The original, was perhaps the first 3d MMORPG, and in my opinion was the best 3d MMORPG until World of Warcraft came along.
The problem is, Turbine completely screwed up with the sequel, they had a perfect formula and screwed it up by trying to make it mainstream and popish instead of honing in on the hardcore gamers and improving game mechanics. Also they put all their money and focus into the graphics of AC2, which were the best at the time, and not enough on improving the gameplay. The result is AC1 was more fun than AC2.
Turbine in my opinion, would have a hit if they made AC3, with similar elements to AC1, with vastly improved graphics, and perhaps some new gameplay elements.
A lot of games suck because they focus too much on graphics, or too much on the mainstream audience, and not enough on actually making the game fun.
Sure calculating pollution would be difficult but it's not impossible. We can create standards to calculate pollution just like we can create software to help us test a video game for bugs. We simply have to figure out how to debug the economy. We must debug the free market.
What are your ideas? Just saying the pollution tax idea is bad is not offering a better alternative.
So who is going to pay for the government if not the taxes? You cannot have a tax free market. So the pollution tax is the one tax which is logical and makes sense.
Unless you think the market itself can run with no taxes at all and no way to fund the federal government at all.
why not improve corporate law? why not give tax cuts as reward and fees as punishment? no one says there should be no taxes. the debate is who should pay.
also, the private government is already global so depending on the government wont work anymore when you have multinational corps. I think you need new classifications of corporations to regulate.
If we simply redefine our system into the globalized century, we can compete.
The reason we cannot compete is because we ignore our strengths. The USA should be the easiest/best/cheapest place on planet earth to start a small business, period. The USA should stop fearing growth, and change the laws so that growth is encouraged.
Pollution is not profitable for anyone. The solution, is simple, if we want a better market, we have to make it more free, and the only way to make it more free is to allow for increased flexibility, more options, more choices for corporations, consumers, etc. The person who wants to start a corporation should have more freedom to define and classify their corporation. The whole (for profit) and (non profit) segregation, is ultimately why we have corporations which are run irresponsibly.
I'm not saying a corporation should not focus on profit, but a founder of a corporation should have many options of many different types of corporate entities they'd like to start, and we need to allow for options which encourage social responsibility and environmentally friendly operation.
We also need to make it more expensive to be irresponsible. How can we make corporations responsible if we don't?
Most importantly, we need hundreds of new tools. Taxes are an old tool. Tarrifs are an old tool, and both of these tools depend on a big centralized government. What about tools that a local community can use? What about tools that allow for the corporation to, by design, operate in the way we require environmentally?
Corporations could be made to pay hefty fines, or high taxes, we could have a pollution tax. We'd also need to give tax credits and benefits to corporations which don't pollute. We'd also need new types of corporations which by law are required to minimize pollution while maximizing profits. We also need corporations which, by architecture, function just the way they should.
What you have to do, is use your ideas, your concepts, your thoughts, to be an intellectual architect, and develop a new corporate architecture. We need corporation 2.0, and corporation 3.0, and 4.0 onto infinity. We have better product standards for motherboard and CPU designs. We design better graphics cards than we do corporations and policies.
Do we need to host a contest with a 10 million dollar prize to see who can come up with the best new policy ideas, best new architectures for corporations, best new corporate classifications?
Because the ideas the green party offers to me, are not going to work. Raising taxes will never work because there is no evidence that the government was ever a more efficient driver in society than the corporation. If there ever were a time, it was when corporations were just barely invented. We have hedge funds now, and a global market, but governments still operating on old models. We have a global market now, but we still have corporations operating on old models.
Corporation need the freedom to operate on new levels, and once this happens then we will be able to solve climate change, and there will not be a need for trade wars. We just need to become more efficient, and the way for us to become more efficient, is for the USA to become the investor nation. We should invest in the third world, and have the third world working for our corporations. When those in the third world start their own corporations, we can buy stock. We have a global market, and it's extremely proitable, but the only thing holding us back at this point is ourselves and our own inefficiency.
Why do we have people starving in the third world, dying of cureable diseases, when we could be using 100% of our human resources? We could invent new sports for people to watch, we can invent new industries, new markets, and then maximize our human resources to realize our dreams.
We could be building stuff on the moon, underwater, or whereever, and you'd think space travel would be a lot cheaper if we had a workforce of 6 billion. How much easier would
The role of the government is to keep the market free and make it more free. The GPL has to be enforced by the governments legal system. Patents have to be enforced as well.
The solution to climate change is legal. The solution involves a new set of classifications for corporations. We need to define the eco-corp legally. Currently, corporations harm the environment by design because our laws are outdated. We cannot attempt to solve the climate change problem simply by reward and punishment.
We need to also invent new kinds of corporations, so people can start new types of businesses specifically designed to tackle climate change. This increases freedom in the market and thesefore it's the most libertarian policy one could choose.
Basically I advocate a new type of corporation called an eco-corporation. The eco-corporation would need a classification. The eco-corporation is simply a corporation with a conscience. The conscience is the core of the corporation, not the profit driven motive alone. This would mean the eco-corporation would legally be required to profit with respect towards the social costs and environmental costs.
Now, this type of corporation, in some states that want to attract them, can be started and run tax free like a non profit, if it's proven to do little to no harm to the environment. The taxes can still come at the federal level.
The point is, the non-profit and the corporation, have to be combined in such a way as to create a completely new corporate entity. This hybrid is the major part of the solution. This hybrid would also need to develop certain legal abilities, new markets, perhaps make these new hybrids more open modeled like open source is, in some areas, but more closed in others.
No idea should go unconsidered. Every idea must be considered. I just think the best ideas will be from the business law category. When governments institute policies, governments should discuss these policies with business law professionals.
Markets are fine, but it's 2007, we need a new idea of what a corporate model is, and we need new models. If corporate models were like cars, we are so far behind. Once we invent the eco-corporation, any corporation or new entrepreuer will be able classify their corporation, as an eco-corporation. Then with a specific set of laws, these corporations can be managed.
Most important you have to make it more fun, more profitable, and more free, to run an eco-corporation than to run a standard corporation. What if eco-corporations got some extra features?
I'm convinced, due to knowledge about human nature, that the climate change problem will only be solved with market-driven solutions.
I don't think the government, or governments, can solve it without the private industry. Private industry is the only organizer of the masses and it must be utilized in every way on every level.
It must be cheaper to run a business in an environmentally friendly manner. It also must be cheapter to start a business that is dedicated to solving climate change.
I propose that we allow people to start small businesses, tax free, for 5 years, as long as that business is dedicated to the principles outlined, of reducing environmental harm. This is what worked for the internet, so many businesses moved to the net because theres no internet taxes. One way to bring business support is to simply remove taxes.
Are you telling me that Democrats and Republicans can't agree to cut taxes for this issue? If we want environment-conscious businesses, we need to cut taxes for environmentally conscious businesses. I think Tarrifs are another one of those old ideas from the last century. We are globalized now, and the elements of our system which are globalized, are tax laws, and business laws.
We need to update business laws so people can start corporations who's main goal is not simply profit in money, but also to advance social goals. If a business is started by law with the social agenda of being environment conscious and of preserving the environment, then it will be illegal for that business to go against the social agenda set forth through law.
So lawyers, who understand business law, need to team up with environmentalists, who need to team up with social activists, who need to term up with business and economics majors, and together they can come up with something similar to the GPL, or creative commons, only this would be a legal document and script for starting eco-corporations.
This eco-corp document should redefine corporation, into eco-corporation, and being eco-friendly should come before all else. At the same time, by redefining what a corporation is and how it functions, it will give people the freedom to organize the market to solve climate change. I see this is a legal/technical problem of business law. The way it can be solved is through new corporate models, new classifications, new laws to manage corporations on the local level.
If anyone here is a lawyer and capable of understanding exactly the impact the GPL had on the open source movement, could something similar to the GPL be invented to assist the climate change movement? And is anyone interested in starting a project to do it?
Respond with your comments, this post is designed to advance discussion and promote new idea generation. New ideas are needed. Old ideas like tarrifs, and taxes, only make the government bigger but don't create the fundamental changes anymore than having the government build an OS would create the open source movement. So think bigger.
You have to be practical. Biofuels is a pragmatic and practical approach to solving this problem. You are not going to get anywhere with electric cars, or the hydrogen fuel cars. Biofuels actually are cleaner, not cleanest, but it's a step forward, and it's efficient.
Of course it has to be economically profitable, otherwise people would not support the idea. Of course the price of corn has to go up, otherwise no one would support it. Who would support a solution that is not profitable? We could have solar cars sure, but solar cars aren't profitable. We could build maglev trains all over the place, but maglev trains aren't as profitable.
So be realistic here, alternative energy is still alternative energy, it might not be clean energy, but you can't get to clean energy if you don't have alternative energy, or any flexibility.
Third world countries have more food, and higher quality food than we have. They have so much good food that they want to sell it to us. And we have a lot of cheap food, that we want to sell to them.
We have an over supply of food, why not use it to make ethanol? People don't really need to eat all that fructose and junkfood anyway. I look forward to the day when we can power our cars with coke and pepsi.
Everyone knows humans arent supposed to make it off the planet. God says so. Instead, learn to profit while we destroy ourselves and planet earth and forget about spacewars.
Correct, but it does not change the fact that corporations will weigh genetics in, and likely want information on your genetics for the same reason they'd want SAT scores.
OK, so the way to solve bigotry is to kill off all minorities and act like assholes.
The question is, do we want to pick an appearance in a lab, or not. I never mentioned anything about killing. I never mentioned anything about minorities either.
You never answered any of my questions, why do you care how our babies will look in the future? Why do you want to stand in the way of parents who want to have reproductive freedom?
No, I'm not FOR abortion, and I'm not for killing. You seem to not be capable of understanding the difference between positive and negative eugenics.
Negative eugenics, is a form of genocide, this is what happened during world war 2. I'm against negative eugenics as much as you are. Positive eugenics is something COMPLETELY different, it's simply deciding on the race of your baby in the lab, and activating the genes you want your baby to have activated.
Now tell me, what is wrong with giving parents the ability to all select blonde haired blue eyed babies? If that's what the parents of the world want, why should you stand in their way just because you want variety? If you want to have a child that is a minority, or gay, or anything else, no one would FORCE you to pay the extra money for a designer baby. The designer baby option, will be an option that parents will pay extra to take, so that they can select high intelligence, good looks (however they decide to define it), and good health.
Positive eugenics is simply encouraging people with good genes to have more babies, and better babies. What's wrong with having "better" and "healthier" babies? And why not give that option to anyone who can afford it? I admit, it would be boring if everyone looked the same, but it's not for me or you to decide. Parents should ultimately decide how the children of the future will look, I generally don't care about the aesthetics, or appearances of the babies of the future, I'm not concerned with that issue at all. I am concerned with the intelligence issue, I DO think we should encourage intelligent people to have more kids, I DO think we should slow population growth. I don't think it's wise to recklessly create lots and lots of kids, without any thought or consideration of the social impact these kids will have.
So I'm not saying anyone should be sterilized, and I'm not supporting abortion. I'm supporting better parenting, and positive growth.
If you say a world with transhumanism and designer babies is not worth living in, well guess what, your food is already genetically engineered and you've been eating it for a while, we've been genetically engineering crops, we've been doing it to horses, we did it to dogs, cats, etc. The main mistake humans have made is they have been breeding blind, basically they've been mating with whoever was attractive physically, the problem with this is, a lot of the most intelligent people are not going to be the most physically attractive, and so we end up with a lot of physically attractive yet stupid people, or a lot of ugly models.
So how can we breed better? Do you have ideas? You dislike negative eugenics? So do I, but liberal eugenics is simply mating better, and transhumanism is simply using our technology to speed up evolution. I don't see how either of these would be a bad thing as long as A), there is no violence done to any individual or group, and B) the parents have complete reproductive freedom.
To me it's an issue of reproductive freedom, and I side with freedom/liberty on this issue. You should try to understand the issue a bit better before you comment further on it, it has nothing to do with violence, we are talking about spermbanks, eggbanks, and genetic screening, we are talking about designer babies, and germline therapy, we are talking about vaccines, biotechnology and other treatments.
The result of this will simply be more liberty. Parents will be able to choose the race, height, intelligence, weight of their child. These influence the childs quality of life, and no one is harm
You assume that people care about cultures and perspectives. You seem to think people care about other people. Newsflash, a lot of people don't give a fuck about other people, or animals, or nature, or the earth itself, or the species itself.
The species is more important. If abortion increases the survivability of the species, then you cannot say it's "wrong". Aborting simply means, there will be less people, which means less aggression, which means less people to kill and die in wars. War is the regulator of aggression. More people requires greater regulation, and unless you want to tackle aggression and outlaw bullying, having more people just means more bullys, whats the point? You'll have more people who hate you and others. You'll have more people polluting.
Bill Gates is not Bill Gates because of autism, he's not even autistic. However if his parents don't like how his brain works, his parents have the right to do whatever because they created him.
What parent wants to give birth to a child that is doomed to live a miserable life, a life of torture? If a child is disabled, they are going to be born into a miserable life. Life is going to get harsher for people with disabilities in the future as the world becomes more competitive. If we can have babies born with high intelligence and no disability, why the hell would any parent choose for their kid to be born with down syndrome, or autism, or any disease?
Also, no one is saying wipe out anyone already born, genetic screening is called positive eugenics because it does not require you to have an abortion or wipe anyone out. It's simple, you can genetically engineer the fetus to be disease free while it's still developing. You simply choose which genes activate in the fetus.
Conformity may or may not be good for the species, the only thing I know is that we need to more intelligently select. What we are doing now is clearly not good for the species. If you are against abortion thats understandable, but why would you be against transhumanism or designer babies?
You want to argue that we need people who are different? Have you ever been different? have you ever thought about what happens to these different people? Are you an ordinary white male, middle class, etc? Are you straight?
Different people are outcasted, abused, and tortured by society. Society in general hates what is different. Society also in general, hates weakness. Now, people don't want to admit that the world is this way, but the world hates the disabled, the poor, the unintelligent, etc etc. Sure there would be different people to hate in the future, but why exactly would you advocate for having more disabled people, simply to promote this idea of a world which accepts difference when you know we don't live in that world? Because no country wants to give birth to a lot of people who are unintelligent, and if technology can guarentee every new birth will be intelligent, it's going to happen because the competition will force it to happen.
Do you want your kids to lose the competition for survival because you did not decide to give them the gene enhancement when they were a fetus? So now your ordinary kid will have to compete in a world where all these millions or billions of their competitors have photographic memories and high intelligence. Your kid will have to compete in a world of Einstiens and Gates, and what if your child is born with dylexia?
Do you see? The survival of your child is at stake and from the view of a parent it's ethical to give your child whatever edge you can afford. And if you cannot afford to give your child an edge or if you don't want your child to compete in the global competition for survival, why have children?
Society is not going to change. The best we can do is try and evolve intelligently as we can.
My problem is not with the principle, or the spirit of the bill, but the wording. I don't think it's enforceable.
This bill needs to take into account what the result of it will be. I don't think it should be unconstitutional but I think it will cause a lot of changes, some negative, and we know it's going to raise medical expenses, and we know it's going to create black markets, and cause all sorts of problems in hiring.
You must admit that evolution is guided by selection, and why should we not cure ourselves using positive eugenics? Liberal Eugenics/BioLibertarianism. The problem is NEGATIVE EUGENICS, not POSITIVE EUGENICS. Positive Eugenics is simply selecting/mating intelleently, we can call it intelligent selection. It also includes screening fetuses in labs for diseases, and designer babies.
Then you have NEGATIVE EUGENICS, which is the abortion, and the sterilization and it gets more violent up to the point of genocides.
Positive Eugenics simply encourages intelligent people to have more kids than less intelligent people, resulting in more intelligent people. I don't see how this is wrong or even unnatural.
But let's debate it, lets debate positive eugenics and transhumanism. And if the only reason people are against it is because of the results of negative eugenics, well lets debate that too.
The problem with the bioconservative view is simple, it's not working. It's not guarentee that biolibertarianism will work better, but it's more liberty/options than we have now.
Slashdot Mirror
What if it's battery powered? and shielded from EMP?
I think technologies such as wireless electricity, are among the many technologies which can also be dangerous as weapons.
How exactly would anyone stop wireless electric weapons? Not easily.
The original, was perhaps the first 3d MMORPG, and in my opinion was the best 3d MMORPG until World of Warcraft came along.
The problem is, Turbine completely screwed up with the sequel, they had a perfect formula and screwed it up by trying to make it mainstream and popish instead of honing in on the hardcore gamers and improving game mechanics. Also they put all their money and focus into the graphics of AC2, which were the best at the time, and not enough on improving the gameplay. The result is AC1 was more fun than AC2.
Turbine in my opinion, would have a hit if they made AC3, with similar elements to AC1, with vastly improved graphics, and perhaps some new gameplay elements.
A lot of games suck because they focus too much on graphics, or too much on the mainstream audience, and not enough on actually making the game fun.
People donate to charity, but donating to charity is not as good as actually doing stuff to help people.
Thats just it, everyone pays the pollution tax, and we can either pay it now, or pay it later when our health declines.
I'd rather we pay it now.
That's exactly what I was leading to. Like I said, I proposed this idea to get you to think in that direction. Take it further.
The free market can only be kept free, by the government. The free market can be made more free.
What is your solution?
Sure calculating pollution would be difficult but it's not impossible. We can create standards to calculate pollution just like we can create software to help us test a video game for bugs. We simply have to figure out how to debug the economy. We must debug the free market.
What are your ideas? Just saying the pollution tax idea is bad is not offering a better alternative.
So who is going to pay for the government if not the taxes? You cannot have a tax free market. So the pollution tax is the one tax which is logical and makes sense.
Unless you think the market itself can run with no taxes at all and no way to fund the federal government at all.
http://www.changemakers.net/
why not improve corporate law? why not give tax cuts as reward and fees as punishment?
no one says there should be no taxes. the debate is who should pay.
also, the private government is already global so depending on the government wont work anymore when you have multinational corps. I think you need new classifications of corporations to regulate.
If we simply redefine our system into the globalized century, we can compete.
The reason we cannot compete is because we ignore our strengths. The USA should be the easiest/best/cheapest place on planet earth to start a small business, period. The USA should stop fearing growth, and change the laws so that growth is encouraged.
Pollution is not profitable for anyone. The solution, is simple, if we want a better market, we have to make it more free, and the only way to make it more free is to allow for increased flexibility, more options, more choices for corporations, consumers, etc. The person who wants to start a corporation should have more freedom to define and classify their corporation. The whole (for profit) and (non profit) segregation, is ultimately why we have corporations which are run irresponsibly.
I'm not saying a corporation should not focus on profit, but a founder of a corporation should have many options of many different types of corporate entities they'd like to start, and we need to allow for options which encourage social responsibility and environmentally friendly operation.
We also need to make it more expensive to be irresponsible. How can we make corporations responsible if we don't?
Most importantly, we need hundreds of new tools. Taxes are an old tool. Tarrifs are an old tool, and both of these tools depend on a big centralized government. What about tools that a local community can use? What about tools that allow for the corporation to, by design, operate in the way we require environmentally?
Corporations could be made to pay hefty fines, or high taxes, we could have a pollution tax. We'd also need to give tax credits and benefits to corporations which don't pollute. We'd also need new types of corporations which by law are required to minimize pollution while maximizing profits. We also need corporations which, by architecture, function just the way they should.
What you have to do, is use your ideas, your concepts, your thoughts, to be an intellectual architect, and develop a new corporate architecture. We need corporation 2.0, and corporation 3.0, and 4.0 onto infinity. We have better product standards for motherboard and CPU designs. We design better graphics cards than we do corporations and policies.
Do we need to host a contest with a 10 million dollar prize to see who can come up with the best new policy ideas, best new architectures for corporations, best new corporate classifications?
Because the ideas the green party offers to me, are not going to work. Raising taxes will never work because there is no evidence that the government was ever a more efficient driver in society than the corporation. If there ever were a time, it was when corporations were just barely invented. We have hedge funds now, and a global market, but governments still operating on old models. We have a global market now, but we still have corporations operating on old models.
Corporation need the freedom to operate on new levels, and once this happens then we will be able to solve climate change, and there will not be a need for trade wars. We just need to become more efficient, and the way for us to become more efficient, is for the USA to become the investor nation. We should invest in the third world, and have the third world working for our corporations. When those in the third world start their own corporations, we can buy stock. We have a global market, and it's extremely proitable, but the only thing holding us back at this point is ourselves and our own inefficiency.
Why do we have people starving in the third world, dying of cureable diseases, when we could be using 100% of our human resources? We could invent new sports for people to watch, we can invent new industries, new markets, and then maximize our human resources to realize our dreams.
We could be building stuff on the moon, underwater, or whereever, and you'd think space travel would be a lot cheaper if we had a workforce of 6 billion. How much easier would
The role of the government is to keep the market free and make it more free. The GPL has to be enforced by the governments legal system. Patents have to be enforced as well.
The solution to climate change is legal. The solution involves a new set of classifications for corporations. We need to define the eco-corp legally. Currently, corporations harm the environment by design because our laws are outdated. We cannot attempt to solve the climate change problem simply by reward and punishment.
We need to also invent new kinds of corporations, so people can start new types of businesses specifically designed to tackle climate change. This increases freedom in the market and thesefore it's the most libertarian policy one could choose.
Basically I advocate a new type of corporation called an eco-corporation. The eco-corporation would need a classification.
The eco-corporation is simply a corporation with a conscience. The conscience is the core of the corporation, not the profit driven motive alone. This would mean the eco-corporation would legally be required to profit with respect towards the social costs and environmental costs.
Now, this type of corporation, in some states that want to attract them, can be started and run tax free like a non profit,
if it's proven to do little to no harm to the environment. The taxes can still come at the federal level.
The point is, the non-profit and the corporation, have to be combined in such a way as to create a completely new corporate entity. This hybrid is the major part of the solution. This hybrid would also need to develop certain legal abilities, new markets, perhaps make these new hybrids more open modeled like open source is, in some areas, but more closed in others.
No idea should go unconsidered. Every idea must be considered. I just think the best ideas will be from the business law category. When governments institute policies, governments should discuss these policies with business law professionals.
Markets are fine, but it's 2007, we need a new idea of what a corporate model is, and we need new models. If corporate models were like cars, we are so far behind. Once we invent the eco-corporation, any corporation or new entrepreuer will be able classify their corporation, as an eco-corporation. Then with a specific set of laws, these corporations can be managed.
Most important you have to make it more fun, more profitable, and more free, to run an eco-corporation than to run a standard corporation. What if eco-corporations got some extra features?
What should some of those features be?
I'm convinced, due to knowledge about human nature, that the climate change problem will only be solved with market-driven solutions.
I don't think the government, or governments, can solve it without the private industry. Private industry is the only organizer of the masses and it must be utilized in every way on every level.
It must be cheaper to run a business in an environmentally friendly manner. It also must be cheapter to start a business that is dedicated to solving climate change.
I propose that we allow people to start small businesses, tax free, for 5 years, as long as that business is dedicated to the principles outlined, of reducing environmental harm. This is what worked for the internet, so many businesses moved to the net because theres no internet taxes. One way to bring business support is to simply remove taxes.
Are you telling me that Democrats and Republicans can't agree to cut taxes for this issue? If we want environment-conscious businesses, we need to cut taxes for environmentally conscious businesses. I think Tarrifs are another one of those old ideas from the last century. We are globalized now, and the elements of our system which are globalized, are tax laws, and business laws.
We need to update business laws so people can start corporations who's main goal is not simply profit in money, but also to advance social goals. If a business is started by law with the social agenda of being environment conscious and of preserving the environment, then it will be illegal for that business to go against the social agenda set forth through law.
So lawyers, who understand business law, need to team up with environmentalists, who need to team up with social activists, who need to term up with business and economics majors, and together they can come up with something similar to the GPL, or creative commons, only this would be a legal document and script for starting eco-corporations.
This eco-corp document should redefine corporation, into eco-corporation, and being eco-friendly should come before all else.
At the same time, by redefining what a corporation is and how it functions, it will give people the freedom to organize the market to solve climate change. I see this is a legal/technical problem of business law. The way it can be solved is through new corporate models, new classifications, new laws to manage corporations on the local level.
If anyone here is a lawyer and capable of understanding exactly the impact the GPL had on the open source movement, could something similar to the GPL be invented to assist the climate change movement? And is anyone interested in starting a project to do it?
Respond with your comments, this post is designed to advance discussion and promote new idea generation. New ideas are needed. Old ideas like tarrifs, and taxes, only make the government bigger but don't create the fundamental changes anymore than having the government build an OS would create the open source movement. So think bigger.
You have to be practical. Biofuels is a pragmatic and practical approach to solving this problem. You are not going to get anywhere with electric cars, or the hydrogen fuel cars. Biofuels actually are cleaner, not cleanest, but it's a step forward, and it's efficient.
Of course it has to be economically profitable, otherwise people would not support the idea. Of course the price of corn has to go up, otherwise no one would support it. Who would support a solution that is not profitable? We could have solar cars sure, but solar cars aren't profitable. We could build maglev trains all over the place, but maglev trains aren't as profitable.
So be realistic here, alternative energy is still alternative energy, it might not be clean energy, but you can't get to clean energy if you don't have alternative energy, or any flexibility.
Option 1 turn it into ethanol.
Option 2 turn it into corn syrup and put it in the drinking water.
You choose. Your car or your body.
Why do we need cheap low quality food?
Third world countries have more food, and higher quality food than we have. They have so much good food that they want to sell it to us. And we have a lot of cheap food, that we want to sell to them.
We have an over supply of food, why not use it to make ethanol? People don't really need to eat all that fructose and junkfood anyway. I look forward to the day when we can power our cars with coke and pepsi.
A black hole is just one of the many ways we might destroy the earth.
Face it, self destruction, and destroying the earth, is too profitable to stop.
In 100 years, when there are no more humans left, or just a few hundred thousand, this is when humans can talk about going into space.
Everyone knows humans arent supposed to make it off the planet. God says so.
Instead, learn to profit while we destroy ourselves and planet earth and forget about spacewars.
Correct, but it does not change the fact that corporations will weigh genetics in, and likely want information on your genetics for the same reason they'd want SAT scores.
There is a discussion on this topic at the huffington post
Read it and understand the topic a bit and then post a response.
Huffington Post Debate
OK, so the way to solve bigotry is to kill off all minorities and act like assholes.
The question is, do we want to pick an appearance in a lab, or not. I never mentioned anything about killing. I never mentioned anything about minorities either.
You never answered any of my questions, why do you care how our babies will look in the future? Why do you want to stand in the way of parents who want to have reproductive freedom?
No, I'm not FOR abortion, and I'm not for killing. You seem to not be capable of understanding the difference between positive and negative eugenics.
Negative eugenics, is a form of genocide, this is what happened during world war 2. I'm against negative eugenics as much as you are. Positive eugenics is something COMPLETELY different, it's simply deciding on the race of your baby in the lab, and activating the genes you want your baby to have activated.
Now tell me, what is wrong with giving parents the ability to all select blonde haired blue eyed babies? If that's what the parents of the world want, why should you stand in their way just because you want variety? If you want to have a child that is a minority, or gay, or anything else, no one would FORCE you to pay the extra money for a designer baby. The designer baby option, will be an option that parents will pay extra to take, so that they can select high intelligence, good looks (however they decide to define it), and good health.
Positive eugenics is simply encouraging people with good genes to have more babies, and better babies. What's wrong with having "better" and "healthier" babies? And why not give that option to anyone who can afford it? I admit, it would be boring if everyone looked the same, but it's not for me or you to decide. Parents should ultimately decide how the children of the future will look, I generally don't care about the aesthetics, or appearances of the babies of the future, I'm not concerned with that issue at all. I am concerned with the intelligence issue, I DO think we should encourage intelligent people to have more kids, I DO think we should slow population growth. I don't think it's wise to recklessly create lots and lots of kids, without any thought or consideration of the social impact these kids will have.
So I'm not saying anyone should be sterilized, and I'm not supporting abortion. I'm supporting better parenting, and positive growth.
If you say a world with transhumanism and designer babies is not worth living in, well guess what, your food is already genetically engineered and you've been eating it for a while, we've been genetically engineering crops, we've been doing it to horses, we did it to dogs, cats, etc. The main mistake humans have made is they have been breeding blind, basically they've been mating with whoever was attractive physically, the problem with this is, a lot of the most intelligent people are not going to be the most physically attractive, and so we end up with a lot of physically attractive yet stupid people, or a lot of ugly models.
So how can we breed better? Do you have ideas? You dislike negative eugenics? So do I, but liberal eugenics is simply mating better, and transhumanism is simply using our technology to speed up evolution. I don't see how either of these would be a bad thing as long as A), there is no violence done to any individual or group, and B) the parents have complete reproductive freedom.
To me it's an issue of reproductive freedom, and I side with freedom/liberty on this issue. You should try to understand the issue a bit better before you comment further on it, it has nothing to do with violence, we are talking about spermbanks, eggbanks, and genetic screening, we are talking about designer babies, and germline therapy, we are talking about vaccines, biotechnology and other treatments.
The result of this will simply be more liberty. Parents will be able to choose the race, height, intelligence, weight of their child. These influence the childs quality of life, and no one is harm
read it Neo Eugenics
You assume that people care about cultures and perspectives. You seem to think people care about other people. Newsflash, a lot of people don't give a fuck about other people, or animals, or nature, or the earth itself, or the species itself.
The species is more important. If abortion increases the survivability of the species, then you cannot say it's "wrong".
Aborting simply means, there will be less people, which means less aggression, which means less people to kill and die in wars.
War is the regulator of aggression. More people requires greater regulation, and unless you want to tackle aggression and outlaw bullying, having more people just means more bullys, whats the point? You'll have more people who hate you and others.
You'll have more people polluting.
Bill Gates is not Bill Gates because of autism, he's not even autistic. However if his parents don't like how his brain works, his parents have the right to do whatever because they created him.
What parent wants to give birth to a child that is doomed to live a miserable life, a life of torture? If a child is disabled, they are going to be born into a miserable life. Life is going to get harsher for people with disabilities in the future as the world becomes more competitive. If we can have babies born with high intelligence and no disability, why the hell would any parent choose for their kid to be born with down syndrome, or autism, or any disease?
Also, no one is saying wipe out anyone already born, genetic screening is called positive eugenics because it does not require you to have an abortion or wipe anyone out. It's simple, you can genetically engineer the fetus to be disease free while it's still developing. You simply choose which genes activate in the fetus.
Conformity may or may not be good for the species, the only thing I know is that we need to more intelligently select. What we are doing now is clearly not good for the species. If you are against abortion thats understandable, but why would you be against transhumanism or designer babies?
You want to argue that we need people who are different? Have you ever been different? have you ever thought about what happens to these different people? Are you an ordinary white male, middle class, etc? Are you straight?
Different people are outcasted, abused, and tortured by society. Society in general hates what is different. Society also in general, hates weakness. Now, people don't want to admit that the world is this way, but the world hates the disabled, the poor, the unintelligent, etc etc. Sure there would be different people to hate in the future, but why exactly would you advocate for having more disabled people, simply to promote this idea of a world which accepts difference when you know we don't live in that world? Because no country wants to give birth to a lot of people who are unintelligent, and if technology can guarentee every new birth will be intelligent, it's going to happen because the competition will force it to happen.
Do you want your kids to lose the competition for survival because you did not decide to give them the gene enhancement when they were a fetus? So now your ordinary kid will have to compete in a world where all these millions or billions of their competitors have photographic memories and high intelligence. Your kid will have to compete in a world of Einstiens and Gates, and what if your child is born with dylexia?
Do you see? The survival of your child is at stake and from the view of a parent it's ethical to give your child whatever edge you can afford. And if you cannot afford to give your child an edge or if you don't want your child to compete in the global competition for survival, why have children?
Society is not going to change. The best we can do is try and evolve intelligently as we can.
My problem is not with the principle, or the spirit of the bill, but the wording.
I don't think it's enforceable.
This bill needs to take into account what the result of it will be. I don't think it should be unconstitutional but I think it will cause a lot of changes, some negative, and we know it's going to raise medical expenses, and we know it's going to create black markets, and cause all sorts of problems in hiring.
You must admit that evolution is guided by selection, and why should we not cure ourselves using positive eugenics?
Liberal Eugenics/BioLibertarianism.
The problem is NEGATIVE EUGENICS, not POSITIVE EUGENICS. Positive Eugenics is simply selecting/mating intelleently, we can call it intelligent selection. It also includes screening fetuses in labs for diseases, and designer babies.
Then you have NEGATIVE EUGENICS, which is the abortion, and the sterilization and it gets more violent up to the point of genocides.
Positive Eugenics simply encourages intelligent people to have more kids than less intelligent people, resulting in more intelligent people. I don't see how this is wrong or even unnatural.
But let's debate it, lets debate positive eugenics and transhumanism. And if the only reason people are against it is because of the results of negative eugenics, well lets debate that too.
Better Babies
The problem with the bioconservative view is simple, it's not working.
It's not guarentee that biolibertarianism will work better, but it's more liberty/options than we have now.