There's a vast difference between "principle" and "implementation". I like the basic idea of network neutrality in PRINCIPLE. However, I don't trust the federal government one iota when it comes to actually implementing it. The M.O. in Washington D.C. is to create some piece of legislation with a nice sounding name. "Patriot Act", "Health Care Reform", "Financial Reform" etc. Once you get beyond the cover page however, the legislation is just another set of provisions which give the government more power and benefit the politically well-connected people and businesses to the detriment of the average U.S. citizen. "Network Neutrality" will be no different.
Glenn Beck is a jackass and probably opposes such legislation for the wrong reasons, as is probably true of many Republican lawmakers, but they're absolutely right to oppose it. If
"OMG THE GOVERNMENT WANTS TO CONTROL THE INTERNET!"
and
"NETWORK NEUTRALITY IS A SOCIALIST PLOT!"
are what it takes to prevent the criminals in Washington D.C. from doing any more harm to our country, so be it.
I'd like to elaborate on your point about transfer of wealth from the PRODUCTIVE for the benefit of the UNPRODUCTIVE.
You're entirely correct in the assertion, but you're wrong to include only the "poor" in the latter group.
High paid government employees are also parasitic by nature. In addition, the transfer of trillions of taxpayer dollars into the banking and financial industry is a case of stealing from people who are actually producing for the benefit of people who aren't really producing anything. Don't confuse an overpaid bureaucrat or someone that shuffles money around all day with a "producer".
The location is irrelevant. The scary thing is that in the US, the President can point his finger at a U.S. citizen, accuse them of being an "enemy combatant" and then throw them in jail indefinitely without trial. e.g. Hamdi, Padilla, and al-Marri
Even scarier is the fact that several court decisions have come down in favor of these monarch-like executive powers, and that many citizens actually support this nonsense.
"Anything with the word cyber in it is automatically bullshit as far as I'm concerned . .."
AFAIC, anything coming out of Washington D.C. these days is automatically bullshit. Screw the White House and their cyber-security crapola.
There are some very intelligent, knowledgeable people in academia and the private sector working on computer security issues. I'm open to discussion, but I question the basic role of government in this arena. Furthermore, I'm certain that whatever laws, madates, Presidential orders etc. that come from THIS government will be detrimental to individual liberty and/or a boon for wealthy special interests at the expense of the taxpayer.
The Federal government is borrowing and spending over $1.6 trillion ( > 10%) of GDP this year alone. A debt, that We, The People will eventually be responsible for, either through pernicious levels of taxation, or theft of our accumulated wealth by destruction of the currency (If someone sees another possible eventuality, it would cheer me up to hear about it.)
Yet, with this catastrophic fiscal crisis clearly on the way, the government still seems to find the time and resources to conduct a relentless assault on the civil liberites of the citizens that it pretends to serve.
By the People, of the People, for the People ????
Is there anyone out there besides the Mainstream Media, government employees and the politically well connected elite that even believes that sad, cruel joke anymore?
The fact that we continue to PAY for this nonsense is the most infuriating thing of all.
You were talking about corporations, but diverged into a generalization about "this great country" and went into a tirade about free market and libertarian principles. The country was founded on the idea of limited and decentralized government before the idea and legal status of corporations had even been established. That basic philosophy goes hand in hand with individual liberty and is entirely pertinent to the subject of business regulations. You can't hold up big government as the best and only savior of the individual from the abuses of business while ignoring the inevitable consequences and risks to the individual of an empowered government.
I'm well aware of the difference between a corporation and an individual. It was the very government that you enshrine as our protector that undermined the tort system and blurred the distinction between businesses and individuals. I'm completely opposed to the idea.
Your observations may be about corporations, but again, a key part of your argument rests on the idea that government is somehow on the side of the people, and serves to protect us from corporate evils. From what I observe in the U.S. it's more often the case that government is on the side of the corporations and uses its monopoly on force to extract wealth from the people and further enrich and empower the coporations you decry.
I think of a corporation as a legal entity analogous to a Tyrannosaurus rex. Driven by a single focus, crushing all obstacles in the way of that goal, and as oblivious as possible to any other consequences arising from its fulfillment. A threat to everything and everyone around them? Most probably, but that's just them behaving in the way that we would expect them to behave given their government-granted legal status. The U.S. Government on the other hand is SUPPOSED to be protecting the freedom of the individual. However, they have failed and betrayed the individual at almost every turn, especially in the last 20 years. They use their monopoly on the use of force not to protect us and our freedom, but to steal our wealth and protect the corporations FROM us.
One thing I think we do agree on is that the government is badly broken.
You think that free market principles and the idea of individual liberty are going to "destroy this great country" and then claim that I'm ignorant of history? Take a deep breath and wipe the foam from your mouth. This country didn't become "great" and prosperous by establishing a big powerful central government to take care of us. It became great precisely because the amount of governement coercion and intrusion into the people's private affairs was minimized, and more importantly, government power was de-centralized.
YOUR ideology is the one based on wishful thinking. Regardless of how many totalitarian regimes you observe, despite the imprisonment and outright slaughter of millions of people at the hands of governments everywhere, and a long history of warfare, repression and corruption worldwide, you STILL think that big government "could" work(if we could just get the right people in charge, right?). You're delusional! Big government is a fundamentally corrupt and inherently flawed institution. The only way to keep it functional, useful and responsible to the people is to keep it small, de-centralized and limited to specific functions.
This year alone, your Federal government will be spending 25+% of GDP and they will be borrowing 10% of GDP to continue their insane fiscal policies. The path is simply not sustainable, it's getting worse and there is no political will to change things. Hopefully one or more of the draconian measures that the political elite try to impose on the people in a desperate attempt to maintain their power will convince even the most ardent statists that big government is a catastophic failure.
"...because we DO need more regulation. the 2008 market crash proves this: the fruits of years of deregulation in the financial world resulted in that..."
Much of that deregulation was idiotic precisley because it was done in the context of a government created backstop for depository institutions and two mortgage companies with implicit government guarantees. Furthermore, we have the FBI, OTS, OCC, FDIC, SEC and Federal Reserve, all with regulatory powers over the banking and financial industries, yet they failed (and continue to fail) abysmally in their duties. Recall also that in 2008, those people and companies who had engaged in massively risky behavior and made bad decisions were about to go bankrupt (the free market solution) when big government steps in with $1 trillion of taxpayer money to bail them out.
In your ideal world, government apparently serves the people and protects them from the abuses of evil corporations. Here in the real world, government is the enabler of those same corporations and works with them to pursue an agenda that is in their collective best interest at the expense of the vast majority of U.S. citizens.
These days, regulations are only enforced against the little people. When it's a politically well connected banking corporation engaged in fraud, the rules no longer apply. You can write all of the laws you want, but when the people you hire to enforce them are in bed with the companies they are supposed to be regulating, it's a waste of time and money.
"... your government, the only agent you have in the fight against corporations..."
That's absurd. Government is hardly the ONLY means to oppose corporate abuses. We can choose what companies we want to do business with. We can refuse to work for them, boycott their products and services, boycott their sponsors or anybody who does business with them, etc. etc. Unfortunately, the government is a monopoly and you have NO choice but to "do business" with them. Give them your wealth, and obey their rules, or they'll throw you in jail, steal your property and maybe kill you.
Sooner or later the termite problem is beyond repair, and it really IS time to tear down the whole house and rebuild it. Good luck trying to "FIX" government through the electoral process.
Back to the drawing board my arse. You may have beaten the web page game easily, but consider the fact that you wouldn't get first shot at every single question in a real match. If you assume 50-50 on the ring-in time when both players think they have the right answer, I think Watson looks pretty good on this game (although they wouldn't have put an example of a particularly bad match on the web).
It also has a probability threshold below which it won't attempt a response. The real machine must be set up so that if it's behind in the score late in the game, it would ring in with its highest probability "guess". That would make things more interesting. Think of "Final Jeopardy" too. If the machine can get >50% of the point leader's score, the match is totally up for grabs.
People that go through the qualifying process to appear on the show are definitely on the upper end of the intellect/knowledge bell curves, so that would be a tough challenge. I totally believe that the machine would crush the "average" person.
With the Federal government running a $1.6 trillion annual deficit, we need to scrutinize every possible expenditure.
I propose that we cut the portion of budget for the Ministry of Justice that is expended on development, maintenance and use of software that scans the public portions of facebook and other social media sites and terminate the employment of all personnel involved in said operations. Legal or illegal, I don't want my tax dollars being used for this.
OP: "when someone can set up a system to see *everything* you do in a public place, then there are legitimate privacy concerns." SuperK: "No there are not. There is nothing legitimate whatsoever in any way, thinking that anything public should or COULD automatically be made private."
There is a clear and definite distinction between the "someone" being a private individual or business that happens to observe or record SOMETHING that you do, and that "someone" being a government that wants to observe and record EVERYTHING that you do.
Furthermore, there is a vast difference between doing something in "public" that could easily be observed by a casual bystander and doing something in public that will be observed and recorded by Big Brother for anyone and everyone to see. I agree that you have no expectation of complete privacy when you do something in public, but being observed by those in close proximity is much different than being under surveillance and having your actions observable over and over again by the entire world.
I suppose that you never ever exceed the speed limit, never use your cell phone in an illegal manner, never pick your nose or scratch your arse or did anything accidental that might have been momentarily embarrassing. If you think about it, someone could take a bunch of recordings of things you do in public, use excerpts out of context, and create a rather embarrassing and damaging portrait of you.
I like my "accidental privacy" and I refuse to live in a society where my every move is recorded by the government.
No matter how ridiculous it sounds, we should do our best to keep up the whole "cyber-war", "cyber-weapons", "cyber-attack" theme.
That way, we can invoke the Second Amendment when the government tries to restrict strong encryption, copyright circumvention software or whatever other "cyber-weapons" they find threatening. Sorry Feds, you were the ones that started this whole theme about electronics and software being "weapons", and as such, you have no power to restrict the citizens from owning them.
"The belief that a face should be covered is no more absurd than any number of other beliefs..."
I don't think it's "absurd". In the context where is only applies to women, I think it's "offensive" and I'd prefer not to live in a culture that considers this practice "acceptable". I wonder how a bunch of Muslims would feel if I moved into their neighborhoods and decided to have a pig roast every weekend, or if my GF went walking around in a mini-skirt and tank-top? I can see how their culture might find those things offensive.
The political topics you discussed are important, but we have legal mechanisms in place to resolve those disputes. More importantly, they're things we don't have to deal with on a day to day basis. I don't want government imposing dress codes on people. As a matter of basic courtesy however, it would be nice for people who settle in a new area to respect some of the cultural norms of the inhabitants. There would be a lot less friction without this codified multicultural BS which mandates that we be "tolerant" of behavior that, while not illegal, is nevertheless irritating.
"You would be extremely stupid to take offense if women hide their faces here because its not your face."
Would I likewise be "stupid" or "ignorant" if I objected to the idea of a bunch of people in my neighborhood going around in public and holding mass gatherings while wearing white hoods and robes? It's not MY face, so why should I care? Right?
I was born here, and this IS my land. Whether you like it or not, my area has a unique, interesting and wondeful culture. If someone wants to come live here and adopt OUR behavioral norms, while bringing interesting and innocuous elements of their own culture e.g. food, music, art, etc. I have no problem with them. If they insist on bringing cultural practices that MY culture finds offensive e.g. treating women and girls like second class citizens, they can stay where THEY were born, or move to any of 1000 places on earth where those practices are acceptable. This "In your face" multiculturalism is a load of crap, and we shouldn't have to "flee" to escape from it.
"If you posted a "parody" like this of your boss, on your own time and using your own resources, you'd still be fired. And with cause. It's no different just because these kids are in school."
For a private school the employer/employee analogy works. It's completely different when the institution is a public school. AFAIK, students are required to attend school, and for most, government school is the only viable option. That doesn't grant the school blanket authority over the students' lives however. If the school district really needs to address something like this, I think a conversation with the student and parents should be step #1. If that fails, the school should pursue the case in civil, or possibly criminal court. Maybe they could hold a class or seminar teaching the kids about slander, libel, etc. with a few real world examples of the possible consequences? Public school officials should not be able to use their authority and arbitrary punishment to control the behavior of students outside the school.
"The sad thing is that I can't see how this changes without bullets . .."
This system is going to collaps under its own weight. We've been printing and borrowing to avoid dealing with recession ever since the beginning of the Bush administration, and it has only accelerated in the last two years. Every day that they continue this nonsense makes the day of reckoning worse. This year alone the Federal government will borrow and spend at least $1.5 trillion. That's almost 10% of GDP. Then, they'll release official BS statistics which claim that the economy "grew" by 2-3%. Remove the unsustainable debt spending, and the economy clearly shrank. Furthermore, if they balanced the budget tomorrow, it's an immediate 9+% drop in GDP.
It won't take bullets to change things, just another few years of the status quo.
When the asshats in D.C. refuse to deal with a glaringly obvious fiscal crisis, why should we have any hope that they're going to do something like network neutrality?
Thanks for raising the issue about guns, statistics, and perceptions.
True Statistic: A gun in the home is more likely to be used to KILL someone residing in the home than it is to KILL a criminal intruder.
This is a perfect example of how someone takes a fact, and twists it into a misperception. In this case, the idea that a gun in the home is more of a danger to the occupants than it is worth as a weapon of self defense. The folks who formulated and propagated this statistic typically don't mention the fact that the deaths include accidents, suicides and justifiable homicides (e.g. someone killing an abusive partner/spouse).
What's even more annoying is that you will continuously hear this statement regurgitated by the anti-gun crowd in such a way that it is no longer even TRUE. e.g. "A gun in the home is more likely to be used on a family member than it is to be used in self defense."
The statement conjures up the exact same imagery but with an incorrect factual basis. The former (true) statistic was careful to talk about cases where an intruding criminal is actually KILLED by the resident. It therefore ignores the most typical scenario of defensive firearms use in which the weapon is never fired. Missed shots and woundings also don't figure into the former (factual) statement.
"This is why people like me are so anxious to keep the Internet public, using Net Neutrality laws."
If you put your faith in government, your doomed to be disappointed. I like net neutrality "in principle", and I reconcile(d) that with my libertarian world view mostly because I believe that the availability of information is critical to a free market and a free society. I was even something of a "crusader" for the cause a couple of years ago. I then came to the realization that we cannot trust the federal government to do ANYTHING for the benefit of the average citizens if it might be somehow detrimental to the wealthy politically-connected elites. If we ever get something like a "Net Neutrality" law, it will be just like "Health Care Reform" and "Financial Reform". A nice sounding cover page on top of 1000+ pages of provisions that benefit wealthy campaign contributors, citizenry be damned.
Check out "opensecrets.org" to see who's greasing the wheels in DC. The telecom and cable companies are near the top in campaign contributions and rather high up in lobbying expenditures.
We can't expect the government to serve the people. We should just assume that the battle lines have been drawn, and it's the citizens on one side vs. the government and their corporate allies on the other.
It's overwhelmingly frustrating when you attempt to have a political debate with someone and they come out with the rhetorical "If you don't like it, LEAVE" or words to that affect.
In your case however, you'd like to have a foreign nation take over the area where you live simply because you prefer their laws to your current nation's laws, and you feel more affinity with their citizens than your current fellow citizens? If you're in "Times Square" Canada is only 6-8 hours away by car. Don't you think that moving to Canada might be a better option for you that working to re-draw international borders?
" . . . the primary responsibility for the irresponsibility in home loans is...the American people."
I think your weighting of responsibility is seriously skewed. As an aside, I think it starts with the Federal Reserve and a decade of loose monetary policy. If I had to name ONE "primary" culprit in this whole financial mess, The Fed is public enemy #1.
On the home loan side of things however, you correctly point out one major flaw in the process. The ability to transfer risk through "securitization". That allowed bankers to KNOWINGLY transfer high risk mortgage pools to unsuspecting investors. This used to be called "fraud" and people used to go to jail for it, but things are different in the new U.S.
The borrowers might have made dumb decisions, but it is the bankers that ultimately decide who does and who does not get a loan. As professionals, the bankers clearly knew, or had the ability to determine a borrower's credit worthiness. A homeless person can come into a bank and request a loan, but the bank makes the final decision. That's why they, not the borrowers, should bear the most responsibility for bad mortgage lending. The bankers made loans with clear knowledge that the loans would end up in default. They just assumed that they could collect their fees and pass the risk on to somebody else, OR, they bought into the idea that property prices would keep rising, and they could foreclose on an asset that was worth more than the loan.
In a world without bailouts and fraud, these bankers would be forced into bankruptcy. The bad mortgages could then be sold to the highest bidder (at a market value substantially lower than the original value) and the new owner could then re-negotiate terms with the borrower so that the borrower could afford the new mortgage, and the responsible lender can make a profit . . . But this is the new U.S. where bailouts and fraud are a way of doing business.
"More often than not the outsourcing of essential government functions to private industries results in conflicts of interest and disaster. Educational standards should not be next."
Are you trying to suggest that the same conflicts of interest don't exist in government-operated schools? Regardless of what else they are teaching, their common mission is foster a culture of subservience and authoritarianism, and to repeatedly indoctrinate the children with the "government is good" mentality. Do you think they're actually going to produce students who question the validity of the state and its role in society? More likely than not, the students will graduate believing that education is an "essential government function".
>"have MBAs and PhDs, and are untouchable because of political connections" >>Who? Name some. Otherwise I call "bullshit".
Lloyd Blankfein, Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Vikram Pandit, John Mack, Alan Greenspan, Christopher Dodd, Barney Frank, Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines, Richard Fuld, Edward Liddy . . .
I'm sure that a lot of these guys are lawyers, but I think you could easily find a few hundred MBAs and PhDs involved in mortgage and securities fraud who are untouchable due to their political connections.
"Government doesn't expand in terms of power and revenue because it's getting better, it expands because the economy is expanding."
That's an interesting perspective given that the chart you referenced clearly shows Federal government spending as less than 5% of GDP in 1930, and ~25% of GDP right now.
Recall also that government spending is part of GDP. Therefore, showing spending and revenue as a % of GDP tends to obscure the picture of the size of government relative to the private sector. A $3.6T budget is ~24% of a $15T GDP, but ~31.5% the size of the real productive economy which has to bear the burden.
I also love the little inflection points showing that in the next few years the deficit is going to drop from 10% of GDP to 5% of GDP. I'd like to see it happen, but I see no evidence of any leadership or political will to make that happen.
I'll agree with one point however:
"Government doesn't expand in terms of power and revenue because it's getting better . .."
It expands because it's filled with a bunch of self-serving parasites.
Slashdot Mirror
There's a vast difference between "principle" and "implementation". I like the basic idea of network neutrality in PRINCIPLE. However, I don't trust the federal government one iota when it comes to actually implementing it. The M.O. in Washington D.C. is to create some piece of legislation with a nice sounding name. "Patriot Act", "Health Care Reform", "Financial Reform" etc. Once you get beyond the cover page however, the legislation is just another set of provisions which give the government more power and benefit the politically well-connected people and businesses to the detriment of the average U.S. citizen. "Network Neutrality" will be no different.
Glenn Beck is a jackass and probably opposes such legislation for the wrong reasons, as is probably true of many Republican lawmakers, but they're absolutely right to oppose it. If
"OMG THE GOVERNMENT WANTS TO CONTROL THE INTERNET!"
and
"NETWORK NEUTRALITY IS A SOCIALIST PLOT!"
are what it takes to prevent the criminals in Washington D.C. from doing any more harm to our country, so be it.
I'd like to elaborate on your point about transfer of wealth from the PRODUCTIVE for the benefit of the UNPRODUCTIVE.
You're entirely correct in the assertion, but you're wrong to include only the "poor" in the latter group.
High paid government employees are also parasitic by nature. In addition, the transfer of trillions of taxpayer dollars into the banking and financial industry is a case of stealing from people who are actually producing for the benefit of people who aren't really producing anything. Don't confuse an overpaid bureaucrat or someone that shuffles money around all day with a "producer".
The location is irrelevant. The scary thing is that in the US, the President can point his finger at a U.S. citizen, accuse them of being an "enemy combatant" and then throw them in jail indefinitely without trial. e.g. Hamdi, Padilla, and al-Marri
http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2008/07/16/al_marri
Even scarier is the fact that several court decisions have come down in favor of these monarch-like executive powers, and that many citizens actually support this nonsense.
"Anything with the word cyber in it is automatically bullshit as far as I'm concerned . . ."
AFAIC, anything coming out of Washington D.C. these days is automatically bullshit. Screw the White House and their cyber-security crapola.
There are some very intelligent, knowledgeable people in academia and the private sector working on computer security issues. I'm open to discussion, but I question the basic role of government in this arena. Furthermore, I'm certain that whatever laws, madates, Presidential orders etc. that come from THIS government will be detrimental to individual liberty and/or a boon for wealthy special interests at the expense of the taxpayer.
The Federal government is borrowing and spending over $1.6 trillion ( > 10%) of GDP this year alone. A debt, that We, The People will eventually be responsible for, either through pernicious levels of taxation, or theft of our accumulated wealth by destruction of the currency (If someone sees another possible eventuality, it would cheer me up to hear about it.)
Yet, with this catastrophic fiscal crisis clearly on the way, the government still seems to find the time and resources to conduct a relentless assault on the civil liberites of the citizens that it pretends to serve.
By the People, of the People, for the People ????
Is there anyone out there besides the Mainstream Media, government employees and the politically well connected elite that even believes that sad, cruel joke anymore?
The fact that we continue to PAY for this nonsense is the most infuriating thing of all.
You were talking about corporations, but diverged into a generalization about "this great country" and went into a tirade about free market and libertarian principles. The country was founded on the idea of limited and decentralized government before the idea and legal status of corporations had even been established. That basic philosophy goes hand in hand with individual liberty and is entirely pertinent to the subject of business regulations. You can't hold up big government as the best and only savior of the individual from the abuses of business while ignoring the inevitable consequences and risks to the individual of an empowered government.
I'm well aware of the difference between a corporation and an individual. It was the very government that you enshrine as our protector that undermined the tort system and blurred the distinction between businesses and individuals. I'm completely opposed to the idea.
Your observations may be about corporations, but again, a key part of your argument rests on the idea that government is somehow on the side of the people, and serves to protect us from corporate evils. From what I observe in the U.S. it's more often the case that government is on the side of the corporations and uses its monopoly on force to extract wealth from the people and further enrich and empower the coporations you decry.
I think of a corporation as a legal entity analogous to a Tyrannosaurus rex. Driven by a single focus, crushing all obstacles in the way of that goal, and as oblivious as possible to any other consequences arising from its fulfillment. A threat to everything and everyone around them? Most probably, but that's just them behaving in the way that we would expect them to behave given their government-granted legal status. The U.S. Government on the other hand is SUPPOSED to be protecting the freedom of the individual. However, they have failed and betrayed the individual at almost every turn, especially in the last 20 years. They use their monopoly on the use of force not to protect us and our freedom, but to steal our wealth and protect the corporations FROM us.
One thing I think we do agree on is that the government is badly broken.
You think that free market principles and the idea of individual liberty are going to "destroy this great country" and then claim that I'm ignorant of history? Take a deep breath and wipe the foam from your mouth. This country didn't become "great" and prosperous by establishing a big powerful central government to take care of us. It became great precisely because the amount of governement coercion and intrusion into the people's private affairs was minimized, and more importantly, government power was de-centralized.
YOUR ideology is the one based on wishful thinking. Regardless of how many totalitarian regimes you observe, despite the imprisonment and outright slaughter of millions of people at the hands of governments everywhere, and a long history of warfare, repression and corruption worldwide, you STILL think that big government "could" work(if we could just get the right people in charge, right?). You're delusional! Big government is a fundamentally corrupt and inherently flawed institution. The only way to keep it functional, useful and responsible to the people is to keep it small, de-centralized and limited to specific functions.
This year alone, your Federal government will be spending 25+% of GDP and they will be borrowing 10% of GDP to continue their insane fiscal policies. The path is simply not sustainable, it's getting worse and there is no political will to change things. Hopefully one or more of the draconian measures that the political elite try to impose on the people in a desperate attempt to maintain their power will convince even the most ardent statists that big government is a catastophic failure.
"...because we DO need more regulation. the 2008 market crash proves this: the fruits of years of deregulation in the financial world resulted in that..."
Much of that deregulation was idiotic precisley because it was done in the context of a government created backstop for depository institutions and two mortgage companies with implicit government guarantees. Furthermore, we have the FBI, OTS, OCC, FDIC, SEC and Federal Reserve, all with regulatory powers over the banking and financial industries, yet they failed (and continue to fail) abysmally in their duties. Recall also that in 2008, those people and companies who had engaged in massively risky behavior and made bad decisions were about to go bankrupt (the free market solution) when big government steps in with $1 trillion of taxpayer money to bail them out.
In your ideal world, government apparently serves the people and protects them from the abuses of evil corporations. Here in the real world, government is the enabler of those same corporations and works with them to pursue an agenda that is in their collective best interest at the expense of the vast majority of U.S. citizens.
These days, regulations are only enforced against the little people. When it's a politically well connected banking corporation engaged in fraud, the rules no longer apply. You can write all of the laws you want, but when the people you hire to enforce them are in bed with the companies they are supposed to be regulating, it's a waste of time and money.
"... your government, the only agent you have in the fight against corporations ..."
That's absurd. Government is hardly the ONLY means to oppose corporate abuses. We can choose what companies we want to do business with. We can refuse to work for them, boycott their products and services, boycott their sponsors or anybody who does business with them, etc. etc. Unfortunately, the government is a monopoly and you have NO choice but to "do business" with them. Give them your wealth, and obey their rules, or they'll throw you in jail, steal your property and maybe kill you.
Sooner or later the termite problem is beyond repair, and it really IS time to tear down the whole house and rebuild it. Good luck trying to "FIX" government through the electoral process.
Back to the drawing board my arse. You may have beaten the web page game easily, but consider the fact that you wouldn't get first shot at every single question in a real match. If you assume 50-50 on the ring-in time when both players think they have the right answer, I think Watson looks pretty good on this game (although they wouldn't have put an example of a particularly bad match on the web).
It also has a probability threshold below which it won't attempt a response. The real machine must be set up so that if it's behind in the score late in the game, it would ring in with its highest probability "guess". That would make things more interesting. Think of "Final Jeopardy" too. If the machine can get >50% of the point leader's score, the match is totally up for grabs.
People that go through the qualifying process to appear on the show are definitely on the upper end of the intellect/knowledge bell curves, so that would be a tough challenge. I totally believe that the machine would crush the "average" person.
With the Federal government running a $1.6 trillion annual deficit, we need to scrutinize every possible expenditure.
I propose that we cut the portion of budget for the Ministry of Justice that is expended on development, maintenance and use of software that scans the public portions of facebook and other social media sites and terminate the employment of all personnel involved in said operations. Legal or illegal, I don't want my tax dollars being used for this.
OP: "when someone can set up a system to see *everything* you do in a public place, then there are legitimate privacy concerns."
SuperK: "No there are not. There is nothing legitimate whatsoever in any way, thinking that anything public should or COULD automatically be made private."
There is a clear and definite distinction between the "someone" being a private individual or business that happens to observe or record SOMETHING that you do, and that "someone" being a government that wants to observe and record EVERYTHING that you do.
Furthermore, there is a vast difference between doing something in "public" that could easily be observed by a casual bystander and doing something in public that will be observed and recorded by Big Brother for anyone and everyone to see. I agree that you have no expectation of complete privacy when you do something in public, but being observed by those in close proximity is much different than being under surveillance and having your actions observable over and over again by the entire world.
I suppose that you never ever exceed the speed limit, never use your cell phone in an illegal manner, never pick your nose or scratch your arse or did anything accidental that might have been momentarily embarrassing. If you think about it, someone could take a bunch of recordings of things you do in public, use excerpts out of context, and create a rather embarrassing and damaging portrait of you.
I like my "accidental privacy" and I refuse to live in a society where my every move is recorded by the government.
" . . . And the alternative is?"
Do your best evil laugh and go over to the dark side.
No matter how ridiculous it sounds, we should do our best to keep up the whole "cyber-war", "cyber-weapons", "cyber-attack" theme.
That way, we can invoke the Second Amendment when the government tries to restrict strong encryption, copyright circumvention software or whatever other "cyber-weapons" they find threatening. Sorry Feds, you were the ones that started this whole theme about electronics and software being "weapons", and as such, you have no power to restrict the citizens from owning them.
"The belief that a face should be covered is no more absurd than any number of other beliefs..."
I don't think it's "absurd". In the context where is only applies to women, I think it's "offensive" and I'd prefer not to live in a culture that considers this practice "acceptable". I wonder how a bunch of Muslims would feel if I moved into their neighborhoods and decided to have a pig roast every weekend, or if my GF went walking around in a mini-skirt and tank-top? I can see how their culture might find those things offensive.
The political topics you discussed are important, but we have legal mechanisms in place to resolve those disputes. More importantly, they're things we don't have to deal with on a day to day basis. I don't want government imposing dress codes on people. As a matter of basic courtesy however, it would be nice for people who settle in a new area to respect some of the cultural norms of the inhabitants. There would be a lot less friction without this codified multicultural BS which mandates that we be "tolerant" of behavior that, while not illegal, is nevertheless irritating.
"You would be extremely stupid to take offense if women hide their faces here because its not your face."
Would I likewise be "stupid" or "ignorant" if I objected to the idea of a bunch of people in my neighborhood going around in public and holding mass gatherings while wearing white hoods and robes? It's not MY face, so why should I care? Right?
I was born here, and this IS my land. Whether you like it or not, my area has a unique, interesting and wondeful culture. If someone wants to come live here and adopt OUR behavioral norms, while bringing interesting and innocuous elements of their own culture e.g. food, music, art, etc. I have no problem with them. If they insist on bringing cultural practices that MY culture finds offensive e.g. treating women and girls like second class citizens, they can stay where THEY were born, or move to any of 1000 places on earth where those practices are acceptable. This "In your face" multiculturalism is a load of crap, and we shouldn't have to "flee" to escape from it.
"If you posted a "parody" like this of your boss, on your own time and using your own resources, you'd still be fired. And with cause. It's no different just because these kids are in school."
For a private school the employer/employee analogy works. It's completely different when the institution is a public school. AFAIK, students are required to attend school, and for most, government school is the only viable option. That doesn't grant the school blanket authority over the students' lives however. If the school district really needs to address something like this, I think a conversation with the student and parents should be step #1. If that fails, the school should pursue the case in civil, or possibly criminal court. Maybe they could hold a class or seminar teaching the kids about slander, libel, etc. with a few real world examples of the possible consequences? Public school officials should not be able to use their authority and arbitrary punishment to control the behavior of students outside the school.
"The only rights we have are listed in the Bill of Rights."
Yes and no. Amendment #9 reads:
"The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
Therefore, our Rights are not limited to those which are explicitly stated in The Constitution.
"The sad thing is that I can't see how this changes without bullets . . ."
This system is going to collaps under its own weight. We've been printing and borrowing to avoid dealing with recession ever since the beginning of the Bush administration, and it has only accelerated in the last two years. Every day that they continue this nonsense makes the day of reckoning worse. This year alone the Federal government will borrow and spend at least $1.5 trillion. That's almost 10% of GDP. Then, they'll release official BS statistics which claim that the economy "grew" by 2-3%. Remove the unsustainable debt spending, and the economy clearly shrank. Furthermore, if they balanced the budget tomorrow, it's an immediate 9+% drop in GDP.
It won't take bullets to change things, just another few years of the status quo.
When the asshats in D.C. refuse to deal with a glaringly obvious fiscal crisis, why should we have any hope that they're going to do something like network neutrality?
Thanks for raising the issue about guns, statistics, and perceptions.
True Statistic: A gun in the home is more likely to be used to KILL someone residing in the home than it is to KILL a criminal intruder.
This is a perfect example of how someone takes a fact, and twists it into a misperception. In this case, the idea that a gun in the home is more of a danger to the occupants than it is worth as a weapon of self defense. The folks who formulated and propagated this statistic typically don't mention the fact that the deaths include accidents, suicides and justifiable homicides (e.g. someone killing an abusive partner/spouse).
What's even more annoying is that you will continuously hear this statement regurgitated by the anti-gun crowd in such a way that it is no longer even TRUE. e.g. "A gun in the home is more likely to be used on a family member than it is to be used in self defense."
The statement conjures up the exact same imagery but with an incorrect factual basis. The former (true) statistic was careful to talk about cases where an intruding criminal is actually KILLED by the resident. It therefore ignores the most typical scenario of defensive firearms use in which the weapon is never fired. Missed shots and woundings also don't figure into the former (factual) statement.
"This is why people like me are so anxious to keep the Internet public, using Net Neutrality laws."
If you put your faith in government, your doomed to be disappointed. I like net neutrality "in principle", and I reconcile(d) that with my libertarian world view mostly because I believe that the availability of information is critical to a free market and a free society. I was even something of a "crusader" for the cause a couple of years ago. I then came to the realization that we cannot trust the federal government to do ANYTHING for the benefit of the average citizens if it might be somehow detrimental to the wealthy politically-connected elites. If we ever get something like a "Net Neutrality" law, it will be just like "Health Care Reform" and "Financial Reform". A nice sounding cover page on top of 1000+ pages of provisions that benefit wealthy campaign contributors, citizenry be damned.
Check out "opensecrets.org" to see who's greasing the wheels in DC. The telecom and cable companies are near the top in campaign contributions and rather high up in lobbying expenditures.
We can't expect the government to serve the people. We should just assume that the battle lines have been drawn, and it's the citizens on one side vs. the government and their corporate allies on the other.
It's overwhelmingly frustrating when you attempt to have a political debate with someone and they come out with the rhetorical "If you don't like it, LEAVE" or words to that affect.
In your case however, you'd like to have a foreign nation take over the area where you live simply because you prefer their laws to your current nation's laws, and you feel more affinity with their citizens than your current fellow citizens? If you're in "Times Square" Canada is only 6-8 hours away by car. Don't you think that moving to Canada might be a better option for you that working to re-draw international borders?
" . . . the primary responsibility for the irresponsibility in home loans is...the American people."
I think your weighting of responsibility is seriously skewed. As an aside, I think it starts with the Federal Reserve and a decade of loose monetary policy. If I had to name ONE "primary" culprit in this whole financial mess, The Fed is public enemy #1.
On the home loan side of things however, you correctly point out one major flaw in the process. The ability to transfer risk through "securitization". That allowed bankers to KNOWINGLY transfer high risk mortgage pools to unsuspecting investors. This used to be called "fraud" and people used to go to jail for it, but things are different in the new U.S.
The borrowers might have made dumb decisions, but it is the bankers that ultimately decide who does and who does not get a loan. As professionals, the bankers clearly knew, or had the ability to determine a borrower's credit worthiness. A homeless person can come into a bank and request a loan, but the bank makes the final decision. That's why they, not the borrowers, should bear the most responsibility for bad mortgage lending. The bankers made loans with clear knowledge that the loans would end up in default. They just assumed that they could collect their fees and pass the risk on to somebody else, OR, they bought into the idea that property prices would keep rising, and they could foreclose on an asset that was worth more than the loan.
In a world without bailouts and fraud, these bankers would be forced into bankruptcy. The bad mortgages could then be sold to the highest bidder (at a market value substantially lower than the original value) and the new owner could then re-negotiate terms with the borrower so that the borrower could afford the new mortgage, and the responsible lender can make a profit . . . But this is the new U.S. where bailouts and fraud are a way of doing business.
"More often than not the outsourcing of essential government functions to private industries results in conflicts of interest and disaster. Educational standards should not be next."
Are you trying to suggest that the same conflicts of interest don't exist in government-operated schools? Regardless of what else they are teaching, their common mission is foster a culture of subservience and authoritarianism, and to repeatedly indoctrinate the children with the "government is good" mentality. Do you think they're actually going to produce students who question the validity of the state and its role in society? More likely than not, the students will graduate believing that education is an "essential government function".
>"have MBAs and PhDs, and are untouchable because of political connections"
>>Who? Name some. Otherwise I call "bullshit".
Lloyd Blankfein, Timothy Geithner, Ben Bernanke, Vikram Pandit, John Mack, Alan Greenspan, Christopher Dodd, Barney Frank, Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines, Richard Fuld, Edward Liddy . . .
I'm sure that a lot of these guys are lawyers, but I think you could easily find a few hundred MBAs and PhDs involved in mortgage and securities fraud who are untouchable due to their political connections.
"Government doesn't expand in terms of power and revenue because it's getting better, it expands because the economy is expanding."
That's an interesting perspective given that the chart you referenced clearly shows Federal government spending as less than 5% of GDP in 1930, and ~25% of GDP right now.
Recall also that government spending is part of GDP. Therefore, showing spending and revenue as a % of GDP tends to obscure the picture of the size of government relative to the private sector. A $3.6T budget is ~24% of a $15T GDP, but ~31.5% the size of the real productive economy which has to bear the burden.
I also love the little inflection points showing that in the next few years the deficit is going to drop from 10% of GDP to 5% of GDP. I'd like to see it happen, but I see no evidence of any leadership or political will to make that happen.
I'll agree with one point however:
"Government doesn't expand in terms of power and revenue because it's getting better . . ."
It expands because it's filled with a bunch of self-serving parasites.