name of safety or fighting terrorism. Both parties fight pointless overseas wars against foreign nations that are not a threat to the USA because the military-industrial interests demand it and because the economy would have collapsed long ago without it.
For your own sake, take a hard look at what's going on.
What you describe is true in an ideal employment environment.
The problem is, when criminal bankers knowingly make unsound loans and employ bad financial instruments like credit default swaps, and do it on a scale that it grossly harms the global economy, then jobs become more scarce and workers become more desperate. In this kind of scenario, the employer is at a clear advantage and the worker is at a clear disadvantage. This is especially true with a (multiple) state-sponsored organization that does not even have to make a profit such as this one. The usual market forces apply less and maybe don't apply at all.
This will cause people to take jobs they don't want and otherwise wouldn't take because they have families to feed and mortgages to pay and consider themselves fortunate to have work at all. The workers aren't bad negotiators or incompetent or doing a disservice to other candidate workers like you suggest. They're doing what they have to do to survive, not what they want to do in an ideal scenario.
As for causality, for all we know, he owns a business with 20 employees that he treats well, and thinks other business owners should do the same.
Whether I own a controlling share in a Fortune 500 corporation or whether I have never run a business of any kind doesn't let you escape a basic fact of life: if you believe I am wrong, the only way to correct me is to explain to me why I am wrong and why your point of view is closer to reality than mine.
Sometimes on this site I encounter someone with the intellectual honesty and the emotional maturity to do so. When that happens, I admit I was mistaken, I change my mind, and you don't hear the old viewpoint from me again. I have no problem doing that because I don't entertain some silly fantasy about always being right and always knowing everything. When I encounter someone who clearly has more knowledge than I do, I listen and learn for my own edification. It's called humility and it must be consciously practiced if you wish to develop it and enjoy its virtues.
The only real losers here are those who are clearly wrong but are too prideful to admit it, so they bicker and quibble, usually try to make it personal, and pretend like they're fooling anyone. It's childish behavior that harms the signal-to-noise ratio of the site and makes adult conversation more difficult to enjoy. I say if you really like being right so much, then you have an obligation to correct your wrongs.
You're getting all excited and you appear a bit frustrated because you are choosing to bicker about which of us owns a business and which of us has a deeper grasp and other PERSONAL MATTERS rather than fulfill the criteria in the first paragraph of this post. There is a difference between stubborn and tenacious.
Please don't read judgement into that question. It is simply something I always wonder when I hear statements like yours.
It's a transparent attempt to change an abstract discussion about labor relations into a personal matter. This is the kind of tactic used by someone who dislikes the point that was made but acknowledges that he has no real counter-point. It is strongly indicative of a weak position on your part. That you are at least being polite about it does not change this.
There is a reason you're catching flak for it in several other comments. Rhywden explained it succinctly.
So then, do you have a solid reason why you disagree with what I said?
(On that note: I really don't get why some Americans are so much in favor of a free market when it concerns goods, but very much against it when it's labor.)
The idea sadly is like this: when government and corporations exercise market power, that's the free market. When workers or average customers exercise market power, it's hippy pinko communism.
The fact is, an employer and an employee inherently have competing interests. Negotiating is a perfectly valid way to resolve competing interests by seeking a middle ground acceptable to both.
Go find work elsewhere then.
Striking just shows at they can't. Otherwise they already would have.
The flip side is that without unions and the real threat of losses caused by strikes, the next employer in that line of work will merely do the exact same thing. Consider the way that the major cell networks all charge similar rates (including overcharging in many cases for texting) when they are ostensibly competing with each other for customers. If it's not actual collusion it's similar in effect because it's based on a "market rate" which is merely a look at what everyone else is doing.
Now maybe other employers should do the same thing, I'm not giving an opinion there (for those reactive types who can't plainly see that I didn't), just that such an effect is something to consider.
People think you're saying MRSA, and they tune out. I've seen it happening over and over now.
Actually listening to what other people are saying and trying to comprehend what they do and (and most importantly) don't mean just isn't a valued part of American culture.
When you were younger, did you ever work an entry-level customer service type of job? Then you know all about it. You see this behavior even in people who are actively seeking and truly do need your advice. I think it's a form of puerile impatience (that ends up costing more time ironically enough). It could also be an attempt to show a false superiority and independence, since it is most often seen in helpless people who are unable to perform even the most basic observation and problem-solving (think Freudian projection).
and are unable to cope with reality despite possibly having high intelligence.
Both of these things being true at once seems extremely improbable.
If you really think so, it's because you don't appreciate the (massive) distinction between cleverness and wisdom.
The way I like to explain it: if you take a childish, annoying, malicious, aggressive asshole and give him greater intelligence, do you know what happens? He becomes more effective at being a childish, annoying, malicious, aggressive asshole.
There are large numbers of people who never really grew up emotionally and are unable to cope with reality despite possibly having high intelligence. It's not that they have any solid reason to doubt you (in fact it's the opposite if they bothered to look). It's that they want so badly to believe their government is not out-of-control that they're personally offended you would suggest otherwise. Of course anything that offends them must be wrong, right?
Replace "government" with "religion", "corporations" (or "the free market"), "nation", "philosophy", "software development process".
What you're describing is simply a "true believer". They come in all sorts of flavors. Some of them get attached to governments.
The problem with having them involved in government is that I can't decide not to sit in the pews of, or do business with, or adhere to the government. Government is founded on two related things: force and threat of force. You can't just ignore those.
This is well said. I have offered to explain to people why I think what I think and have had them say, "If what you're saying is true, I don't want to know."
Thank you. One definition of "psychotic" is "out of contact with reality". There are many psychotic people. In fact, I would venture that the majority of people in Western societies are psychotic. I believe forced ("public") schooling and mass media to be the two primary causes, with an almost hypnotic reverence for authority as an enabling factor.
There is a funny thing about compulsory education. Since ancient times, particularly ancient Greece and Rome, compulsory training was only for slaves. In fact the word "pedagogy" comes from an ancient word for "slave".
Ironically fear of abusers getting drugs guides things rather than legitimate, safe uses.
There are speed-like weight loss drugs that are safe and effective and used in many oyher countries. They are illegal in the US because addicts might illegally get ahold of them.
That's right. You can't get it because some addict might figure out a black market for it. I..e completely severed from your medical use.
Thanks for deciding that on our behalf. :( That our lives are worth less in legitimate use than an addict's through illegitimate.
No shit. If we are going to have a system designed to restrict the availability of drugs, one would think it would be used to prevent the over-use of antibiotics so we can stop creating these "superbugs". But no one can get high on antibiotics, and that's all government seems concerned with, so their overuse continues...
Although I can predict its moves and articulate its faults, I will never truly understand this Puritannical need to meddle in the affairs of other adults, tell them how to live, and especially to get power-hungry government into that business. It must come from completely empty, desperate lives devoid of all purpose and joy, trying so hard to fill the vacuum within themselves by feeling powerful since they couldn't do it by feeling compassion.
Schedule I drugs are not drugs with no medical use. Schedule I drugs are drugs that a particular government organization has *decided* have no medical use. This isn't a scientific claim; it's a political one.
That is a decent summary of what I stated, yes.
The most blatant example is heroin, which is Schedule I in the USA but used in much the same way as morphine in the UK.
Heroin is just a form of morphine modified to more easily cross the blood-brain barrier. Thus if morphine has a medical use in pain management (and it does), one would expect heroin to have a similar use (as an aside, the hilarious part is that heroin was invented in an attempt to treat morphine addiction - they were trying to produce something like modern methadone but ended up creating a harder drug).
In our litigious society I feel a need to say that I am not a doctor, this is not medical advice, and if you thought it was medical advice you're a fuckin' moron. It's sad that saying such a thing would ever even cross my mind but there you have it. I am weary of this idea that anyone should disclaim things that were never claimed. The fact that they were not claimed is disclaimer enough.
"Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master."
George Washington
It's not just government itself. The phenomenon I described above also explains why issues that should be factual/scientific are instead political. I'll give an example: marijuana is a Schedule I substance. Schedule I means "no medical use". Yet we have doctors prescribing it and patients using it who report relief of symptoms. We have lots of laws like this which directly contradict the available facts. It's because so many people aren't concerned with facts. They are concerned with their feelings, their fears, and with what offends them.
Is it time to say "We told you fuckers."?
Don't worry. The next time you see it coming because you understand this concept of a "track record" or have read a little history, you'll still be called a tin-foil hatter.
There are large numbers of people who never really grew up emotionally and are unable to cope with reality despite possibly having high intelligence. It's not that they have any solid reason to doubt you (in fact it's the opposite if they bothered to look). It's that they want so badly to believe their government is not out-of-control that they're personally offended you would suggest otherwise. Of course anything that offends them must be wrong, right?
This is actually how the average person perceives reality. Yes it's scary. It's why so little effort is put towards prevention.