Pig sounds like a pretty reasonable thing to call someone who stops you for something that isn't a crime, tries to set you up for "assaulting a police officer" or "resisting arrest", and threatens to ban you for life from a public service.
It's just funny how that stuff mostly happens to people who seem generally spoiling for a fight. There are a few asshole cops out there, just like there are lots of assholes they have to deal with every day of their lives, for a living. How this makes it appropriate to use the term "pig" as a lable for police is beyond me. It's no different than a cop that calls everyone they meet "punk"... but the difference is that such cops are imaginary comic-book villains, whereas the GP actually is an idiot characature of a twit right out of 1968.
Traitor seems more accurate.
Have you ever actually looked up what that work means? I didn't think so.
Try watching it again, OK? And this time keep some things in mind. Insurgents in the area had been shooting at troops all day, and had been part of several engagements rolling through the that part of town. They were tracked to the location in question. Most of the locals had cleared the street (this is obvious in the video that are pretending you've seen) - they knew exactly who those guys were, and could see they were armed with RPGs, and wanted out of the way. The reporters (who had deliberately removed their neon "I'm a reporter" vests that the military uses to help identify them) were along with the insurgents specifically to get video of them attacking military targets.
In the video, you can clearly see guys with AK's slung, and have a couple of good looks at at least one of them hoisting, and then leaning on an RPG launcher. These insurgents are the ones who head out deliberately each day to deliberately kill cilivians, cops, solidiers and kids. They strap explosives to mentally damaged young women and send them into markets to slaughter people. The military goes out looking to kill them, as they should. Here, they found them, weapons in hand, fresh from earlier attacks on troops.
It's terrible when innocent people get killed. Which is why it's terrible that the insurgents deliberately operate in the middle of the locals, specifically to generate such deaths whenenver they're pursued and engaged.
So, you served in the military, and your conclusion is that those in the military can't help but commit attrocities? What the hell are you talking about?
As for the rest: the reporters on the ground were there to film a rocket attack on troops. That's why they were tagging along with the armed insurgents. The troops on the scene (the ones who medevac-ced the two wounded girls to the hospital) found multiplpe weapons, including RPGs, amoung the insurgents killed on the ground. This has been covered in hundreds of news reports, not that you care, obviously.
Then you weren't looking. Even the "editors" at Wikileaks reported having a bit internal fight over how to deal with the fact that they saw an obvious RPG launcher in the video. Regardless, have you bothered to read up on the reports from the ground (by third parties) in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the insurgents? You know, where the RPG ammo the guys were carrying was found scattered around (even under the body of one of the reporters)? At least be a little intellectually honest, here.
No matter how many tymes I look and search I do not see those being shot at with any weapons. Not one.
Well, if you're not observant enough to see the guy leaning on the RPG launcher, or the guy next to him with the AK-47, then I have to question how many other bad conclusions you come to, and how often. Why don't you read up on the comments from people (like other reports) who quickly came up on the scene of that street, and found the weapons still on the bodies, and even found one of the dead journalists with another guy's dropped RPG ammo under him on the ground. I know those pesky video images and facts are annoying to you and everything.
But sure, go ahead and say that since bad people have done something in the past, that "those in the military" are all atrocity-committing evil-doers. Enjoy that twisted world view - I'm sure it really helps you with understanding all current events.
Yes, civilians hanging out in the street with armed insurgents carrying machine guns and rocket launchers, in an area of the town where those insurgents had been involved in firefights all day. What's interesting, of course, is how an otherwise normally busy street was so empty of civilians. Why? Because the people in that town knew exactly who these guys were, what they were doing, and what it means to be out and about when they're doing their thing in a combat zone. Do you really (really, now, come on) think that if a helicopter gunship was actually out and about specifically to kill civilians, for the sake of killing civilians, that the situation would have resembled anything remotely like what you saw? If you do, you really need to do a little more thinking.
video of US soldiers killing innocent journalists and children... And other information that the People deserve to know
You mean, "And other spin I want them to digest as if it were basic factual information." The video you cite is a perfect example of out-of-context agenda-driven spin, coupled with deliberately false and misleading commentary. They used video of an attack on weapons-carrying insurgents (in an area where insurgents had been shooting at people all day), and the un-marked embedded journalists hanging out with the insurgents specifically so they could get attention-grabbing video... they used that as a marketing tool. Wikileaks used some nice big fat lying of their own to promote their own presence in the media landscape. It's so noble! So anti-The-Man! Gaah.
If clueless people didn't take that spin as gospel, it would be darkly humorous.
You mean like the all-or-nothing argument being put forth by the administration? You know, the guys that say that all such drilling must stop for six months because of BP's accident, even though BP is not running all such wells, the Interior Secretary's own experts have told him that the drilling moratorium is counterproductive and possibly dangerous, and there are no new standards to apply, nor any plan to alter regulation of the wells in question? You mean that sort of slippery? Where politics, pandering to the far eco-left's rabidity on the subject, rather than any practicality whatsoever, drives an all-or-nothing reaction? Gotcha.
Stopping current drilling until the industry can demonstrate that they are performing in a safe manner seems to be one of the few ways (and republicans are demanding that something be done) that will make a company act responsibly
How would you demonstrate that, exactly? Perhaps tens of thousands of drilling operations that haven't had this happen? Thousands in production, right now, that haven't? You want the government to look at something and decide that they are seeing pefection and the complete impossibility of an accident? Are you also in favor of shutting down all coal mines, all air traffic, all chemical factories, all meat packing plants, all schools (children can slip in the bathrooms!) in the name of the "justice" that the GP was referring to? Really?
the administration has every right to regulate when it is in the public interest
Who's talking about regulation? The GP is talking about justice, which means he's talking about the consequences of criminal conduct. Telling other drilling operations that they have to stop working because that's the only way to make sure that justice will be done in advance of an as-yet uncomitted crime is prior restraint.
And no... the administration does not have "every right" (do you even know what the word "right" means?) to regulate anything. The executive branch can only regulate within the bounds granted by the congress through legislation. They can each squabble over what that means, which is when the judicial branch steps in to interpret the legislation, compare it to the constitution, and then weigh the executive's actions in that context.
and yet we still insist on this barbaric process of killing human beings to prove that killing is wrong
That's not what it's about, of course, and you know it. We've already established that killing another person is wrong. And in the vast majority of cases - even in states where there is a death penalty - murderers do not see the death penalty. It's reserved for people who clearly exhibit an understanding that they think so little of life (including their own) that they're willing to kill people, with malice, intentionally, and usually under especially heinous circumstances. The death penalty is simply the next step in what the deliberate murderer has started: an acknowledgement that we're dealing with a person so irredeemable, who so closely and without remorse holds for themselves the authority to kill innocent people as they see fit, that they've been found by their felllow citizens to be best handed the very fate that they've personally endorsed for others who have done nothing wrong.
The person being put to death has himself declared his life worthless, and has demonstrated a willingness to end violently end other people's lives. The guy in this case happyily killed other people while he was in prison for doing other crimes. He's exactly the kind of person that you, presumably, would want to torture for another 40 years by locking him in an isolated box, or perhaps lobotomize, or permanently drug into a stupor, right? Yeah, I thought so.
Why should a non-crazy man who has deliberately killed innocent people have to command the special attention of guards and special facilities for decades just so they can make sure he doesn't kill them, too? He's got nothing to lose, and has already done it before. I know you think it's more valuable to have him locked up and staring at walls in solitary confinement for the rest of his life - but perhaps you can explain the high-minded enlightenment that represents? Or perhaps you had a different plan for him? Do tell.
People will just run it longer, or leave their windows and doors open all the time, to make up for the energy savings
You're right. There's no point in doing anything, ever. We should all just die. Also, you hate your parents, right? Because they wouldn't get you the bigger iPod?
Well, the state kept him in jail for some 30 odd years before commiting the very same crime he did
What's it like, having such a crippling case of mixed premises, situational ethics, and sleazy moral relavence? How do you decide what to wear every morning?
It's quite another thing to have cops volunteer to kill another human being.
Why? Cops go to work every day knowing that they've taken on the solemn responsibility to use deadly force, if necessary, to protect other people. They are also frequently the ones that get to watch some innocent person - a victim of some violent person - die right before their eyes. They are frequenly the poor guys who have to go knock on a family's door to tell them that their loved one was just killed by somebody else for no good reason. Police officers see death all the time. They are acutely aware of how precious life is, and how capriciously it can be taken away. And when a guy like the murderer in question personally decides to kill innocent people, and a jury finds his motives and actions to rise to the level of unforgivable, why shouldn't a skilled police officer volunteer to be one of the people that gets the job done correctly?
The officers that volunteered for that duty are carefully screened, and undergo significant training. They consider it an important responsibility, doing it right. It's in the service of the families of the people that murderer decided to kill. It's in the service of the non-murdering working citizens of Utah, who had to work just a little bit, every day, to pay some taxes to buy this guy years of meals while he strung out his appeals process... even while his victims will never eat with their families again. His victims' families were part of who was paying to keep him alive. Now ended.
"He" was long gone. Instantly, in fact. The amount of energy delivered to his chest cavity (with very carefully chosen ammunition) produces a mammoth shock wave. Complete and irreversible instant mega brain trauma, courtesy of - among other things - the fact that major arteries connect the brain to the central plumbing. Out like a light. Don't confused some left-over autonomic nerve/muscle activity (ever seen a chicken quite literally hopping around, minus its head? I have) with him being "alive" in any way that counts.
His victims, unfortunately, didn't die so quickly.
deserves a bit more than 140 characters in Twitter
You mean, like the years and years of exhaustive press coverage this murderer received after he killed innocent people in his failed attempt to break out of custody for other crimes he committed? You mean the thousands and thousands of pages of public records and court documents that accompanied his multiple prosecutions and appeals over the years? Do you mean like the years the murderer himself had to talk about himself and his fate to a wide audience, despite having cut short other innocent people's chances to ever do that? Do you mean the public procedings in his most recent hearings, which go on page after page?
Maybe this topic deserves more than your own short, uninformed ramblings. You may not have limited it to 140 characters, but you sure dumbed it down plenty yourself.
laws should be written and enforced so that no one firm has the market power to lead or lower prices
What a bunch of crap. Are you also suggesting that no company should be allowed to suddenly find a way to do something better, and thus offer what they do or produce at a lower price? It's just not fair to be more productive than the next guy, right? Yes, way to reward increases in productivity, there. Why you want to make the always-encroaching Nanny State even more powerful, and move to that delightfully effective central economic planning model (which has worked so well throughout history, right?), I'll never know. This model does seem to be favored by the lazy, though, so maybe that's it.
Do you think people shouldn't be able to lend each other books ?
Really? You are unable to grasp the difference between me handing you a book I purchased, and me reproducing and distributing a million copies of a ripped off movie to a million anonymous "friends" of mine? Of course you know the difference, and you're just hoping nobody will call you on it.
Selling reselling the same thing over and over again? Without any further investments?? And expect to be paid the same money forever???
So, if it takes someone 10 years to write a novel, or a lifetime of photographing a particularly difficult animal in the jungles of Burma, or $200 million to hire thousands of employees to work on a production, your take on it is: people who don't want to pay for it should be able to rip it off, since they don't have the personal integrity to simply walk away if they don't want to pay what the creator of the work is asking. You're saying that the audience gets to tell the artist what is, or is not enough of an investment, and if the artist doesn't like that, the audience just gets to rip it off, instead? How about this: if you don't think an artist is being reasonable in the price they're asking for their work, don't patronize that artist. Just go find someone who is willing to spend thousands of hours in the studio and who is wants to be your pet entertainment slave. Why would you want to be entertained by the work from someone who you think is evil for charging after the fact for work they did entirely at their own risk, in advance? If you hate them for taking on all of the risk in advance, and charging later, just go elsewhere for your entertainment. Surely you can talk some writers into making a living by charging for readings in bars, instead of delivering their work to you to read at your leisure. You're really onto something, there. The bad poets will love you.
Concert, shows, etc. That's how artists should earn their living
Really? You're going to tell people how they should earn their living? How about just ignoring those artists whose business model you don't like? That's called a market. But you don't want a market. You want to circumvent the market and just rip stuff off if you don't like the price. How is that any different than hopping the fence at a concert if you don't like what the artist is charging at the door? It's not.
Private sharing -> no money involved -> not a business -> normal cultural information exchange
No. Ripping off the entertainment you want so you can have it with "no money involved" is still a business thing. An artist or a business creates something and offers it for sale. You might want it, but you can choose to do business with them, or go without the thing they've made. Deciding to rip it off, instead, so that you can avoid paying for it, is not a "private" issue, because one half of the equation involves the person who created it and offered it up for sale. The choice to find a way to rip it off, instead of doing business as the work's creator has offered, is not a private matter. Choosing to create something of your own, and offering it up to a million of your best online friends at no charge - that's a private matter. Pirating commercially sold entertainment is not.
SUVs were a fad, started by marketing departments. In fact it was 100% marketing that led to the suburban drivers buying them.
I call BS. SUVs simply replaced station wagons for most people. A light SUV and all of those crossover variations aren't any worse than driving a minivan or a large passenger car... but you get the advantage of being far more versatile. Clearly you don't know anyone that lives down a gravel road, or someplace that regularly gets feet of snow, or where roads wash out. Or anyone who actually does use the payload and passenger space at the same time. Are you saying that it's a fad to have five or six people and a bunch of stuff all going to the same place at the same time? Is it better to drive multiple vehicles? Why is that better? Please be specific.
For many situations it is often more cost efficient to rent what you need for the short amount of time that you will need it
Perhaps for some situations. It's certainly not cost effective to rent a workably larger vehicle three or four weekends every month, month-in-month-out, or to keep a working vehicle like that, and rent a small passenger car for five days every week. I know lots of people who have trucks, vans, and SUVs... and they all actually use them as intended. Doesn't stop people from saying that every light truck and SUV they see is being driven by some anti-enivronment a-hole, of course. But we're used to hearing it.
I'll put my annual fuel consumption (I drive a Chevy Suburban) up against some guy who zips around town all day in a Mini Cooper any time. I only drive when it matters, and otherwise telecommute for the day job 99 out of 100 working days. When you see me on the road in my large truck, you're seeing a rare thing... but I'm sure plenty of people curse at me anyway, since they have no clue. Meanwhile, the guy in the modern muscle car is driving to bars, driving to go rock climbing, driving to see friends, driving to pick up beer, driving to work, and getting a thumbs up from Hot Green-Is-My-Fashion-Today Chicks for not driving a truck - even though he goes through far more gas than I do.
Perhaps you have no idea what they do when you're not watching them on the particular road you saw them on. Perhaps you don't see them when they're pulling a trailer, or hauling a soccer team around, or carrying three kayaks, etc. I guess you'd rather that person have a second vehicle manufactured for him, which he can separately maintain, insure, and store somewhere. That's super efficient.
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Pig sounds like a pretty reasonable thing to call someone who stops you for something that isn't a crime, tries to set you up for "assaulting a police officer" or "resisting arrest", and threatens to ban you for life from a public service.
... but the difference is that such cops are imaginary comic-book villains, whereas the GP actually is an idiot characature of a twit right out of 1968.
It's just funny how that stuff mostly happens to people who seem generally spoiling for a fight. There are a few asshole cops out there, just like there are lots of assholes they have to deal with every day of their lives, for a living. How this makes it appropriate to use the term "pig" as a lable for police is beyond me. It's no different than a cop that calls everyone they meet "punk"
Traitor seems more accurate.
Have you ever actually looked up what that work means? I didn't think so.
With your phrasing, the decision is being passed to the pig
Gee, I wonder why you find yourself in confrontations like this. Maybe it's a result of, like, your time travel from 1968, man? Whoa, that's heavy.
that I saw on the video
Try watching it again, OK? And this time keep some things in mind. Insurgents in the area had been shooting at troops all day, and had been part of several engagements rolling through the that part of town. They were tracked to the location in question. Most of the locals had cleared the street (this is obvious in the video that are pretending you've seen) - they knew exactly who those guys were, and could see they were armed with RPGs, and wanted out of the way. The reporters (who had deliberately removed their neon "I'm a reporter" vests that the military uses to help identify them) were along with the insurgents specifically to get video of them attacking military targets.
In the video, you can clearly see guys with AK's slung, and have a couple of good looks at at least one of them hoisting, and then leaning on an RPG launcher. These insurgents are the ones who head out deliberately each day to deliberately kill cilivians, cops, solidiers and kids. They strap explosives to mentally damaged young women and send them into markets to slaughter people. The military goes out looking to kill them, as they should. Here, they found them, weapons in hand, fresh from earlier attacks on troops.
It's terrible when innocent people get killed. Which is why it's terrible that the insurgents deliberately operate in the middle of the locals, specifically to generate such deaths whenenver they're pursued and engaged.
So, you served in the military, and your conclusion is that those in the military can't help but commit attrocities? What the hell are you talking about?
As for the rest: the reporters on the ground were there to film a rocket attack on troops. That's why they were tagging along with the armed insurgents. The troops on the scene (the ones who medevac-ced the two wounded girls to the hospital) found multiplpe weapons, including RPGs, amoung the insurgents killed on the ground. This has been covered in hundreds of news reports, not that you care, obviously.
I saw no guns and no rocket launcher.
Then you weren't looking. Even the "editors" at Wikileaks reported having a bit internal fight over how to deal with the fact that they saw an obvious RPG launcher in the video. Regardless, have you bothered to read up on the reports from the ground (by third parties) in the immediate aftermath of the attack on the insurgents? You know, where the RPG ammo the guys were carrying was found scattered around (even under the body of one of the reporters)? At least be a little intellectually honest, here.
No matter how many tymes I look and search I do not see those being shot at with any weapons. Not one.
Well, if you're not observant enough to see the guy leaning on the RPG launcher, or the guy next to him with the AK-47, then I have to question how many other bad conclusions you come to, and how often. Why don't you read up on the comments from people (like other reports) who quickly came up on the scene of that street, and found the weapons still on the bodies, and even found one of the dead journalists with another guy's dropped RPG ammo under him on the ground. I know those pesky video images and facts are annoying to you and everything.
But sure, go ahead and say that since bad people have done something in the past, that "those in the military" are all atrocity-committing evil-doers. Enjoy that twisted world view - I'm sure it really helps you with understanding all current events.
Unarmed civilians were slaughtered.
Yes, civilians hanging out in the street with armed insurgents carrying machine guns and rocket launchers, in an area of the town where those insurgents had been involved in firefights all day. What's interesting, of course, is how an otherwise normally busy street was so empty of civilians. Why? Because the people in that town knew exactly who these guys were, what they were doing, and what it means to be out and about when they're doing their thing in a combat zone. Do you really (really, now, come on) think that if a helicopter gunship was actually out and about specifically to kill civilians, for the sake of killing civilians, that the situation would have resembled anything remotely like what you saw? If you do, you really need to do a little more thinking.
video of US soldiers killing innocent journalists and children ... And other information that the People deserve to know
... they used that as a marketing tool. Wikileaks used some nice big fat lying of their own to promote their own presence in the media landscape. It's so noble! So anti-The-Man! Gaah.
You mean, "And other spin I want them to digest as if it were basic factual information." The video you cite is a perfect example of out-of-context agenda-driven spin, coupled with deliberately false and misleading commentary. They used video of an attack on weapons-carrying insurgents (in an area where insurgents had been shooting at people all day), and the un-marked embedded journalists hanging out with the insurgents specifically so they could get attention-grabbing video
If clueless people didn't take that spin as gospel, it would be darkly humorous.
an all-or-nothing slippery slope argument
You mean like the all-or-nothing argument being put forth by the administration? You know, the guys that say that all such drilling must stop for six months because of BP's accident, even though BP is not running all such wells, the Interior Secretary's own experts have told him that the drilling moratorium is counterproductive and possibly dangerous, and there are no new standards to apply, nor any plan to alter regulation of the wells in question? You mean that sort of slippery? Where politics, pandering to the far eco-left's rabidity on the subject, rather than any practicality whatsoever, drives an all-or-nothing reaction? Gotcha.
Stopping current drilling until the industry can demonstrate that they are performing in a safe manner seems to be one of the few ways (and republicans are demanding that something be done) that will make a company act responsibly
How would you demonstrate that, exactly? Perhaps tens of thousands of drilling operations that haven't had this happen? Thousands in production, right now, that haven't? You want the government to look at something and decide that they are seeing pefection and the complete impossibility of an accident? Are you also in favor of shutting down all coal mines, all air traffic, all chemical factories, all meat packing plants, all schools (children can slip in the bathrooms!) in the name of the "justice" that the GP was referring to? Really?
the administration has every right to regulate when it is in the public interest
... the administration does not have "every right" (do you even know what the word "right" means?) to regulate anything. The executive branch can only regulate within the bounds granted by the congress through legislation. They can each squabble over what that means, which is when the judicial branch steps in to interpret the legislation, compare it to the constitution, and then weigh the executive's actions in that context.
Who's talking about regulation? The GP is talking about justice, which means he's talking about the consequences of criminal conduct. Telling other drilling operations that they have to stop working because that's the only way to make sure that justice will be done in advance of an as-yet uncomitted crime is prior restraint.
And no
justice
You're confusing "justice" with "prior restraint."
and yet we still insist on this barbaric process of killing human beings to prove that killing is wrong
That's not what it's about, of course, and you know it. We've already established that killing another person is wrong. And in the vast majority of cases - even in states where there is a death penalty - murderers do not see the death penalty. It's reserved for people who clearly exhibit an understanding that they think so little of life (including their own) that they're willing to kill people, with malice, intentionally, and usually under especially heinous circumstances. The death penalty is simply the next step in what the deliberate murderer has started: an acknowledgement that we're dealing with a person so irredeemable, who so closely and without remorse holds for themselves the authority to kill innocent people as they see fit, that they've been found by their felllow citizens to be best handed the very fate that they've personally endorsed for others who have done nothing wrong.
The person being put to death has himself declared his life worthless, and has demonstrated a willingness to end violently end other people's lives. The guy in this case happyily killed other people while he was in prison for doing other crimes. He's exactly the kind of person that you, presumably, would want to torture for another 40 years by locking him in an isolated box, or perhaps lobotomize, or permanently drug into a stupor, right? Yeah, I thought so.
Why should a non-crazy man who has deliberately killed innocent people have to command the special attention of guards and special facilities for decades just so they can make sure he doesn't kill them, too? He's got nothing to lose, and has already done it before. I know you think it's more valuable to have him locked up and staring at walls in solitary confinement for the rest of his life - but perhaps you can explain the high-minded enlightenment that represents? Or perhaps you had a different plan for him? Do tell.
People will just run it longer, or leave their windows and doors open all the time, to make up for the energy savings
You're right. There's no point in doing anything, ever. We should all just die. Also, you hate your parents, right? Because they wouldn't get you the bigger iPod?
Well, the state kept him in jail for some 30 odd years before commiting the very same crime he did
What's it like, having such a crippling case of mixed premises, situational ethics, and sleazy moral relavence? How do you decide what to wear every morning?
It's quite another thing to have cops volunteer to kill another human being.
... even while his victims will never eat with their families again. His victims' families were part of who was paying to keep him alive. Now ended.
Why? Cops go to work every day knowing that they've taken on the solemn responsibility to use deadly force, if necessary, to protect other people. They are also frequently the ones that get to watch some innocent person - a victim of some violent person - die right before their eyes. They are frequenly the poor guys who have to go knock on a family's door to tell them that their loved one was just killed by somebody else for no good reason. Police officers see death all the time. They are acutely aware of how precious life is, and how capriciously it can be taken away. And when a guy like the murderer in question personally decides to kill innocent people, and a jury finds his motives and actions to rise to the level of unforgivable, why shouldn't a skilled police officer volunteer to be one of the people that gets the job done correctly?
The officers that volunteered for that duty are carefully screened, and undergo significant training. They consider it an important responsibility, doing it right. It's in the service of the families of the people that murderer decided to kill. It's in the service of the non-murdering working citizens of Utah, who had to work just a little bit, every day, to pay some taxes to buy this guy years of meals while he strung out his appeals process
but he didn't die within seconds
"He" was long gone. Instantly, in fact. The amount of energy delivered to his chest cavity (with very carefully chosen ammunition) produces a mammoth shock wave. Complete and irreversible instant mega brain trauma, courtesy of - among other things - the fact that major arteries connect the brain to the central plumbing. Out like a light. Don't confused some left-over autonomic nerve/muscle activity (ever seen a chicken quite literally hopping around, minus its head? I have) with him being "alive" in any way that counts.
His victims, unfortunately, didn't die so quickly.
deserves a bit more than 140 characters in Twitter
You mean, like the years and years of exhaustive press coverage this murderer received after he killed innocent people in his failed attempt to break out of custody for other crimes he committed? You mean the thousands and thousands of pages of public records and court documents that accompanied his multiple prosecutions and appeals over the years? Do you mean like the years the murderer himself had to talk about himself and his fate to a wide audience, despite having cut short other innocent people's chances to ever do that? Do you mean the public procedings in his most recent hearings, which go on page after page?
Maybe this topic deserves more than your own short, uninformed ramblings. You may not have limited it to 140 characters, but you sure dumbed it down plenty yourself.
laws should be written and enforced so that no one firm has the market power to lead or lower prices
What a bunch of crap. Are you also suggesting that no company should be allowed to suddenly find a way to do something better, and thus offer what they do or produce at a lower price? It's just not fair to be more productive than the next guy, right? Yes, way to reward increases in productivity, there. Why you want to make the always-encroaching Nanny State even more powerful, and move to that delightfully effective central economic planning model (which has worked so well throughout history, right?), I'll never know. This model does seem to be favored by the lazy, though, so maybe that's it.
Do you think people shouldn't be able to lend each other books ?
Really? You are unable to grasp the difference between me handing you a book I purchased, and me reproducing and distributing a million copies of a ripped off movie to a million anonymous "friends" of mine? Of course you know the difference, and you're just hoping nobody will call you on it.
Selling reselling the same thing over and over again? Without any further investments?? And expect to be paid the same money forever???
So, if it takes someone 10 years to write a novel, or a lifetime of photographing a particularly difficult animal in the jungles of Burma, or $200 million to hire thousands of employees to work on a production, your take on it is: people who don't want to pay for it should be able to rip it off, since they don't have the personal integrity to simply walk away if they don't want to pay what the creator of the work is asking. You're saying that the audience gets to tell the artist what is, or is not enough of an investment, and if the artist doesn't like that, the audience just gets to rip it off, instead? How about this: if you don't think an artist is being reasonable in the price they're asking for their work, don't patronize that artist. Just go find someone who is willing to spend thousands of hours in the studio and who is wants to be your pet entertainment slave. Why would you want to be entertained by the work from someone who you think is evil for charging after the fact for work they did entirely at their own risk, in advance? If you hate them for taking on all of the risk in advance, and charging later, just go elsewhere for your entertainment. Surely you can talk some writers into making a living by charging for readings in bars, instead of delivering their work to you to read at your leisure. You're really onto something, there. The bad poets will love you.
Concert, shows, etc. That's how artists should earn their living
Really? You're going to tell people how they should earn their living? How about just ignoring those artists whose business model you don't like? That's called a market. But you don't want a market. You want to circumvent the market and just rip stuff off if you don't like the price. How is that any different than hopping the fence at a concert if you don't like what the artist is charging at the door? It's not.
Private sharing -> no money involved -> not a business -> normal cultural information exchange
No. Ripping off the entertainment you want so you can have it with "no money involved" is still a business thing. An artist or a business creates something and offers it for sale. You might want it, but you can choose to do business with them, or go without the thing they've made. Deciding to rip it off, instead, so that you can avoid paying for it, is not a "private" issue, because one half of the equation involves the person who created it and offered it up for sale. The choice to find a way to rip it off, instead of doing business as the work's creator has offered, is not a private matter. Choosing to create something of your own, and offering it up to a million of your best online friends at no charge - that's a private matter. Pirating commercially sold entertainment is not.
SUVs were a fad, started by marketing departments. In fact it was 100% marketing that led to the suburban drivers buying them.
... but you get the advantage of being far more versatile. Clearly you don't know anyone that lives down a gravel road, or someplace that regularly gets feet of snow, or where roads wash out. Or anyone who actually does use the payload and passenger space at the same time. Are you saying that it's a fad to have five or six people and a bunch of stuff all going to the same place at the same time? Is it better to drive multiple vehicles? Why is that better? Please be specific.
I call BS. SUVs simply replaced station wagons for most people. A light SUV and all of those crossover variations aren't any worse than driving a minivan or a large passenger car
For many situations it is often more cost efficient to rent what you need for the short amount of time that you will need it
... and they all actually use them as intended. Doesn't stop people from saying that every light truck and SUV they see is being driven by some anti-enivronment a-hole, of course. But we're used to hearing it.
... but I'm sure plenty of people curse at me anyway, since they have no clue. Meanwhile, the guy in the modern muscle car is driving to bars, driving to go rock climbing, driving to see friends, driving to pick up beer, driving to work, and getting a thumbs up from Hot Green-Is-My-Fashion-Today Chicks for not driving a truck - even though he goes through far more gas than I do.
Perhaps for some situations. It's certainly not cost effective to rent a workably larger vehicle three or four weekends every month, month-in-month-out, or to keep a working vehicle like that, and rent a small passenger car for five days every week. I know lots of people who have trucks, vans, and SUVs
I'll put my annual fuel consumption (I drive a Chevy Suburban) up against some guy who zips around town all day in a Mini Cooper any time. I only drive when it matters, and otherwise telecommute for the day job 99 out of 100 working days. When you see me on the road in my large truck, you're seeing a rare thing
Perhaps you have no idea what they do when you're not watching them on the particular road you saw them on. Perhaps you don't see them when they're pulling a trailer, or hauling a soccer team around, or carrying three kayaks, etc. I guess you'd rather that person have a second vehicle manufactured for him, which he can separately maintain, insure, and store somewhere. That's super efficient.