It's impossible that EVERYONE will agree on anything.
Yep. That's life.
A socialised education system benefits the vast majority of the people, but of course there are a few grumpy ones who want to be different for some reason. Either they don't want to be educated, or they are so rich that can afford to educate themselves and don't want to contribute to the rest.
I fail to see the problem here. If the vast majority likes a socialized education system, let them finance this system and use it. If somebody doesn't like this system, fine - don't make him pay and don't let him use the system. And if it's only "a few people" who don't want socialized education, their money won't make a difference. So, everyone's happy!
But THEY LIKE socialised roads and police force, don't they?
This doesn't follow from anywhere. They may or may not like it. But again, if they like it, let them finance it and use it. If they don't like it, don't make them pay and don't let them use it. It's that simple. If it's too much hassle to prevent free-riding, so what. I too cannot prevent people from using the road in front of my house that I have cleaned from ice, but I'm fine with it, even if they haven't paid for this work.
So, it the majority decides your taxes will be used for socialised education, then pay up, use the services you're entitled to, or else pack your bags and bye bye.
Sometimes it's cheaper to pay a regular robber than to move. However, a robber remains a robber, even if the laws say that this kind of robbery is OK. So no, buddy, I won't move, but I will call him a robber and will be generally fine if he just admits being one.
That being said, yes, life isn't fair, but we as human beings have the abililty to make it so, within limits, for each other
You're absolutely right! However, that doesn't grant you or an arbitrary group of people, however large it is, to impose their definition of fairness on other people under the threat of harm. I can and do help others from what I have, but it's always my choice who and how to help. I don't like being robbed to help some poor soul; that's not the proper way to request help or offer cooperation. Ethically, you cannot do charity using money gotten from other people without their consent.
Of course, there are always the greedy, selfish scumbags that say "Fuck you, I've got mine"
This is only natural thing to say to a robber. I have other, much friendlier and helpful words for people politely asking for help and/or offering mutually beneficial voluntary cooperation.
It's funny how many people come to this exact conclusion without bothering to properly understand my argument.
What I actually mean is that you are free to make it "better" for everyone as long as EVERYONE involved (not the mythical "society") agrees that what you do is indeed better and finances it voluntarily.
Let me translate... "YOU have no rights to anything, life is unfair. However, I have things and have the RIGHT to a law that protects that stuff because life is supposed to be fair - to me."
This is not an adequate translation, I meant nothing of the sort. But it must be my fault since the phrase "life is unfair" and the fairness itself can be understood very differently. The most basic thing I am trying to convey is that the notion of "fairness" or rights must be uniform, be it for two people or for a whole country.
If life isn't fair, and you're okay with that, would you whine if I stole your car?
To continue the explanation using your example, it wouldn't be fair if somebody stole my car and give it to some disadvantaged fellow who for some unfortunate reason has no car. But if you agree that it woudn't be fair, it must be equally unfair to you if government did similar things, albeit on a larger scale.
There's also another take on fairness. You know that not all men are equally attractive. But everyone wants himself an attractive woman - or, to be more precise, a woman who earns no less than certain mark by his own standard of attractiveness, whatever it is. However, not everyone is able to get himself such a woman. Should government interfere here and force some attractive woman to marry you because you aren't able to attract her on your own? Do you have a right (entitlement) to the woman of your dream? After all, why one man gets all women he wants and some other cannot get anyone, it's unfair!
Why do you have the right to demand my tax money be spent on police just to enforce the illusion of fairness in some situations?
I have no such right, though the laws of the state give me such an opportunity (the real rights are very few, are above the laws and can only be expressed through laws, not established using them). There's no illusion of fairness - it's either fair or not. Robbery is still robbery, whether or not there is police (and whether or not some forms of robbery are allowed by the laws). As for the police, I'm not against it as such and ready to co-finance it voluntarily from my own money; I even don't object to the government being the default, opt-out provider of these services - but unfortunately, government wants to be their only and compulsory provider in the sense that I cannot direct my funds to some other provider if I don't like how the default one works. I can only fund some private services in addition to compulsory financing of government services.
Lucky for you the point of government and society is to make life more fair.
Taxation is a means by which to force people to purchase services
And this is robbery.
from which they will personally benefit, but which only make sense if everyone purchases these services too
Ah, you speaking about so called free riders. But I'm OK with free riders. For example, if I remove ice from the road nead my house, other people will benefit from it without having paid for it, but it's alright, because I did it for myself.
Robbery is taking things from people under the threat of harm period. It doesn't matter if the robber returns some money taken from me in the form of some service that "we" (that means "you and the like-minded people") take for granted, but that _I_ didn't request at all or at least from this provider, at this moment, at this price and quality and in this scope.
People chipping in together is a perfectly good way to achieve common goals - but only when the financing is voluntary and the goal is shared by every person in the group. Otherwise it is a glorified robbery.
Which is a completely bollocks idea, if you ask me. Ultimately, if we can send more people to college, our society as a whole will improve. How many people end up in crime because they either didn't have the resources to, or weren't encouraged by peers, family, and so on? I think if you do the math, the "pockets of others" will be more taxed now than if we were to be able to send a lot more people to college.
What you describe here is similar to some kind of implicit racket. "You'd better pay them, or else." From the utilitarian point of view, sometimes it's indeed cheaper overall to pay the (potential) criminal than deal with the problem afterwards using law enforcement. That doesn't make said (potential) criminal ENTITLED to payment. See what I mean? It's an ethical take on the issue.
Not to mention we're h-u-m-a-n. Most of us have compassion and empathy with others. Live may not be fair and perhaps it never will be, but at the very least we can try to make it/more/ fair.
Of course we are and we can. But it's always the your own personal decision to do that. Ethically, you cannot take money from others under the threat of a gun and do some good deeds using that money.
The thing I protest against here is the sense of entitlement itself. It's one thing to say "I like when foo and bar are socialized and paid from the pockets of all people whether or not they actually need them." It's completely another thing to presume that you somehow entitled to foo and bar. No, you're NOT, however much you like them. You can enjoy them since this is the way things are set up at the moment, but these aren't your rights.
Taxes are robbery, yes it's that simple. When you're taking money from another people under the threat of violence and use it to the end of your choice (however noble this end is in your opinion,) you're committing robbery. And it's precisely what state does with taxes. It's directly equivalent to you taking money from people on the street threatening them with your gun to help someone in need. The society-wide scale of this act doesn't change its essense.
What I essentially want to say is this: I have no problem with people who support robbery and honestly admit it. I do have a problem with pretending that robbery is not what it is.
Moreover, you cite some noble goals that you believe are achieved by socialism (legalized statewide robbery.) Other people may have different noble goals or prefer different ways to achieve the same set of goals. Therefore you cannot speak for the whole society/nation, only for yourself and for people that share your opinion. So it isn't "society" whose needs you discuss, just "you and the like-minded people."
The specifics, namely the necessity, means and scope of financing military, police, road and transport, agriculture etc. are discussable. However, this is a very long and somewhat separate topic, which it really makes sense to discuss only with people who have accepted the fundamental points of ethical and logical nature stated above.
Having some disadvantage, such as no family with the resources to send you to college, doesn't mean you are somehow entitled to be compensated for that disadvantage from the pockets of other people. Life is not meant to be fair, live with it. You CAN get some compensation if somebody chooses to do it for you as a gift or privilege, and that's perfectly fine - you just have no RIGHTS to that effect.
The notion that somebody can prohibit me from installing software I bought on hardware I also bought is ridiculous. This is only possible due to overreaching scope of the government-granted artificial monopoly that is copyright. Therefore copyright should be limited at least in the following way:
- Copyright owner may not prohibit and/or limit any actions with a lawfully acquired copy of a copyrighted work whose intention is not to increase the number of users of the work beyond the number that the license was given for. Any license provisions aiming to establish such prohibitions and/or limitations are null and void.
In public toilets (in malls, cafes etc.), there are wastebaskets for used toilet paper. Some even have a sign inside that reads "Please do not flush toilet paper, use the bin provided. Thank you for your understanding!". Ostensibly, they want to prevent sewer clogging.
As a Russian, I don't like the current regime myself, but what you describe has very little to do with democracy. And Russian don't exactly have free pass to America, either.
from taking a well earned portion of their economy
WTF is it supposed to mean? It's not "the economy of Russian Government," whatever that means. It's a private corporation owned by, well, its owners - the only ones who have earned something in this context.
IMHO it's not that straightforward. OK you've learned the lesson from some memory and incorporated it in your behavior - do you really need the memory itself now? The answer is not obvious to me.
It definitely costs money to try out even free software - just not in license costs. And SoftMaker Office has a trial version (though unlimited only for 7 days.) And if you consider a wide-scale deployment, I'm sure SoftMaker will be happy to offer you full version for longer evaluation.
IMHO the smartest overall migration strategy for productivity software would be to divide users into categories by tasks they perform and compatibility level they require, then provide each category of users with the software that is just enough for them. For example, "power users" that require a lot of features, 100% compatibility and high productivity will use MS Office, and for "light users" OO.o will suffice. The downside to this is that you have to perform the study (for non-zero cost) and then support different office suites, but monetary benefits may outweigh the costs anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.naturephoto-cz.com/photos/birds/great-tit-3066.jpg
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http://www.tailored.com.au/uploaded_images/ass-758565.jpg
It's impossible that EVERYONE will agree on anything.
Yep. That's life.
A socialised education system benefits the vast majority of the people, but of course there are a few grumpy ones who want to be different for some reason. Either they don't want to be educated, or they are so rich that can afford to educate themselves and don't want to contribute to the rest.
I fail to see the problem here. If the vast majority likes a socialized education system, let them finance this system and use it. If somebody doesn't like this system, fine - don't make him pay and don't let him use the system. And if it's only "a few people" who don't want socialized education, their money won't make a difference. So, everyone's happy!
But THEY LIKE socialised roads and police force, don't they?
This doesn't follow from anywhere. They may or may not like it. But again, if they like it, let them finance it and use it. If they don't like it, don't make them pay and don't let them use it. It's that simple. If it's too much hassle to prevent free-riding, so what. I too cannot prevent people from using the road in front of my house that I have cleaned from ice, but I'm fine with it, even if they haven't paid for this work.
So, it the majority decides your taxes will be used for socialised education, then pay up, use the services you're entitled to, or else pack your bags and bye bye.
Sometimes it's cheaper to pay a regular robber than to move. However, a robber remains a robber, even if the laws say that this kind of robbery is OK. So no, buddy, I won't move, but I will call him a robber and will be generally fine if he just admits being one.
That being said, yes, life isn't fair, but we as human beings have the abililty to make it so, within limits, for each other
You're absolutely right! However, that doesn't grant you or an arbitrary group of people, however large it is, to impose their definition of fairness on other people under the threat of harm. I can and do help others from what I have, but it's always my choice who and how to help. I don't like being robbed to help some poor soul; that's not the proper way to request help or offer cooperation. Ethically, you cannot do charity using money gotten from other people without their consent.
Of course, there are always the greedy, selfish scumbags that say "Fuck you, I've got mine"
This is only natural thing to say to a robber. I have other, much friendlier and helpful words for people politely asking for help and/or offering mutually beneficial voluntary cooperation.
Yeah, let's quit making it better for everyone.
It's funny how many people come to this exact conclusion without bothering to properly understand my argument.
What I actually mean is that you are free to make it "better" for everyone as long as EVERYONE involved (not the mythical "society") agrees that what you do is indeed better and finances it voluntarily.
Let me translate... "YOU have no rights to anything, life is unfair. However, I have things and have the RIGHT to a law that protects that stuff because life is supposed to be fair - to me."
This is not an adequate translation, I meant nothing of the sort. But it must be my fault since the phrase "life is unfair" and the fairness itself can be understood very differently. The most basic thing I am trying to convey is that the notion of "fairness" or rights must be uniform, be it for two people or for a whole country.
If life isn't fair, and you're okay with that, would you whine if I stole your car?
To continue the explanation using your example, it wouldn't be fair if somebody stole my car and give it to some disadvantaged fellow who for some unfortunate reason has no car. But if you agree that it woudn't be fair, it must be equally unfair to you if government did similar things, albeit on a larger scale.
There's also another take on fairness. You know that not all men are equally attractive. But everyone wants himself an attractive woman - or, to be more precise, a woman who earns no less than certain mark by his own standard of attractiveness, whatever it is. However, not everyone is able to get himself such a woman. Should government interfere here and force some attractive woman to marry you because you aren't able to attract her on your own? Do you have a right (entitlement) to the woman of your dream? After all, why one man gets all women he wants and some other cannot get anyone, it's unfair!
Why do you have the right to demand my tax money be spent on police just to enforce the illusion of fairness in some situations?
I have no such right, though the laws of the state give me such an opportunity (the real rights are very few, are above the laws and can only be expressed through laws, not established using them). There's no illusion of fairness - it's either fair or not. Robbery is still robbery, whether or not there is police (and whether or not some forms of robbery are allowed by the laws). As for the police, I'm not against it as such and ready to co-finance it voluntarily from my own money; I even don't object to the government being the default, opt-out provider of these services - but unfortunately, government wants to be their only and compulsory provider in the sense that I cannot direct my funds to some other provider if I don't like how the default one works. I can only fund some private services in addition to compulsory financing of government services.
Lucky for you the point of government and society is to make life more fair.
Blessed is he who believes.
Now shut up and pitch in your share.
No need to be so aggressive.
Taxation is a means by which to force people to purchase services
And this is robbery.
from which they will personally benefit, but which only make sense if everyone purchases these services too
Ah, you speaking about so called free riders. But I'm OK with free riders. For example, if I remove ice from the road nead my house, other people will benefit from it without having paid for it, but it's alright, because I did it for myself.
Robbery is taking things from people under the threat of harm period. It doesn't matter if the robber returns some money taken from me in the form of some service that "we" (that means "you and the like-minded people") take for granted, but that _I_ didn't request at all or at least from this provider, at this moment, at this price and quality and in this scope.
People chipping in together is a perfectly good way to achieve common goals - but only when the financing is voluntary and the goal is shared by every person in the group. Otherwise it is a glorified robbery.
Which is a completely bollocks idea, if you ask me. Ultimately, if we can send more people to college, our society as a whole will improve. How many people end up in crime because they either didn't have the resources to, or weren't encouraged by peers, family, and so on? I think if you do the math, the "pockets of others" will be more taxed now than if we were to be able to send a lot more people to college.
What you describe here is similar to some kind of implicit racket. "You'd better pay them, or else." From the utilitarian point of view, sometimes it's indeed cheaper overall to pay the (potential) criminal than deal with the problem afterwards using law enforcement. That doesn't make said (potential) criminal ENTITLED to payment. See what I mean? It's an ethical take on the issue.
Not to mention we're h-u-m-a-n. Most of us have compassion and empathy with others. Live may not be fair and perhaps it never will be, but at the very least we can try to make it /more/ fair.
Of course we are and we can. But it's always the your own personal decision to do that. Ethically, you cannot take money from others under the threat of a gun and do some good deeds using that money.
The thing I protest against here is the sense of entitlement itself. It's one thing to say "I like when foo and bar are socialized and paid from the pockets of all people whether or not they actually need them." It's completely another thing to presume that you somehow entitled to foo and bar. No, you're NOT, however much you like them. You can enjoy them since this is the way things are set up at the moment, but these aren't your rights.
Taxes are robbery, yes it's that simple. When you're taking money from another people under the threat of violence and use it to the end of your choice (however noble this end is in your opinion,) you're committing robbery. And it's precisely what state does with taxes. It's directly equivalent to you taking money from people on the street threatening them with your gun to help someone in need. The society-wide scale of this act doesn't change its essense.
What I essentially want to say is this: I have no problem with people who support robbery and honestly admit it. I do have a problem with pretending that robbery is not what it is.
Moreover, you cite some noble goals that you believe are achieved by socialism (legalized statewide robbery.) Other people may have different noble goals or prefer different ways to achieve the same set of goals. Therefore you cannot speak for the whole society/nation, only for yourself and for people that share your opinion. So it isn't "society" whose needs you discuss, just "you and the like-minded people."
The specifics, namely the necessity, means and scope of financing military, police, road and transport, agriculture etc. are discussable. However, this is a very long and somewhat separate topic, which it really makes sense to discuss only with people who have accepted the fundamental points of ethical and logical nature stated above.
Having some disadvantage, such as no family with the resources to send you to college, doesn't mean you are somehow entitled to be compensated for that disadvantage from the pockets of other people. Life is not meant to be fair, live with it. You CAN get some compensation if somebody chooses to do it for you as a gift or privilege, and that's perfectly fine - you just have no RIGHTS to that effect.
The notion that somebody can prohibit me from installing software I bought on hardware I also bought is ridiculous. This is only possible due to overreaching scope of the government-granted artificial monopoly that is copyright. Therefore copyright should be limited at least in the following way:
- Copyright owner may not prohibit and/or limit any actions with a lawfully acquired copy of a copyrighted work whose intention is not to increase the number of users of the work beyond the number that the license was given for. Any license provisions aiming to establish such prohibitions and/or limitations are null and void.
In public toilets (in malls, cafes etc.), there are wastebaskets for used toilet paper. Some even have a sign inside that reads "Please do not flush toilet paper, use the bin provided. Thank you for your understanding!". Ostensibly, they want to prevent sewer clogging.
Just wonder how much you would ask now for your AT if you were to sell it.
Hehe, I had exactly the same config. Upgraded to Win 95 OSR2, worked surprisingly well for me as a production PC with Word 97 till 2000.
Well, I've read the published paper, and I still don't have a clue what the answer is.
That's steganography at work! The answer is hidden.
As a Russian, I don't like the current regime myself, but what you describe has very little to do with democracy. And Russian don't exactly have free pass to America, either.
from taking a well earned portion of their economy
WTF is it supposed to mean? It's not "the economy of Russian Government," whatever that means. It's a private corporation owned by, well, its owners - the only ones who have earned something in this context.
Thank you, as a Russian, I had a good laugh at that.
Nobody in Russia has had European democracy, so your "any more" is out of place.
" " (from the original article) is free/libre software, not gratis or open source software.
IMHO it's not that straightforward. OK you've learned the lesson from some memory and incorporated it in your behavior - do you really need the memory itself now? The answer is not obvious to me.
Why, he just believes that underfunding governments is an ethical thing to do.
It definitely costs money to try out even free software - just not in license costs. And SoftMaker Office has a trial version (though unlimited only for 7 days.) And if you consider a wide-scale deployment, I'm sure SoftMaker will be happy to offer you full version for longer evaluation.
IMHO the smartest overall migration strategy for productivity software would be to divide users into categories by tasks they perform and compatibility level they require, then provide each category of users with the software that is just enough for them. For example, "power users" that require a lot of features, 100% compatibility and high productivity will use MS Office, and for "light users" OO.o will suffice. The downside to this is that you have to perform the study (for non-zero cost) and then support different office suites, but monetary benefits may outweigh the costs anyway.
Are there kangaroos walking on the streets of Vienna, AUSTRIA?
Ah, got it, so you missed the bubbles. Yeah, that is more or less fixed now.
No.