Why do I want to die fighting to defend my air and my water when we can all share our air and water and have unlimited supply?
Two reasons:
A. There will always be someone who feels justified by might, status, or ideology to take it from you. If you are unwilling to die defending it, someone will take it from you. They don't care about "free" land, they don't want "free" land, they want your land and since you are unwilling to defend it, you make for an easy victim.
B. There is no unlimited supply for either land or water, both are scarce, fresh water even more so.
I wouldnt say owning land is very smart because by owning land you are assuming your society is going to collapse and that you'll be in a situation where land is in limited supply. You set yourself up for future disputes by owning stuff.
Actually, you have it reversed, land ownership is worthless without a social-cultural-legal system that respects property rights. Also, as stated above land is a limited resource.
In the USA you can own land, fine, but if they made it so the state owns land and we can live on it for free thats even better than paying rent or buying land. It all depends on how its handled.
No, it isn't better, it swaps the need for capital with the need for political connections. It also means that you can not use the land, because it does not belong to you, to raise capital. In addition, you can not simply get up and move by selling your land or terminating a rental/lease agreement and moving on,in your system you need government approval to do anything because the land belongs to the government. Land is a significant asset, there is risk involved with acquiring it, but there is also reward have having acquired it.
While a market system has its issues, they pale in comparison to what happens in a system where the govenment owns the land (DPRK, Zimbabwe, PRC, USSR). In the PRC companies bribe government officials who then send in the police to evict persons from land where they may have lived for generations. What can those who are evicted do? Nothing because they have no property rights and the officials that they complain to are the same ones that had them evicted. Zimbabwe has gone from net food exporter to food importer. Why? Because they seized farms and redistributed the land to people unable and unwilling to make the farm land productive. You are welcome to argue that it was justified because whites owned the most productive land in an African country; however, the fact is that famine and corruption are the legacy of state owned land.
Is it bigger (pun intended) then porn? I was thinking about specializing in classified IP licensing after I finish law school (will have about a decade of experience in classified software development by then), but the concept of Porn IP may be too intriguing to pass up.
but are we really 49/51? What percentage did not vote? Are we more like 25/25/50? While Anybody but Bush/Anybody but Kerry might rally the party faithful, the politically agnostic need something more to motivate them.
3 elections, 1 for Representitives, 1 for Senate, 1 for President. Open to any party that can make it on any state ballet; the party that "wins" the most representitive seats is barred from Senate and Presidential elections; same goes for Senate; and the remaining parties can vie for the Presidential election. Political parties will have to be very stratigic in their thinking, being president does you no good if your party does not have a majority or near-majority in Congress. Complete political gridlock.
and US unis get money from both government (NIH, NIMH, etc) and pharmaceutical companies. The problem is that something like 90% of all newly developed drugs make it 80% of the way through development just to fail in phase II/III clinical trials. All that money goes to waste, if they are lucky the company gets "lessons learned". The point being is that you do have to be pretty big to be able to withstand that kind of pressure. Yes, in the US at least, there are niche-market biotechs, quite a few of them are genetic engineering types that have been spun out of university research labe and are super-narrowly focused and are justtrying to get far enough along in the process to patent and then either license or get bought out.
The issue on taxes has less to do with a fear of socialism then a realization that the more money you give the government, the bigger it becomes, and the bigger it becomes the more remote and inefficient it becomes.
Success in the pharmaceutical business requires risk and communism and maybe socialism reduce the incentive for taking risk by minimizing the returns for the risk for a private business. For a govenment branch it is even worse. If they succeed, they cannot capitalize on it because of price controls in a centralized economy; if they fail, the indivduals in charge will be punished, maybe even executed in places like the DPRK and PRC, but the state (the company) incurrs no hardship (and no lesson learned) they do not have to answer for their failures.
anyway, nice to have an intelligent discussion, hope that the situation in your country gets better. Just remember that there was once a strife-torn and destitue country, considered by the world as illiterate and backwards, little more then a natural resource supplier. That country was the US. Give the average person an average chance and see what can happen.
A lot of reasons behind the Iraq war had to do with actually stabilizing our currency
I wish the war was about oil, or currency, or revenge. Those motives I can understand. I am afraid that the motivation for this war was quasi-religious. Not Christianity==good - Islam==bad religious bigotry, more like hasten the end-times religious motivation. That is why they cannot see or will not admit their errors, who can be wrong if they are fulfilling biblical prophecy?
Currently countries like China are proping up our currency by purchasing tons of dollars
Countries like China and Korea buy dollars to support their peg which props up their export driven economy. If the dollar *really* tanks, China and other exporters are super-screwed since we buy so much of their product. India can't pick up the slack because the nouveau rich in India are a very small minority. EUians are heavily taxed and that reduces their spendable income. Central/South America & Africa are, on the balance, too poor to buy. Japanese are hording money and won't be buying either. Other economies like Mexico and Canada are heavily dependant on Americans buying their products, without Americans buying their products they will have less money to buy products made in China. If the dollar *really**really* tanks, the peg used by asian exporters may very well make it unprofitable to manufacture anything.
country in the world almost wants to see us unseated
Not almost, all, citizens of every other country and many within the US would like to see us "unseated" from our geo-political chair. Some, like the French, because they feel it is their turn in the chair; some, like the Arabs, because they see a weakend US as the key to implementing their own "final solution". What countries like France fail to see is the cost associated with being in "the chair". Look at how Europe bungled the Balkans war, the Dutch sitting on their hands during the slaughter in Srebrenica. Not because they didn't care, but because they were not prepared. Do you really think the EU can stand between China and Taiwan? Do you think they won't have to? Do you think Africans would appreciate their formaer colonial masters sticking their noses into their business? Do you understand the cost of having a globe-spanning military on call 24/7? I'm not talking about 500 troops here or there on peacekeeping missions, I'm talking about the ability to transport and support 100,000+ troops in a combat environment. Yeah, I'm sure countries like France want to be in the hot-seat, until the bill comes due. Crap, they can't even keep the Ivory Coast under control. "Unseating" America might sound like a great idea, but the practical repercussions are significant. Someone will have to pick up the slack and if you think the world will be full of chocolaty goodness without the US I would suggest you read a bit of world histroy prior to pax-americana. If you think the UN will do anything I suggest you look at how little the UN has actually accomplished.
Price of oil is going to cause stagflation
The price of oil sucks; however, SUV sales are down, there is significant investment going in in hybrid and fuel cell research including hydrogen extraction by bio-chemical means, and gas is still cheaper then it was in terms of real dollars.
we're loosing a war
How do you define loosing? How do you define winning? What are your metrics? body count? number of attacks? transition to extraction? public relations?
vulnerable to attack
Vulnerable to attack by who and how? Terrorists? Sure we are and having every active duty member of the military station in CONUS would not make a difference. Is someone going to invade? Is DPRK going to launch a nuke? No one is going to invade and the DPRK isn't going to launch a nuke. Maybe Cuba will invade.... Yes our military is str
The emancipation proclamation had only one purpose, to keep Britain from aiding the south. Once the war was "about slavery" there was no way the Brits could join in. Lincon's plan was to send the slaves back to Africa, it's why they let him die.
and the government is going to get the money from where? Taxes, of course; so now we can see a new regulatory agency eat up more money in overhead, brilliant. Of course former and current communist economies are well known for their cutting-edge pharmaceutical industries...
1. It isn't "your" government, its "our" government.
2. You are already free to practice your religon, you're just not free to shove you belief system down other peoples throats.
You want your children to learn about creation, fine teach it in Sunday school or at home. Until you allow secular evolution to be taught as a valid theory in Sunday School, don't complain about creationism not being taught in public schools.
exactly, see International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918). While there was no value intrinsic to news itself, there are associated costs. The five part test is further clarified in The National Basketball Assn. v. Motorola, Inc., 105 F.3d 841 (2d Cir. 1997). Then again I'm just a.5L, 2L's and 3L's feel free to correct.
learned in my years as a boy scout if you ratted someone out you would pay later and keep your friends close but your enemies closer. So Boy Scouts did pretty much prepare me for life.
ummm... you do pay for healthcare of people you do not know. Medicare from the Gov't, paid for with your taxes; VA hospitals as well. Those medical ins. premiums you pay? Part of that is used to reimburse hospitals for care given to the indigent. Someone walks into a hospital in the middle of congenitive heart failure or wheeled in from a car wreck or gets his hand cut off by the lawnmower the hospital is going to care for them regardless of their ability to pay. Yes, the hospital will go after them for the bill, but if their address in 1st street bridge, cardboard box on the left or Tijuana, Mexico, there isn't much a collection agency can do. So the hospitals raise the prices for paying "customers" in order to cover, these customers, more often then not, are health care insurance providers that it turn raise permiums to cover their increased costs. So, you pay. On the plus side, you pay your medical insurance premium of x dollars (mine is $38) and when you suffer some sort of traumatic illness or injury, you pay your deductable of maybe $1000 or so and that half-million dollar hospital bill goes away. Who paid for it? Not you. I did and so did everyone else in your plan.
There are people inside and outside of the US that really take a dim view of our privatized health system. I think it offers the best combinaton of care and access. If you are unable to pay, you can still get medical care. For those who do pay, you have access to a huge array of medical services from lab work, to imaging, to elective surgery that can be used on very short (from a few hours to a few weeks, depending) notice. It is not the perfect system, but it works.
You will find that UK pride in their achivements during WW2 stems mainly from the fact that we held out as long as we did against incredible odds.
I don't suppose that your history books mention all of the food, fuel, and ammunition that was shipped to you from the US? Do they say that it was paid back? It wasn't. We let the whole thing slide 'cause that is what brothers do. Do they mention the American sailors lost at sea, to help a people they didn't know, whose decendants would spit on the memory of their sacrifice? Cripes even the Russians built a monument and gave the survivors medals. Yes, you survived the Blitz and yes there is a lot to be said for thumbing your nose at that half-pint Austrian with a stupid mustache when you must have been scared silly; however, you'd still be doing that today or, more likey, you'd be thumbing your nose at ol' Uncle Joe; the Atlantic Wall replaced with the Atlantic Iron Curtain. Did you know you what caused the blitz? See, up until the blitz, the Huns were happy to bomb military value targets. What changed their mind? When you lobster-backs bombed Berlin. That's right, in an effort to bait the Krauts into switching to civilian targets and take the pressure off of the RAF bases, ol' Winny had the RAF bomb german civilian targets, worked like a charm. Stratigic bombing, by either side, was the biggest mistake of WWII. It did not break morale; it did not slow war-time production; it just made people mad.
Now before you get mad and start calling me a limey-hater I just want you to know that there is no other country I would rather have stand by our side then Great Britain. No other country in the world I trust more then Great Britain. Seriously, I really do think you Brits are tops, and that's no porkies.
You are not moving into the "automotive industry", you are moving into the "automotive repair industry" which, is so chock-full of BS it will make you wonder how any work gets done.
You wear the uniform
You are right,a corporate mandated uniform with the companies name/logo on it and your name on it isn't like a suit and tie, it's worse. Basically you are wearing a peice of clothing that identifies you as the property of the company. Not only that, but wearing clothing that has your name stiched in it basically identifies you as a loser to society. Not that I agree with that, but that is how society functions.
which is actually functional (utterly unlike suit and tie)
A suit and tie is functional, it functions to distinguish between your work-self and your non-work self. Companies didn't decide to let people dress down because they were nice or felt that they had to, they did it to break down the barrier between the work-self and the non-work self, so that when you look at yourself in the mirror, all you see is the work-self. Now there doesn't have to be any prep time between leaving work and going back to work. Your entire life can revolve around work, no need to change clothes.
you GO HOME and you don't have to think about work
The only reason you can go home now and not think about work is because you are a FNG. After a while, if you have any competency at all, you'll be pushed up the food chain, then it will be back to worrying about schedules and conflicts and all those other problems that you get to spend your "free" time worrying about. However, even as a FNG, guess what? when one of your alcoholic, derelict coworkers calls in sick you get to cover for him; day off? too bad, after shift? too bad.
There is nothing wrong with being a car mechanic, I have a close friend who fixes cars for a living and fixes mine for free. Nothing irritates me more then when he tells me about someone treating him like dog shit beause of his profession. That being said, if you think you are putting the world of corporate BS behind you, you are quite mistaken. Every job from automotive mechanic to zamboni driver has either government or corporate driven BS. Regardless of what you do, there will be individuals whose job, while tangential to the the actual type of business being conducted, directly effects the daily lives of the employees. These are the people that create and enforce the BS. There is no escape.
Re:Know Your Enemy *is* 'stuff that matters'
on
Paul Graham on PR
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One minor problem Spock... the above listed three did not commit their crimes against humanity in the name of "radical secularism". This should be contrasted to the history of the worlds major religons who have committed crimes against humanity in the name of their religon. Politics and insanity may have driven the three to do what they did, but they did not do it in order to force "radical secularism" down anyone's throat.
Slashdot Mirror
where is Ralph Nader when you need him ... Unsafe at any resolution...
Isn't that in Quebec? That would make the residents pseudo-french, which means their tendency to protest is genetic.
A. There will always be someone who feels justified by might, status, or ideology to take it from you. If you are unwilling to die defending it, someone will take it from you. They don't care about "free" land, they don't want "free" land, they want your land and since you are unwilling to defend it, you make for an easy victim.
B. There is no unlimited supply for either land or water, both are scarce, fresh water even more so. Actually, you have it reversed, land ownership is worthless without a social-cultural-legal system that respects property rights. Also, as stated above land is a limited resource. No, it isn't better, it swaps the need for capital with the need for political connections. It also means that you can not use the land, because it does not belong to you, to raise capital. In addition, you can not simply get up and move by selling your land or terminating a rental/lease agreement and moving on,in your system you need government approval to do anything because the land belongs to the government. Land is a significant asset, there is risk involved with acquiring it, but there is also reward have having acquired it.
While a market system has its issues, they pale in comparison to what happens in a system where the govenment owns the land (DPRK, Zimbabwe, PRC, USSR). In the PRC companies bribe government officials who then send in the police to evict persons from land where they may have lived for generations. What can those who are evicted do? Nothing because they have no property rights and the officials that they complain to are the same ones that had them evicted. Zimbabwe has gone from net food exporter to food importer. Why? Because they seized farms and redistributed the land to people unable and unwilling to make the farm land productive. You are welcome to argue that it was justified because whites owned the most productive land in an African country; however, the fact is that famine and corruption are the legacy of state owned land.
Is it bigger (pun intended) then porn? I was thinking about specializing in classified IP licensing after I finish law school (will have about a decade of experience in classified software development by then), but the concept of Porn IP may be too intriguing to pass up.
at least you didn't ask for petrol....
Porn is a simulation too, but it is considered both art and free speech. These are not exclusive categories.
So you know the difference between "they're", "their", and "there"; do you know the difference between "work" and "word"?
but are we really 49/51? What percentage did not vote? Are we more like 25/25/50? While Anybody but Bush/Anybody but Kerry might rally the party faithful, the politically agnostic need something more to motivate them.
3 elections, 1 for Representitives, 1 for Senate, 1 for President. Open to any party that can make it on any state ballet; the party that "wins" the most representitive seats is barred from Senate and Presidential elections; same goes for Senate; and the remaining parties can vie for the Presidential election. Political parties will have to be very stratigic in their thinking, being president does you no good if your party does not have a majority or near-majority in Congress. Complete political gridlock.
The issue on taxes has less to do with a fear of socialism then a realization that the more money you give the government, the bigger it becomes, and the bigger it becomes the more remote and inefficient it becomes.
Success in the pharmaceutical business requires risk and communism and maybe socialism reduce the incentive for taking risk by minimizing the returns for the risk for a private business. For a govenment branch it is even worse. If they succeed, they cannot capitalize on it because of price controls in a centralized economy; if they fail, the indivduals in charge will be punished, maybe even executed in places like the DPRK and PRC, but the state (the company) incurrs no hardship (and no lesson learned) they do not have to answer for their failures.
anyway, nice to have an intelligent discussion, hope that the situation in your country gets better. Just remember that there was once a strife-torn and destitue country, considered by the world as illiterate and backwards, little more then a natural resource supplier. That country was the US. Give the average person an average chance and see what can happen.
I wish the war was about oil, or currency, or revenge. Those motives I can understand. I am afraid that the motivation for this war was quasi-religious. Not Christianity==good - Islam==bad religious bigotry, more like hasten the end-times religious motivation. That is why they cannot see or will not admit their errors, who can be wrong if they are fulfilling biblical prophecy?
Countries like China and Korea buy dollars to support their peg which props up their export driven economy. If the dollar *really* tanks, China and other exporters are super-screwed since we buy so much of their product. India can't pick up the slack because the nouveau rich in India are a very small minority. EUians are heavily taxed and that reduces their spendable income. Central/South America & Africa are, on the balance, too poor to buy. Japanese are hording money and won't be buying either. Other economies like Mexico and Canada are heavily dependant on Americans buying their products, without Americans buying their products they will have less money to buy products made in China. If the dollar *really**really* tanks, the peg used by asian exporters may very well make it unprofitable to manufacture anything.
Not almost, all, citizens of every other country and many within the US would like to see us "unseated" from our geo-political chair. Some, like the French, because they feel it is their turn in the chair; some, like the Arabs, because they see a weakend US as the key to implementing their own "final solution". What countries like France fail to see is the cost associated with being in "the chair". Look at how Europe bungled the Balkans war, the Dutch sitting on their hands during the slaughter in Srebrenica. Not because they didn't care, but because they were not prepared. Do you really think the EU can stand between China and Taiwan? Do you think they won't have to? Do you think Africans would appreciate their formaer colonial masters sticking their noses into their business? Do you understand the cost of having a globe-spanning military on call 24/7? I'm not talking about 500 troops here or there on peacekeeping missions, I'm talking about the ability to transport and support 100,000+ troops in a combat environment. Yeah, I'm sure countries like France want to be in the hot-seat, until the bill comes due. Crap, they can't even keep the Ivory Coast under control. "Unseating" America might sound like a great idea, but the practical repercussions are significant. Someone will have to pick up the slack and if you think the world will be full of chocolaty goodness without the US I would suggest you read a bit of world histroy prior to pax-americana. If you think the UN will do anything I suggest you look at how little the UN has actually accomplished.
The price of oil sucks; however, SUV sales are down, there is significant investment going in in hybrid and fuel cell research including hydrogen extraction by bio-chemical means, and gas is still cheaper then it was in terms of real dollars.
How do you define loosing? How do you define winning? What are your metrics? body count? number of attacks? transition to extraction? public relations?
Vulnerable to attack by who and how? Terrorists? Sure we are and having every active duty member of the military station in CONUS would not make a difference. Is someone going to invade? Is DPRK going to launch a nuke? No one is going to invade and the DPRK isn't going to launch a nuke. Maybe Cuba will invade.... Yes our military is str
The emancipation proclamation had only one purpose, to keep Britain from aiding the south. Once the war was "about slavery" there was no way the Brits could join in. Lincon's plan was to send the slaves back to Africa, it's why they let him die.
and the government is going to get the money from where? Taxes, of course; so now we can see a new regulatory agency eat up more money in overhead, brilliant. Of course former and current communist economies are well known for their cutting-edge pharmaceutical industries...
2. You are already free to practice your religon, you're just not free to shove you belief system down other peoples throats.
You want your children to learn about creation, fine teach it in Sunday school or at home. Until you allow secular evolution to be taught as a valid theory in Sunday School, don't complain about creationism not being taught in public schools.
exactly, see International News Service v. Associated Press, 248 U.S. 215 (1918). While there was no value intrinsic to news itself, there are associated costs. The five part test is further clarified in The National Basketball Assn. v. Motorola, Inc., 105 F.3d 841 (2d Cir. 1997). Then again I'm just a .5L, 2L's and 3L's feel free to correct.
Stop reading Wiki and start thinking for yourself.
The same place God came from...
ummm... you do pay for healthcare of people you do not know. Medicare from the Gov't, paid for with your taxes; VA hospitals as well. Those medical ins. premiums you pay? Part of that is used to reimburse hospitals for care given to the indigent. Someone walks into a hospital in the middle of congenitive heart failure or wheeled in from a car wreck or gets his hand cut off by the lawnmower the hospital is going to care for them regardless of their ability to pay. Yes, the hospital will go after them for the bill, but if their address in 1st street bridge, cardboard box on the left or Tijuana, Mexico, there isn't much a collection agency can do. So the hospitals raise the prices for paying "customers" in order to cover, these customers, more often then not, are health care insurance providers that it turn raise permiums to cover their increased costs. So, you pay. On the plus side, you pay your medical insurance premium of x dollars (mine is $38) and when you suffer some sort of traumatic illness or injury, you pay your deductable of maybe $1000 or so and that half-million dollar hospital bill goes away. Who paid for it? Not you. I did and so did everyone else in your plan. There are people inside and outside of the US that really take a dim view of our privatized health system. I think it offers the best combinaton of care and access. If you are unable to pay, you can still get medical care. For those who do pay, you have access to a huge array of medical services from lab work, to imaging, to elective surgery that can be used on very short (from a few hours to a few weeks, depending) notice. It is not the perfect system, but it works.
I guess since Mr. Gates is dressed as a Borg, /. can Dress Mr. Jobs as an SA brownshirt.
So true it was painful to read.
He's not a loon, he's invincible....
One minor problem Spock... the above listed three did not commit their crimes against humanity in the name of "radical secularism". This should be contrasted to the history of the worlds major religons who have committed crimes against humanity in the name of their religon. Politics and insanity may have driven the three to do what they did, but they did not do it in order to force "radical secularism" down anyone's throat.