If this is true of Christians it's certainly true of Atheists.
No, it most certainly isn't. You're being very dishonest. Isn't lying a sin?
Do you see the lazy doubt at work here?
No, because there isn't any. You're taking the traditional approach used by deeply dishonest and cowardly believers of pretending that just because I know that your fairy tales are ridiculous, and I've never even heard of a religion whose fairy tales aren't ridiculous that somehow I have some magical faith.
I don't have a faith to be questioned. I lack all of the thousands of beliefs in idiotic fairy tales that you do, plus one more. Now if there were any evidence *at all* for the truth of your fairy tales, then it would be possible for you to make a valid point that way. As there isn't any, it is not possible. Rejecting your idiotic ideas isn't a religion, it's just common sense.
Now, keep in mind that the only reason that you are a Christian is that your parents brainwashed you into believing that idiotic nonsense. If your parents were Muslim, then you'd believe that idiotic nonsense just as strongly and you'd recognize what you now see as "holy" to be idiotic nonsense. That's what's really amazing to me about adults who still cling so desperately to childish nonsense like religion. If you'd ever given the matter any honest thought at all, you'd know that your deepest held beliefs are only that through an accident of birth. It's sad, really.
And if God's moral standard is at a certain level, then human definitions of virtue will always fall short.
Not at all. We know where God's moral standard is (He regularly committed and/or ordered genocide and mass murder and he invented ebola for a laugh) and we know that people who only come up to that level are generally called monsters and we lock them in cages or execute them.
We (in general) have far surpassed God's moral standards and it's a much better world due to that fact.
Your capacity to live civilly within the constraints of a society where other people accept their responsibilities-- but not you-- is also clear.
Except that I perfectly understand and accept my responsibilities. You keep trying to invent some way in which I'm irresponsible because I recognize that my rights aren't granted by a government agency. There is nothing irresponsible about that, quite the contrary. That is taking responsibility. Attaining a license before driving on roads I paid for isn't my responsibility. It is, however, something which I could get ticketed/arrested for if I opted not to do. You seem to believe that those are the same thing. That is a pretty incredibly huge error.
Your incapacity to understand civility, and your ostensible pity and contempt demonstrate that you believe you have one set of rules for you, and everyone else can have a different set of rules.
No, it demonstrates nothing of the sort. What an amazingly huge non sequitor. I believe that the same rules apply to everyone. I am perfectly civil, your contempt for the people around you is clear and I clearly stated that simple fact. You think like a slave. That is also a perfectly civil statement of fact even if you don't like the fact, stating it doesn't make me uncivil. You demanding that your slavish attitude be adopted by me or I'm shirking some unnamed responsibility which you are attempting to foist upon me is, however,quite uncivil.
Grow the fuck up.
Says the person who thinks he has no rights unless granted to him by big mommy government. Like I said, your contempt for those around you is clear as crystal.
You may think you have rights.... and you may think you can determine them, but ultimately, freedom and rights have to do with accepting responsibility and civility.
None of which have anything to do with the indisputable fact that I have a perfect right to drive without their blessing.
That you think a government agency being set up magically revokes my rights is a clear indication of your mental state. You think like a slave, therefore it's highly unlikely you'll manage to come up with anything to say that's worthwhile for a free person to even bother hearing.
I pity you and hold you in the deepest contempt as you've proven you hold yourself and everyone around you.
By its very nature, a supernatural being cannot be tested and no direct physical evidence can be brought forth to validate its existence.
That's not true. If there such an entity then it could easily directly validate its existence absolutely positively and universally.
Heck, that's one of the clearest and most obvious bits of proof that if such an entity existed it's never even tried to make itself known to humans. Anything worthy of the name god would have been capable of delivering a simple message. That complete and total failure isn't proof that there is no god, just that if there is one it can't possibly be any of the ones there are books about.
If the Bible is so clear and complete on geologic history, shouldn't we be able to at least get the hundreds place pinned down too?
It was actually pinned down to the exact day:
James Ussher (sometimes spelled Usher) (4 January 1581-21 March 1656) was Anglican Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland between 1625-1656. He was a prolific scholar, who most famously published a chronology that purported to time and date creation to the night preceding 27 October 4004 BC, according to the proleptic Julian calendar.
Ask your bureau of motor vehicles for the answer to the question: is there a RIGHT to drive in ________ (your state)?
If you honestly believe that the department of motor vehicles has any place determining rights, then your problems are far too egregious to even bother attempting to address.
Your quotation is specious. You do have the right to walk, and travel freely. You don't have the right to drive a motorized vehicle.
Uh no. Your view is dead wrong.
Can you point me to the exact sentence in the constitution that specifically grants the government the authority to remove that right from me? Oh you can't? Then I have that right. That's how things work in a free country
I really don't understand it. Have we really fallen so far so fast?
No, it's been slow and steady ever since WW2. That was the great war against fascism. Most people forget that the American industrialists were huge Hitler supporters and one of the reasons they hate FDR so much is that he manipulated us into war against Hitler, instead of adopting his policies.
So after WW2, we immediately started a national policy of rabid anti-leftism, which was exactly Hitler's starting point in creating his philosophy.
Never let yourself forget for one second that Henry Ford, Charles Lindburgh, and the grandfather of our former president, Prescott Bush, as well as much of the rest of the wealthy and powerful in America were rabid Nazis before WW2 and they, and their descendants intellectual and literal are still rabid Nazis to this day.
So there is nothing fast about it. This plan has taken over half a century to come to fruition.
So start a company, get a patent, get steamrolled by an incumbent who licenses your tech for a year or two until they come up with a way to not pay patent fees.
So, by "get steamrolled" I have to assume you mean, license their new patent or whatever allowed them to outcompete you and then get back in the game thereby causing a more rapid improvement?
Oh, wait...you meant you fear competition and hope to profit for life off of one halfway decent idea?
Windows is not the issue... the millions of x86-dependent applications would be the issue. This isn't Linux where you just apt-get the version for your architecture.
Which means Windows is part of the issue. That's the environment they've worked so hard to create, and an example of an alternative environment that does work well to address just such issues.
It doesn't mean that MS is "guilty", but it does mean that if you use Windows, you might have an issue therefore Windows is indeed (a big part of) the issue.
Sugarcoat it so the talking heads think it's some kind of treaty that doesn't think of the children.
The talking heads say what their owners tell them to say. Are you fucking stupid?
You do know that allowing this kind of shit to sneak by is a huge part of why media consolidation laws have been eviscerated. It makes it so every one who matters to this discussion can fit around one small table while they decide on what new shit they'll saddle us with.
Try posting again if you ever manage to get out of kindergarten you stupid, deeply naive, idiotic little kid.
One of the reasons I haven't believed the 9/11 conspiracy stuff is that is seems to me essentially impossible for so many people to be involved without a single one having a twinge of conscience to come forward. It gives me pause, though.....
Please for the love of anything holy, I hope you *learned* something real from this experience.
Now, I'm not saying that 9/11 conspiracies are valid, just that your reasons for rejecting them were silly, and borderline insane.
But you really need to have learned that your previous attitude was stupid, ignorant, delusional, and completely unacceptable in an adult and especially in a citizen. It's hard for a lot of people to have even the scraps of integrity it takes to take an honest look at themself and apply those terms to their decisions, but without having the courage, decency, and integrity to do so, you will never stop doing the same damn thing repeatedly for the rest of your life.
I hope you come away from this experience having learned and grown and realized that this *is* how the world works, this is how it has always worked, and most likely it will always work this way unless you and most of the rest of the people grow up, wake up, and start paying attention.
You've taken a great step forward. I hope you have the courage to continue, but you will absolutely have to come to terms with how you were able to be so easily duped for so long, how you took an active part in duping yourself and trying to help dupe those around you and support the scum pushing crap like this because you were too stupid to recognize it. I'm not trying to insult you, but unless you can somehow build up the courage to look in the mirror and call yourself out for being that incredibly, amazingly foolish, you will never be able to grow past it. You will rationalize it as "an isolated incident", or some master plot that would have fooled anybody.
These things are not isolated, they happen damn near every day.
It's not some master plot, it's every day corruption that you didn't have the courage to look in the eye and call out for what it was.
I very much hope you have the courage to look at yourself in the mirror and be honest with yourself. The only way you will ever be able to recover your honor and integrity and avoid falling for the same old shit next time around, is to realize and admit to yourself how truly naive, stupid, and ignorant your previous attitudes were.
However, the real paradox is that government intervention to "fix" these problems always makes them worse. So what do we do ?
We realize that your statement that government intervention *always* makes problems worse is every bit as incorrect and purely hypothetical as the statement that free markets exist.
I gave a perfect example of where government intervention did nothing of the sort, and in fact, is completely necessary for anything even remotely approximating a free market to exist.
Laws against murder have a very powerful positive force on the markets which cause them to be freer than they would be otherwise. There are many other examples. Similarly, there are plenty of examples where a government will act in a way which can be seen as restricting freedom for some people, which nevertheless have the effect of greatly increasing liberty for everyone. Heck, murder laws work there as an example as well.
Now, none of this is intended to imply that government intervention==good or anything of the sort. I'd even be happy to stipulate that *more often than not* government intervention is bad, and I'd go so far as to say that it is usually on purpose that it's bad, because it's good for somebody and they bought the law, but then I've been called a cynical bastard on more than one occasion.
You do realize that free market does not mean anarchy right ?
I realize that a free market does not exist. I further realize that the only people likely to benefit from "free market religion" are those who despise free markets and want *unregulated* markets.
While free markets neither do nor can exist, it's worthwhile to attempt to approach that more or less as closely as possible. It is, however, also a fact that an unregulated market is far, far away from the hypothetical ideal of a free market. Likewise, an over/poorly regulated market isn't much better and might even be able to end up worse than a completely unregulated market.
That violence is still very much illegal and the government still exists to enforce people's rights.
Which is fine, as far as it goes, but it doesn't matter *at all* why murder is illegal. Laws against murder are nevertheless a regulation of the market. That is an unavoidable fact. You can't separate "the market" out of society into its own distinct entity. A completely unregulated market will involve the hiring of people to murder competitors. That's the way of the world. Always has been, always will be and that'll never get close to a free market without regulation. So really, the only thing that even approaches a paradox is the fact that greater regulation ( greater than none, or very little, not greater than we currently have) can *and does* lead to a more free market.
That "protecting" the free market by preventing other people from using coercive force to interfere with it themselves is quite different than interference.
You're attempting to divide market regulation into different descriptions (protecting, interfering, etc.), but that isn't generally a valid distinction. One person's protection is another person's interference. What they are in any case is regulation of the market. So, there are certainly good regulations (no murder) and bad regulations ( anybody buying or selling anything must chop off a toe). Then there are the vast majority of regulations which are somewhere in the middle, neither good nor bad in any objective sense.
So we come down to where the debate should actually be in the public sphere which is "What minimal set of regulations can we put in place which will lead to the closest approximation to a free market?"
Now, the question I'd suggest you might want to seek an answer for is, "Why isn't this the debate we're having?" ( That's we the America Public/Legislators, not you and I)
I think that the answer to that question is very simple. Many very powerful interests despise free markets. They want unregulated markets and so they have maliciously worked to convince people that those are the same thing when they're almost as far apart as can be in reality. These are quite often the people you see on the news cheerleading free markets.
You seem to be confused about opinions being right or wrong.
Not really. A person's opinion can easily be wrong given that people seem to offer up as "opinions" nonsense they heard on TV. If they don't know anything about an issue, then for them to even offer an opinion on the matter is already an insult to anybody listening and a dishonest act. That is to say, if they were capable of forming an honest opinion on the subject, then it's not possible that they would form the one they put forward. This happens all the freaking time, especially on the news.
Nor does having a misguided opinion based on incorrect information.
*Having* a misguided opinion based on incorrect information doesn't make one a liar. *Stating* that false information as if it were fact does.
Calling somebody out for telling a lie whether or not they disingenuously pretend it's stated as an "opinion" is a good thing. Pretending propaganda and bullshit is ok to spout off as if it were true as long as you pretend it's "opinion" is still completely dishonest and it's still a bad thing.
Construction of cartels. In a truly free market, private collusion (a cartel) is extremely unstable and always short lived because
There's the problem with your argument right there. You're basing your entire argument on a theoretical abstraction which can not possibly ever exist in reality.
You do know free markets are like the frictionless planes of high school physics, right? They are a useful abstraction, but they do not exist, they never have existed and they can not under any conceivable set of circumstances *ever* exist.
In reality private collusion is a constant, Wealth is power, and those with the most wealth will use their power to manipulate the markets driving them ever further away from the theoretical ideal of a free market. Without serious controls on the market, whoever controlled a given market would have you murdered if you provided any legitimate competition. Now, if you do not support the idea of using murder to stifle competition, then congratulations, you've realized that the free market can't exist. Ever.
What I am saying is that when Stephen King spends 1-2 years writing a book, he deserves to get PAID! Jeez.
No, he doesn't.
I don't know why some of ye find this concept so difficult.
Because it's blatantly and obviously false? In fact it is so blatant and obvious that you embarrass yourself when you keep spouting it?
He has a right to try and get paid. He has no right to be paid, or you are saying that I have an obligation to pay him because he sat around for a couple years writing something.
Of course then you go on from there to say that were I to download it without paying him to read it, then I'd be guilty of theft of labor.
That is, possibly, even dumber that your other statement.
Now, I'll try and take this slow, but I'm sure you will willfully misunderstand it anyhow:
If Mr. King has produced a book, then he has already freely chosen to put his labor into that book.
So when you talk about me downloading that book, when would that be happening? Oh right, that would be *after* the book is written. Therefore before I could even start downloading all of the labor has freely been contributed to the effort in the past making it impossible for me to be stealing it in the present.
So, you're failing at the level of even understanding what constitutes "before" and "after" in time.
That's why people find your concept too difficult to swallow. It's becasue your idea is completely batshit insane.
So yes jailing people for non-violent offenses is acceptable.
You do know that your entire argument to "prove" that is: "We've been doing it so it's ok to do it". right? You know that's neither sound, nor valid, right?
Slavery and genocide are perfectly acceptable by your argument, which is a handy way to tell that it's badly broken.
I don't care why someone's breaking into my house, that f***er needs to be in prison.
That is exactly the ignorant cowardice and stupidity that is the heart of the problem.
The person is breaking into your house *because of the fucking drug laws you god damned idiot*.
Using the bad result of the law as a justification for the fucking law is idiotic.
How can you even breath if you're so fucking dumb that your brain let *that* thought go through?
You just stated flat out that you want to encourage more people to break into your house and that you want *me* to pay for it both through increased tax spending on an already proven failed idea, but also with the increased violence of my community due to your fucking idiotic police state bullshit, and your utter failure to pay any attention to its well known consequences.
Sorry, dude, it's not like you're alone or anything, but that specific bit of idiocy is far and away the greatest threat facing America, not just in drug laws, but in all of our laws.
Please for the love of anything decent, please try and think before you ever open your mouth again on a subject when you can't even make a one sentence statement without blatantly contradicting yourself.
...and I've yet to see the illegal beatdowns for compliant suspects. I've seen LOTS of people try to argue, pull their hands away, fight the cops, or run. As for unwarranted beatdown? Nothing yet, unless you can present an episode number that I missed.
I've seen it live plenty of times. A huge number of cops *are* scum who will abuse the weak at any opportunity.
Don't get me wrong, crooked cops ARE out there; I've run into a few... But the cops *I* know are solid, want to help their community, and aren't in it for a power-trip. Y'know, the real cops.
I'd imagine even a lot of the ones you think aren't bad have done things for which they should be locked up for for a long time. There are a lot more dirty cops than I suspect that you would be willing to believe, no matter how many proven cases we see and no matter that that is far and away the most covered up type of crime.
You just have to look at the laws we have these days, from this copyright lunacy, to drug laws and the rest of the unconstitutional crap to see that our laws are not designed to help the communities. Therefore, it doesn't matter SFA what you think about your friends. they are not capable of simultaneously doing their jobs and helping their communities. Drug laws alone have done more damage to our communities that anything cops help with. Toss that in with the rest of the laws passed for the benefit of the prison industry, and it's really quite obvious that no decent person could possibly be a cop in America today. The job does not allow it anymore.
However, this isn't the first time someone has decided that their opinion is the "right" one and someone else's is wrong and should be labeled as such.
You seem to be under the delusion that that constitutes a problem somehow. There are plenty of opinions that are dead wrong, and plenty of people repeatedly spouting them off anyhow.
In general, what you described is a good thing. It's called calling a liar a liar. It's only a bad thing if the opinion in question even has any merit in the first place, which I note you haven't even bothered attempting to demonstrate, instead choosing to whine that everyone doesn't treat reality as if it were a Fox news segment.
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If this is true of Christians it's certainly true of Atheists.
No, it most certainly isn't. You're being very dishonest. Isn't lying a sin?
Do you see the lazy doubt at work here?
No, because there isn't any. You're taking the traditional approach used by deeply dishonest and cowardly believers of pretending that just because I know that your fairy tales are ridiculous, and I've never even heard of a religion whose fairy tales aren't ridiculous that somehow I have some magical faith.
I don't have a faith to be questioned. I lack all of the thousands of beliefs in idiotic fairy tales that you do, plus one more. Now if there were any evidence *at all* for the truth of your fairy tales, then it would be possible for you to make a valid point that way. As there isn't any, it is not possible. Rejecting your idiotic ideas isn't a religion, it's just common sense.
Now, keep in mind that the only reason that you are a Christian is that your parents brainwashed you into believing that idiotic nonsense. If your parents were Muslim, then you'd believe that idiotic nonsense just as strongly and you'd recognize what you now see as "holy" to be idiotic nonsense. That's what's really amazing to me about adults who still cling so desperately to childish nonsense like religion. If you'd ever given the matter any honest thought at all, you'd know that your deepest held beliefs are only that through an accident of birth. It's sad, really.
And if God's moral standard is at a certain level, then human definitions of virtue will always fall short.
Not at all. We know where God's moral standard is (He regularly committed and/or ordered genocide and mass murder and he invented ebola for a laugh) and we know that people who only come up to that level are generally called monsters and we lock them in cages or execute them.
We (in general) have far surpassed God's moral standards and it's a much better world due to that fact.
Your capacity to live civilly within the constraints of a society where other people accept their responsibilities-- but not you-- is also clear.
Except that I perfectly understand and accept my responsibilities. You keep trying to invent some way in which I'm irresponsible because I recognize that my rights aren't granted by a government agency. There is nothing irresponsible about that, quite the contrary. That is taking responsibility.
Attaining a license before driving on roads I paid for isn't my responsibility. It is, however, something which I could get ticketed/arrested for if I opted not to do. You seem to believe that those are the same thing. That is a pretty incredibly huge error.
Your incapacity to understand civility, and your ostensible pity and contempt demonstrate that you believe you have one set of rules for you, and everyone else can have a different set of rules.
No, it demonstrates nothing of the sort. What an amazingly huge non sequitor. I believe that the same rules apply to everyone. I am perfectly civil, your contempt for the people around you is clear and I clearly stated that simple fact. You think like a slave. That is also a perfectly civil statement of fact even if you don't like the fact, stating it doesn't make me uncivil. You demanding that your slavish attitude be adopted by me or I'm shirking some unnamed responsibility which you are attempting to foist upon me is, however,quite uncivil.
Grow the fuck up.
Says the person who thinks he has no rights unless granted to him by big mommy government. Like I said, your contempt for those around you is clear as crystal.
No, they use the "catch and release" method
Dude, you definitely needed a "don't drink anything before reading this post" warning for that one ;-)
After all, they just proved that they are willing to drive 90 miles to save $5.
They also proved that they aren't all that bright after they used up $10.00 worth of gas driving all over the county to save $5.00 ;-)
Really? Test this.
Huh?
Go read it again. You clearly missed the point.
If you are incapable of accurately delivering a simple message, then omnipotent is obviously not a word that could be used to describe you.
You may think you have rights.... and you may think you can determine them, but ultimately, freedom and rights have to do with accepting responsibility and civility.
None of which have anything to do with the indisputable fact that I have a perfect right to drive without their blessing.
That you think a government agency being set up magically revokes my rights is a clear indication of your mental state.
You think like a slave, therefore it's highly unlikely you'll manage to come up with anything to say that's worthwhile for a free person to even bother hearing.
I pity you and hold you in the deepest contempt as you've proven you hold yourself and everyone around you.
By its very nature, a supernatural being cannot be tested and no direct physical evidence can be brought forth to validate its existence.
That's not true. If there such an entity then it could easily directly validate its existence absolutely positively and universally.
Heck, that's one of the clearest and most obvious bits of proof that if such an entity existed it's never even tried to make itself known to humans. Anything worthy of the name god would have been capable of delivering a simple message. That complete and total failure isn't proof that there is no god, just that if there is one it can't possibly be any of the ones there are books about.
If the Bible is so clear and complete on geologic history, shouldn't we be able to at least get the hundreds place pinned down too?
It was actually pinned down to the exact day:
James Ussher (sometimes spelled Usher) (4 January 1581-21 March 1656) was Anglican Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of All Ireland between 1625-1656. He was a prolific scholar, who most famously published a chronology that purported to time and date creation to the night preceding 27 October 4004 BC, according to the proleptic Julian calendar.
From here.
Ask your bureau of motor vehicles for the answer to the question: is there a RIGHT to drive in ________ (your state)?
If you honestly believe that the department of motor vehicles has any place determining rights, then your problems are far too egregious to even bother attempting to address.
Your quotation is specious. You do have the right to walk, and travel freely. You don't have the right to drive a motorized vehicle.
Uh no. Your view is dead wrong.
Can you point me to the exact sentence in the constitution that specifically grants the government the authority to remove that right from me? Oh you can't? Then I have that right. That's how things work in a free country
I really don't understand it. Have we really fallen so far so fast?
No, it's been slow and steady ever since WW2. That was the great war against fascism. Most people forget that the
American industrialists were huge Hitler supporters and one of the reasons they hate FDR so much is that he manipulated us into war against Hitler, instead of adopting his policies.
So after WW2, we immediately started a national policy of rabid anti-leftism, which was exactly Hitler's starting point in creating his philosophy.
Never let yourself forget for one second that Henry Ford, Charles Lindburgh, and the grandfather of our former president, Prescott Bush, as well as much of the rest of the wealthy and powerful in America were rabid Nazis before WW2 and they, and their descendants intellectual and literal are still rabid Nazis to this day.
So there is nothing fast about it. This plan has taken over half a century to come to fruition.
So start a company, get a patent, get steamrolled by an incumbent who licenses your tech for a year or two until they come up with a way to not pay patent fees.
So, by "get steamrolled" I have to assume you mean, license their new patent or whatever allowed them to outcompete you and then get back in the game thereby causing a more rapid improvement?
Oh, wait...you meant you fear competition and hope to profit for life off of one halfway decent idea?
It's hard to tell what you really mean.
Windows is not the issue... the millions of x86-dependent applications would be the issue. This isn't Linux where you just apt-get the version for your architecture.
Which means Windows is part of the issue. That's the environment they've worked so hard to create, and an example of an alternative environment that does work well to address just such issues.
It doesn't mean that MS is "guilty", but it does mean that if you use Windows, you might have an issue therefore Windows is indeed (a big part of) the issue.
much like a superposition of all things slashdotters have welcomed and more.
Speaking of which, how is your mother? ;-)
Sugarcoat it so the talking heads think it's some kind of treaty that doesn't think of the children.
The talking heads say what their owners tell them to say. Are you fucking stupid?
You do know that allowing this kind of shit to sneak by is a huge part of why media consolidation laws have been eviscerated. It makes it so every one who matters to this discussion can fit around one small table while they decide on what new shit they'll saddle us with.
Try posting again if you ever manage to get out of kindergarten you stupid, deeply naive, idiotic little kid.
One of the reasons I haven't believed the 9/11 conspiracy stuff is that is seems to me essentially impossible for so many people to be involved without a single one having a twinge of conscience to come forward. It gives me pause, though.....
Please for the love of anything holy, I hope you *learned* something real from this experience.
Now, I'm not saying that 9/11 conspiracies are valid, just that your reasons for rejecting them were silly, and borderline insane.
But you really need to have learned that your previous attitude was stupid, ignorant, delusional, and completely unacceptable in an adult and especially in a citizen. It's hard for a lot of people to have even the scraps of integrity it takes to take an honest look at themself and apply those terms to their decisions, but without having the courage, decency, and integrity to do so, you will never stop doing the same damn thing repeatedly for the rest of your life.
I hope you come away from this experience having learned and grown and realized that this *is* how the world works, this is how it has always worked, and most likely it will always work this way unless you and most of the rest of the people grow up, wake up, and start paying attention.
You've taken a great step forward. I hope you have the courage to continue, but you will absolutely have to come to terms with how you were able to be so easily duped for so long, how you took an active part in duping yourself and trying to help dupe those around you and support the scum pushing crap like this because you were too stupid to recognize it. I'm not trying to insult you, but unless you can somehow build up the courage to look in the mirror and call yourself out for being that incredibly, amazingly foolish, you will never be able to grow past it. You will rationalize it as "an isolated incident", or some master plot that would have fooled anybody.
These things are not isolated, they happen damn near every day.
It's not some master plot, it's every day corruption that you didn't have the courage to look in the eye and call out for what it was.
I very much hope you have the courage to look at yourself in the mirror and be honest with yourself. The only way you will ever be able to recover your honor and integrity and avoid falling for the same old shit next time around, is to realize and admit to yourself how truly naive, stupid, and ignorant your previous attitudes were.
However, the real paradox is that government intervention to "fix" these problems always makes them worse. So what do we do ?
We realize that your statement that government intervention *always* makes problems worse is every bit as incorrect and purely hypothetical as the statement that free markets exist.
I gave a perfect example of where government intervention did nothing of the sort, and in fact, is completely necessary for anything even remotely approximating a free market to exist.
Laws against murder have a very powerful positive force on the markets which cause them to be freer than they would be otherwise.
There are many other examples. Similarly, there are plenty of examples where a government will act in a way which can be seen as restricting freedom for some people, which nevertheless have the effect of greatly increasing liberty for everyone. Heck, murder laws work there as an example as well.
Now, none of this is intended to imply that government intervention==good or anything of the sort. I'd even be happy to stipulate that *more often than not* government intervention is bad, and I'd go so far as to say that it is usually on purpose that it's bad, because it's good for somebody and they bought the law, but then I've been called a cynical bastard on more than one occasion.
You do realize that free market does not mean anarchy right ?
I realize that a free market does not exist. I further realize that the only people likely to benefit from "free market religion" are those who despise free markets and want *unregulated* markets.
While free markets neither do nor can exist, it's worthwhile to attempt to approach that more or less as closely as possible. It is, however, also a fact that an unregulated market is far, far away from the hypothetical ideal of a free market. Likewise, an over/poorly regulated market isn't much better and might even be able to end up worse than a completely unregulated market.
That violence is still very much illegal and the government still exists to enforce people's rights.
Which is fine, as far as it goes, but it doesn't matter *at all* why murder is illegal. Laws against murder are nevertheless a regulation of the market. That is an unavoidable fact. You can't separate "the market" out of society into its own distinct entity. A completely unregulated market will involve the hiring of people to murder competitors. That's the way of the world. Always has been, always will be and that'll never get close to a free market without regulation. So really, the only thing that even approaches a paradox is the fact that greater regulation ( greater than none, or very little, not greater than we currently have) can *and does* lead to a more free market.
That "protecting" the free market by preventing other people from using coercive force to interfere with it themselves is quite different than interference.
You're attempting to divide market regulation into different descriptions (protecting, interfering, etc.), but that isn't generally a valid distinction. One person's protection is another person's interference. What they are in any case is regulation of the market. So, there are certainly good regulations (no murder) and bad regulations ( anybody buying or selling anything must chop off a toe). Then there are the vast majority of regulations which are somewhere in the middle, neither good nor bad in any objective sense.
So we come down to where the debate should actually be in the public sphere which is "What minimal set of regulations can we put in place which will lead to the closest approximation to a free market?"
Now, the question I'd suggest you might want to seek an answer for is, "Why isn't this the debate we're having?" ( That's we the America Public/Legislators, not you and I)
I think that the answer to that question is very simple. Many very powerful interests despise free markets. They want unregulated markets and so they have maliciously worked to convince people that those are the same thing when they're almost as far apart as can be in reality. These are quite often the people you see on the news cheerleading free markets.
You seem to be confused about opinions being right or wrong.
Not really. A person's opinion can easily be wrong given that people seem to offer up as "opinions" nonsense they heard on TV. If they don't know anything about an issue, then for them to even offer an opinion on the matter is already an insult to anybody listening and a dishonest act. That is to say, if they were capable of forming an honest opinion on the subject, then it's not possible that they would form the one they put forward. This happens all the freaking time, especially on the news.
Nor does having a misguided opinion based on incorrect information.
*Having* a misguided opinion based on incorrect information doesn't make one a liar. *Stating* that false information as if it were fact does.
Calling somebody out for telling a lie whether or not they disingenuously pretend it's stated as an "opinion" is a good thing. Pretending propaganda and bullshit is ok to spout off as if it were true as long as you pretend it's "opinion" is still completely dishonest and it's still a bad thing.
Construction of cartels. In a truly free market, private collusion (a cartel) is extremely unstable and always short lived because
There's the problem with your argument right there. You're basing your entire argument on a theoretical abstraction which can not possibly ever exist in reality.
You do know free markets are like the frictionless planes of high school physics, right? They are a useful abstraction, but they do not exist, they never have existed and they can not under any conceivable set of circumstances *ever* exist.
In reality private collusion is a constant, Wealth is power, and those with the most wealth will use their power to manipulate the markets driving them ever further away from the theoretical ideal of a free market. Without serious controls on the market, whoever controlled a given market would have you murdered if you provided any legitimate competition. Now, if you do not support the idea of using murder to stifle competition, then congratulations, you've realized that the free market can't exist. Ever.
What I am saying is that when Stephen King spends 1-2 years writing a book, he deserves to get PAID! Jeez.
No, he doesn't.
I don't know why some of ye find this concept so difficult.
Because it's blatantly and obviously false? In fact it is so blatant and obvious that you embarrass yourself when you keep spouting it?
He has a right to try and get paid. He has no right to be paid, or you are saying that I have an obligation to pay him because he sat around for a couple years writing something.
Of course then you go on from there to say that were I to download it without paying him to read it, then I'd be guilty of theft of labor.
That is, possibly, even dumber that your other statement.
Now, I'll try and take this slow, but I'm sure you will willfully misunderstand it anyhow:
If Mr. King has produced a book, then he has already freely chosen to put his labor into that book.
So when you talk about me downloading that book, when would that be happening? Oh right, that would be *after* the book is written. Therefore before I could even start downloading all of the labor has freely been contributed to the effort in the past making it impossible for me to be stealing it in the present.
So, you're failing at the level of even understanding what constitutes "before" and "after" in time.
That's why people find your concept too difficult to swallow. It's becasue your idea is completely batshit insane.
Good luck with that!
So yes jailing people for non-violent offenses is acceptable.
You do know that your entire argument to "prove" that is: "We've been doing it so it's ok to do it". right?
You know that's neither sound, nor valid, right?
Slavery and genocide are perfectly acceptable by your argument, which is a handy way to tell that it's badly broken.
Hope this helps.
I don't care why someone's breaking into my house, that f***er needs to be in prison.
That is exactly the ignorant cowardice and stupidity that is the heart of the problem.
The person is breaking into your house *because of the fucking drug laws you god damned idiot*.
Using the bad result of the law as a justification for the fucking law is idiotic.
How can you even breath if you're so fucking dumb that your brain let *that* thought go through?
You just stated flat out that you want to encourage more people to break into your house and that you want *me* to pay for it both through increased tax spending on an already proven failed idea, but also with the increased violence of my community due to your fucking idiotic police state bullshit, and your utter failure to pay any attention to its well known consequences.
Sorry, dude, it's not like you're alone or anything, but that specific bit of idiocy is far and away the greatest threat facing America, not just in drug laws, but in all of our laws.
Please for the love of anything decent, please try and think before you ever open your mouth again on a subject when you can't even make a one sentence statement without blatantly contradicting yourself.
...and I've yet to see the illegal beatdowns for compliant suspects. I've seen LOTS of people try to argue, pull their hands away, fight the cops, or run. As for unwarranted beatdown? Nothing yet, unless you can present an episode number that I missed.
I've seen it live plenty of times. A huge number of cops *are* scum who will abuse the weak at any opportunity.
Don't get me wrong, crooked cops ARE out there; I've run into a few... But the cops *I* know are solid, want to help their community, and aren't in it for a power-trip. Y'know, the real cops.
I'd imagine even a lot of the ones you think aren't bad have done things for which they should be locked up for for a long time. There are a lot more dirty cops than I suspect that you would be willing to believe, no matter how many proven cases we see and no matter that that is far and away the most covered up type of crime.
You just have to look at the laws we have these days, from this copyright lunacy, to drug laws and the rest of the unconstitutional crap to see that our laws are not designed to help the communities. Therefore, it doesn't matter SFA what you think about your friends. they are not capable of simultaneously doing their jobs and helping their communities. Drug laws alone have done more damage to our communities that anything cops help with. Toss that in with the rest of the laws passed for the benefit of the prison industry, and it's really quite obvious that no decent person could possibly be a cop in America today. The job does not allow it anymore.
However, this isn't the first time someone has decided that their opinion is the "right" one and someone else's is wrong and should be labeled as such.
You seem to be under the delusion that that constitutes a problem somehow. There are plenty of opinions that are dead wrong, and plenty of people repeatedly spouting them off anyhow.
In general, what you described is a good thing. It's called calling a liar a liar. It's only a bad thing if the opinion in question even has any merit in the first place, which I note you haven't even bothered attempting to demonstrate, instead choosing to whine that everyone doesn't treat reality as if it were a Fox news segment.