Really, we're talking about subjective opinion here, and no amount of googling will give someone insight into what you consider to be misconceptions. Unless you've already published that online, in which case you could've linked to it.
Okay, so, if money is speech, and the government can't restrict people from buying elections because of the first amendment, then why can't I use my money buy weed?
The next trick is to watch that $2T finally be spent (god knows those on the Forbes list weren't about to liquidate their net worth on their own). The economy would look a lot better than it does today.
Of course, we'd need to find a new set of 400 central planners to run our economy (that's really what their "contribution" to society amounts to, no?). Or we could, you know, go back to having a decentralized market economy.
The other 90% would screw off on the backs of the 10%, and the whole country would go to hell in a handbasket.
Okay, so, this is slashdot, so none of us read the article. Understandable.
You didn't read the summary either, which isn't terribly uncommon either. Okay.
But, if you could at least READ THE FUCKING HEADLINE, you'd see even in the pessimistic case of your estimate, the whole country would not go to hell in a handbasket.
Now, $1k/month might be enough for you to quit your SV job, trade your BMW in for a 2005 Honda, sell all your furniture on Craigslist, and use your Honda to move what little's left to Wyoming so you can work on your ideas without having to burn your savings. However, if you live in SV, don't you have enough money saved to do that anyway? Doing that for 2 years would only cost $24k; a large amount of savings for some guy making $40k at some regular job, but that's nothing to someone working a 6-figure job in SV.
Emphasis mine.
See, the basic income is not a temporary "will last two years" thing. That's the point. Your suggestion, while seemingly reasonable, brings us to GP's claim "I cannot afford a single idea that fails to sell". Indeed, going with your example, let's say he moves out to Wyoming, blows through his $24k in savings over two years, and his single ideal fails to sell. Now what? Now he can't even afford to move back to SV to get his fat salary back. Now he's gone down a dead end street, and he's fucked.
The crucial difference between your proposal (which, incidentally, requires savings, and the median family net worth is around $80k, with very little of it liquid) and the basic income is that the basic income allows him to pursue this course of action without the very significant risk of being fucked in two years.
Pure research wasn't why the US landed on the moon first. That was applied research. Which those companies do lots of. You're attempting to goalpost shift and it isn't working.
It was both, if you want to be pedantic, but this isn't relevant in the original context either way. The original context was that
As to the no-true-scottsman thing that the marxists love to play. I'm not interested. You want to cherry pick your pathetic ideology to make it look better by hiding its missteps? Okay... allow me to do that with your opposing ideologies and suddenly all the things you could say against them become moot because by your logic I can no-true-scottsman all of them endlessly.
So no. Eat your problem children just like everyone else.
That's fine. We can talk about Stalin as the mascot for socialism when you agree to hold up Robert Mugabe as the mascot for capitalism. Or we can stick to the dictionary definitions of socialism and capitalism instead of using self-identification as a yardstick. Your call, though I prefer the latter.
As to your statement that socialism doesn't require centralization... define socialism please. Because you're using an unorthodox definition and neither of us will know what the other is talking about if you're just randomly changing the definitions of terms. Define it please. My definition of it, which is the official and most commonly used definition does require centralization. Saying that it doesn't means either you're wrong or you're using a different definition.
Here's some more cherry-picking for you. I went to google and I typed 'define socialism'. Google told me that socialism is "a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole." I did the same thing with 'define centralize' and I got "concentrate (control of an activity or organization) under a single authority." Power concentrated under a single authority of the community as a whole. At this point, it should be evident that saying that socialism requires centralization is a severe twisting of words, as "the community as a whole" wouldn't be considered a "single authority" by most English speakers.
I am being kind in assuming you're working from a different definition, though I honestly suspect you've merely confused yourself.
This doesn't seem to add much value to the discussion, but I appreciate your... kindness...
The rest of your response is written in a manner that lacks context. If you're not going to quote what you're responding to, at least explicitly identify it in your own words. Don't expect me to read through a pages-long thread in an attempt to infer what you're talking about when you say "As to capitalist class" or "As to democracy resolving corruption".
Beyond that, your argument is fallacious to the extent that you are arguing that because something tends to be true that it is true in this case. That has to be validated. Tends is not "is".
It's not clear what you mean here as the word "tend" was not used in any of my posts in this thread. It is my opinion that you're not very good at providing context for the things which you write, which makes it challenging for me to provide meaningful replies.
1.
You're not going to find any AGW deniers saying anything because its like referring to a position as "Nazis"... Which is the rhetorical point of that label.
Too poorly written to parse. I find AGW deniers saying things all the time, so you're factually incorrect on that point. I have no idea what you mean by 'referring to a position as "Nazis"'. Moving on.
They're skeptics on the findings of a lot of things. I personally see no way to argue that there isn't warming, sea level rises, etc... What I do however find difficult to validate is the connection between CO2 and these changes. You have at BEST correlation in some cases. But I've seen a lot of evidence that you don't even have correlation. Absent correlation you can't have causation. And even with correlation you do not have causation.
If I weren't so old, I'd respond with "cool story, bro". This is all fantastic stuff, but it's not evident how this relates to my request for evidence backing the claim that AGW-deniers support geoengineering solutions to climate change.
There are a few geo engineering ideas. The sulfur dioxide sprayed into the upper atmosphere idea is one. The amount of the gas required to cancel the warming would be an amount that could be squirted out of two garden hoses... ideally roughly on opposite ends of the planet. The idea would involve a tube held aloft by balloons...
Another idea involves flinging sea water into air to marginally increase cloud cover. The concept either suggests that cargo ships be fitted with units do this on the rear of the ship or that purpose built ships be created to do it.
Most of the geo engineering ideas after that focus on sequestrating carbon which may or may not even be relevant. Mostly they involve simulating algae growth on a massive scale.
I'm aware of various geoengineering strategies that might control the global climate, including the ones you listed. What I asked for was evidence that AGW-deniers support any of them. You haven't provided that yet.
2.
As to you finding it odd that the term "denier" in heated political discussions, a term crafted by politicians, and a term used to discredit rivals has no dirty political connotations... I think you may be naive.
The English "deny" comes form the Middle-English "deny" which comes from the Old French "deni" which comes from the latin "denegare". The Latin roots "de-" and "negare" mean "formally" and "say no", respectively. It is a word whose origins trace back much longer than the debate about climate change. There is no evidence that it is a term crafted by politicians. My alleged naivety has no bearing on these facts.
It is a term rendered to associate AGW deniers with holocaust deniers and thus with neo nazis or something. Its a pathetic ploy to bury a baseless ad hominem in a title. And then just as you're doing... when this is pointed out... you'll say "who me?"...
While I have no issues giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that you earnestly believe this, I question your motives for wanting to abandon the dictionary definition of a word in favor of some flowery interpretation instead. The word "denier" predates the Jewish Holocaust by a healthy margin, so it's hard to fathom how it could have been used to associate things with an event that had not yet occurred. Regardless of your opinion about the intent of using such a word, let me be explicit: when I refer to deniers, I refer to people that disagree that some claim is factually true, and I do not seek to associate them with AGW-deniers, holocaust deniers, or any other deniers, beyond the fact that they all deny some thing or another. If you attribute additional meaning beyond this to my words, you do so in error.
The pretense is tiring.
What's tiring is you trying to explain to me what I mean when I write to you. You have no ba
Let's not continually expand the scope of this interaction. I was talking about the validity of a logical argument, not economics. I specifically said in my last post that I'm not evaluating the merits of any economic philosophy or policy, that I'm restricting my comment specifically to the domain of rational logic, and not interested in economics. I repeat, I have no interest in getting into a subjective discussion about a complex issue, but in the interest of civility I'll at least offer a brief response to your enumerated points.
Regarding illegal immigration, it's not clear that an absence of government (and the resulting uncontrolled flow of persons) would remedy wage discrepancy. If anything, based on your reasoning here, it would only worsen it.
Regarding mandated monopolies, it's not clear that an absence of government would prevent the natural formation of monopolies through consolidation, collusion, or other anti-competitive practices. Granted, it would eliminate the potential for government-mandated monopolies, but those are only one variety of many.
Regarding limited access, it's not clear than an absence of government would result in equal access for all. Government regulation is indeed a barrier to entry into markets, but it is not the only one, and it's not clear how getting rid of one barrier would eliminate all others.
That being said, you bring up a number of good points, many of which I agree with (some of which I don't). However, they don't really demonstrate that a free market without any government activity would necessarily be free from wage disparity, which is what you'd need in order to falsify my claim.
If it is true that wage disparity is due to government activity and not the market, then it is necessarily true that a pure free market with no government activity must have no wage disparity.
Whether or not some "small-but-not-nonexistent government" approach would be a viable or preferable alternative is orthogonal to this fact, which is why I didn't bring it up.
More specifically, I wasn't advocating for or against government activity or a market economy -- I was applying deductive reasoning to an argument made by OP to demonstrate how it leads to absurdity, and is therefore false. I'm not setting up a false dichotomy here, although OP likely did.
The Sanders one is pretty uncreative, I mean it's an obvious joke to add his face to the famous "parade of Marxists" seeing as Bernie's own views are quite close to theirs. Don't believe me, ask real-live Marxists what they think about him. Spoiler alert: he's not far enough left for their taste.
So, if we don't believe you, you've conveniently offered us a link that also contradicts your claim?
Call and response can refer to a few different things, but the one that best fits this context has nothing to do with making audible comments during the screening of a film.
Where did I say they needed to work harder and write better than previous generations? I said to work hard, not hardER.
You didn't. The person your talking to did, when he said "you'll have a vastly harder time than your parents or grandparents did". You contested this claim with your response when you said "'Vastly harder' to earn as much is a gross overstatement. There is lots of opportunity for those that simply write well and work hard." However, the fact that there is lots of opportunity doesn't mean that it's not vastly harder to earn as much, so you haven't really provided any basis for your claims. Note, neither has the other guy, but you're both just stating your own opposing opinions.
I guess you can add reading comprehension to the list, so they actually understand the communications people send.
The notion that wage disparity is the direct result of government activity and not the market is absurd as it flies in the face of reason.
The same line of reasoning could be applied to criminal justice. Perhaps if we got rid of the meddling government, we could allow a heretofore unknown or suppressed method of human social behavior to actually do a better job of promoting harmony between individuals in society. After all, look at failed states all over the world. The lack of central government brings with it both economic equality and civil tranquility.
So you're saying that in the USSR, the relationship between the state and industry could best be described as "the means of production were owned by the workers"? I'm fairly confident that that's not an accurate description.
Actually many geo engineering options have been suggested. Its just that the alarmists are so busy strawmanning, demonizing, ad homineming, and other associated fallacies that in all likelihood you have no idea what so ever what their opposition believes if you only listen to one side.
I'd greatly, greatly appreciate any citations of AGW-deniers suggesting and/or promoting geoengineering solutions to climate change. That would be truly awesome.
The "denial" name for example is a name assigned to us by those same people to associate skeptics with holocaust deniers... which basically means they've invoked Godwin's law... That's how far up their own asses they are on this issue.
The side that compares you to hitler in a scientific discussion is probably not arguing in good faith... don't you think?
I find it surprising that you automatically associate the word "deny" with the Jewish holocaust. In my [anecdotal] experience, this isn't a common association. When I write firewall rules, I don't think I've ever had my mind wander to Naziism.
As to whether I would geoengineer the planet to stop the warming... why? The change in sea levels is not happening quickly. Some coastal cities might be effected eventually but so what? That isn't a global problem. That's a coastal city problem. The world is not a few coastal cities. I'm not interested in wasting resources on this project. We have bigger problems.
See, this is more what in line with what I'd expect from an AGW-denier (or skeptic, or philosopher, or whatever you prefer). Not proposals for stopping [supposedly non-anthropogenic] global warming or mitigating its effects, but instead further denial of global warming (or climate change) or its effects. So, once we get past the superficial "it's not manmade" argument, it seems we always get to a "the climate's totally fine" argument.
I wanted to believe that it's just that the alarmists and I were just too busy strawmanning, demonizing, ad homineming to really give you a fair shake, and here you seem to be demonstrating that no, really, you're just penny wise and pound foolish. I'm still hoping you prove me wrong.
As to pure research, the pure research happened long before the moon shot. It was all application and engineering after that. And saying they don't do R&D into engineering and practical application is not supportable.
So my examples are actually great.
Again, none of these companies invest significantly in pure research, and their applied research is either heavily subsidized or directly funded by outside parties (like the federal government). That is why I believe they make poor examples of private industry investing in research. I never suggested they don't do R&D, but I did point out that an overwhelming majority of their R&D is funded by outside parties, and therefore cannot be attributed solely (or even primarily) to these companies.
As to affirming the consequent, why is it that hyper centralized systems have shown to be less productive and innovative then? Here's the problem with your argument. In theory you could be right. However, in practice... aka empirically... you're wrong.
So, you seem to be conflating two issues here. One, your statement, as a rational claim, is baseless. That is, it's logically possible that the Russians lost the Cold War despite socialism being superior, so on that front, your claim is not necessarily true, which means it is unsupported. The second issue is whether it's actually true, in practice, empirically. Well, that would depend on the Russians having actually implemented socialism, which they didn't, as can be evidenced by the significant disparities between their system and the one described by Marx, or any other academic understanding of what constitutes socialism. Pointing to the USSR as an example of socialism makes about as much sense as pointing to North Korea as an example of democracy. Labels don't define reality, they describe it (to varying extents of accuracy).
And because theory is subordinate to empiricism, you must concede that your theory is incomplete or wrong.
Furthermore, you conflate logic and theory, and fortunately, while the irrationality of human society does indeed trump theories about society, it doesn't trump rational logic. I'm not particularly invested in my position, though, so if it makes you feel any better to be right, sure, you can be right, I can be wrong. However, that doesn't change the merits (or lack thereof) of either of our arguments.
Once you've adjusted your theory to account for its empirical errors, recalculate your conclusions. You're going to be forced to agree with me... by the universe. I will gloat. Its my right.
Sure, enjoy the gloating. I'll even grovel before you. But my argument stands.
As to corrupt dictatorships, you centralize power and you get corruption and a dictatorship. So... you're asking for an oxymoron. You want a centralized system that is neither corrupt nor anti-democratic despite massively centralizing authority into a singularity. That's illogical. The centralization of power and authority inherently leads to corruption and tyranny. Centralizing power means reducing the number of people that get to make choices. That inherently leads to tyranny.
I'll note that socialism doesn't require any centralization, as is evidenced by the success of democratic socialism (or social democracy) across Europe. Indeed, if you go back to Marx's writings, I believe the intent is to transfer power not to a central authority but away from the capitalist class where it is currently centralized and to the workers themselves, decentralizing it. It seems that you're fundamentally misunderstanding the core tenets of socialism.
And once you have tyranny, what you call corruption is just the application of powers they've inherited. If I control everything then why can't I use that power any way I want? That is literally my right under that scenario. That you disagree with how I
Slashdot Mirror
Bernie is so far to the left he makes Hillary look like a Republican.
Or, phrased another way, Hillary is so far to the right she makes herself look like a Republican.
Honestly if you're going to blame the US for the state Afghanistan is in, your brain is a fucking joke.
And seriously, if you're going to support the beheading of innocent people, your kidneys must be really sore.
Aren't non sequiturs great?
I must have missed it, when was Afghanistan stable?
I must have missed it too. When did I say Afghanistan was stable?
Really, we're talking about subjective opinion here, and no amount of googling will give someone insight into what you consider to be misconceptions. Unless you've already published that online, in which case you could've linked to it.
Okay, so, if money is speech, and the government can't restrict people from buying elections because of the first amendment, then why can't I use my money buy weed?
Israel is the second biggest recipient of US foreign aid (as of 2014), after Afghanistan (which we destroyed and are trying to stabilize).
The next trick is to watch that $2T finally be spent (god knows those on the Forbes list weren't about to liquidate their net worth on their own). The economy would look a lot better than it does today.
Of course, we'd need to find a new set of 400 central planners to run our economy (that's really what their "contribution" to society amounts to, no?). Or we could, you know, go back to having a decentralized market economy.
The other 90% would screw off on the backs of the 10%, and the whole country would go to hell in a handbasket.
Okay, so, this is slashdot, so none of us read the article. Understandable.
You didn't read the summary either, which isn't terribly uncommon either. Okay.
But, if you could at least READ THE FUCKING HEADLINE, you'd see even in the pessimistic case of your estimate, the whole country would not go to hell in a handbasket.
Here's one.
Now, $1k/month might be enough for you to quit your SV job, trade your BMW in for a 2005 Honda, sell all your furniture on Craigslist, and use your Honda to move what little's left to Wyoming so you can work on your ideas without having to burn your savings. However, if you live in SV, don't you have enough money saved to do that anyway? Doing that for 2 years would only cost $24k; a large amount of savings for some guy making $40k at some regular job, but that's nothing to someone working a 6-figure job in SV.
Emphasis mine.
See, the basic income is not a temporary "will last two years" thing. That's the point. Your suggestion, while seemingly reasonable, brings us to GP's claim "I cannot afford a single idea that fails to sell". Indeed, going with your example, let's say he moves out to Wyoming, blows through his $24k in savings over two years, and his single ideal fails to sell. Now what? Now he can't even afford to move back to SV to get his fat salary back. Now he's gone down a dead end street, and he's fucked.
The crucial difference between your proposal (which, incidentally, requires savings, and the median family net worth is around $80k, with very little of it liquid) and the basic income is that the basic income allows him to pursue this course of action without the very significant risk of being fucked in two years.
Pure research wasn't why the US landed on the moon first. That was applied research. Which those companies do lots of. You're attempting to goalpost shift and it isn't working.
It was both, if you want to be pedantic, but this isn't relevant in the original context either way. The original context was that
As to the no-true-scottsman thing that the marxists love to play. I'm not interested. You want to cherry pick your pathetic ideology to make it look better by hiding its missteps? Okay... allow me to do that with your opposing ideologies and suddenly all the things you could say against them become moot because by your logic I can no-true-scottsman all of them endlessly.
So no. Eat your problem children just like everyone else.
That's fine. We can talk about Stalin as the mascot for socialism when you agree to hold up Robert Mugabe as the mascot for capitalism. Or we can stick to the dictionary definitions of socialism and capitalism instead of using self-identification as a yardstick. Your call, though I prefer the latter.
As to your statement that socialism doesn't require centralization... define socialism please. Because you're using an unorthodox definition and neither of us will know what the other is talking about if you're just randomly changing the definitions of terms. Define it please. My definition of it, which is the official and most commonly used definition does require centralization. Saying that it doesn't means either you're wrong or you're using a different definition.
Here's some more cherry-picking for you. I went to google and I typed 'define socialism'. Google told me that socialism is "a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole." I did the same thing with 'define centralize' and I got "concentrate (control of an activity or organization) under a single authority." Power concentrated under a single authority of the community as a whole. At this point, it should be evident that saying that socialism requires centralization is a severe twisting of words, as "the community as a whole" wouldn't be considered a "single authority" by most English speakers.
I am being kind in assuming you're working from a different definition, though I honestly suspect you've merely confused yourself.
This doesn't seem to add much value to the discussion, but I appreciate your... kindness...
The rest of your response is written in a manner that lacks context. If you're not going to quote what you're responding to, at least explicitly identify it in your own words. Don't expect me to read through a pages-long thread in an attempt to infer what you're talking about when you say "As to capitalist class" or "As to democracy resolving corruption".
Beyond that, your argument is fallacious to the extent that you are arguing that because something tends to be true that it is true in this case. That has to be validated. Tends is not "is".
It's not clear what you mean here as the word "tend" was not used in any of my posts in this thread. It is my opinion that you're not very good at providing context for the things which you write, which makes it challenging for me to provide meaningful replies.
1.
You're not going to find any AGW deniers saying anything because its like referring to a position as "Nazis"... Which is the rhetorical point of that label.
Too poorly written to parse. I find AGW deniers saying things all the time, so you're factually incorrect on that point. I have no idea what you mean by 'referring to a position as "Nazis"'. Moving on.
They're skeptics on the findings of a lot of things. I personally see no way to argue that there isn't warming, sea level rises, etc... What I do however find difficult to validate is the connection between CO2 and these changes. You have at BEST correlation in some cases. But I've seen a lot of evidence that you don't even have correlation. Absent correlation you can't have causation. And even with correlation you do not have causation.
If I weren't so old, I'd respond with "cool story, bro". This is all fantastic stuff, but it's not evident how this relates to my request for evidence backing the claim that AGW-deniers support geoengineering solutions to climate change.
There are a few geo engineering ideas. The sulfur dioxide sprayed into the upper atmosphere idea is one. The amount of the gas required to cancel the warming would be an amount that could be squirted out of two garden hoses... ideally roughly on opposite ends of the planet. The idea would involve a tube held aloft by balloons...
Another idea involves flinging sea water into air to marginally increase cloud cover. The concept either suggests that cargo ships be fitted with units do this on the rear of the ship or that purpose built ships be created to do it.
Most of the geo engineering ideas after that focus on sequestrating carbon which may or may not even be relevant. Mostly they involve simulating algae growth on a massive scale.
I'm aware of various geoengineering strategies that might control the global climate, including the ones you listed. What I asked for was evidence that AGW-deniers support any of them. You haven't provided that yet.
2.
As to you finding it odd that the term "denier" in heated political discussions, a term crafted by politicians, and a term used to discredit rivals has no dirty political connotations... I think you may be naive.
The English "deny" comes form the Middle-English "deny" which comes from the Old French "deni" which comes from the latin "denegare". The Latin roots "de-" and "negare" mean "formally" and "say no", respectively. It is a word whose origins trace back much longer than the debate about climate change. There is no evidence that it is a term crafted by politicians. My alleged naivety has no bearing on these facts.
It is a term rendered to associate AGW deniers with holocaust deniers and thus with neo nazis or something. Its a pathetic ploy to bury a baseless ad hominem in a title. And then just as you're doing... when this is pointed out... you'll say "who me?"...
While I have no issues giving you the benefit of the doubt and assuming that you earnestly believe this, I question your motives for wanting to abandon the dictionary definition of a word in favor of some flowery interpretation instead. The word "denier" predates the Jewish Holocaust by a healthy margin, so it's hard to fathom how it could have been used to associate things with an event that had not yet occurred. Regardless of your opinion about the intent of using such a word, let me be explicit: when I refer to deniers, I refer to people that disagree that some claim is factually true, and I do not seek to associate them with AGW-deniers, holocaust deniers, or any other deniers, beyond the fact that they all deny some thing or another. If you attribute additional meaning beyond this to my words, you do so in error.
The pretense is tiring.
What's tiring is you trying to explain to me what I mean when I write to you. You have no ba
Let's not continually expand the scope of this interaction. I was talking about the validity of a logical argument, not economics. I specifically said in my last post that I'm not evaluating the merits of any economic philosophy or policy, that I'm restricting my comment specifically to the domain of rational logic, and not interested in economics. I repeat, I have no interest in getting into a subjective discussion about a complex issue, but in the interest of civility I'll at least offer a brief response to your enumerated points.
Regarding illegal immigration, it's not clear that an absence of government (and the resulting uncontrolled flow of persons) would remedy wage discrepancy. If anything, based on your reasoning here, it would only worsen it.
Regarding mandated monopolies, it's not clear that an absence of government would prevent the natural formation of monopolies through consolidation, collusion, or other anti-competitive practices. Granted, it would eliminate the potential for government-mandated monopolies, but those are only one variety of many.
Regarding limited access, it's not clear than an absence of government would result in equal access for all. Government regulation is indeed a barrier to entry into markets, but it is not the only one, and it's not clear how getting rid of one barrier would eliminate all others.
That being said, you bring up a number of good points, many of which I agree with (some of which I don't). However, they don't really demonstrate that a free market without any government activity would necessarily be free from wage disparity, which is what you'd need in order to falsify my claim.
If it is true that wage disparity is due to government activity and not the market, then it is necessarily true that a pure free market with no government activity must have no wage disparity.
Whether or not some "small-but-not-nonexistent government" approach would be a viable or preferable alternative is orthogonal to this fact, which is why I didn't bring it up.
More specifically, I wasn't advocating for or against government activity or a market economy -- I was applying deductive reasoning to an argument made by OP to demonstrate how it leads to absurdity, and is therefore false. I'm not setting up a false dichotomy here, although OP likely did.
The Sanders one is pretty uncreative, I mean it's an obvious joke to add his face to the famous "parade of Marxists" seeing as Bernie's own views are quite close to theirs. Don't believe me, ask real-live Marxists what they think about him. Spoiler alert: he's not far enough left for their taste.
So, if we don't believe you, you've conveniently offered us a link that also contradicts your claim?
Question: We have government today, and have had such for 227 years (starting at the Constitution). Have wages *ever* been equal? In that entire time?
So why do you believe that it is so impossible that the action of government is responsible for such?
Question: We have government today, and have had such for 227 years. Has Cthulhu *ever* awoken? In that entire time?
So why do you believe that it is so impossible that the action of government is responsible for keeping Cthulhu asleep?
s/your/you're/
I normally English better.
Call and response can refer to a few different things, but the one that best fits this context has nothing to do with making audible comments during the screening of a film.
tl;dr: you're an idiot.
Where did I say they needed to work harder and write better than previous generations? I said to work hard, not hardER.
You didn't. The person your talking to did, when he said "you'll have a vastly harder time than your parents or grandparents did". You contested this claim with your response when you said "'Vastly harder' to earn as much is a gross overstatement. There is lots of opportunity for those that simply write well and work hard." However, the fact that there is lots of opportunity doesn't mean that it's not vastly harder to earn as much, so you haven't really provided any basis for your claims. Note, neither has the other guy, but you're both just stating your own opposing opinions.
I guess you can add reading comprehension to the list, so they actually understand the communications people send.
That sword cuts both ways.
The notion that wage disparity is the direct result of government activity and not the market is absurd as it flies in the face of reason.
The same line of reasoning could be applied to criminal justice. Perhaps if we got rid of the meddling government, we could allow a heretofore unknown or suppressed method of human social behavior to actually do a better job of promoting harmony between individuals in society. After all, look at failed states all over the world. The lack of central government brings with it both economic equality and civil tranquility.
He does mention wage disparity, but that is due to Government activity, not the Market.
This why anarchy, a total absence of government activity, always results in everyone having the same wage.
Wait, what?
troll, v., to make a deliberately offensive or provocative online posting with the aim of upsetting someone or eliciting an angry response from them.
Was I upset? Did I respond angrily?
So you're saying that in the USSR, the relationship between the state and industry could best be described as "the means of production were owned by the workers"? I'm fairly confident that that's not an accurate description.
Actually many geo engineering options have been suggested. Its just that the alarmists are so busy strawmanning, demonizing, ad homineming, and other associated fallacies that in all likelihood you have no idea what so ever what their opposition believes if you only listen to one side.
I'd greatly, greatly appreciate any citations of AGW-deniers suggesting and/or promoting geoengineering solutions to climate change. That would be truly awesome.
The "denial" name for example is a name assigned to us by those same people to associate skeptics with holocaust deniers... which basically means they've invoked Godwin's law... That's how far up their own asses they are on this issue.
The side that compares you to hitler in a scientific discussion is probably not arguing in good faith... don't you think?
I find it surprising that you automatically associate the word "deny" with the Jewish holocaust. In my [anecdotal] experience, this isn't a common association. When I write firewall rules, I don't think I've ever had my mind wander to Naziism.
As to whether I would geoengineer the planet to stop the warming... why? The change in sea levels is not happening quickly. Some coastal cities might be effected eventually but so what? That isn't a global problem. That's a coastal city problem. The world is not a few coastal cities. I'm not interested in wasting resources on this project. We have bigger problems.
See, this is more what in line with what I'd expect from an AGW-denier (or skeptic, or philosopher, or whatever you prefer). Not proposals for stopping [supposedly non-anthropogenic] global warming or mitigating its effects, but instead further denial of global warming (or climate change) or its effects. So, once we get past the superficial "it's not manmade" argument, it seems we always get to a "the climate's totally fine" argument.
I wanted to believe that it's just that the alarmists and I were just too busy strawmanning, demonizing, ad homineming to really give you a fair shake, and here you seem to be demonstrating that no, really, you're just penny wise and pound foolish. I'm still hoping you prove me wrong.
As to pure research, the pure research happened long before the moon shot. It was all application and engineering after that. And saying they don't do R&D into engineering and practical application is not supportable.
So my examples are actually great.
Again, none of these companies invest significantly in pure research, and their applied research is either heavily subsidized or directly funded by outside parties (like the federal government). That is why I believe they make poor examples of private industry investing in research. I never suggested they don't do R&D, but I did point out that an overwhelming majority of their R&D is funded by outside parties, and therefore cannot be attributed solely (or even primarily) to these companies.
As to affirming the consequent, why is it that hyper centralized systems have shown to be less productive and innovative then? Here's the problem with your argument. In theory you could be right. However, in practice... aka empirically... you're wrong.
So, you seem to be conflating two issues here. One, your statement, as a rational claim, is baseless. That is, it's logically possible that the Russians lost the Cold War despite socialism being superior, so on that front, your claim is not necessarily true, which means it is unsupported. The second issue is whether it's actually true, in practice, empirically. Well, that would depend on the Russians having actually implemented socialism, which they didn't, as can be evidenced by the significant disparities between their system and the one described by Marx, or any other academic understanding of what constitutes socialism. Pointing to the USSR as an example of socialism makes about as much sense as pointing to North Korea as an example of democracy. Labels don't define reality, they describe it (to varying extents of accuracy).
And because theory is subordinate to empiricism, you must concede that your theory is incomplete or wrong.
Furthermore, you conflate logic and theory, and fortunately, while the irrationality of human society does indeed trump theories about society, it doesn't trump rational logic. I'm not particularly invested in my position, though, so if it makes you feel any better to be right, sure, you can be right, I can be wrong. However, that doesn't change the merits (or lack thereof) of either of our arguments.
Once you've adjusted your theory to account for its empirical errors, recalculate your conclusions. You're going to be forced to agree with me... by the universe. I will gloat. Its my right.
Sure, enjoy the gloating. I'll even grovel before you. But my argument stands.
As to corrupt dictatorships, you centralize power and you get corruption and a dictatorship. So... you're asking for an oxymoron. You want a centralized system that is neither corrupt nor anti-democratic despite massively centralizing authority into a singularity. That's illogical. The centralization of power and authority inherently leads to corruption and tyranny. Centralizing power means reducing the number of people that get to make choices. That inherently leads to tyranny.
I'll note that socialism doesn't require any centralization, as is evidenced by the success of democratic socialism (or social democracy) across Europe. Indeed, if you go back to Marx's writings, I believe the intent is to transfer power not to a central authority but away from the capitalist class where it is currently centralized and to the workers themselves, decentralizing it. It seems that you're fundamentally misunderstanding the core tenets of socialism.
And once you have tyranny, what you call corruption is just the application of powers they've inherited. If I control everything then why can't I use that power any way I want? That is literally my right under that scenario. That you disagree with how I