When such philosophy is used, I like to apply the egocentric view: Mankind is MY species and thus it is the species I value above any other. I will protect it against any threat (other than myself obviously), no matter what morality says is the right course of action. I would gladly subdue, enslave and exterminate any other sentient life in the universe if necessary for the survival of my species. This is my species, this is my ultimate goal and there is and can be no reason to ever defy it. Right, wrong, purpose, will, sentience, all of these are just concepts we invented to protect my species and we will abandon them if they stand in our way.
I think the point where automation makes it impossible to keep large parts of the population employed because there's no need for that many people was the basis for communism, the point where it's intended to be used. If it's not possible to sustain the populace through the current way of hoping someone pays them or taking some money from those who work to feed those who don't the government may be forced to "acquire" the means of production and produce what's necessary to maintain the population itself.
Do you mean anatomically correct as in "looks real" or as in "fully implemented genitals"? I have no doubt that the latter will happen in Japan considering what they already produce (NSFW).
Some notes: 1. Do you define anything as speech that comes out of a mouth (or pen or key board or...)? A problem is that we assume that speech is used to communicate information and communicating false information can cause severe damage, both economic and physical, to other people. Acts like fraud usually involve promising things you don't fulfill. Does freedom of speech mean that there cannot be consequences for anything you say (this would include contracts if we interpret speech to mean media) or should it mean (as is probably intended) that the government cannot prevent you from criticising it and openly discussing issues they would rather sweep under the rug? No consequences means no accountability which in turn means that speech cannot be trusted. Since speech is often interpreted as referring to any communication the lack of accountability would mean we could no longer communicate with any form of insurance that people are saying the truth.
2. It says "bear arms" but the lack of any prescribed limits or statement that there are none leaves it open to the government to issue limitations as long as at least one form of weapon is permitted. I think this needs to be clarified to be unambiguous (e.g. "any personell weapon") or just handed down to "normal" law completely.
5. The issue with subjective values in assessing values is that you can't really put a price on them and it leaves too much leeway to whoever is in charge of assessing them with no way to review the decision.
Remember that Common Law dictates that the interpretation of a law by a judge is effectively a new law so you can never say "no interpreting" because your entire legal system is based on such interpretations.
For one example I prefer the German constitution although I will not assert that there may not be better ones available.
It guarantees freedom of expression (which is a lot clearer than freedom of "speech" because the latter requires a judge to interpret what "speech" is) with the exception of promoting a war of aggression* (there is no good reason to start such a war).
It protects privacy strongly (I recall an incident where the US named a suspected terrorist and the German police couldn't search his home yet because search warrants aren't granted as easily) and the data protection helps reduce the abuse of personal data.
Due to using civil law over common law there's much less room for interpretation which means laws are used the way they are written, not the way judges have interpreted them in the past (the US constitution often has judges bending it because of interpretations, resulting in e.g. the restrictions on porn despite the freedom of speech). The inquisitorial system is better than the adversarial system in court, IMO, because the goal of the courts should be to find the truth and act upon it rather than be a game where it all depends upon the "players".
The election system has learned from two systems before it, the US system which resulted in too few candidates and the Weimarer system, which resulted in too much political chaos and finally the rise of Hitler. There are direct votes for each precinct (so individuals from a party can be elected without being on the party's seat list, Ströbele, for example, isn't on his party list but gets elected directly because of his personal agenda) but there's also a vote tally that assigns seats based on percentage. That means that while each precinct gets its representative there are usually also representatives that don't belong to any specific precinct and also parties that don't get any directly elected representatives but still have at least 5% of the "secondary" vote and get seats.
What's also quite useful to a member of the military is the inalienable honor of man (first paragraph of the constitution after the preamble) which means you cannot be forced into degrading punishments. While I expect Full Metal Jacket to be very exaggerated compared to what actually happens in the US Army, military training in Germany is almost nothing like FMJ. Your instructors aren't even allowed to insult you.
That also brings us to the negatives, the mandatory military service is stupid and the only reason it's even kept is because those who object can be used as a cheap workforce for social institutions (e.g. hospitals rely on that), with the new mandatory cheap labour for unemployed people there really shouldn't be any need for keeping the service, especially considering those who do go to the military aren't useful either since they can't be sent on foreign missions and all they do after basic training is hanging around, wasting time and getting drunk (in fact most anecdotes about the service revolve around the amount of alcohol everyone drank, some saying they didn't drink on the weekends because they'd like to be sober at least once a week).
The youth protection provisions could potentially be abused for censorship but then again that would require a very corrupt constitutional court to pull off and when you have a very corrupt constitutional court all is lost anyway. A problem with the indexing is that it's very unclear what constitutes advertising and stores aren't willing to risk anything so indexed media could be too hard to come by.
By the way, you didn't say what you like about the US constitution, I'd be interested in knowing what you consider the most important parts of that.
*=For some idiotic reason holocaust denial counts as such. I know that those deniers usually aren't nice people in other respects as well but I don't see how that's related to a war of aggression. Though it may just be related to the inalienable honor of man and denial would dishonor those who were killed in the holocaust or something. Not that I think holocaust denial counts as expression of an oppinion (oppinions that are claimed as fact shouldn't be protected, although fiction that isn't presented as fact should be and AFAIK is).
For example the line "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happyness" is "Life, liberty and freedom from bodily harm" in the Declaration of Human Rights. The former would permit torture, the latter doesn't. Several of the amendments are way too abstract to be of much use, e.g. the first amendment only states "Congress shall make no law", it doesn't talk about other government authorities or other forms of censorship, the right to bear arms does not state what arms it's talking about, privacy isn't present to the same extend it's seen in the Declaration and overall the US Constitution was written at a different time and needs adjustment to the changed times. The election system IS anchored in the constitution. There's even several deadweight parts like the amendment that outlaws alcohol.
BTW, why does a person have to be 35 to become the POTUS?
Overall I'd say you should look through a few constitutions used throughout the EU, I can't say what's the best because everyone has a different metric (some prefer more freedom, some prefer more sensible restrictions, etc). Personally I prefer sensible restrictions over completely unrestricted freedoms because the latter will often interfere with preventing asssholes from behaving as such.
To quote a certain man, "the constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper" because all good intentions are meaningless if people don't follow up on them. While I also doubt your claim about the US constitution being the best available I also think some mostly unchallenged parts of the US system are broken, e.g. the whole election system. Whether you believe in electoral fraud or not doesn't matter, that thing is so horrible that people pretty much vote for two parties when they like neither because unless 150 million people simultaneously decided to vote different no other party has a chance at getting a spot in the government and the guy who gets in power doesn't even have more than 50% of the voters behind him. Most other democratic countries have systems that allow for more representation of minor parties by e.g. giving power out roughly to percentages of the vote instead of a winner-takes-all system. It's a small wonder that the US even has two parties with a chance to win, if the balance wasn't so close you'd essentially have a single party like all those "people's" republics.
The lack of international regard for the US isn't caused by any unconstitutional activity, it's caused by bad foreign policies. Until you can get your constitution to say "don't mess with other countries' politics for short-term personal gain" the US won't become highly regarded again and any envy towards the US stems mostly from the fact that everyone wishes he had a military strong enough to conquer the world, too.
Enough to change our laws because we're so afraid of them? Sorry but... no. These guys are small fry compared to even muggers, being afraid of them only makes them feel important.
Better solution: Just ignore those terrorists, they're not doing any significant damage. Sure, they wrecked one building... In how many years? Just shrug it off, don't reward them with attention because that's all they want, attention.
I doubt that's happening. We have a huge surplus of low skilled workers, mostly because it's cheaper to offshore these jobs or replace them with machines wherever possible and the rest isn't enough to cover that huge segment of the population (there's only so many burgers to flip). Meanwhile we have a lack of highly qualified personell that can operate and maintain the machines and invent the more and more complex devices we make, sell and use. We need more smart people, problem is the human race just doesn't seem fit to deliver as many of them as we need.
Of course at that point they no longer need evidence to arrest you anyway.
Some of your concerns deal with "everyone" having access to that information, wouldn't it make more sense to try and get data protection laws in place to prevent "them" from sharing information with each other that could be used to track you? E.g. assuming "they" share data freely would mean that your insurance company could look up what you bought with your credit card and determine the quality of your nutrition that way. Most of those scenarios seem to have less to do with ID and more with collaboration and the willingness to track you.
I don't want my insurance agency to be deciding to change my insurance rates if they find that I am out in the woods from time to time (I collect rocks.)
Out of pure curiousity, how are they going to track that? In the woods there are no scanners, they'd need to place a GPS bug on you.
That's interesting because I live in a country where ID is mandatory and yet I rarely have to show it. Certainly not when buying stuff in a store (except for liquor if the salesperson has a bad day and that's hardly regular enough to allow any form of tracking). You're probably easier to track by your credit card than any ID card.
Slashdot Mirror
What makes you think that?
When such philosophy is used, I like to apply the egocentric view: Mankind is MY species and thus it is the species I value above any other. I will protect it against any threat (other than myself obviously), no matter what morality says is the right course of action. I would gladly subdue, enslave and exterminate any other sentient life in the universe if necessary for the survival of my species. This is my species, this is my ultimate goal and there is and can be no reason to ever defy it. Right, wrong, purpose, will, sentience, all of these are just concepts we invented to protect my species and we will abandon them if they stand in our way.
I think the point where automation makes it impossible to keep large parts of the population employed because there's no need for that many people was the basis for communism, the point where it's intended to be used. If it's not possible to sustain the populace through the current way of hoping someone pays them or taking some money from those who work to feed those who don't the government may be forced to "acquire" the means of production and produce what's necessary to maintain the population itself.
A robot could very well be considered equal to a corporation.
The three laws aren't about programming, they're about which ones we blast to smithereens.
Animal abuse is illegal in many jurisdictions, it's quite thinkable that we'll have robots that are as intelligent as most pets.
Do you mean anatomically correct as in "looks real" or as in "fully implemented genitals"? I have no doubt that the latter will happen in Japan considering what they already produce (NSFW).
There's an English translation of the "GG" here.
Some notes:
1. Do you define anything as speech that comes out of a mouth (or pen or key board or...)? A problem is that we assume that speech is used to communicate information and communicating false information can cause severe damage, both economic and physical, to other people. Acts like fraud usually involve promising things you don't fulfill. Does freedom of speech mean that there cannot be consequences for anything you say (this would include contracts if we interpret speech to mean media) or should it mean (as is probably intended) that the government cannot prevent you from criticising it and openly discussing issues they would rather sweep under the rug? No consequences means no accountability which in turn means that speech cannot be trusted. Since speech is often interpreted as referring to any communication the lack of accountability would mean we could no longer communicate with any form of insurance that people are saying the truth.
2. It says "bear arms" but the lack of any prescribed limits or statement that there are none leaves it open to the government to issue limitations as long as at least one form of weapon is permitted. I think this needs to be clarified to be unambiguous (e.g. "any personell weapon") or just handed down to "normal" law completely.
5. The issue with subjective values in assessing values is that you can't really put a price on them and it leaves too much leeway to whoever is in charge of assessing them with no way to review the decision.
Remember that Common Law dictates that the interpretation of a law by a judge is effectively a new law so you can never say "no interpreting" because your entire legal system is based on such interpretations.
Even better if they replaced the Windows key with a Commodore key (or should that be alt?).
For one example I prefer the German constitution although I will not assert that there may not be better ones available.
It guarantees freedom of expression (which is a lot clearer than freedom of "speech" because the latter requires a judge to interpret what "speech" is) with the exception of promoting a war of aggression* (there is no good reason to start such a war).
It protects privacy strongly (I recall an incident where the US named a suspected terrorist and the German police couldn't search his home yet because search warrants aren't granted as easily) and the data protection helps reduce the abuse of personal data.
Due to using civil law over common law there's much less room for interpretation which means laws are used the way they are written, not the way judges have interpreted them in the past (the US constitution often has judges bending it because of interpretations, resulting in e.g. the restrictions on porn despite the freedom of speech). The inquisitorial system is better than the adversarial system in court, IMO, because the goal of the courts should be to find the truth and act upon it rather than be a game where it all depends upon the "players".
The election system has learned from two systems before it, the US system which resulted in too few candidates and the Weimarer system, which resulted in too much political chaos and finally the rise of Hitler. There are direct votes for each precinct (so individuals from a party can be elected without being on the party's seat list, Ströbele, for example, isn't on his party list but gets elected directly because of his personal agenda) but there's also a vote tally that assigns seats based on percentage. That means that while each precinct gets its representative there are usually also representatives that don't belong to any specific precinct and also parties that don't get any directly elected representatives but still have at least 5% of the "secondary" vote and get seats.
What's also quite useful to a member of the military is the inalienable honor of man (first paragraph of the constitution after the preamble) which means you cannot be forced into degrading punishments. While I expect Full Metal Jacket to be very exaggerated compared to what actually happens in the US Army, military training in Germany is almost nothing like FMJ. Your instructors aren't even allowed to insult you.
That also brings us to the negatives, the mandatory military service is stupid and the only reason it's even kept is because those who object can be used as a cheap workforce for social institutions (e.g. hospitals rely on that), with the new mandatory cheap labour for unemployed people there really shouldn't be any need for keeping the service, especially considering those who do go to the military aren't useful either since they can't be sent on foreign missions and all they do after basic training is hanging around, wasting time and getting drunk (in fact most anecdotes about the service revolve around the amount of alcohol everyone drank, some saying they didn't drink on the weekends because they'd like to be sober at least once a week).
The youth protection provisions could potentially be abused for censorship but then again that would require a very corrupt constitutional court to pull off and when you have a very corrupt constitutional court all is lost anyway. A problem with the indexing is that it's very unclear what constitutes advertising and stores aren't willing to risk anything so indexed media could be too hard to come by.
By the way, you didn't say what you like about the US constitution, I'd be interested in knowing what you consider the most important parts of that.
*=For some idiotic reason holocaust denial counts as such. I know that those deniers usually aren't nice people in other respects as well but I don't see how that's related to a war of aggression. Though it may just be related to the inalienable honor of man and denial would dishonor those who were killed in the holocaust or something. Not that I think holocaust denial counts as expression of an oppinion (oppinions that are claimed as fact shouldn't be protected, although fiction that isn't presented as fact should be and AFAIK is).
For example the line "Life, liberty and the pursuit of happyness" is "Life, liberty and freedom from bodily harm" in the Declaration of Human Rights. The former would permit torture, the latter doesn't. Several of the amendments are way too abstract to be of much use, e.g. the first amendment only states "Congress shall make no law", it doesn't talk about other government authorities or other forms of censorship, the right to bear arms does not state what arms it's talking about, privacy isn't present to the same extend it's seen in the Declaration and overall the US Constitution was written at a different time and needs adjustment to the changed times. The election system IS anchored in the constitution. There's even several deadweight parts like the amendment that outlaws alcohol.
BTW, why does a person have to be 35 to become the POTUS?
Overall I'd say you should look through a few constitutions used throughout the EU, I can't say what's the best because everyone has a different metric (some prefer more freedom, some prefer more sensible restrictions, etc). Personally I prefer sensible restrictions over completely unrestricted freedoms because the latter will often interfere with preventing asssholes from behaving as such.
We're talking about predicting decisions, not the future. This is closer to Asimov's Foundation.
... use water to short out his cloaking device.
Who needs ratings when you can play the game for yourself?
Not every demo is a perfect representation of the full version, some demos are better, some worse than the full game.
To quote a certain man, "the constitution is just a goddamn piece of paper" because all good intentions are meaningless if people don't follow up on them. While I also doubt your claim about the US constitution being the best available I also think some mostly unchallenged parts of the US system are broken, e.g. the whole election system. Whether you believe in electoral fraud or not doesn't matter, that thing is so horrible that people pretty much vote for two parties when they like neither because unless 150 million people simultaneously decided to vote different no other party has a chance at getting a spot in the government and the guy who gets in power doesn't even have more than 50% of the voters behind him. Most other democratic countries have systems that allow for more representation of minor parties by e.g. giving power out roughly to percentages of the vote instead of a winner-takes-all system. It's a small wonder that the US even has two parties with a chance to win, if the balance wasn't so close you'd essentially have a single party like all those "people's" republics.
The lack of international regard for the US isn't caused by any unconstitutional activity, it's caused by bad foreign policies. Until you can get your constitution to say "don't mess with other countries' politics for short-term personal gain" the US won't become highly regarded again and any envy towards the US stems mostly from the fact that everyone wishes he had a military strong enough to conquer the world, too.
Enough to change our laws because we're so afraid of them? Sorry but... no. These guys are small fry compared to even muggers, being afraid of them only makes them feel important.
Problem is that won't hype those that don't put their console online.
Better solution: Just ignore those terrorists, they're not doing any significant damage. Sure, they wrecked one building... In how many years? Just shrug it off, don't reward them with attention because that's all they want, attention.
If it's really as bad as you say there's no point in protesting this ID stuff, get the hell out of there while you still can, ID or no ID.
To quote Friedman: By the time the market reacts we are all dead.
take their kids and shove them up their ass.
1. Children don't come out of the ass.
2. Life has a strict "no returns" policy.
I doubt that's happening. We have a huge surplus of low skilled workers, mostly because it's cheaper to offshore these jobs or replace them with machines wherever possible and the rest isn't enough to cover that huge segment of the population (there's only so many burgers to flip). Meanwhile we have a lack of highly qualified personell that can operate and maintain the machines and invent the more and more complex devices we make, sell and use. We need more smart people, problem is the human race just doesn't seem fit to deliver as many of them as we need.
The standard unit for that is Libraries of Congress.
Of course at that point they no longer need evidence to arrest you anyway.
Some of your concerns deal with "everyone" having access to that information, wouldn't it make more sense to try and get data protection laws in place to prevent "them" from sharing information with each other that could be used to track you? E.g. assuming "they" share data freely would mean that your insurance company could look up what you bought with your credit card and determine the quality of your nutrition that way. Most of those scenarios seem to have less to do with ID and more with collaboration and the willingness to track you.
I don't want my insurance agency to be deciding to change my insurance rates if they find that I am out in the woods from time to time (I collect rocks.)
Out of pure curiousity, how are they going to track that? In the woods there are no scanners, they'd need to place a GPS bug on you.
That's interesting because I live in a country where ID is mandatory and yet I rarely have to show it. Certainly not when buying stuff in a store (except for liquor if the salesperson has a bad day and that's hardly regular enough to allow any form of tracking). You're probably easier to track by your credit card than any ID card.