The problem with Rawles' philosophical construct that you're parroting here (until you randomly slid into Kant, somehow) is that humans aren't, on the whole, entirely risk-averse. Thus this nonsense about ensuring everyone's survival is just that: nonsense. Any reasonable person, given your hypothetical situation, could easily be expected to simply kill off a small percentage of the population were it to increase the overall welfare of the rest of the population, and thus his own probable overall welfare.
In a similar vein, many people have a sense of identity which extends beyond themselves, and would willingly accept the sacrifice of certain groups for the overall advantage of the species, even were they part of the sacrifice themselves. Anyhow, your basic argument about why we would necessarily agree with your system were we to be stuck into society randomly is not sound.
Um, in times of war and plague, the rate of population growth decreases. I imagine you were thinking about the birth rate, which is something else entirely.
Yeah, i would have gone more for (0, offtopic) than (0, flamebait). After all, the purpose of this article was to whine about the MPAA's stance on piracy. Whining about lack of objectivity in the media is for threads related to government announcements only;)
Yeah, except that that would be an inversion of the process of invention. Things get invented because someone wants them to be invented, not the other way around.
It's more of that the larger bureaucratic unit shoudl not take on projects that WILL be handlesd by a smaller. For instance, every county and township in north america COULD independently build and maintain the continent's road system, including highways... but they wouldn't. This is the gray area of federalism that leads to disagreements-- it's the place where politicians have to make a qualitative descision about what will be a problem before it arises. So don't be too hard on the poor bureaucrats in this case, eh. At least they aren't outlawing observed biological phenomena, like the school boards are trying to do in Kansas.
Yeah, but this is slashdot. If it isn't actively burning wealthy owners to death, selling their women and childern into slavery, and using the money to fund the INternational Socialist Org, then it's a right-wing conspiracy;)
The 'interesting' tag on your post indicates that your sense of humor is too complex for these unenlightened surroundings. Unless you were being serious, in which case you're a complete nutcase.
Because, as a result of my low opinion of the Democratic party, I'm a registered repubublican (a descision based purely on primary structure- I had to choose a major party), and thus am not allowed to vote in primaries for the democrats. I'm hoping that if I goad enough democrats, they'll shape up, though, or at least move out of the way and let the greens and Libertarians step up to fill the gap.
The important bit is the ideology. Republicans have one. They're a bunch of people that make decisions based on similar principles, or similar enough that voting together makes sense. The impression I get from the Democratic party is that they're either taking whatever the republican party leaves behind or drawing things out of a hat. Voting together for increased power is not a purpose unless you're using that power to accomplish something, which, if you're just throwing vote blocks around for the sake of exercising power, isn't really happening.
I agree with you about the stupidity of hot-button issue votes, but for slightly different reasons. Picking a single issue you care about and voting based on it isn't really that bad a way to make descisions in a representative government, but the specific issues that most people pick as their one are generally stupid and irrelevant (so far as I can see, anyhow). Gay marriage, abortion, education... all irrelevant, resolved half a century ago, or simply not something that different parties have different policies on. Man, I hate politics. I should stop reading this section.
It doesn't scare me because I have faith in the judicial system to bitch-slap this provision like it only turned up a twenty after a night's work. Partisan bickering notwithstanding, I've been quite satisfied with the judicial striking down of things recently.
Teh fact that the majority of humanity is composed of wolves rather than sheep is one of the founding principles of the country, and, though it's not stated explicity, it's accounted for in a number of places. The entire bill of rights is pretty much devoted to protecting the individual from the tyrrany of perfectly legitimate majority opinion, which tends to destroy things and otherwise inhibit progress.
I applaud your optimism, but the only thing wrong with the original metaphor was that it didn't have enough wolves.
Read the bloody bill. The info contained in the ID card is a fraction of that contained in your current driver's license. The fact that you don't know this and yet are getting modded insightful disturbs me a bit.
Wah, wah. Buy some tinfoil and relax, the requirements for the National ID are actually smaller in terms of info than either Texas driver's licenses or california's. I can't swear by any other states, but I can tell you I don't find this particularly troubling. If states meld the ID card with the driver's license as expected, I won't even have to stuff another card in my billfold. The only worry is the waste of public funds on enforcing this, and that's peanuts next to the deficit alone.
I doubt the bill will be interpreted in this manner if it comes to court. My impression of the intent of the wording was that it was to prevent state laws from screwing up the construction of barriers to prevent illegal immigration (and pretty much only that). If a rape or murder took place and the dfendant claimed protection of this law, I'm pretty sure a judge would be more likely to take it as a guilty plea than accept it as a valid defense.
He has a point, though. This particular issue actually involves physical entitites (people) with the potential and probablility of moving across state lines at some point. Looks like this is actually an interstate commerce thing, really.
Eh, well, it turned out all right, so I guess we can forgive him.
I'm from Texas. I can hold this ambivalent opinion without the slightest hint of hypocrisy (We're pretty solidly better off for being part of the USA).
Nah. Hyperbole aside, our government is nowhere near the level of most facist states. For one thing, we honor treaties way too often. For another, our actions tend to be genuinely defensive, though we have demonstrated a disturbing tendency to take advantage of a war on one declared enemy of the nation to go after another declared enemy of the nation. Our bonds of honor protect foregn civillians despite the fact that they aren't American, even in the hairy military entanglements we find ourselves in so often. Our annoying-empire-o-meter score is still a hair's breadth below "british empire", meaning we're still blind xenophobia, near-uniform naitonalism, and a genocide away from actually hitting the 'evil facist empire' notch.
Right. The reason for the representative form of government is that voters don't have time to make proper decisions about every governmental issue in a narion of 400 million odd citizens. We are responsible for selecting other people to do the research and come up with a reasonable descision for us. In all honesty, I would like to see LESS correspondence between public opinion and government action. After all, if we're just going to go with whatever the majority want, we should simply abolish government altogether and hand over control to the Gallup corporation. I'm paying my congressman to put together a working nation, not make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
I'm thinking that the Dems are weak in pretty much everything: They really don't stand for anything important, except a bunch of confused people with no particular ideology that just vote together for the sake of voting together. If they had an actual purpose, I imagine that people who weren't trained lapdogs (i.e. people who vote with their minds rather than their habits) might vote for them more often.
I'm all for breaking republican majority, the buggers have angered me a bit at this point. But I'm going to continue voting for candidates rather than parties until the Democrats demonstrate that they actually have a set of values (once this is accomplished, I'll evaluate wether I agree with those values, but one step at a time). Ok, I'm done whining now. I'm also going to note, though, that the technique you're describing isn't actually an original invention, especailly not an invention of the republican party: like most of the propaganda techniques the Reps use nowadays, it was stolen from the teoretical Democratic operations manual from back in the day. This is why I'm not too fond of either party.
This is what we call 'old hat' as far as procedure goes. It's been going on since before the republicans existed, and the Democrats are slightly more guilty of it than everyone else, mostly because they've been around to write more legislation.
Right... much as I'm amused by your blindly reactionary characterization of our current president, I'm bored enough to annotate your bullet points, there:
(1) True enough.
(2) Not really. Party man that Bush may be, there are still other political parties, one of which holds almost 50% of the assemblies.
(3) Nope. See (2)
(4) Not really. Mostly just recycling old-hat Democratic party propaganda techniques that aren't fooling anybody that didn't already agree with the administration.
(5) Hegemony. That's a laugh.
In all honesty, go for stealing and giving to the rich. The other one simply prolongs and excaberates a problem that has been draining public funds forever. And don't respond with the standard "bums aren't useless social parasites, they're just down on their luck" until you've visited the bum capital of the world (Berkeley, CA) and talked to a couple. You'll be voting for mandatory beating for vagrancy within minutes of completing the first such conversation, I assure you. And asking for your social programs funding back.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with Rawles' philosophical construct that you're parroting here (until you randomly slid into Kant, somehow) is that humans aren't, on the whole, entirely risk-averse. Thus this nonsense about ensuring everyone's survival is just that: nonsense. Any reasonable person, given your hypothetical situation, could easily be expected to simply kill off a small percentage of the population were it to increase the overall welfare of the rest of the population, and thus his own probable overall welfare.
In a similar vein, many people have a sense of identity which extends beyond themselves, and would willingly accept the sacrifice of certain groups for the overall advantage of the species, even were they part of the sacrifice themselves. Anyhow, your basic argument about why we would necessarily agree with your system were we to be stuck into society randomly is not sound.
Um, in times of war and plague, the rate of population growth decreases. I imagine you were thinking about the birth rate, which is something else entirely.
Population growth = birth rate - death rate.
Yeah, i would have gone more for (0, offtopic) than (0, flamebait). After all, the purpose of this article was to whine about the MPAA's stance on piracy. Whining about lack of objectivity in the media is for threads related to government announcements only ;)
Yeah, except that that would be an inversion of the process of invention. Things get invented because someone wants them to be invented, not the other way around.
You misspelled "skeer'd" on the last two lines.
It's more of that the larger bureaucratic unit shoudl not take on projects that WILL be handlesd by a smaller. For instance, every county and township in north america COULD independently build and maintain the continent's road system, including highways... but they wouldn't. This is the gray area of federalism that leads to disagreements-- it's the place where politicians have to make a qualitative descision about what will be a problem before it arises. So don't be too hard on the poor bureaucrats in this case, eh. At least they aren't outlawing observed biological phenomena, like the school boards are trying to do in Kansas.
Public schools? Upgrade software? HAHAHAHAHA!
Yeah, but this is slashdot. If it isn't actively burning wealthy owners to death, selling their women and childern into slavery, and using the money to fund the INternational Socialist Org, then it's a right-wing conspiracy ;)
The 'interesting' tag on your post indicates that your sense of humor is too complex for these unenlightened surroundings. Unless you were being serious, in which case you're a complete nutcase.
Because, as a result of my low opinion of the Democratic party, I'm a registered repubublican (a descision based purely on primary structure- I had to choose a major party), and thus am not allowed to vote in primaries for the democrats. I'm hoping that if I goad enough democrats, they'll shape up, though, or at least move out of the way and let the greens and Libertarians step up to fill the gap.
The important bit is the ideology. Republicans have one. They're a bunch of people that make decisions based on similar principles, or similar enough that voting together makes sense. The impression I get from the Democratic party is that they're either taking whatever the republican party leaves behind or drawing things out of a hat. Voting together for increased power is not a purpose unless you're using that power to accomplish something, which, if you're just throwing vote blocks around for the sake of exercising power, isn't really happening.
I agree with you about the stupidity of hot-button issue votes, but for slightly different reasons. Picking a single issue you care about and voting based on it isn't really that bad a way to make descisions in a representative government, but the specific issues that most people pick as their one are generally stupid and irrelevant (so far as I can see, anyhow). Gay marriage, abortion, education... all irrelevant, resolved half a century ago, or simply not something that different parties have different policies on. Man, I hate politics. I should stop reading this section.
Don't feed the trolls, bub. Especially if you are going to completely misunderstand their bitter sarcasm and take them literally.
It doesn't scare me because I have faith in the judicial system to bitch-slap this provision like it only turned up a twenty after a night's work. Partisan bickering notwithstanding, I've been quite satisfied with the judicial striking down of things recently.
Teh fact that the majority of humanity is composed of wolves rather than sheep is one of the founding principles of the country, and, though it's not stated explicity, it's accounted for in a number of places. The entire bill of rights is pretty much devoted to protecting the individual from the tyrrany of perfectly legitimate majority opinion, which tends to destroy things and otherwise inhibit progress.
I applaud your optimism, but the only thing wrong with the original metaphor was that it didn't have enough wolves.
Read the bloody bill. The info contained in the ID card is a fraction of that contained in your current driver's license. The fact that you don't know this and yet are getting modded insightful disturbs me a bit.
Wah, wah. Buy some tinfoil and relax, the requirements for the National ID are actually smaller in terms of info than either Texas driver's licenses or california's. I can't swear by any other states, but I can tell you I don't find this particularly troubling. If states meld the ID card with the driver's license as expected, I won't even have to stuff another card in my billfold. The only worry is the waste of public funds on enforcing this, and that's peanuts next to the deficit alone.
I doubt the bill will be interpreted in this manner if it comes to court. My impression of the intent of the wording was that it was to prevent state laws from screwing up the construction of barriers to prevent illegal immigration (and pretty much only that). If a rape or murder took place and the dfendant claimed protection of this law, I'm pretty sure a judge would be more likely to take it as a guilty plea than accept it as a valid defense.
He has a point, though. This particular issue actually involves physical entitites (people) with the potential and probablility of moving across state lines at some point. Looks like this is actually an interstate commerce thing, really.
Eh, well, it turned out all right, so I guess we can forgive him.
I'm from Texas. I can hold this ambivalent opinion without the slightest hint of hypocrisy (We're pretty solidly better off for being part of the USA).
Nah. Hyperbole aside, our government is nowhere near the level of most facist states. For one thing, we honor treaties way too often. For another, our actions tend to be genuinely defensive, though we have demonstrated a disturbing tendency to take advantage of a war on one declared enemy of the nation to go after another declared enemy of the nation. Our bonds of honor protect foregn civillians despite the fact that they aren't American, even in the hairy military entanglements we find ourselves in so often. Our annoying-empire-o-meter score is still a hair's breadth below "british empire", meaning we're still blind xenophobia, near-uniform naitonalism, and a genocide away from actually hitting the 'evil facist empire' notch.
Right. The reason for the representative form of government is that voters don't have time to make proper decisions about every governmental issue in a narion of 400 million odd citizens. We are responsible for selecting other people to do the research and come up with a reasonable descision for us. In all honesty, I would like to see LESS correspondence between public opinion and government action. After all, if we're just going to go with whatever the majority want, we should simply abolish government altogether and hand over control to the Gallup corporation. I'm paying my congressman to put together a working nation, not make me feel warm and fuzzy inside.
I'm thinking that the Dems are weak in pretty much everything: They really don't stand for anything important, except a bunch of confused people with no particular ideology that just vote together for the sake of voting together. If they had an actual purpose, I imagine that people who weren't trained lapdogs (i.e. people who vote with their minds rather than their habits) might vote for them more often.
I'm all for breaking republican majority, the buggers have angered me a bit at this point. But I'm going to continue voting for candidates rather than parties until the Democrats demonstrate that they actually have a set of values (once this is accomplished, I'll evaluate wether I agree with those values, but one step at a time). Ok, I'm done whining now. I'm also going to note, though, that the technique you're describing isn't actually an original invention, especailly not an invention of the republican party: like most of the propaganda techniques the Reps use nowadays, it was stolen from the teoretical Democratic operations manual from back in the day. This is why I'm not too fond of either party.
This is what we call 'old hat' as far as procedure goes. It's been going on since before the republicans existed, and the Democrats are slightly more guilty of it than everyone else, mostly because they've been around to write more legislation.
Right... much as I'm amused by your blindly reactionary characterization of our current president, I'm bored enough to annotate your bullet points, there:
(1) True enough.
(2) Not really. Party man that Bush may be, there are still other political parties, one of which holds almost 50% of the assemblies.
(3) Nope. See (2)
(4) Not really. Mostly just recycling old-hat Democratic party propaganda techniques that aren't fooling anybody that didn't already agree with the administration.
(5) Hegemony. That's a laugh.
In all honesty, go for stealing and giving to the rich. The other one simply prolongs and excaberates a problem that has been draining public funds forever. And don't respond with the standard "bums aren't useless social parasites, they're just down on their luck" until you've visited the bum capital of the world (Berkeley, CA) and talked to a couple. You'll be voting for mandatory beating for vagrancy within minutes of completing the first such conversation, I assure you. And asking for your social programs funding back.