It doesn't matter if they were warned about pepper spray two weeks, a month or a year in advance - it's still illegal
No, it's not. And you would have realized that if you'd bothered to read the non-bolded section as well as the bolded one.
The bolded section is a purposeful misrepresentation of the actual content of the policy as given directly below. The policy says "They should only be used in situations where such force reasonably appears justified and necessary.” The (obviously impartial) 'student activism' website falsely summarizes that as "University of California Police are not authorized to use pepper spray except in circumstances in which it is necessary to prevent physical injury to themselves or others." So they decided to define what is 'justified and necessary'. However the quoted text (and the actual document, which I actually read) simply state that the use of spray must appear justified and necessary to the policeman.
It's not surprising that you blindly accept several other bald-faced lies about the text of the document, including the falsehood that the police did 'nothing' to attempt to remove the protesters (they were given several eviction notices and granted many chances to voluntarily leave, then granted several opportunities to comply with the verbal instructions of the police, by definition leaving only involuntary removal and requiring physical action) and the blatant misrepresentation contained in noting that UC Police are not allowed to use physical force "except to control violent offenders or keep suspects from escaping", when the actual statement is "to subdue violence or ensure detention". In this situation the cops reasoned that, to ensure detention, using pepper spray was a better option than wrestling with the non-compliant criminals (and if they had wrestled with them and used the batons, you'd be complaining about that).
It doesn't really matter what the people in the video did a day or a week before
Nobody said anything about a day or a week before. And you still refuse to address the obvious imbalance of the situation, where a small team of campus police were entirely surrounded by a menacing group of people. You focus on the ones who stage-managed their sit-in, exactly as they expected you to. The cops were massively outnumbered by agitated people with a history of violent acts.
just look at the guy parading around with the pepper can, holding it up for everyone to see, for a good half a minute before he actually proceeds to shove it right in people's faces
That is clearly a warning. He is showing the pepper spray to the surrounding people to hopefully get them to tell the others to comply. He takes quite a bit of time warning everyone what will happen, so he won't have to use the spray. And you try to make that an indictment of him.
Now, once he uses the spray, he definitely makes sure it is sufficiently applied. Which any cop should do. Cops don't shoot to wound, either. You deploy the solution in the best manner for it to be effective. And for all your whining, notice that none of the kids move after the first blast of spray. Most don't move after the second blast. The whole point is getting them to a state of compliance, and they are being defiant. This is what they wanted to happen, so they provoked it.
In a civilized society, the offenders would be removed without being pepper sprayed.
I wholeheartedly agree! In a civilized society, these kids would have obeyed the eviction orders. In a civilized society that respected itself, that expected grown-up behavior from people who are technically adults, these kids might not have been out doing this stupid nonsense. Heck, they might have even cared enough in 2008 to want a qualified candidate for President rather than an unqualified con-man that made them feel good about themselves for voting for him. They might care about polit
Um, no. Watch the whole video. At the end the cops are huddled together in a small group, surrounded by activists. The activists then chant in unison (in that creepy echo-chamber thing they do) about how they will give the cops a 'moment of peace' and 'allow them to leave'. It is clear who the aggressors are in that crowd, which is why that part is excised from all the video everyone's getting angry about. And while I'm sure you're qualified to tell us when the use of pepper spray is appropriate, after they ignored the notice they received TWO WEEKS ago telling them to vacate, they were given a 24-hour notice that if they did not voluntarily leave they would be forcibly removed. Pepper spray was listed as one of the options for their removal. You can make excuses for these thugs all you want, but they refused to obey the law, disrupted campus faculty meetings and classes, made threats towards faculty members, refused to allow students to attend class, spread garbage and feces and urine, and generally acted as lawless people. The police did exactly what the police are supposed to do in a society of laws: remove the offenders with minimal force. The only reason they are being vilified is this nonsensical, juvenile, anti-establishment BS that morons keep foisting on us.
Actually, fire is forceful. Acid would probably qualify as well since they both inflict permanent harm.
But thanks for playing the definitions game with me, and ignoring all the salient facts: that these kids were given notice, refused to leave, then surrounded the cops who were trying to evict them, and after the heavily edited pepper spray video, threatened the cops then 'allowed' them to leave without violence.
Oh, and later in the video - you know, the part nobody watched - the mob surrounding the police chants in unison that they will 'allow' the police to leave unharmed.
But the police are the bad guys here.
Right.
- They were given a letter two weeks before the pepper spraying indicating that they were being evicted
- They continued to disrupt normal campus business
- Several faculty meetings had to be canceled because of threats to faculty members by OWS
- Students were unable to attend classes because OWS refused to vacate the premises
- They were given an order in writing that indicated that if they did not leave within 24 hours, they would be forcibly removed, and pepper spray was listed as one of the options
So, yeah. They wanted this to happen. It happened. Blame the correct people: the morons who have been blocking up business and schools and tying up traffic because of their childish temper tantrum.
Actually, it's both. There is no 'physical force' involved, ergo it does not qualify as 'violence'.
Now, it IS something that someone on the receiving end undoubtedly does not want. But that's why you listen to the police and move when you're told.
Those kids knew the pepper spray was coming, which is why they didn't move. They wanted their video online to rally the idiots, just like that 84-year-old professional protester in Seattle with milk on her face pretending it was pepper spray and she was individually targeted by Officer McSadist.
You're being played.
The best dissection of this idiotic 'movement' I have yet to read - not fawning, not pandering, but a realistic evaluation of who and what they are:
"The idea is utopian socialism. The method is revolutionary anarchism."
http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/anarchy-usa_609222.html
The sheer inanity of the OWS crowd is only one-upped by the people attempting to analogize a bunch of spoiled rich kids demanding more 'free' stuff (and refusing to accept responsibility for their tragic error in 2008) to actual freedom-fighters of America's past and the world's present. You know how these kids like to chant "the world is watching"? Yeah, the world is watching... and laughing. All around the world we are the laughingstock of poorer nations.
And by the way: pepper spray IS 'non-violent' law enforcement. The purpose of pepper spray is exactly that for which it has been used: to force compliance from people who have been given every chance to voluntarily comply.
In addition to needing education in economics and politics, it seems our kids now need education in basic rights. You do not have the 'right' to occupy public property indefinitely, or private property at all.
"Health insurance has been 'free market' for ages in the US and it's in a terrible state of corruption"
It amazes me how the most ignorant speak with such assurance.
Health care in the US is anything but a free market. Most state governments have larded on mandates - insisting that companies cover IVF and alcohol counseling, for example. Government has also forbidden interstate competition in health insurance. Further, private insurance policies are charged an extra premium to cover the shortfall in what Medicare and Medicaid pay providers. This is only a fraction of the government's long-arm reach into our health care system.
If health care were a truly free market, quality would go up and prices would go down. Because just like every other mostly-free to fully-free market (such as auto insurance, cell phones, utilities, trucking) small companies would be able to compete with the big ones like Kaiser and Blue Cross to provide low-cost, custom-tailored health care and insurance. Practitioners would be able to handle most of the non-critical care needs.
How do we know this? Because that's how things used to be. Prior to government stepping into health care, strangely everyone in America could afford health care when they needed it. The 'crisis' in health care (of course there is no 'crisis', just problems we could easily fix if people stopped demagoguing) arose when government tried to create a socialist utopia. Same as in the housing market.
But again, don't let reality stop you. Don't let the fact that our health care system, with all its flaws, still beats every socialized system in the world. Ignore all the problems with socialized systems around the world (dying in the hallways, giving birth in cabs, massive infections, lack of doctors and beds, etc). You have an agenda to push!
"You've been brainwashed by corporate marketing"
It's funny how your type always fall back to this nonsensical, childish argumentation on every subject from health care to 'global warming': any alternative viewpoint, no matter how factually correct, is the result of 'corporate brainwashing'. Sure is easier to say that than actually defend your beliefs, isn't it?
Maybe you should look at how much money these 'corporate brainwashers' give the political party who is trying to force through socialized medicine. Now, why would they do that? Because government in return will hand them a monopoly. Follow the money.
"It's not simply a 'free' vs 'controlled' argument"
Oh, it most certainly is. In fact, that's the entire founding idea of our country.
"Because any system, no matter how perfect on paper, is fundamentally flawed by human operation."
Funny how you just can't see that this applies even more greatly to government, where there is no free market to regulate human flaw.
I don't blame you. I blame the horribly flawed educational system that produced you.
"It's because the "free market" is blind to long-term goals, settling for short-term benefits even when it undermines the longterm."
Boy, someone has been effectively brainwashed.
Long-term goals are a product of short-term goals. The free market thus guides us best towards long-term goals, and only at the consent of the people to whom it is providing service. Central planning uses the lure of a long-term goal to be utterly ineffective and to actively thwart reaching either long- or short-term goals. And it is controlled by ideological potentates.
"A 'free market' has only one logical conclusion: monopoly"
Not at all. But monopoly is certainly and provably the result of government interference. In fact, the best way to ensure a monopoly is to get government involved. One can plainly see this in the cases of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It's why Big Pharma is on-board with ObamaCare. The one thing that corporations most fear is a free market where they have to face opposition. They want the government running things because government officials can be paid off to help them maintain their monopolies.
Count the number of monopolies that existed with less government restriction and compare it to the ones that exist with more. What did big government with its thousands of regulations do to bust up Microsoft? Nothing.
But this time we'll "get it right", right?
"The US doesn't have a free market"
Something I stated in a previous reply. However, the aspects of our market that are free are where all the innovation comes from. The controlled parts are where stagnation and decline come from. This is the best argument for creating a more free market.
"consider how your stance is equally ideologically blind."
But I'm not blind. I see results and I determine to what ideological position those results lead. You, however, continue to sell the same socialist nonsense that has been proven wrong every time it is tried, which is not only hilarious because of the psychotic nature of it in practice, but because you cannot see what is right in front of your face:
If people are so inherently flawed that a FREE market may lead to monopoly, what is the guaranteed result of a CONTROLLED market run by those same people?
If controlled markets are the answer to everything, why do free-market societies always outperform controlled-market societies?
I'm clearly serious. And I will never understand how people can be so ideologically blind that they cannot recognize or accept the benefits of the free market.
That is the most ridiculous, trite, non-argument I have ever heard. The fact that you make such an idiotic argument means you're either mendacious or ignorant. I'll grant you the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter. So let me clarify with an analogy.
Let us say Joe is a member of a baseball team. He is the only member to have achieved his status through skill and hard work. Everyone else on the team is provided by some external entity based upon criteria unrelated to success in the sport. Needless to say, his team loses a lot of games.
But one day Joe is at bat and he knocks the ball out of the park. He's a hero - he won the game! Expecting accolades, Joe heads back to the dugout. Instead he is met by someone like you, who presents him with two greetings:
1. Hey Joe! The fact that you won obviously means that 'the system works'!
2. Hey Joe! If you won this game, obviously it's your fault we lost all the other games!
Both are, of course, ridiculous and fallacious conclusions.
To bring it home: this result is an example of a free market operating where it can in America. And while yes, free markets do have problems, to claim that 'anything bad that happens is also the free market' requires you to be blinded by the incredible level of government intervention in the American market. It also requires you to ignore the uninterrupted stream of failures and catastrophes caused by government intervention, including but not limited to the housing boom and bust and the ongoing financial crisis.
Rational people are capable of evaluating these results objectively and giving points to the free market where it succeeds and points to government intervention where it succeeds. People with a grasp of history and basic math realize that the former is a much more common occurrence than the latter.
I will never understand this kneejerk, uninformed reaction people like you have to free markets. You're surrounded by the benefits of this system every single day and yet all you can offer are dirty looks and words of dismissal.
Why is it that whenever some over-sensitive PC-ified professional grievance monger (like everyone at 'gay gamer', a hilarious site that points up their differences to scream about people who point up their differences) sees anything involving women that they don't like, they dismiss it as 'sexist, misogynist, and exploitive'? It seems our standards for these terms have fallen incredibly far when 'winning a date' with someone qualifies, seeing a woman dressed in revealing clothes qualifies, participating in a beauty contest qualifies - what isn't 'sexism, misogyny, and exploitation' to these tiresome people?
Surely this whole thing was embarrassingly juvenile. But give the identity politics nonsense a break. Advertising is objectifying and exploitive. That's the whole point.
The truly exciting thing here is that it's yet another 'green' innovation brought to you by the private free market. Just like the Prius itself, this was the result of a business listening to its customers and responding to a demand. It was not brought about by government mandate or fiat.
People roll their eyes when you talk about the wonder of the free market, unaware of its massive and beneficial daily impact on their lives. This is why you have to fight to keep it.
When I saw the headline I thought, "Gee, I bet some left-wing douchebag is going to make a lame Palin joke". And I was right. You left-wing douchebags are so predictable.
By the way, how's your guy working out? Oh yeah, he's a complete failure. But keep making fun of things Palin didn't say - it shows how smart you are.
And most people wouldn't care, they don't want to run, they want to settle down and start a life of normality Which is precisely why you don't listen to the people. The people do not know anything about military strategy, and survival is a realm in which military strategy is paramount. If you establish a home base you can be destroyed easily. This is one of the more ridiculous parts of the later episodes.
So take an active role in pushing your species to extinction? Sure, in the same way that killing someone in self-defense is 'taking an active role in pushing your species to extinction'. If someone is more concerned with their own well-being than with the survival of their species, they are not worth the time and effort to save them.
What is nice about the show is it explores the different angle. Take the hard line military approach like Admiral Cain and you are killing off your species to fight a war you've already lost. And that's precisely the issue: in order to make the peace-and-flowers hippie angle seem the 'right' one, they have to be dishonest about the actual right one. It isn't a choice of 'throw yourself against the machines until dead' or 'start a democracy'. The proper choice in this situation is martial law. Yet we've been brainwashed into having a kneejerk negative reaction to martial law. It is always painted in a fascist light, as if it were something imposed on a whim for the betterment of some evil behind-the-scenes puppetmaster. Martial law is military rule in times of great risk and uncertainty.
What I like is there is no good, no bad - it preaches one thing, then turns around and reflects on the morality of such choices, all of which have pros and cons. Yes, well, a lot of people despise this mealy-mouth nonsense. It gets nobody anywhere. And there's already enough of that junk on TV, in books, in movies. That's the problem with this insidious liberal nonsense - it's like cancer eating away at our society.
As I stated above, the reason it is particularly ridiculous in this instance is because the situation is black and white. There is no gray. It's man versus ruthless killing machines. There is no room for tweed-wearing, beard-stroking, pipe-smoking post-graduate students sitting around and mulling the 'humanity' of the killing machines.
Yeah, that racist, enema-giving weirdo is really someone to emulate.
Given how much your type love fairy tales, another reality check may be devastating. But you do realize that Gandhi's great 'non-violent' success actually was mostly good timing. India refused to participate in WWII. Britain was already overtaxed fighting this war and did not need to become embroiled in a conflict with India. So they agreed to negotiate when he - 'non-violent', indeed - managed to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people to rebel. Implied violence is violence.
Even granting it was resolved without major violence, one exception does not disprove the rule (rules are not, after all, scientific proofs).
And, by the way, every person in every other conflict in the history of man thinks you're a moron. You know what happened to Jews who tried to 'see things from the Nazi side'?
I simply think the matter could have been put to better use specifically by not going to the diplomacy angle. If Adama had addressed the civilians and explained to them that, by the way, they're in a struggle for the survival of their entire species against killer cyborgs, the whole voting thing would have appeared very foolish. And as for the prisoners - they should have been executed. Mutiny in a time of war? They're already convicts anyway.
The problem is that what should happen isn't as weepy and melodramatic as the hippie fantasy stuff. The problem with going the wishy-washy "are we really the bad guys?!?" angle is that it gives the show no backbone. Our country's already full of a bunch of whiny people with no backbone constantly yammering about how bad things are. Shouldn't sci-fi be escapist?
your mindset it so ingrain in thinking such survivalistic Of course. You know why? Because survival is a key instinct. In fact, the greatest mark of foolishness in an endeavor or ideology is the presence of tangible or substantial risk to your survival.
Do you honestly believe that criminals have no feelings? Do you honestly believe that it matters? How can you not understand the concept of the struggle for survival?
It amazes me that people who think they are intelligent need to have such basic ideas explained to them. They will pontificate endlessly on how 'alike' you and your enemy are, how you need to 'understand their feelings'. Yet you fail to grasp the fundamental point that these strategies are for the non-combat arena. These are methods of diplomacy. When diplomacy fails your mentality must change.
And I can assure you, the message was not that it's definitely the right thing to do. Clearly I understand that. It was the basis of my original complaint. That is what is so irksome and tiresome about the show - that after presenting a very stark, black-and-white basis for the story, they then continue with the tired, trite, cliche sci-fi trope of looking for 'gray area'. They've explicitly established the story to have no gray area. It is a binary situation: mankind versus killing machines intent upon our destruction.
The fact that people actually see sense in applying the touchy-feely nonsense of our hippified left-wing society even into this extreme fictional realm is an indicator of how insidious the ideology has become.
How is an enemy suffering more OK than someone else? Because he is your enemy. Again, I am amazed that I have to explain this to you. You cannot win if you consider your enemy to be of equal or greater importance to you.
Why do you think people do these things in the first place? Why do you imagine causation to be relevant? This is another tiresome new-age mantra. Tell me, have you figured out crack addiction yet? How about rape? Got an answer for murder? Well guess what - you never will. Human behavior is the ultimate black box. While we should certainly continue to try to understand it, and continue to try to identify and fix problems, we should never delude ourselves into thinking that this will have 100% success.
Do you think people are incapable of change? Yes, I'm sure with a good cry and a hug those killer cyborgs will learn the error of their ways.
"None of that made any context within the confines of the show, the writers just wanted to do something they saw in the headlines. Yawn. Might as well throw in stem cell research, teen pregnancy, female genital mutilation, and rants about Vista"
There's a show that covers all those topics with a nice browbeating liberal lecture - it's called "Law and Order SVU". You think BG is bad, SVU actually had an episode where they found 'justice' for an Abu Ghraib inmate.
There is so much that is sad about the nonsense you are spouting - that people accept it as truth, that we teach it to our gullible children, that it actively undermines our own capacity for survival. But undoubtedly the most irritating thing about it is the smugness of your ignorance. You don't adopt the position because it's logical. You adopt it because it lets you have a little smug sense of moral superiority. It's pathetic.
Next time you're in a fight, when the other guy is beating the crap out of you, be sure to take time to 'understand' him. Or if a guy breaks into your house, try to get to the bottom of his motivation for doing so while he murders your family. Practice what you preach, or stop preaching.
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It doesn't matter if they were warned about pepper spray two weeks, a month or a year in advance - it's still illegal
No, it's not. And you would have realized that if you'd bothered to read the non-bolded section as well as the bolded one.
The bolded section is a purposeful misrepresentation of the actual content of the policy as given directly below. The policy says "They should only be used in situations where such force reasonably appears justified and necessary.” The (obviously impartial) 'student activism' website falsely summarizes that as "University of California Police are not authorized to use pepper spray except in circumstances in which it is necessary to prevent physical injury to themselves or others." So they decided to define what is 'justified and necessary'. However the quoted text (and the actual document, which I actually read) simply state that the use of spray must appear justified and necessary to the policeman.
It's not surprising that you blindly accept several other bald-faced lies about the text of the document, including the falsehood that the police did 'nothing' to attempt to remove the protesters (they were given several eviction notices and granted many chances to voluntarily leave, then granted several opportunities to comply with the verbal instructions of the police, by definition leaving only involuntary removal and requiring physical action) and the blatant misrepresentation contained in noting that UC Police are not allowed to use physical force "except to control violent offenders or keep suspects from escaping", when the actual statement is "to subdue violence or ensure detention". In this situation the cops reasoned that, to ensure detention, using pepper spray was a better option than wrestling with the non-compliant criminals (and if they had wrestled with them and used the batons, you'd be complaining about that).
It doesn't really matter what the people in the video did a day or a week before
Nobody said anything about a day or a week before. And you still refuse to address the obvious imbalance of the situation, where a small team of campus police were entirely surrounded by a menacing group of people. You focus on the ones who stage-managed their sit-in, exactly as they expected you to. The cops were massively outnumbered by agitated people with a history of violent acts.
just look at the guy parading around with the pepper can, holding it up for everyone to see, for a good half a minute before he actually proceeds to shove it right in people's faces
That is clearly a warning. He is showing the pepper spray to the surrounding people to hopefully get them to tell the others to comply. He takes quite a bit of time warning everyone what will happen, so he won't have to use the spray. And you try to make that an indictment of him.
Now, once he uses the spray, he definitely makes sure it is sufficiently applied. Which any cop should do. Cops don't shoot to wound, either. You deploy the solution in the best manner for it to be effective. And for all your whining, notice that none of the kids move after the first blast of spray. Most don't move after the second blast. The whole point is getting them to a state of compliance, and they are being defiant. This is what they wanted to happen, so they provoked it.
In a civilized society, the offenders would be removed without being pepper sprayed.
I wholeheartedly agree! In a civilized society, these kids would have obeyed the eviction orders. In a civilized society that respected itself, that expected grown-up behavior from people who are technically adults, these kids might not have been out doing this stupid nonsense. Heck, they might have even cared enough in 2008 to want a qualified candidate for President rather than an unqualified con-man that made them feel good about themselves for voting for him. They might care about polit
Um, no. Watch the whole video. At the end the cops are huddled together in a small group, surrounded by activists. The activists then chant in unison (in that creepy echo-chamber thing they do) about how they will give the cops a 'moment of peace' and 'allow them to leave'. It is clear who the aggressors are in that crowd, which is why that part is excised from all the video everyone's getting angry about. And while I'm sure you're qualified to tell us when the use of pepper spray is appropriate, after they ignored the notice they received TWO WEEKS ago telling them to vacate, they were given a 24-hour notice that if they did not voluntarily leave they would be forcibly removed. Pepper spray was listed as one of the options for their removal. You can make excuses for these thugs all you want, but they refused to obey the law, disrupted campus faculty meetings and classes, made threats towards faculty members, refused to allow students to attend class, spread garbage and feces and urine, and generally acted as lawless people. The police did exactly what the police are supposed to do in a society of laws: remove the offenders with minimal force. The only reason they are being vilified is this nonsensical, juvenile, anti-establishment BS that morons keep foisting on us.
Actually, fire is forceful. Acid would probably qualify as well since they both inflict permanent harm. But thanks for playing the definitions game with me, and ignoring all the salient facts: that these kids were given notice, refused to leave, then surrounded the cops who were trying to evict them, and after the heavily edited pepper spray video, threatened the cops then 'allowed' them to leave without violence.
Oh, and later in the video - you know, the part nobody watched - the mob surrounding the police chants in unison that they will 'allow' the police to leave unharmed. But the police are the bad guys here. Right.
- They were given a letter two weeks before the pepper spraying indicating that they were being evicted - They continued to disrupt normal campus business - Several faculty meetings had to be canceled because of threats to faculty members by OWS - Students were unable to attend classes because OWS refused to vacate the premises - They were given an order in writing that indicated that if they did not leave within 24 hours, they would be forcibly removed, and pepper spray was listed as one of the options So, yeah. They wanted this to happen. It happened. Blame the correct people: the morons who have been blocking up business and schools and tying up traffic because of their childish temper tantrum.
Actually, it's both. There is no 'physical force' involved, ergo it does not qualify as 'violence'. Now, it IS something that someone on the receiving end undoubtedly does not want. But that's why you listen to the police and move when you're told. Those kids knew the pepper spray was coming, which is why they didn't move. They wanted their video online to rally the idiots, just like that 84-year-old professional protester in Seattle with milk on her face pretending it was pepper spray and she was individually targeted by Officer McSadist. You're being played.
The best dissection of this idiotic 'movement' I have yet to read - not fawning, not pandering, but a realistic evaluation of who and what they are: "The idea is utopian socialism. The method is revolutionary anarchism." http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/anarchy-usa_609222.html
Really? What 'mark' will they leave other than the gigantic piles of feces and garbage they leave behind?
The sheer inanity of the OWS crowd is only one-upped by the people attempting to analogize a bunch of spoiled rich kids demanding more 'free' stuff (and refusing to accept responsibility for their tragic error in 2008) to actual freedom-fighters of America's past and the world's present. You know how these kids like to chant "the world is watching"? Yeah, the world is watching ... and laughing. All around the world we are the laughingstock of poorer nations.
And by the way: pepper spray IS 'non-violent' law enforcement. The purpose of pepper spray is exactly that for which it has been used: to force compliance from people who have been given every chance to voluntarily comply.
In addition to needing education in economics and politics, it seems our kids now need education in basic rights. You do not have the 'right' to occupy public property indefinitely, or private property at all.
Good idea, but your mom said she's busy tonight - shore leave and all.
"The rest of your monologue is so fatally flawed that it's almost not worth responding to."
In other words, you concede the point. Thank you. Hopefully you will take what I have taught you and spread the knowledge.
"Health insurance has been 'free market' for ages in the US and it's in a terrible state of corruption"
It amazes me how the most ignorant speak with such assurance.
Health care in the US is anything but a free market. Most state governments have larded on mandates - insisting that companies cover IVF and alcohol counseling, for example. Government has also forbidden interstate competition in health insurance. Further, private insurance policies are charged an extra premium to cover the shortfall in what Medicare and Medicaid pay providers. This is only a fraction of the government's long-arm reach into our health care system.
If health care were a truly free market, quality would go up and prices would go down. Because just like every other mostly-free to fully-free market (such as auto insurance, cell phones, utilities, trucking) small companies would be able to compete with the big ones like Kaiser and Blue Cross to provide low-cost, custom-tailored health care and insurance. Practitioners would be able to handle most of the non-critical care needs.
How do we know this? Because that's how things used to be. Prior to government stepping into health care, strangely everyone in America could afford health care when they needed it. The 'crisis' in health care (of course there is no 'crisis', just problems we could easily fix if people stopped demagoguing) arose when government tried to create a socialist utopia. Same as in the housing market.
But again, don't let reality stop you. Don't let the fact that our health care system, with all its flaws, still beats every socialized system in the world. Ignore all the problems with socialized systems around the world (dying in the hallways, giving birth in cabs, massive infections, lack of doctors and beds, etc). You have an agenda to push!
"You've been brainwashed by corporate marketing"
It's funny how your type always fall back to this nonsensical, childish argumentation on every subject from health care to 'global warming': any alternative viewpoint, no matter how factually correct, is the result of 'corporate brainwashing'. Sure is easier to say that than actually defend your beliefs, isn't it?
Maybe you should look at how much money these 'corporate brainwashers' give the political party who is trying to force through socialized medicine. Now, why would they do that? Because government in return will hand them a monopoly. Follow the money.
"It's not simply a 'free' vs 'controlled' argument"
Oh, it most certainly is. In fact, that's the entire founding idea of our country.
"Because any system, no matter how perfect on paper, is fundamentally flawed by human operation."
Funny how you just can't see that this applies even more greatly to government, where there is no free market to regulate human flaw.
I don't blame you. I blame the horribly flawed educational system that produced you.
"It's because the "free market" is blind to long-term goals, settling for short-term benefits even when it undermines the longterm."
Boy, someone has been effectively brainwashed.
Long-term goals are a product of short-term goals. The free market thus guides us best towards long-term goals, and only at the consent of the people to whom it is providing service. Central planning uses the lure of a long-term goal to be utterly ineffective and to actively thwart reaching either long- or short-term goals. And it is controlled by ideological potentates.
"A 'free market' has only one logical conclusion: monopoly"
Not at all. But monopoly is certainly and provably the result of government interference. In fact, the best way to ensure a monopoly is to get government involved. One can plainly see this in the cases of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It's why Big Pharma is on-board with ObamaCare. The one thing that corporations most fear is a free market where they have to face opposition. They want the government running things because government officials can be paid off to help them maintain their monopolies.
Count the number of monopolies that existed with less government restriction and compare it to the ones that exist with more. What did big government with its thousands of regulations do to bust up Microsoft? Nothing.
But this time we'll "get it right", right?
"The US doesn't have a free market"
Something I stated in a previous reply. However, the aspects of our market that are free are where all the innovation comes from. The controlled parts are where stagnation and decline come from. This is the best argument for creating a more free market.
"consider how your stance is equally ideologically blind."
But I'm not blind. I see results and I determine to what ideological position those results lead. You, however, continue to sell the same socialist nonsense that has been proven wrong every time it is tried, which is not only hilarious because of the psychotic nature of it in practice, but because you cannot see what is right in front of your face:
If people are so inherently flawed that a FREE market may lead to monopoly, what is the guaranteed result of a CONTROLLED market run by those same people?
If controlled markets are the answer to everything, why do free-market societies always outperform controlled-market societies?
Do you even think?
I'm clearly serious. And I will never understand how people can be so ideologically blind that they cannot recognize or accept the benefits of the free market.
That is the most ridiculous, trite, non-argument I have ever heard. The fact that you make such an idiotic argument means you're either mendacious or ignorant. I'll grant you the benefit of the doubt and assume the latter. So let me clarify with an analogy.
Let us say Joe is a member of a baseball team. He is the only member to have achieved his status through skill and hard work. Everyone else on the team is provided by some external entity based upon criteria unrelated to success in the sport. Needless to say, his team loses a lot of games.
But one day Joe is at bat and he knocks the ball out of the park. He's a hero - he won the game! Expecting accolades, Joe heads back to the dugout. Instead he is met by someone like you, who presents him with two greetings:
1. Hey Joe! The fact that you won obviously means that 'the system works'!
2. Hey Joe! If you won this game, obviously it's your fault we lost all the other games!
Both are, of course, ridiculous and fallacious conclusions.
To bring it home: this result is an example of a free market operating where it can in America. And while yes, free markets do have problems, to claim that 'anything bad that happens is also the free market' requires you to be blinded by the incredible level of government intervention in the American market. It also requires you to ignore the uninterrupted stream of failures and catastrophes caused by government intervention, including but not limited to the housing boom and bust and the ongoing financial crisis.
Rational people are capable of evaluating these results objectively and giving points to the free market where it succeeds and points to government intervention where it succeeds. People with a grasp of history and basic math realize that the former is a much more common occurrence than the latter.
I will never understand this kneejerk, uninformed reaction people like you have to free markets. You're surrounded by the benefits of this system every single day and yet all you can offer are dirty looks and words of dismissal.
Why is it that whenever some over-sensitive PC-ified professional grievance monger (like everyone at 'gay gamer', a hilarious site that points up their differences to scream about people who point up their differences) sees anything involving women that they don't like, they dismiss it as 'sexist, misogynist, and exploitive'? It seems our standards for these terms have fallen incredibly far when 'winning a date' with someone qualifies, seeing a woman dressed in revealing clothes qualifies, participating in a beauty contest qualifies - what isn't 'sexism, misogyny, and exploitation' to these tiresome people? Surely this whole thing was embarrassingly juvenile. But give the identity politics nonsense a break. Advertising is objectifying and exploitive. That's the whole point.
The truly exciting thing here is that it's yet another 'green' innovation brought to you by the private free market. Just like the Prius itself, this was the result of a business listening to its customers and responding to a demand. It was not brought about by government mandate or fiat. People roll their eyes when you talk about the wonder of the free market, unaware of its massive and beneficial daily impact on their lives. This is why you have to fight to keep it.
When I saw the headline I thought, "Gee, I bet some left-wing douchebag is going to make a lame Palin joke". And I was right. You left-wing douchebags are so predictable. By the way, how's your guy working out? Oh yeah, he's a complete failure. But keep making fun of things Palin didn't say - it shows how smart you are.
As I stated above, the reason it is particularly ridiculous in this instance is because the situation is black and white. There is no gray. It's man versus ruthless killing machines. There is no room for tweed-wearing, beard-stroking, pipe-smoking post-graduate students sitting around and mulling the 'humanity' of the killing machines.
Given how much your type love fairy tales, another reality check may be devastating. But you do realize that Gandhi's great 'non-violent' success actually was mostly good timing. India refused to participate in WWII. Britain was already overtaxed fighting this war and did not need to become embroiled in a conflict with India. So they agreed to negotiate when he - 'non-violent', indeed - managed to mobilize hundreds of thousands of people to rebel. Implied violence is violence.
Even granting it was resolved without major violence, one exception does not disprove the rule (rules are not, after all, scientific proofs).
And, by the way, every person in every other conflict in the history of man thinks you're a moron. You know what happened to Jews who tried to 'see things from the Nazi side'?
The problem is that what should happen isn't as weepy and melodramatic as the hippie fantasy stuff. The problem with going the wishy-washy "are we really the bad guys?!?" angle is that it gives the show no backbone. Our country's already full of a bunch of whiny people with no backbone constantly yammering about how bad things are. Shouldn't sci-fi be escapist?
It amazes me that people who think they are intelligent need to have such basic ideas explained to them. They will pontificate endlessly on how 'alike' you and your enemy are, how you need to 'understand their feelings'. Yet you fail to grasp the fundamental point that these strategies are for the non-combat arena. These are methods of diplomacy. When diplomacy fails your mentality must change.
And I can assure you, the message was not that it's definitely the right thing to do. Clearly I understand that. It was the basis of my original complaint. That is what is so irksome and tiresome about the show - that after presenting a very stark, black-and-white basis for the story, they then continue with the tired, trite, cliche sci-fi trope of looking for 'gray area'. They've explicitly established the story to have no gray area. It is a binary situation: mankind versus killing machines intent upon our destruction.The fact that people actually see sense in applying the touchy-feely nonsense of our hippified left-wing society even into this extreme fictional realm is an indicator of how insidious the ideology has become.
How is an enemy suffering more OK than someone else? Because he is your enemy. Again, I am amazed that I have to explain this to you. You cannot win if you consider your enemy to be of equal or greater importance to you. Why do you think people do these things in the first place? Why do you imagine causation to be relevant? This is another tiresome new-age mantra. Tell me, have you figured out crack addiction yet? How about rape? Got an answer for murder? Well guess what - you never will. Human behavior is the ultimate black box. While we should certainly continue to try to understand it, and continue to try to identify and fix problems, we should never delude ourselves into thinking that this will have 100% success. Do you think people are incapable of change? Yes, I'm sure with a good cry and a hug those killer cyborgs will learn the error of their ways.There's a show that covers all those topics with a nice browbeating liberal lecture - it's called "Law and Order SVU". You think BG is bad, SVU actually had an episode where they found 'justice' for an Abu Ghraib inmate.
With force. The only thing that has ever resolved such conflicts.
"And why doesn't your enemy deserve to live"
In this case? Because your enemy wants to ANNHIALIATE YOUR SPECIES and will NEVER STOP TRYING TO DO SO.
Were you born without your survival chip? Report to your nearest service center.
There is so much that is sad about the nonsense you are spouting - that people accept it as truth, that we teach it to our gullible children, that it actively undermines our own capacity for survival. But undoubtedly the most irritating thing about it is the smugness of your ignorance. You don't adopt the position because it's logical. You adopt it because it lets you have a little smug sense of moral superiority. It's pathetic. Next time you're in a fight, when the other guy is beating the crap out of you, be sure to take time to 'understand' him. Or if a guy breaks into your house, try to get to the bottom of his motivation for doing so while he murders your family. Practice what you preach, or stop preaching.