The United States will never have a Green Party president.
Well that's just, like, your opinion, man.
But on a more serious note, the fact that no party member has held public office above the state level is irrelevant. That could have been said about the Democrats and the Republicans at one point as well, and yet they dominate politics today. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
So you're saying that these freeloading "47%", these welfare queens, can afford to buy real estate? The people Mitt Romney was demonizing behind closed doors weren't minorities, they were simply homeowners?
The short-term rate scales exactly with the progressive income tax. The long-term rate is LOWER than the progressive income tax for the poor (as in it's more progressive), equalling it at the 25% bracket, and then remaining flat.
Not entirely accurate. Let me clarify, based on tax policy from 2008 through 2012. The long-term capital gains rate never equals the progressive income tax rate for the corresponding tax bracket. The long-term rate is always lower than the progressive income tax for the poor, for the middle class, and for everyone else. If you were in the 10% or 15% income tax brackets, you paid 0% on your capital gains. If you were in the 25%, 28%, 33%, or 35% income tax brackets, you paid 15% on your capital gains. Long-term capital gains tax is less than income tax, always, across the board.
In a vacuum, one could say that this is a our capital gains tax is progressive. However, we don't live in a vacuum. Not everyone gets their money from capital gains. Some of us actually have to, you know, work. In fact, it seems that these capital gains rates don't apply to the poor, because the poor don't have capital. And it seems that the income tax rates don't apply to the wealthy, because they don't need to work. The end result is that we have, effectively, two separate taxation schedules: one for the rich, and one for the poor. The rich have a long-term capital gains tax that is capped at 15%. The poor have an income tax that is capped at 35%. That's not looking very progressive from where I stand.
Fuel tax isn't entirely regressive. The truly poor don't buy fuel, as they have no motor vehicles of their own. Also, you'd be surprised by how much fuel supercars burn. However, excluding these two far extremes, your point is entirely valid and worthy of public debate.
Sales tax is flat, but consumption as a percentage of net income is most definitely not. The rich buy more expensive things, but a much smaller share of their income is spent on them. They pay less tax, proportionally to their income. This is regressive, by definition.
And that last bit, about rebating "necessary spending" sales tax, is starting to sound an awful lot like that [un]Fair Tax proposal I keep seeing thrown around here. I'd be fully supportive of a simplification of the tax code, I'd be fully supportive of a base income provided to all people, but I would not be supportive of any policy that is designed to make life comfortable for the poor and the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.
Which part is not true? That the wealthy pay lower tax rates than the poor? Warren Buffet disagrees. Of course, there's some argument that Buffett is misleading us since his secretary might make more than the average secretary. However, it's safe to assume that she makes less than Warren himself. The fact that Buffett's tax burden is proportionally lower than his secretary's (which nobody is arguing is a false statement) is clear, inarguable proof that our tax code is (or at least has the potential to be) regressive. That capital gains tax used to be lower in the past has no bearing on this fact. That children and cripples don't pay income tax has no bearing on this fact. That Social Security withholding is also regressive has no bearing on this fact.
But speaking of falsehoods... Sure, half of people don't pay any income tax. This includes children, the disabled, the elderly, those on unemployment. Does it also include the working poor? The last time I worked a full time minimum wage job, less than a decade ago, I paid income tax. I paid federal and state income tax. I was making the minimum wage allowed by law. And yet I paid income tax. Explain to me how that is possible. Are you suggesting that about half of people are being paid less than minimum wage? Are you suggesting that about half of people make more than I was but were saddled with a lower tax rate? Are you suggesting that my accountant, TurboTax, somehow failed me, but somehow gets these great deals on taxes for everyone else?
1) Punctuation would make your objection much clearer. I'm not sure if my other points actually address your objection or not, but I'm making a good faith effort.
2) If there is no difference in capital gains as opposed to income, the incentive to invest in companies would be to profit from the investment. Any tax rate short of 100% would preserve this incentive.
3) My employer would do it the same way he does now, as this company was built with no third party investment. Consequently, I don't see how this would impact the viability of my job.
Brief aside: What does your objection have to do with what I said? I didn't say that there should be no difference between "capital gains" and "income", I merely pointed out that there is such a difference.
P.S. I do believe that there should be a tax difference between "capital gains" and "income". I believe that capital gains ought to be taxed at a much higher rate than income, since income usually results from productive activity. Capital gains, not so much. I fully support modifying the tax code to incentivize productive behavior.
For a company's worth to increase, someone must've given them money. They must've earned that money to begin with. The money was taxed then as well. The money is taxed not twice, not three times, but continuously.
And that's not a problem. The problem is when a person (corporate or corporeal) is taxed twice.
The corporation is taxed on net income. The corporation is taxed once.
Stockholders are taxed for any dividend they receive from the corporation. They are taxed once as well.
If stockholders choose to sell stock (sell more than they buy), then any gains are taxed there. Once.
Going by your logic, the money is being taxed infinitely many times. First at the corporate rate, then at the capital gains rate, then at the sales tax rate (when investors spend it), then again at the corporate rate (when corporations make profits), forever, as long as it keeps circulating. While this is true, it's far from insightful. Nobody cares when "money" is taxed, they only care when they themselves are taxed.
But almost everyone I know spends all of their money on something
Almost everyone you know is far from rich. A wealthy individual will invest a considerable proportion of their income instead of spending it. It's not that they're buying items exempt from sales tax; they're not buying things period.
A poor person spends all of their income. This necessarily prevents them from accumulating wealth, or becoming rich. The rich, by definition, did not spend all of their income, enabling them to accumulate wealth, or become rich. Any of the income that they didn't spend (i.e. any of the income that contributed towards their accumulated wealth) was not subject to sales tax or any other form of consumption tax.
A jurisdiction has a certain sales tax rate, say X%.
A poor person, Mr. A, spends all his money. X% of his net income goes towards sales tax.
An upper middle class person, Mr. B, spends half his money and invests the other half. X/2% of his net income goes towards sales tax.
A truly wealthy person, Mr. C, spends one percent of his money and invests the remainder. X/100% of his net income goes towards sales tax.
Why would we, as a society, support a tax that has a poor person paying 100 times more, as a percentage of his net income, than a truly wealthy person?
It's not considered evil. It's considered immune to a sales tax, or any other form of consumption tax.
"Capital gains" are taxed differently than "income". This leads to a situation where our tax policy ends up being quite regressive, in that the wealthy are paying lower tax rates than the poor. If this is truly what we want as a society, we should campaign to have the "income" tax brackets reflect this. However, I don't think you'd have much popular support for a policy that takes the tax brackets and flips them around so that the rate goes down as income goes up. That means that our tax policy is not only regressive, but it's also sufficiently misleading to have won the support of the electorate despite being against their own interests.
I'm not sure where you got the idea that investments are "evil". GP was merely stating that money that is invested is not spent, and therefore is not impacted by a sales tax. This is only "evil" if you believe that it is a moral imperative to pay sales tax. Reading comprehension FTW.
So web developers the world over suck ass, and their bloated designs make it okay for the IETF to follow in their footsteps up the stairway to bloat heaven?
Fuck that.
For the record, it's already binary. IP only speaks in 1s and 0s. How do you manage now with the ASCII-encoded binary strings that comprise HTTP/1.1 headers? Do you do a byte-to-character conversion in your head? Or do you rely on software to parse and render the data accordingly? Would it be such an outrageous idea to have software that parses and renders this new binary HTTP/2.0 encoding as well?
Also, for the record, your assertion is false. The upper bound on HTTP/1.1 header size exceeds the lower bound on HTML page size. That is, it is possible for an HTTP header to be larger than a complete web page. Also, your assertion seems to rest on the assumption that HTTP is only used to transfer HTML/images for web pages. While that would be nice, it is unfortunately not the case.
So in NY, 2 gay people could live together for long enough to file their federal taxes jointly?
That's remarkable, but even if that's the case, that's not "the exact same rights". Straight people can be married and enjoying the perks within an hour or two of meeting each other, if the courthouse isn't crowded. Having to wait "XX years" isn't "the exact same" thing.
You make the distinction between unalienable rights (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness) and alienable ones (the Bill of Rights).
I would argue that much like the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights have been alienated in the past, so too have your unalienable rights. People have been killed, imprisoned, or otherwise prevented from pursuing happiness.
Indeed, it is self evident that you are born alive, you are born with the ability to choose, you are born with the ability to vocalize words (well, once you learn to speak), you are born with the ability to remain silent, et cetera. That these rights can be [wrongly] infringed upon by others, whether individuals or governments, has no bearing on the fact that they are rights that we have by virtue of our existence, so long as they are not infringed upon. It is no less possible to infringe on ones right to life than it is to infringe on ones right to bear arms.
All rights are alienable, in practice. That doesn't mean that all rights are rightfully alienable. It doesn't mean that the government grants them to us. It does mean that rights must be fought for to be retained. And that includes the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness just as much as it includes any other rights.
That God doesn't give a shit about my right to file a joint tax return has no bearing on the fact that the United States government doesn't grant rights to the citizenry. That's an inherently un-American way of looking at rights, and while it's an entirely reasonable (that is, internally consistent) worldview to espouse, it's sad to see it expressed by an American. This country was wrested from England's grip at the cost of many lives over this very issue, and I feel that we have failed in our duty to honor these men's sacrifice every time I hear an uneducated American spouting off about the rights they are given by the government. I cite the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence as my reference.
Somebody seems unfamiliar with the basis of the government of the USA. Something about people being endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. If I remember correctly, the government is not my creator.
Your view on rights is not compatible with the United States.
First of all, you're referring to the prefatory clause of the second amendment. You're not the first person to bring it up, and thankfully this issue was resolved with the Fifth Circuit ruling in United States v. Emerson (2001). It turns out that the right is not restricted to the militia. The fact that a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state is merely stated as one possible justification for the amendment's existence. If I were to state "the sky is blue, one plus one is two", would you argue that one plus one is only two if the computation is performed under a blue sky?
Second, you're distracting yourself with the issue of militia membership. For the record, if you're asking who constitutes the militia, it's hard to take you seriously. Second, it's not virtually impossible to so fully specify a law that it becomes completely unambiguous in all situations. The second amendment is one such law. It states that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. There is no "except" or "unless" or any other corner cases. Shall. Not. In standard English, there is no ambiguity here. Now, you might argue that such an unambiguous law is undesirable, as it would allow private ownership of nukes, et cetera. I, personally, would agree with you. Or you could argue that we should ignore both the letter and the spirit of the law in the interest of expediency, since we all agree that there is in fact a need to infringe on the right to bear arms. I, personally, would rather die in a nuclear holocaust.
You suggest that the second amendment is restricted to weapons suitable to the militia, or "light infantry weapons", under the assumption that "we've got a Regular Army for the artillery/armour/heavy stuff". However, you overlook the fact that when the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, there was no "Regular Army". In fact, that's the reason why we have a second amendment. Take this commentary from Joseph Story, who served on the Supreme Court from 1811 to 1845:
The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people.
It is evident to any honest person that at the time of the writing of the second amendment, the intent of the legislators was to obviate the need for a standing army by ensuring that the populace is armed. It would follow that imposing artificial limitations on the degree of armament would be counterproductive then as it is today. We don't tell our standing army they can't have artillery or armor or nukes.
However, things have changed. Arms have changed, and now we have things like nukes. Attitudes have changed, and now we have things like a standing army. It's safe to say that there is overwhelming support for a prohibition against private ownership of nuclear arms. However, that prohibition runs counter to both the letter and the spirit of the second amendment. The correct course of action, in this case, is to scrap the second amendment, not to ignore it, not to "interpret" it in a way that casts aside both its content and its intent.
I think we can all agree, we don't want people running around with nukes. I just don't understand this inability to be honest about what the second amendment actually says.
You have the right to bear arms but not the right to own a suitcase nuke.
Precisely this. The text of the second amendment clearly states "shall not be infringed". It takes some serious mental gymnastics to interpret that to mean "shall not be infringed unless such infringement is reasonable or warranted".
The law is the law, or at least it ought to be. Merely ignoring the Constitution and the Bill of Rights when convenient (like in the case of your hypothetical suitcase nuke) leads us to right where we are now: a situation where the rule of law has been eroded, to be replaced by the rule of man. Surely this can be more convenient, since now we don't need a 2/3 majority of states to ratify an amendment that bans private ownership of nuclear arms. However, it also makes it possible for secret courts to okay secret laws that legalize unconstitutional secret spying on our fellow citizens. By finding a way around the checks and balances put in place by the founders of this country, we've made it considerably easier to pass new legislation, both good and bad.
Personally, I value freedom over expediency, and I'm deeply disturbed by this trend to ignore the law and instead pay heed to man. I can easily see the benefits, and also the pitfalls, of such an approach, but I fear that I'm somewhat alone in my desire to look at this objectively. It would be nice to hear some honest debate about the role of the Supreme Court and their rather liberal (read: false) "interpretation" of the Constitution. That the Constitution is a "living document" should not mean that black can mean white, or that up can mean down. "Shall not be infringed" is quite clear in its meaning, and no amount of men in robes will convince me otherwise. That we, as a nation, are okay with current legislation that desirably, but unconstitutionally, infringes on the right to bear arms, and are okay with a Supreme Court that twists basic English words to mean their very opposite, is a sad indictment of our ability to be principled human beings.
I've been a gun owner my whole life, but we really, really need to repeal the second amendment. We can't have people running around with nukes, and we can't infringe on people's right to bear arms unless we either A) amend the constitution or B) ignore the constitution. Option B doesn't sit as well with me as it does with the entire rest of the American population.
Iran has a nuclear program. Critics insist they're trying to build nuclear bombs. Iran insists it's for nuclear energy. But take their word on it because they won't let inspectors anywhere near it.
I always found this belief to be interesting. As far as I know, Iran is in full compliance with the NPT, and has met any and all obligations to the IAEA. Despite the full transparency surrounding their nuclear program, you allege that they "won't let inspectors anywhere near it".
Why?
Is it because they deny the IAEA access to facilities which have nothing to do with their nuclear program? If this is the case, do you also feel that the USA is not meeting their obligations to the IAEA for not allowing them access to non-nuclear facilities (say, Lockheed-Martin's Skunk Works, or Area 51, or the new SLC datacenter)?
There seems to be a huge double standard here. It seems that to satisfy the critics, Iran would have to provide unfettered access to any and all government facilities, not just ones involved in nuclear-related activities. This would put Iran in a unique position, preventing them from maintaining any sovereign privilege/secrecy, imposing an undue burden on them unlike any seen in another country, and to a large extent compromising their sovereignty in general. I understand that their current [outgoing] President is "touched", to put it mildly, but do you think that justifies some international demand that they abandon their sovereignty? Should our eight years under Bush have warranted the international community's demands that we give up our sovereignty here in the States?
If we're going to hate, at least let's hate with some consistency.
You're failing to totally remove humans from the equation, whether or not the topic is precisely about them. If a self-sustaining population of machines can be created, that entirely eliminates the need for a "who will want to clean toilets" question. There will be no need to interact with those machines (since they're by definition self-sustaining) nor do other "unpleasant" tasks which will all be handled by machines (since that's the premise: machines that take over all jobs, even the unpleasant ones like cleaning toilets). The lack of jobs might not look that unpleasant by today's standards, unlike how nowadays jobs don't look any more scarce from a 2000 BCE perspective, but it will allow for a life of leisure activities in the future and people will really appreciate that.
Again, a stunning display of imagination.
If a machine that repairs other machines exists, why would anyone need to repair it? Presumably, such machines could repair each other.
Or is that just too farfetched for you to wrap your head around?
A human analogy would be: If people are repaired by doctors, who repairs the doctors?
Seriously?
A fascinating interview, a fascinating person, a fascinating project.
And this is all we can muster? A few jokes about Weird Al, complaints about not putting his modules up on CPAN...
And not a single person is interested in an open source AI project that seeks to build up a comprehensive ontology from the crap scattered across the web?
The deafening silence in the comments is hurting my head. It's like all the nerds left, and we're now left with a SlashBI crowd.
The least we could do is imagine a beowulf cluster of these, shit.
Slashdot Mirror
The United States will never have a Green Party president.
Well that's just, like, your opinion, man.
But on a more serious note, the fact that no party member has held public office above the state level is irrelevant. That could have been said about the Democrats and the Republicans at one point as well, and yet they dominate politics today. Past performance is not indicative of future results.
I hate to sound cynical, but at this point, it really doesn't matter who you vote for in federal elections.
I hate to burst your bubble of cynicism, but the Green Party doesn't accept donations from corporate persons.
So you're saying that these freeloading "47%", these welfare queens, can afford to buy real estate? The people Mitt Romney was demonizing behind closed doors weren't minorities, they were simply homeowners?
The short-term rate scales exactly with the progressive income tax. The long-term rate is LOWER than the progressive income tax for the poor (as in it's more progressive), equalling it at the 25% bracket, and then remaining flat.
Not entirely accurate. Let me clarify, based on tax policy from 2008 through 2012. The long-term capital gains rate never equals the progressive income tax rate for the corresponding tax bracket. The long-term rate is always lower than the progressive income tax for the poor, for the middle class, and for everyone else. If you were in the 10% or 15% income tax brackets, you paid 0% on your capital gains. If you were in the 25%, 28%, 33%, or 35% income tax brackets, you paid 15% on your capital gains. Long-term capital gains tax is less than income tax, always, across the board.
In a vacuum, one could say that this is a our capital gains tax is progressive. However, we don't live in a vacuum. Not everyone gets their money from capital gains. Some of us actually have to, you know, work. In fact, it seems that these capital gains rates don't apply to the poor, because the poor don't have capital. And it seems that the income tax rates don't apply to the wealthy, because they don't need to work. The end result is that we have, effectively, two separate taxation schedules: one for the rich, and one for the poor. The rich have a long-term capital gains tax that is capped at 15%. The poor have an income tax that is capped at 35%. That's not looking very progressive from where I stand.
Fuel tax isn't entirely regressive. The truly poor don't buy fuel, as they have no motor vehicles of their own. Also, you'd be surprised by how much fuel supercars burn. However, excluding these two far extremes, your point is entirely valid and worthy of public debate.
Sales tax is flat, but consumption as a percentage of net income is most definitely not. The rich buy more expensive things, but a much smaller share of their income is spent on them. They pay less tax, proportionally to their income. This is regressive, by definition.
And that last bit, about rebating "necessary spending" sales tax, is starting to sound an awful lot like that [un]Fair Tax proposal I keep seeing thrown around here. I'd be fully supportive of a simplification of the tax code, I'd be fully supportive of a base income provided to all people, but I would not be supportive of any policy that is designed to make life comfortable for the poor and the wealthy at the expense of the middle class.
Which part is not true? That the wealthy pay lower tax rates than the poor? Warren Buffet disagrees. Of course, there's some argument that Buffett is misleading us since his secretary might make more than the average secretary. However, it's safe to assume that she makes less than Warren himself. The fact that Buffett's tax burden is proportionally lower than his secretary's (which nobody is arguing is a false statement) is clear, inarguable proof that our tax code is (or at least has the potential to be) regressive. That capital gains tax used to be lower in the past has no bearing on this fact. That children and cripples don't pay income tax has no bearing on this fact. That Social Security withholding is also regressive has no bearing on this fact.
But speaking of falsehoods... Sure, half of people don't pay any income tax. This includes children, the disabled, the elderly, those on unemployment. Does it also include the working poor? The last time I worked a full time minimum wage job, less than a decade ago, I paid income tax. I paid federal and state income tax. I was making the minimum wage allowed by law. And yet I paid income tax. Explain to me how that is possible. Are you suggesting that about half of people are being paid less than minimum wage? Are you suggesting that about half of people make more than I was but were saddled with a lower tax rate? Are you suggesting that my accountant, TurboTax, somehow failed me, but somehow gets these great deals on taxes for everyone else?
1) Punctuation would make your objection much clearer. I'm not sure if my other points actually address your objection or not, but I'm making a good faith effort.
2) If there is no difference in capital gains as opposed to income, the incentive to invest in companies would be to profit from the investment. Any tax rate short of 100% would preserve this incentive.
3) My employer would do it the same way he does now, as this company was built with no third party investment. Consequently, I don't see how this would impact the viability of my job.
Brief aside: What does your objection have to do with what I said? I didn't say that there should be no difference between "capital gains" and "income", I merely pointed out that there is such a difference.
P.S. I do believe that there should be a tax difference between "capital gains" and "income". I believe that capital gains ought to be taxed at a much higher rate than income, since income usually results from productive activity. Capital gains, not so much. I fully support modifying the tax code to incentivize productive behavior.
The money is taxed much more than twice.
For a company's worth to increase, someone must've given them money. They must've earned that money to begin with. The money was taxed then as well. The money is taxed not twice, not three times, but continuously.
And that's not a problem. The problem is when a person (corporate or corporeal) is taxed twice.
The corporation is taxed on net income. The corporation is taxed once.
Stockholders are taxed for any dividend they receive from the corporation. They are taxed once as well.
If stockholders choose to sell stock (sell more than they buy), then any gains are taxed there. Once.
Going by your logic, the money is being taxed infinitely many times. First at the corporate rate, then at the capital gains rate, then at the sales tax rate (when investors spend it), then again at the corporate rate (when corporations make profits), forever, as long as it keeps circulating. While this is true, it's far from insightful. Nobody cares when "money" is taxed, they only care when they themselves are taxed.
But almost everyone I know spends all of their money on something
Almost everyone you know is far from rich. A wealthy individual will invest a considerable proportion of their income instead of spending it. It's not that they're buying items exempt from sales tax; they're not buying things period.
A poor person spends all of their income. This necessarily prevents them from accumulating wealth, or becoming rich. The rich, by definition, did not spend all of their income, enabling them to accumulate wealth, or become rich. Any of the income that they didn't spend (i.e. any of the income that contributed towards their accumulated wealth) was not subject to sales tax or any other form of consumption tax.
A jurisdiction has a certain sales tax rate, say X%.
A poor person, Mr. A, spends all his money. X% of his net income goes towards sales tax.
An upper middle class person, Mr. B, spends half his money and invests the other half. X/2% of his net income goes towards sales tax.
A truly wealthy person, Mr. C, spends one percent of his money and invests the remainder. X/100% of his net income goes towards sales tax.
Why would we, as a society, support a tax that has a poor person paying 100 times more, as a percentage of his net income, than a truly wealthy person?
It's not considered evil. It's considered immune to a sales tax, or any other form of consumption tax.
"Capital gains" are taxed differently than "income". This leads to a situation where our tax policy ends up being quite regressive, in that the wealthy are paying lower tax rates than the poor. If this is truly what we want as a society, we should campaign to have the "income" tax brackets reflect this. However, I don't think you'd have much popular support for a policy that takes the tax brackets and flips them around so that the rate goes down as income goes up. That means that our tax policy is not only regressive, but it's also sufficiently misleading to have won the support of the electorate despite being against their own interests.
I'm not sure where you got the idea that investments are "evil". GP was merely stating that money that is invested is not spent, and therefore is not impacted by a sales tax. This is only "evil" if you believe that it is a moral imperative to pay sales tax. Reading comprehension FTW.
So web developers the world over suck ass, and their bloated designs make it okay for the IETF to follow in their footsteps up the stairway to bloat heaven?
Fuck that.
For the record, it's already binary. IP only speaks in 1s and 0s. How do you manage now with the ASCII-encoded binary strings that comprise HTTP/1.1 headers? Do you do a byte-to-character conversion in your head? Or do you rely on software to parse and render the data accordingly? Would it be such an outrageous idea to have software that parses and renders this new binary HTTP/2.0 encoding as well?
Also, for the record, your assertion is false. The upper bound on HTTP/1.1 header size exceeds the lower bound on HTML page size. That is, it is possible for an HTTP header to be larger than a complete web page. Also, your assertion seems to rest on the assumption that HTTP is only used to transfer HTML/images for web pages. While that would be nice, it is unfortunately not the case.
So in NY, 2 gay people could live together for long enough to file their federal taxes jointly?
That's remarkable, but even if that's the case, that's not "the exact same rights". Straight people can be married and enjoying the perks within an hour or two of meeting each other, if the courthouse isn't crowded. Having to wait "XX years" isn't "the exact same" thing.
You make the distinction between unalienable rights (life, liberty, pursuit of happiness) and alienable ones (the Bill of Rights).
I would argue that much like the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights have been alienated in the past, so too have your unalienable rights. People have been killed, imprisoned, or otherwise prevented from pursuing happiness.
Indeed, it is self evident that you are born alive, you are born with the ability to choose, you are born with the ability to vocalize words (well, once you learn to speak), you are born with the ability to remain silent, et cetera. That these rights can be [wrongly] infringed upon by others, whether individuals or governments, has no bearing on the fact that they are rights that we have by virtue of our existence, so long as they are not infringed upon. It is no less possible to infringe on ones right to life than it is to infringe on ones right to bear arms.
All rights are alienable, in practice. That doesn't mean that all rights are rightfully alienable. It doesn't mean that the government grants them to us. It does mean that rights must be fought for to be retained. And that includes the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness just as much as it includes any other rights.
That God doesn't give a shit about my right to file a joint tax return has no bearing on the fact that the United States government doesn't grant rights to the citizenry. That's an inherently un-American way of looking at rights, and while it's an entirely reasonable (that is, internally consistent) worldview to espouse, it's sad to see it expressed by an American. This country was wrested from England's grip at the cost of many lives over this very issue, and I feel that we have failed in our duty to honor these men's sacrifice every time I hear an uneducated American spouting off about the rights they are given by the government. I cite the second sentence of the Declaration of Independence as my reference.
it is about destroying the family, teaching kindergartners to masturbate to "find out" if they are gay.
Wait, what? Is that what was going on before DOMA was passed? Citation please?
**NOTE: As far as I know, New Jersey does not just give everyone a license at 18. They have to find it in a Crackerjack box first.
You wouldn't last a day on our roads. Not one day :)
Rights are given by the government.
Somebody seems unfamiliar with the basis of the government of the USA. Something about people being endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights. If I remember correctly, the government is not my creator.
Your view on rights is not compatible with the United States.
He'brew, the chosen beer!
But really, He'brew is terrible. Funny, but terrible.
First of all, you're referring to the prefatory clause of the second amendment. You're not the first person to bring it up, and thankfully this issue was resolved with the Fifth Circuit ruling in United States v. Emerson (2001). It turns out that the right is not restricted to the militia. The fact that a well regulated militia is necessary to the security of a free state is merely stated as one possible justification for the amendment's existence. If I were to state "the sky is blue, one plus one is two", would you argue that one plus one is only two if the computation is performed under a blue sky?
Second, you're distracting yourself with the issue of militia membership. For the record, if you're asking who constitutes the militia, it's hard to take you seriously. Second, it's not virtually impossible to so fully specify a law that it becomes completely unambiguous in all situations. The second amendment is one such law. It states that the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. There is no "except" or "unless" or any other corner cases. Shall. Not. In standard English, there is no ambiguity here. Now, you might argue that such an unambiguous law is undesirable, as it would allow private ownership of nukes, et cetera. I, personally, would agree with you. Or you could argue that we should ignore both the letter and the spirit of the law in the interest of expediency, since we all agree that there is in fact a need to infringe on the right to bear arms. I, personally, would rather die in a nuclear holocaust.
The prefatory clause issue was settled with the Fifth Circuit ruling in United States v. Emerson (2001).
You suggest that the second amendment is restricted to weapons suitable to the militia, or "light infantry weapons", under the assumption that "we've got a Regular Army for the artillery/armour/heavy stuff". However, you overlook the fact that when the Bill of Rights was ratified in 1791, there was no "Regular Army". In fact, that's the reason why we have a second amendment. Take this commentary from Joseph Story, who served on the Supreme Court from 1811 to 1845:
The militia is the natural defence of a free country against sudden foreign invasions, domestic insurrections, and domestic usurpations of power by rulers. It is against sound policy for a free people to keep up large military establishments and standing armies in time of peace, both from the enormous expenses, with which they are attended, and the facile means, which they afford to ambitious and unprincipled rulers, to subvert the government, or trample upon the rights of the people.
It is evident to any honest person that at the time of the writing of the second amendment, the intent of the legislators was to obviate the need for a standing army by ensuring that the populace is armed. It would follow that imposing artificial limitations on the degree of armament would be counterproductive then as it is today. We don't tell our standing army they can't have artillery or armor or nukes.
However, things have changed. Arms have changed, and now we have things like nukes. Attitudes have changed, and now we have things like a standing army. It's safe to say that there is overwhelming support for a prohibition against private ownership of nuclear arms. However, that prohibition runs counter to both the letter and the spirit of the second amendment. The correct course of action, in this case, is to scrap the second amendment, not to ignore it, not to "interpret" it in a way that casts aside both its content and its intent.
I think we can all agree, we don't want people running around with nukes. I just don't understand this inability to be honest about what the second amendment actually says.
You have the right to bear arms but not the right to own a suitcase nuke.
Precisely this. The text of the second amendment clearly states "shall not be infringed". It takes some serious mental gymnastics to interpret that to mean "shall not be infringed unless such infringement is reasonable or warranted".
The law is the law, or at least it ought to be. Merely ignoring the Constitution and the Bill of Rights when convenient (like in the case of your hypothetical suitcase nuke) leads us to right where we are now: a situation where the rule of law has been eroded, to be replaced by the rule of man. Surely this can be more convenient, since now we don't need a 2/3 majority of states to ratify an amendment that bans private ownership of nuclear arms. However, it also makes it possible for secret courts to okay secret laws that legalize unconstitutional secret spying on our fellow citizens. By finding a way around the checks and balances put in place by the founders of this country, we've made it considerably easier to pass new legislation, both good and bad.
Personally, I value freedom over expediency, and I'm deeply disturbed by this trend to ignore the law and instead pay heed to man. I can easily see the benefits, and also the pitfalls, of such an approach, but I fear that I'm somewhat alone in my desire to look at this objectively. It would be nice to hear some honest debate about the role of the Supreme Court and their rather liberal (read: false) "interpretation" of the Constitution. That the Constitution is a "living document" should not mean that black can mean white, or that up can mean down. "Shall not be infringed" is quite clear in its meaning, and no amount of men in robes will convince me otherwise. That we, as a nation, are okay with current legislation that desirably, but unconstitutionally, infringes on the right to bear arms, and are okay with a Supreme Court that twists basic English words to mean their very opposite, is a sad indictment of our ability to be principled human beings.
I've been a gun owner my whole life, but we really, really need to repeal the second amendment. We can't have people running around with nukes, and we can't infringe on people's right to bear arms unless we either A) amend the constitution or B) ignore the constitution. Option B doesn't sit as well with me as it does with the entire rest of the American population.
Iran has a nuclear program. Critics insist they're trying to build nuclear bombs. Iran insists it's for nuclear energy. But take their word on it because they won't let inspectors anywhere near it.
I always found this belief to be interesting. As far as I know, Iran is in full compliance with the NPT, and has met any and all obligations to the IAEA. Despite the full transparency surrounding their nuclear program, you allege that they "won't let inspectors anywhere near it".
Why?
Is it because they deny the IAEA access to facilities which have nothing to do with their nuclear program? If this is the case, do you also feel that the USA is not meeting their obligations to the IAEA for not allowing them access to non-nuclear facilities (say, Lockheed-Martin's Skunk Works, or Area 51, or the new SLC datacenter)?
There seems to be a huge double standard here. It seems that to satisfy the critics, Iran would have to provide unfettered access to any and all government facilities, not just ones involved in nuclear-related activities. This would put Iran in a unique position, preventing them from maintaining any sovereign privilege/secrecy, imposing an undue burden on them unlike any seen in another country, and to a large extent compromising their sovereignty in general. I understand that their current [outgoing] President is "touched", to put it mildly, but do you think that justifies some international demand that they abandon their sovereignty? Should our eight years under Bush have warranted the international community's demands that we give up our sovereignty here in the States?
If we're going to hate, at least let's hate with some consistency.
You're failing to totally remove humans from the equation, whether or not the topic is precisely about them. If a self-sustaining population of machines can be created, that entirely eliminates the need for a "who will want to clean toilets" question. There will be no need to interact with those machines (since they're by definition self-sustaining) nor do other "unpleasant" tasks which will all be handled by machines (since that's the premise: machines that take over all jobs, even the unpleasant ones like cleaning toilets). The lack of jobs might not look that unpleasant by today's standards, unlike how nowadays jobs don't look any more scarce from a 2000 BCE perspective, but it will allow for a life of leisure activities in the future and people will really appreciate that.
Again, a stunning display of imagination.
If a machine that repairs other machines exists, why would anyone need to repair it? Presumably, such machines could repair each other.
Or is that just too farfetched for you to wrap your head around?
A human analogy would be: If people are repaired by doctors, who repairs the doctors?
You're right, machines that repair other machines could never exist.
Your lack of imagination concerns me.
Seriously?
A fascinating interview, a fascinating person, a fascinating project.
And this is all we can muster? A few jokes about Weird Al, complaints about not putting his modules up on CPAN...
And not a single person is interested in an open source AI project that seeks to build up a comprehensive ontology from the crap scattered across the web?
The deafening silence in the comments is hurting my head. It's like all the nerds left, and we're now left with a SlashBI crowd.
The least we could do is imagine a beowulf cluster of these, shit.