As I understand it, it would be impossible to see what they look like under a pure Libertarian System, since they wouldn't exist as such. The artificial construction of a corporation as a seperate entity is entirely an act of government. In a libertarian society, they would never have been made.
On the other hand, you might still find shares and stock for sale, but the owners would almost certainly keep a closer eye on what the company is doing, since any property they personally own could be taken to pay for any debts incurred by said company, not just their piece of stock.
- NASA funding is being redirected away from science and toward flimsy "national pride" missions (ISS, the moon and Mars).
It could be much better written as
- NASA funding is being redirected away from astronomy and towards more practical endeavors (the moon and mars), with 1 flimsy "national pride" mission (ISS) continuing to recieve funding.
There is a lot of scientific knowledge to be gained from manned space missions, largely consisting of "What are the negative effects of sending people on extended trips with little gravity? How do we cope with those effects? How are those effects ammeliorated? Can humans successfully settle another celestial body? etc." This is of huge pragmatic interest, if you subscribe to the notion that having humanity live on in case of a major catastrophe is a GoodThing. Some of this is already known, but further knowledge looks to be of much more immediate use than long distance astronomical observations. The ISS may make more contributions this way than I realize, in terms of being a test bed for future space construction projects, but I don't believe we are gaining much in the way of knew information or capabilities from it.
Although astronomy can provide some very useful observations, as near as I can tell most astronmy using the hubble currently has little practical use. It may in the future, but it is not automatically the case that theoretical science is useful. Speaking as a lay person, tangible benefits seem far more useful than esoteric knowledge about distant objects. If the hubble can be serviced without significanly taking away from those tangible benefits, good. More power to it, let it stand. I cannot state whether or not that is the case, and so must defer to experts on that. I can however state that doing just astronomy at the expense of manned space missions is wrong.
There is a replacment already in the works. IIRC, the hubble is well past it's origianl planned lifecycle, and they have been designing a replacment since it went up.
Just engaging in warlike activities is not sufficient to grant POW status if you get caught. You have to follow certain rules. If there is some doubt, then the default is POW status until decided otherwise by "a competent tribunal". However, the use of the word "doubt" in this case may be a bad choice. It may indicate any case where there is reason to suspect they are not protected, or it may only refer to those cases where it's truly unclear. If it's the latter, then it's possible to be caught while doing something so clearly a violation that they can immediately shoot you without bothering with a tribunal.
The UCMJ has it's own set of rules, which I haven't read in detail. It's quite possible that some people not granted protected status in the conventions are still granted protection by our own rules.
The association of authoritarianism with the right, for example. Both the left and the right in this country are authoritarian in their own way, and you can not use that to pin the Nazi party either way. This is why I prefer the politcal compass approach, although even a 2 dimensionl grid isn't fully informative.
The list of traits associated with the right is flawed in numerous ways. It implicitly claims that the right wing is racist, but racism is another idependent trait. I don't know any right wingers who are eugenicists either. It basically amounts to a straw man argument, since he defines his own version of the right to make sure it fits the quotes he's found for Hitler.
I really didn't care for his redefining socialism at the start of the article: "...socialism requires worker ownership and control of the means of production." That's communism, not socialism.
I found an article that does a better job tearing apart this argument than I ever could at Random observations.
You brought up the fact that Hitler had a deep resentment of communism. While true, this is irrelevant. Some of the most vicious fighting you will find is political infighting.
I will concede that destroying the power of unions is not something modern socialists would do. However, just being the same/different in one way does not make them the same/different in every way. As far as I can tell, the Nazi party implemented an authoritarian socialist system, with a few modifications. It is not honest to say that the socialist part of their name was JUST a name, when it did match at least SOME of their actions.
This whole conversation should be modded -1 offtopic. The orinal post bringing up national socialsts violated godwins law anyways.
This is the main reason I like the concept of a property tax. No argument about who has the authority to tax you. OTOH, you get some headaches with deciding what people should pay for a given piece of land.
I'll assume you aren't familiar with actual official Nazi policies. See http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/25Po ints.html for a handy list. Several (a litte under half i think) of the points overlap socialist policies pretty well. Perhaps the actual implemented policies differ, but they did create heavy government regulation of business, a pension system, and other socialist style programs. Even if you consider it a misnomer, it is by no means a simple one.
Most socialist and communist systems devolve into a small elite governing the masses. The only way to get some of their goals into place 'for the good of the people' is to use force and revoke freedom of contract, because much as people say they want something they resist interference in their own life more. Lots in common with NIMBY type thinking really.
Not entirely true. If the user stops/starts smoking, then the prescription may not work. Happened to a friend of mind who stopped and didn't realize she needed to get it changed.
There are, as someone else indicated, other circumstances that make a pill useless. As a male, I'm not really familiar with the details.
Yes, I would care to argue the point, inasmuch as throwing money at the problem will not fix it. I know you didn't specify that as a solution, but you indicated that wealth is the key factor, and I think the problems are structural.
Medical care is a scarce resource. There is a shortage of licensed health care professionals at the moment, so that it is not possible to treat every person for everything. Using willingness to buy as the means of allocation is not inherently less fair than any other. Why shouldn't you let people pay for Obscure Test #1 if they are willing to incure all the costs?
That being said, there are a number of steps that can reduce the scarcity, although some of these aren't even on the table. There are issues with all of them of course, but I think they are at least worth examining.
1.) Tort reform. Well known topic, so I won't discuss this one in detail.
2.) Easing licensing requirements. It is not necessary for every specialist to be a fully qualified generalist, for instance. It also is unnecessary for interns to work 60 hour weeks. Doing so unnecessarily reduces the pool of qualfied proffessionals. There is a vicious circle here, in that the shortage of doctors makes it much more likely to . Almost all government licensing requirements are abused by the proffesion being licensed to let them keep prices up. Yes, I really wouldn't want some random person off the street to act as my lawyer or doctor, but going to far the other way is not helpful. Perhaps it would be sufficient to have at least one other medical association other than the AMA setting policies. I am NOT proposing that we license treatments that cannot pass a double blind test (Homeopathy for instance), just that we allow more gradiation in the medical proffession. I'd be willing to use a cheaper, less qualified doctor for more common afflictions.
3.)Easing abilty to revoke licenses. Fundamentally, people don't trust and respect doctors the way they once did. Incompetent doctors, as in any other proffession, are protected by their co-workers. Thus people are more willing to sue, people aren't willing to take a single opinion, and doctors are forced to run every test even when they think it is unnecesary. Ties in heavily with #1.
4.) Additional medical schools and scholarships. It is so difficult to get into medical school, that someone who could be competent may find it difficult to even get into the program. This is where money might actually be of direct help.
5.) Eliminate insurance. This is just an idea I've been toying with, but as near as I can tell the main effect of insurance is to raise the average prices so you need to have insurance. The net benefit to most consumers over the long term is zero. They now have to pay as much on insurance premiums as they used to have to pay for medical care directly. I welcome any explanation as to why I'm an idiot for even considering this.
6. Disallow exporters to sell drugs outside our borders at a lower price than they sell it internally. Currently, we fund most of the pharmacutical research, because other contries have price controls. This would cause companies to either lower their prices to match other contries, or to just not export.
There are more, I'm sure, but these are the specific issues that come to mind.
"...how was it a problem for you?"
Let me partially list the ways:
1. It was a terrorist sponsoring nation. Like it or not, all terrorist sponsoring nations were made a target, regardless of which group of terrorists they sponsored.
2. It was, in particular, willing to support Bin Laden. (The offer of sanctuary in 1998 if nothing else.)
3. It had never fully complied with the original cease-fire agreement. Our planes in the area were routinely shot at.
4. It has never fully complied with further UN actions against it, and never gave up WMD aspirations. Compliance was only made at the end of a gun barrel, and then it depended heavily on how current UN action was playing out. Full compliance required that it disclose all WMD programs, and account for the destruction of such weapons as already existed. Although it now appears that he did in fact destroy his weapon stockpiles, he did not do so in a verifiable fashion, which was one of the requirements. I have not checked on this recently, but look up info on the binary sarin shell.
5. We were spending millions enforcing existing resolutions. Even more when we amassed troops on the border. One problem with carrot and stick diplomacy is that you have to follow through on threats to use the stick or it becomes useless.
6. Terrorism is highly correlated with tyrannical regimes. All such regimes are targets, but Iraq can be seen as the 'easy' target because of existing long term issues with it. Diplomacy had already been tried, and failed.
Out of time, but I may add more later.
I see this argument a lot, and it's one of the fundamental disagreements between me and large sections of the left. It's actually a fundamental disagreement with basic christian ethics as well.
If you're poor, which would you rather have:
a)$100 given by someone with $100,000 b)$10 dollars given by someone with only $100 of his own.
To most of the people on the left, donor A is a skinflint. I, however, think results matter more than intent, and donor A has done much more to help than donor B.
It's quite arguable that the reason one individual is richer than the other is that he isn't as charitable on a percentage basis. He doesn't spend more than a small fraction of his funds on things that don't contribute to future success, and thus is quite successful. The small portion he gives is thus larger than the large portion that others give.
You are missing the point. It's not that police are less capable than they should be, it's that there are situations where no matter how well funded they can not physically help you. You are ultimately responsible for your own safety, not anyone else.
Example: You are in your home. There is a knock at the door. You go to answer it, but before you do it's kicked open. The man who came in starts swinging a knife at you. If you don't have a gun and don't know a hell of a lot more about knife fighting than he does, you are in for a world of hurt, although you MIGHT be able to get it from him only minor injuries if you are damn lucky. However, if you have a gun in the home that's not easily accessible and doesn't have a trigger lock on it, you can almost certainly get it and shoot the man who is trying to kill you. The police can not get there in time to make a difference.
That's not really accurate. In 1985 federal revenue was higher than it was in 1981. Voodoo economics did in fact work. A tax cut led to increased revenue.
Spending was up, but most of the increased spending was the creation of a democrat congress, not Reagan. There was a military buildup, but that was a minority of the increased spending. By 1987, the entire increase in military spending since 1981 was less than the revenue increase in the same period.
So far I haven't seen much reference to what seems to be the simplest explanation for the exit poll wierdness:
Exit polls do not include information on early votes via absentee ballots. Senior citizens and military members are much more likely to vote via absentee ballot than the general public, due to greater difficulties in getting to a polling place on election day. Both groups lean heavily Republican.
Am I missing something? The 'Angry voters tend to vote early' may be partially true, but I don't think many of them actually bothered to vote before election day.
How do you know that heavy metal exposure caused the cancer? You may have actual information to back it up, but I suspect it's along the lines of:
1: People exposed to X are statistically more likely to get cancer. 2: My relative has cancer. 3: My relative has been exposed to X 4: Therefore my relative got cancer because of X.
Where X includes any number of chemicals and unhealthy behaviours.
An awful lot of people use this logic, despite it's major flaws. (You may not be one of them, as I said.) The following 2 facts are often ignored:
1a: Some people exposed to X never get cancer. 1b: Some people get cancer who have never been exposed to X.
I'm always suspicious of statements stating that N people died because of X, because they invariably fail to state how they determined the value of N.
2 simple words which describe one way we can deal with bad law.
Jury Nullification
Despite the line you are fed about how you can only consider the facts of the case and not the law itself, a jury can ALWAYS acquit for any reason they damn well please. See http://www.friesian.com/nullif.htm for at least one take. AFAIK, the higher courts have not changed their stance on this, although several lower courts have tried to fight this concept.
Re:Americans talk about freedom
on
Press freedom
·
· Score: 1
I mostly agree with you, but I wish Kerry hadn't mentioned his service in Vietnam so frequently. The worst example I can think of was during an interview for the National Education Association. They were talking about various education reforms like NCLB and vouchers (which they are both wholeheartedly against) and he brought up it up. Completely irrelevant to the topic, and he felt it necesary to talk about his service.
Bush is not running on his record from 25 years ago. Kerry was trying to, despite knowing that certain people had been attacking him during every run for Senate over exactly that record. It doesn't help that he provably said an untrue statement (Christmas in Cambodia). I'm willing to assume that more of that is due to the fallibility of human memory than than to some nefarious plot, but it sure as hell weakens his claims that he remembers seeing war crimes.
Slashdot Mirror
As I understand it, it would be impossible to see what they look like under a pure Libertarian System, since they wouldn't exist as such. The artificial construction of a corporation as a seperate entity is entirely an act of government. In a libertarian society, they would never have been made.
On the other hand, you might still find shares and stock for sale, but the owners would almost certainly keep a closer eye on what the company is doing, since any property they personally own could be taken to pay for any debts incurred by said company, not just their piece of stock.
Although astronomy can provide some very useful observations, as near as I can tell most astronmy using the hubble currently has little practical use. It may in the future, but it is not automatically the case that theoretical science is useful. Speaking as a lay person, tangible benefits seem far more useful than esoteric knowledge about distant objects. If the hubble can be serviced without significanly taking away from those tangible benefits, good. More power to it, let it stand. I cannot state whether or not that is the case, and so must defer to experts on that. I can however state that doing just astronomy at the expense of manned space missions is wrong.
"...replacement..."
"...original..."
I don't know how I missed that when previwing. I know how to spell, I swear.
There is a replacment already in the works. IIRC, the hubble is well past it's origianl planned lifecycle, and they have been designing a replacment since it went up.
See here for details.
As of windows XP, regedit has full access, and regedt32 is just an alias for it.
Please read the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war.
Just engaging in warlike activities is not sufficient to grant POW status if you get caught. You have to follow certain rules. If there is some doubt, then the default is POW status until decided otherwise by "a competent tribunal". However, the use of the word "doubt" in this case may be a bad choice. It may indicate any case where there is reason to suspect they are not protected, or it may only refer to those cases where it's truly unclear. If it's the latter, then it's possible to be caught while doing something so clearly a violation that they can immediately shoot you without bothering with a tribunal.
The UCMJ has it's own set of rules, which I haven't read in detail. It's quite possible that some people not granted protected status in the conventions are still granted protection by our own rules.
I had a few complaints about the linked article.
The association of authoritarianism with the right, for example. Both the left and the right in this country are authoritarian in their own way, and you can not use that to pin the Nazi party either way. This is why I prefer the politcal compass approach, although even a 2 dimensionl grid isn't fully informative.
The list of traits associated with the right is flawed in numerous ways. It implicitly claims that the right wing is racist, but racism is another idependent trait. I don't know any right wingers who are eugenicists either. It basically amounts to a straw man argument, since he defines his own version of the right to make sure it fits the quotes he's found for Hitler.
I really didn't care for his redefining socialism at the start of the article: "...socialism requires worker ownership and control of the means of production." That's communism, not socialism.
I found an article that does a better job tearing apart this argument than I ever could at Random observations.
You brought up the fact that Hitler had a deep resentment of communism. While true, this is irrelevant. Some of the most vicious fighting you will find is political infighting.
I will concede that destroying the power of unions is not something modern socialists would do. However, just being the same/different in one way does not make them the same/different in every way. As far as I can tell, the Nazi party implemented an authoritarian socialist system, with a few modifications. It is not honest to say that the socialist part of their name was JUST a name, when it did match at least SOME of their actions.
This whole conversation should be modded -1 offtopic. The orinal post bringing up national socialsts violated godwins law anyways.
This is the main reason I like the concept of a property tax. No argument about who has the authority to tax you. OTOH, you get some headaches with deciding what people should pay for a given piece of land.
I'll assume you aren't familiar with actual official Nazi policies. See http://www.scrapbookpages.com/DachauScrapbook/25Po ints.html for a handy list. Several (a litte under half i think) of the points overlap socialist policies pretty well. Perhaps the actual implemented policies differ, but they did create heavy government regulation of business, a pension system, and other socialist style programs. Even if you consider it a misnomer, it is by no means a simple one.
Most socialist and communist systems devolve into a small elite governing the masses. The only way to get some of their goals into place 'for the good of the people' is to use force and revoke freedom of contract, because much as people say they want something they resist interference in their own life more. Lots in common with NIMBY type thinking really.
Not entirely true. If the user stops/starts smoking, then the prescription may not work. Happened to a friend of mind who stopped and didn't realize she needed to get it changed. There are, as someone else indicated, other circumstances that make a pill useless. As a male, I'm not really familiar with the details.
I hate these filthy Neutrals Kif. With enemies you know where they stand but with Neutrals, who knows? It sickens me. --Zapp Brannigan
Yes, I would care to argue the point, inasmuch as throwing money at the problem will not fix it. I know you didn't specify that as a solution, but you indicated that wealth is the key factor, and I think the problems are structural.
Medical care is a scarce resource. There is a shortage of licensed health care professionals at the moment, so that it is not possible to treat every person for everything. Using willingness to buy as the means of allocation is not inherently less fair than any other. Why shouldn't you let people pay for Obscure Test #1 if they are willing to incure all the costs?
That being said, there are a number of steps that can reduce the scarcity, although some of these aren't even on the table. There are issues with all of them of course, but I think they are at least worth examining.
1.) Tort reform. Well known topic, so I won't discuss this one in detail.
2.) Easing licensing requirements. It is not necessary for every specialist to be a fully qualified generalist, for instance. It also is unnecessary for interns to work 60 hour weeks. Doing so unnecessarily reduces the pool of qualfied proffessionals. There is a vicious circle here, in that the shortage of doctors makes it much more likely to . Almost all government licensing requirements are abused by the proffesion being licensed to let them keep prices up. Yes, I really wouldn't want some random person off the street to act as my lawyer or doctor, but going to far the other way is not helpful. Perhaps it would be sufficient to have at least one other medical association other than the AMA setting policies. I am NOT proposing that we license treatments that cannot pass a double blind test (Homeopathy for instance), just that we allow more gradiation in the medical proffession. I'd be willing to use a cheaper, less qualified doctor for more common afflictions.
3.)Easing abilty to revoke licenses. Fundamentally, people don't trust and respect doctors the way they once did. Incompetent doctors, as in any other proffession, are protected by their co-workers. Thus people are more willing to sue, people aren't willing to take a single opinion, and doctors are forced to run every test even when they think it is unnecesary. Ties in heavily with #1.
4.) Additional medical schools and scholarships. It is so difficult to get into medical school, that someone who could be competent may find it difficult to even get into the program. This is where money might actually be of direct help.
5.) Eliminate insurance. This is just an idea I've been toying with, but as near as I can tell the main effect of insurance is to raise the average prices so you need to have insurance. The net benefit to most consumers over the long term is zero. They now have to pay as much on insurance premiums as they used to have to pay for medical care directly. I welcome any explanation as to why I'm an idiot for even considering this.
6. Disallow exporters to sell drugs outside our borders at a lower price than they sell it internally. Currently, we fund most of the pharmacutical research, because other contries have price controls. This would cause companies to either lower their prices to match other contries, or to just not export.
There are more, I'm sure, but these are the specific issues that come to mind.
I wasn't clear. My disagreement with that argument is also a a point where I disagree with christian ethics.
Just because they lost the most does not mean they were the most important factor.
"...how was it a problem for you?" Let me partially list the ways: 1. It was a terrorist sponsoring nation. Like it or not, all terrorist sponsoring nations were made a target, regardless of which group of terrorists they sponsored. 2. It was, in particular, willing to support Bin Laden. (The offer of sanctuary in 1998 if nothing else.) 3. It had never fully complied with the original cease-fire agreement. Our planes in the area were routinely shot at. 4. It has never fully complied with further UN actions against it, and never gave up WMD aspirations. Compliance was only made at the end of a gun barrel, and then it depended heavily on how current UN action was playing out. Full compliance required that it disclose all WMD programs, and account for the destruction of such weapons as already existed. Although it now appears that he did in fact destroy his weapon stockpiles, he did not do so in a verifiable fashion, which was one of the requirements. I have not checked on this recently, but look up info on the binary sarin shell. 5. We were spending millions enforcing existing resolutions. Even more when we amassed troops on the border. One problem with carrot and stick diplomacy is that you have to follow through on threats to use the stick or it becomes useless. 6. Terrorism is highly correlated with tyrannical regimes. All such regimes are targets, but Iraq can be seen as the 'easy' target because of existing long term issues with it. Diplomacy had already been tried, and failed. Out of time, but I may add more later.
Simple restatment:
2 million Americans completed their slow suicide since Bush took office.
The tobacco companies did not kill anyone. They sold the product these individuals used to kill themselves. There is a fundamental difference there.
"I hold it to be the inalienable right of anybody to go to hell in his own way."
--Robert Frost
I see this argument a lot, and it's one of the fundamental disagreements between me and large sections of the left. It's actually a fundamental disagreement with basic christian ethics as well.
If you're poor, which would you rather have:
a)$100 given by someone with $100,000
b)$10 dollars given by someone with only $100 of his own.
To most of the people on the left, donor A is a skinflint. I, however, think results matter more than intent, and donor A has done much more to help than donor B.
It's quite arguable that the reason one individual is richer than the other is that he isn't as charitable on a percentage basis. He doesn't spend more than a small fraction of his funds on things that don't contribute to future success, and thus is quite successful. The small portion he gives is thus larger than the large portion that others give.
You are missing the point. It's not that police are less capable than they should be, it's that there are situations where no matter how well funded they can not physically help you. You are ultimately responsible for your own safety, not anyone else.
Example:
You are in your home. There is a knock at the door. You go to answer it, but before you do it's kicked open. The man who came in starts swinging a knife at you. If you don't have a gun and don't know a hell of a lot more about knife fighting than he does, you are in for a world of hurt, although you MIGHT be able to get it from him only minor injuries if you are damn lucky. However, if you have a gun in the home that's not easily accessible and doesn't have a trigger lock on it, you can almost certainly get it and shoot the man who is trying to kill you. The police can not get there in time to make a difference.
That's not really accurate. In 1985 federal revenue was higher than it was in 1981. Voodoo economics did in fact work. A tax cut led to increased revenue. Spending was up, but most of the increased spending was the creation of a democrat congress, not Reagan. There was a military buildup, but that was a minority of the increased spending. By 1987, the entire increase in military spending since 1981 was less than the revenue increase in the same period.
So far I haven't seen much reference to what seems to be the simplest explanation for the exit poll wierdness: Exit polls do not include information on early votes via absentee ballots. Senior citizens and military members are much more likely to vote via absentee ballot than the general public, due to greater difficulties in getting to a polling place on election day. Both groups lean heavily Republican. Am I missing something? The 'Angry voters tend to vote early' may be partially true, but I don't think many of them actually bothered to vote before election day.
How do you know that heavy metal exposure caused the cancer? You may have actual information to back it up, but I suspect it's along the lines of:
1: People exposed to X are statistically more likely to get cancer.
2: My relative has cancer.
3: My relative has been exposed to X
4: Therefore my relative got cancer because of X.
Where X includes any number of chemicals and unhealthy behaviours.
An awful lot of people use this logic, despite it's major flaws. (You may not be one of them, as I said.) The following 2 facts are often ignored:
1a: Some people exposed to X never get cancer.
1b: Some people get cancer who have never been exposed to X.
I'm always suspicious of statements stating that N people died because of X, because they invariably fail to state how they determined the value of N.
IANAL, just a citizen.
2 simple words which describe one way we can deal with bad law.
Jury Nullification
Despite the line you are fed about how you can only consider the facts of the case and not the law itself, a jury can ALWAYS acquit for any reason they damn well please. See http://www.friesian.com/nullif.htm for at least one take. AFAIK, the higher courts have not changed their stance on this, although several lower courts have tried to fight this concept.
I mostly agree with you, but I wish Kerry hadn't mentioned his service in Vietnam so frequently. The worst example I can think of was during an interview for the National Education Association. They were talking about various education reforms like NCLB and vouchers (which they are both wholeheartedly against) and he brought up it up. Completely irrelevant to the topic, and he felt it necesary to talk about his service.
Bush is not running on his record from 25 years ago. Kerry was trying to, despite knowing that certain people had been attacking him during every run for Senate over exactly that record. It doesn't help that he provably said an untrue statement (Christmas in Cambodia). I'm willing to assume that more of that is due to the fallibility of human memory than than to some nefarious plot, but it sure as hell weakens his claims that he remembers seeing war crimes.