Your definition of "accomplishment" is bizarre and self-serving. If the only thing that makes anything worthwhile to you is immediate success in the endeavor, then we have no common ground on this matter.
I stand behind everything I've said. The only thing you seem to be concerned with is short term well being. I find this attitude contemptible. If you would like to meet I will tell you the same thing in person.
If the rebels in the Warsaw Ghetto accomplished nothing simply because they lost, then neither did the Third Reich.
Perhaps you will have the foresight and good fortune to flee a tyrannical government when you finally recognize your own to be one. Maybe to you the possibility of fighting back seems hopeless, and compliance--or even collaboration--is the only answer. I, for one, will not be rounded up so easily. I wish I could say the same for the rest of my countrymen, for my own sake if nothing else. But sadly many of them, like yourself, have forgotten or are willfully ignorant of the lessons of history. Against a single criminal or a tyrannical war machine, a gun can be the great equalizer.
And for the record, the Nazis outnumbered the resistance fighters by a ratio of between 2:1 and 7:1. And the Nazis had tanks and an effectively unlimited supply of weapons at their disposal. You dishonor the fighters by trivializing their accomplishments.
Read up about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and then tell me fighting a losing battle never does any good. A few poorly armed Jews managed to hold off the the Wehrmacht for nearly a month. Sure, they lost in the end. But would it have been so easy for the Nazis to round up their victims if they faced such a battle every time they had tried?
Remember that between 11 and 17 million people were killed in the Holocaust. Do you really believe that if every one of these people had a gun and used it against their oppressors, there would have been nearly as many murdered as there were? Look at the bigger picture.
Oh, it wasn't a problem for the Germans. It was a problem for the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and other undesirables who were largely unarmed when the government came to take them away. And this is all within living memory for many. How quickly some people forget...
What problem? That people kill each other? That's going to be the case no matter what.
According to the article, the last time they tightened gun laws in Germany was in 2002 in response to a guy killing 16 people. So... that's what, 31 people in 7 years? About 4.5 a year? Statistically, you're more likely to win the lottery than be shot by a crazed gunman. Or be struck by lightning. Hell, you take a bigger risk just crossing the street.
This isn't about safety. No, these politicians know exactly what they're doing. They LOVE stuff like this happening. It just gives them one more way to subjugate the public. But you'd think the Germans of all people would understand the risks of having an overly powerful government and a largely unarmed populace.
You're probably referring to U.S. v. Lopez (1995). But as recently as 2005, the Supreme Court held that somebody growing marijuana in his own garden for his own personal use for medicinal purposes was engaged in interstate commerce (Gonzales v. Raich).
The Commerce Clause has more or less become a catchall, and whether it applies to a particular case or not sadly depends on the whims of the court. It's not even necessarily determinable by the political beliefs of the judges/justices deciding the case (Raich was a 6-3 split with three of the conservative justices finding against the above interpretation of the Clause). There is likely no part of the Constitution, with the possible exception of the Second Amendment, that has given rise to more widely varied interpretations. And there is certainly no part of the Constitution that has been more frequently relied upon to expand the powers of Congress well outside the bounds of its constitutional mandate--which is fairly limited in scope, if you strictly interpret the actual text of the document.
I want to smack "I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property" in the face. Not only is his username simultaneously shit-eatingly smug and simplistically moronic, invariably the stories he submits are overblown propaganda designed to further his blatantly anti-corporate agenda.
Note to the editors: Please, please give this jackass his own section or something, so we can filter him out. I'm really tired of seeing him trying to whip the Slashbots into a circle-jerk frenzy.
Mod me down if you want. I'm being dead serious here.
My family employs several people part and full time to help us throughout the day, for reasons relating to physical disability. We cannot do without hiring these people. Because of the nature of their work (and I'm not interested in anybody's uninformed opinion to the contrary), these employees are not deductible as far as the government is concerned. So not only do we have to pay them out of taxable income, we pay their payroll taxes, Social Security, Medicare, and so on.
I have the minimum number of deductions declared on my I-9, and even though I'm married I withhold at the higher single rate. A good 35-40% of my paycheck is therefore withheld. On top of that, we pay estimated taxes throughout the year based on how much we expect to pay our employees. And you know what? At the end of the year, we still owe the IRS money. That is on top of the property taxes, car taxes, sales taxes, and all of the other taxes we are obligated to pay. So yeah, my total tax burden is about half my income, if not more than half. If just my federal income tax were doubled, I would be paying about 85-90% of my income in taxes. If that's not very nearly all of it to you, then I guess we just have differing definitions of what constitutes a confiscatory tax rate.
The aggravating part is I feel like I'm being punished more than most people simply for the fact that I am hiring people to work for me, thus contributing to the economy. These people are, of course, taxed on every dollar they make, in addition to the taxes we pay when we pay them (and the taxes we paid on that money in the first place). It's obscene. It's theft. And it needs to stop before this whole country collapses into a socialist hell.
But let's not mince words here. It is the people deciding to take my property by force and give it to somebody else. Just because it is supposedly a collective decision doesn't make it any more right. I don't like it, and I am trying to change it.
Would a collective decision to take money from the poor and give it to the rich be acceptable to you? If not, doing it the other way should be no less acceptable, because it is no less theft. Whether or not socialism can be made to work (and I am of the opinion that it fundamentally cannot on any but the smallest scale), it is based on violating the basic rights of human beings to control their own lives, for better or worse.
There's another term for "collective decisions" that are imposed upon the unwilling: Mob rule.
They also don't think of it as the government 'taking' it but instead think of it as either giving, or doing their part for their fellow countryment.
But it is the government taking. That's exactly what it is, and calling it anything else is a lie. The government demands you give them what you have, and if you don't they send men with guns to throw you in prison. The fact that it's supposedly for a good cause--though it rarely actually is--is irrelevant.
Charity is good when it is voluntary. Helping the less fortunate is good when it is voluntary. When it is not, it is theft, plain and simple. And expecting to receive things you haven't earned is greedy, plain and simple.
But if wanting to be the final arbiter over what is done with the fruits of my own labor is "greedy" to you, then that is what I am proud to be.
What is property, exactly? Is there some intrinsic quality to objects that makes them "mine" or "yours"? Of course not. Property is only defined by relationships between people. We agree that this object is yours and this object is mine. When we disagree about that, we ask a court to settle our disagreement for us (at least, that's what we do in a civilized society).
So your distinction between my personal possessions, my house, my land, my factory, my minerals, and my intellectual property is completely arbitrary. On what basis do you say that certain things are mine and certain other things are not? It's pretty self serving of you to state that just because things are harder for me to defend against you taking them I should have no right to them.
You ask what you get out of me owning a factory and its output. The fact of the matter is that you do benefit from my owning a factory. Society as a whole benefits as I contribute to the economy, pay employees to work in my factory, sell items to people willing to buy them, purchase raw materials to produce my products, and so on. The better question is why you think you're entitled to any part of my factory? Or more directly, why does it matter whether you get anything at all out of my owning a factory? Why am I obligated to benefit you, especially when you're perfectly capable of benefiting yourself through your own labor and initiative? Or is it that you simply feel that I shouldn't be particularly entitled to the fruits of my own labor, in which case what reason do I have to create things I won't be able to enjoy the benefits from? If you think I shouldn't own the factory, then nobody will own the factory. And how does that benefit anyone?
Property rights are simply an extension of the natural state of being. Before there were property rights, you could only keep what you could defend. The development of property rights and governments to enforce disputes regarding these rights freed people from the burden of having to constantly defend their possessions for fear of having them taken. You seem to want to go back to how things were previously. Fine, but don't get upset if you get killed while trying to take something you think you're entitled to from somebody who doesn't. No matter how you feel about my moral paucity, I'm not willing to go back to anarchy. I would be perfectly happy if you just left me alone and stopped trying to take my things that I have earned so that I can enjoy or give to others as I see fit. So please stop trying to push your religious beliefs on me.
So even if my federal income tax doubled, I'd still be ahead if I didn't have to pay health insurance premiums as well.
If my federal income tax doubled, I'd pay almost my entire income in taxes. If my health insurance premiums were increased tenfold and my taxes halved, I'd come out WAY ahead.
I don't think we really disagree much. Socialism may "work" when everybody is cool with it and wants it to. Just like religions "work" when everybody involved is a true believer and wants them to. But when you start involving people who are not entirely committed, then socialism, like religion, begins to break down rather rapidly as those who don't contribute--or actively work to undermine the system--drag down those who are productive.
But the fact that socialism works on a small scale among those who are truly committed to it isn't really surprising. Practically anything can be made to work on those terms. That's basically the premise behind any social activity, isn't it? From nudist colonies to the Society for Creative Anachronism, there are all sorts of things that work on a small level that don't scale very well. Pretty much any system whereby one person can cause direct harm to others by not participating is bound to collapse as it grows past a certain level.
Why is it that you're so intent on taking what I have for yourself? Do you feel you deserve it more than I do? Or do you think it's better that you benefit and I suffer than the other way around? Or do you just generally believe that it is more efficient overall to take things from people who earn them and give them to people who don't? In other words, are you greedy, evil, or just plain foolish?
Every socialist I've ever known of has fallen into one of those three categories. The greedy ones vote the evil ones into power, and the foolish ones preach about how superior socialism is with the all the fervor (and the logic) of any religious zealot.
I'm guessing you're the latter kind. So I'd ask you for a small favor, one that I'd ask of anybody extolling the virtues of his own faith: Please don't force your religion on me.
Here in California, that'd be good enough to issue him a driver license.
Re:Not to disagree with your conspiracy...
on
Gaming Netflix Ratings?
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· Score: 4, Informative
Not only this, but often times the makers of a film will show it to people before it is even finished. This could be anything from friends and business associates of the filmmakers (such screenings can number into the hundreds of people) to recruited audience test screenings (also often several hundred people). These people see the movie long before it comes out, and most likely not in its final form. Also, after a movie is completed it is sometimes sent around for audience reaction before it is picked up distribution. Of course, if the film plays at a film festival, that's hundreds or thousands of people watching it before it is released in theaters. So a few hundred people rating a movie before it's officially "out" isn't that strange.
And remember, a significant portion of the people who do watch the movie before it comes out are friends and family of the crew, who aren't exactly impartial. That may explain why the ratings skew high.
Yeah, about that. Turns out there was this, shall we say, "disagreement" that ultimately ended in 1865 with the whole South--Texas included--running back to its collective mommy. It's only by the graciousness of the rest of us that Texas is even allowed in our club. Oh, go ahead and thump your chest and pretend you'd be fine on your own. We'll let you play pretend.
Losing the Civil War was the best thing that could have happened to the South. Slavery was on its way out anyway, and with it pretty much the whole of the exploitation economy. It wouldn't have been a decade before the South descended into becoming a third world poverty stricken hellhole, and the North went ahead and reclaimed it for good measure.
Mmm, yes. Everything you could ever possibly need in one convenient place. No reason to ever go anywhere else.
I also live in a major urban area with much the same features as New York or London, and I find one of its nicest qualities is the ease by which I can drive out of it whenever I want to. That's not to say I don't appreciate the convenience of living here; I just also like to experience the world beyond the concrete island when I can.
Slashdot Mirror
Take a look at this.
Your definition of "accomplishment" is bizarre and self-serving. If the only thing that makes anything worthwhile to you is immediate success in the endeavor, then we have no common ground on this matter.
I stand behind everything I've said. The only thing you seem to be concerned with is short term well being. I find this attitude contemptible. If you would like to meet I will tell you the same thing in person.
If the rebels in the Warsaw Ghetto accomplished nothing simply because they lost, then neither did the Third Reich.
Perhaps you will have the foresight and good fortune to flee a tyrannical government when you finally recognize your own to be one. Maybe to you the possibility of fighting back seems hopeless, and compliance--or even collaboration--is the only answer. I, for one, will not be rounded up so easily. I wish I could say the same for the rest of my countrymen, for my own sake if nothing else. But sadly many of them, like yourself, have forgotten or are willfully ignorant of the lessons of history. Against a single criminal or a tyrannical war machine, a gun can be the great equalizer.
And for the record, the Nazis outnumbered the resistance fighters by a ratio of between 2:1 and 7:1. And the Nazis had tanks and an effectively unlimited supply of weapons at their disposal. You dishonor the fighters by trivializing their accomplishments.
Read up about the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising and then tell me fighting a losing battle never does any good. A few poorly armed Jews managed to hold off the the Wehrmacht for nearly a month. Sure, they lost in the end. But would it have been so easy for the Nazis to round up their victims if they faced such a battle every time they had tried?
Remember that between 11 and 17 million people were killed in the Holocaust. Do you really believe that if every one of these people had a gun and used it against their oppressors, there would have been nearly as many murdered as there were? Look at the bigger picture.
Oh, it wasn't a problem for the Germans. It was a problem for the Jews, Gypsies, homosexuals, and other undesirables who were largely unarmed when the government came to take them away. And this is all within living memory for many. How quickly some people forget...
What problem? That people kill each other? That's going to be the case no matter what.
According to the article, the last time they tightened gun laws in Germany was in 2002 in response to a guy killing 16 people. So... that's what, 31 people in 7 years? About 4.5 a year? Statistically, you're more likely to win the lottery than be shot by a crazed gunman. Or be struck by lightning. Hell, you take a bigger risk just crossing the street.
This isn't about safety. No, these politicians know exactly what they're doing. They LOVE stuff like this happening. It just gives them one more way to subjugate the public. But you'd think the Germans of all people would understand the risks of having an overly powerful government and a largely unarmed populace.
War! Huh! What is it good for?
Space exploration, apparently.
You're probably referring to U.S. v. Lopez (1995). But as recently as 2005, the Supreme Court held that somebody growing marijuana in his own garden for his own personal use for medicinal purposes was engaged in interstate commerce (Gonzales v. Raich).
The Commerce Clause has more or less become a catchall, and whether it applies to a particular case or not sadly depends on the whims of the court. It's not even necessarily determinable by the political beliefs of the judges/justices deciding the case (Raich was a 6-3 split with three of the conservative justices finding against the above interpretation of the Clause). There is likely no part of the Constitution, with the possible exception of the Second Amendment, that has given rise to more widely varied interpretations. And there is certainly no part of the Constitution that has been more frequently relied upon to expand the powers of Congress well outside the bounds of its constitutional mandate--which is fairly limited in scope, if you strictly interpret the actual text of the document.
I want to smack "I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property" in the face. Not only is his username simultaneously shit-eatingly smug and simplistically moronic, invariably the stories he submits are overblown propaganda designed to further his blatantly anti-corporate agenda.
Note to the editors: Please, please give this jackass his own section or something, so we can filter him out. I'm really tired of seeing him trying to whip the Slashbots into a circle-jerk frenzy.
Mod me down if you want. I'm being dead serious here.
My family employs several people part and full time to help us throughout the day, for reasons relating to physical disability. We cannot do without hiring these people. Because of the nature of their work (and I'm not interested in anybody's uninformed opinion to the contrary), these employees are not deductible as far as the government is concerned. So not only do we have to pay them out of taxable income, we pay their payroll taxes, Social Security, Medicare, and so on.
I have the minimum number of deductions declared on my I-9, and even though I'm married I withhold at the higher single rate. A good 35-40% of my paycheck is therefore withheld. On top of that, we pay estimated taxes throughout the year based on how much we expect to pay our employees. And you know what? At the end of the year, we still owe the IRS money. That is on top of the property taxes, car taxes, sales taxes, and all of the other taxes we are obligated to pay. So yeah, my total tax burden is about half my income, if not more than half. If just my federal income tax were doubled, I would be paying about 85-90% of my income in taxes. If that's not very nearly all of it to you, then I guess we just have differing definitions of what constitutes a confiscatory tax rate.
The aggravating part is I feel like I'm being punished more than most people simply for the fact that I am hiring people to work for me, thus contributing to the economy. These people are, of course, taxed on every dollar they make, in addition to the taxes we pay when we pay them (and the taxes we paid on that money in the first place). It's obscene. It's theft. And it needs to stop before this whole country collapses into a socialist hell.
But let's not mince words here. It is the people deciding to take my property by force and give it to somebody else. Just because it is supposedly a collective decision doesn't make it any more right. I don't like it, and I am trying to change it.
Would a collective decision to take money from the poor and give it to the rich be acceptable to you? If not, doing it the other way should be no less acceptable, because it is no less theft. Whether or not socialism can be made to work (and I am of the opinion that it fundamentally cannot on any but the smallest scale), it is based on violating the basic rights of human beings to control their own lives, for better or worse.
There's another term for "collective decisions" that are imposed upon the unwilling: Mob rule.
They also don't think of it as the government 'taking' it but instead think of it as either giving, or doing their part for their fellow countryment.
But it is the government taking. That's exactly what it is, and calling it anything else is a lie. The government demands you give them what you have, and if you don't they send men with guns to throw you in prison. The fact that it's supposedly for a good cause--though it rarely actually is--is irrelevant.
Charity is good when it is voluntary. Helping the less fortunate is good when it is voluntary. When it is not, it is theft, plain and simple. And expecting to receive things you haven't earned is greedy, plain and simple.
But if wanting to be the final arbiter over what is done with the fruits of my own labor is "greedy" to you, then that is what I am proud to be.
What is property, exactly? Is there some intrinsic quality to objects that makes them "mine" or "yours"? Of course not. Property is only defined by relationships between people. We agree that this object is yours and this object is mine. When we disagree about that, we ask a court to settle our disagreement for us (at least, that's what we do in a civilized society).
So your distinction between my personal possessions, my house, my land, my factory, my minerals, and my intellectual property is completely arbitrary. On what basis do you say that certain things are mine and certain other things are not? It's pretty self serving of you to state that just because things are harder for me to defend against you taking them I should have no right to them.
You ask what you get out of me owning a factory and its output. The fact of the matter is that you do benefit from my owning a factory. Society as a whole benefits as I contribute to the economy, pay employees to work in my factory, sell items to people willing to buy them, purchase raw materials to produce my products, and so on. The better question is why you think you're entitled to any part of my factory? Or more directly, why does it matter whether you get anything at all out of my owning a factory? Why am I obligated to benefit you, especially when you're perfectly capable of benefiting yourself through your own labor and initiative? Or is it that you simply feel that I shouldn't be particularly entitled to the fruits of my own labor, in which case what reason do I have to create things I won't be able to enjoy the benefits from? If you think I shouldn't own the factory, then nobody will own the factory. And how does that benefit anyone?
Property rights are simply an extension of the natural state of being. Before there were property rights, you could only keep what you could defend. The development of property rights and governments to enforce disputes regarding these rights freed people from the burden of having to constantly defend their possessions for fear of having them taken. You seem to want to go back to how things were previously. Fine, but don't get upset if you get killed while trying to take something you think you're entitled to from somebody who doesn't. No matter how you feel about my moral paucity, I'm not willing to go back to anarchy. I would be perfectly happy if you just left me alone and stopped trying to take my things that I have earned so that I can enjoy or give to others as I see fit. So please stop trying to push your religious beliefs on me.
So even if my federal income tax doubled, I'd still be ahead if I didn't have to pay health insurance premiums as well.
If my federal income tax doubled, I'd pay almost my entire income in taxes. If my health insurance premiums were increased tenfold and my taxes halved, I'd come out WAY ahead.
So what's your point?
I see I misjudged you. I took you for a fool, but I see now you are the greedy sort of socialist.
By what right do you entitle yourself to things that you decide I'm not using?
I don't think we really disagree much. Socialism may "work" when everybody is cool with it and wants it to. Just like religions "work" when everybody involved is a true believer and wants them to. But when you start involving people who are not entirely committed, then socialism, like religion, begins to break down rather rapidly as those who don't contribute--or actively work to undermine the system--drag down those who are productive.
But the fact that socialism works on a small scale among those who are truly committed to it isn't really surprising. Practically anything can be made to work on those terms. That's basically the premise behind any social activity, isn't it? From nudist colonies to the Society for Creative Anachronism, there are all sorts of things that work on a small level that don't scale very well. Pretty much any system whereby one person can cause direct harm to others by not participating is bound to collapse as it grows past a certain level.
Why is it that you're so intent on taking what I have for yourself? Do you feel you deserve it more than I do? Or do you think it's better that you benefit and I suffer than the other way around? Or do you just generally believe that it is more efficient overall to take things from people who earn them and give them to people who don't? In other words, are you greedy, evil, or just plain foolish?
Every socialist I've ever known of has fallen into one of those three categories. The greedy ones vote the evil ones into power, and the foolish ones preach about how superior socialism is with the all the fervor (and the logic) of any religious zealot.
I'm guessing you're the latter kind. So I'd ask you for a small favor, one that I'd ask of anybody extolling the virtues of his own faith: Please don't force your religion on me.
Seconded. I make all my own patch ca$lw7 and3@0 datt trd!@m34ssion ha*F aslwts bben3n vereryu reliabl3233e.
...says Mark Studness, director of e-commerce at Verizon.
Is that his real name or his porn name?
He says he can now follow white lines on the road
Here in California, that'd be good enough to issue him a driver license.
Not only this, but often times the makers of a film will show it to people before it is even finished. This could be anything from friends and business associates of the filmmakers (such screenings can number into the hundreds of people) to recruited audience test screenings (also often several hundred people). These people see the movie long before it comes out, and most likely not in its final form. Also, after a movie is completed it is sometimes sent around for audience reaction before it is picked up distribution. Of course, if the film plays at a film festival, that's hundreds or thousands of people watching it before it is released in theaters. So a few hundred people rating a movie before it's officially "out" isn't that strange.
And remember, a significant portion of the people who do watch the movie before it comes out are friends and family of the crew, who aren't exactly impartial. That may explain why the ratings skew high.
Wow, that's a mighty big word for a Texan.
haha, dude, how many times are you going to post in this discussion??
As often as it takes.
what the heck happened to you in new york?!
Nothing in particular, I'm just crotchety and cantankerous. Now get off my lawn.
Yeah, about that. Turns out there was this, shall we say, "disagreement" that ultimately ended in 1865 with the whole South--Texas included--running back to its collective mommy. It's only by the graciousness of the rest of us that Texas is even allowed in our club. Oh, go ahead and thump your chest and pretend you'd be fine on your own. We'll let you play pretend.
Losing the Civil War was the best thing that could have happened to the South. Slavery was on its way out anyway, and with it pretty much the whole of the exploitation economy. It wouldn't have been a decade before the South descended into becoming a third world poverty stricken hellhole, and the North went ahead and reclaimed it for good measure.
Mmm, yes. Everything you could ever possibly need in one convenient place. No reason to ever go anywhere else.
I also live in a major urban area with much the same features as New York or London, and I find one of its nicest qualities is the ease by which I can drive out of it whenever I want to. That's not to say I don't appreciate the convenience of living here; I just also like to experience the world beyond the concrete island when I can.