See I don't think boycott is the way forward. I think the way forward is to get a government with some balls so that whenever any limited liability company does anything even slightly wrong they are utterly destroyed in the courts. We fine them sums that they will never be able to pay, and then use the money from asset stripping them to prop up pension funds and release all their patents, copyright etc.
As a limited company they have a responsibility to be perfect, and they would be if the economic incentive was there.
With answers like you gave I sometimes wonder if a better legal system wouldn't be to just toss a coin. At least then someone like me would get justice half the time.
I did like your comment about the law being the only leveller left. Last time I checked the laws were all bought and paid for, along with our politicians and civil servants, along with the best lawyer. Our judges vary between incompetant at best, corrupt and political at worst. Our militia, who under normal circumstances would be our last hope are a bunch of mindless hicks who wouldn't know liberty if it hit them in the face with a red hot golf club. Our police force only enforce the laws that their political overlords tell them to, who did I mention are bought and paid for? And to make matter worse fundamental design flaws in the system mean that larger entities are favoured over smaller ones because of their ability to use their greater cost absorbtion potential to extort money from people.
The system is broken, and people are too stupid to fix it because we have gone from living in a representative 'democracy' in which people were told by their betters what was right for them to a geniune democracy (mob rule) where every Tom, Dick and Harry's opinion counts no matter how fundamentally retarded they are. And where do Tom, Dick and Harry go for their opinions. Why the TV, and their favourite political party if they bother to vote. Not that voting makes any difference because just in case Tom, Dick and Harry get wise the system ensures that the small subset of parties likely to win an election are uniformly controlled by money interests. And I wouldn't mind, but it isn't even a conspiracy, it's just the natural evolution of a flawed system which makes the fundamental mistake of assuming that people without a clue will keep thier mouths shut and their backsides out of a polling booth.
You really want to know why people hate lawyers, judges and the police? It's because you have all become pawns, willing pawns, of a system which is out of control and which places the interests of abstract entities above that of an ordinary guy. And which is more, you have all be deluded into developing a hero complex which convinces you that your part of the system is fundamentally right and that if we could just tweak it and fix all the parts you think are broken then societies problems would go away. Well I'm afraid the truth of the matter is you are all useless puppets.
I'm not trying to take away from the good work that you are doing, I'm just pointing out that your belief that the system works in any way shape or form is a falsehood, told to you by people who I've no doubt really convinced themselves of it just as much as you are convinced of it. But it is a falsehood none the less.
Last I checked, you, me or anyone else has no 'right to a profit'. If current entertainment is so expensive to produce, perhaps that is because it is a monopoly and woefully inefficient. Monopolies set their prices at such that marginal cost equals marginal revenue, rather than at equilibrium price. That is, monopoly pricing is inherently unfair and usually bad for the rest of the economy.
It is irrelevant how much a product costs entertainment producers. If as an entertainer you want to make a profit, then sell a product that lots of people are prepared to pay for. Don't try to tell them what they can and cant do with the goods they have bought.
Copyright is an agreement between producers of culture and the rest of society. For a limited time, producers get a monopoly on the work they create, to encourage them to create. Producers of culture are going too far. Copyright should be slashed to a matter of a few years, and fair use fully restored. Measures which will prevent works entering the public domain should be illegal as part of the agreement, and the bar for the length of copyright should be set such that royalties will not a pension pay.
The energy imparted would be smaller if the bullet bounced. The momentum imparted would be more, but you are a very massive object compared with a bullet, so you only need recieve a small overal impulse to compensate for the change in momentum. Bouncing bullet do less damage because they impart less energy into the surface they hit, compared with bullets which become lodged, as a general rule.
You don't live in the UK, if you protect yourself here then there is a concept called 'reasonable force'. Unfortunately reasonable force is not reasonable. As far as I'm concerned if I'm going to stand up to a mugger the only safe state for that mugger to be in when I'm finished if either dead or paralysed. Otherwise they might get up again and harm me. That's reasonable force. Unfortunately the law disagrees with me.
Is it really so much to ask that when a criminal attacks a decent member of the community we treat a victim who defends himself as a hero instead of like the scum they just put down?
Nah the real problem is absence of the right to defend oneself, which gun control laws are just a small part of. If I defend myself against a mugger and they end up dead (and frankly if they are still breathing they are still a threat and I should be able to defend my self by beating them upside the head), then I will be prosecuted. I will probably be convicted too, even if said criminal had a record, or an addiction problem, or was long term unemployed.
Why is it that we don't have the concept that if there is impending danger at the time of an event the right of the victim to defend themselves overrides the criminal right to protection from harm, and if the criminal dies as a consequence, well thats just tough.
Well the difference is pretty clear there though. What your parents did was not wrong. What was wrong was that they were prevented from doing something by the state, when what they did did not do harm to others (unless others choose to harm themselves with it). Laws prohibiting the manufacture, distribution and possesion of drugs are silly and should be repealed. Laws which protect individuals property are not stupid. You have a right to own stuff, just as much as your parents had a right to make stuff.
You ever been to the UK? We have an excelent (if abused) welfare system. If someone comes up to you in this country and robs you, it's because they are one of the following:
1. Addicted to something. 2. Mentally 'ill'. 3. Are unemployed and have refused several jobs because they are beneath them, but aparently do not consider theft beneath them.
Of course if you try to get real justice (which you wont get through the courts I might add) and ensure this SoB doesn't repeat his actions, you will be prosecuted, because while police don't get a rats arse about protecting people from crime, they really hate it when they barge in on their monopoly on protecting people from crime.
The problem is that if you send a criminal the jail you can pretty near guarentee that they will never be safe to release because jails combine two factors.
1. They are dangerous. Criminals are taught to fear other criminals, and are taught that rules mean nothing because of the abuse they suffer from other criminals. They are also inherit the cynicism of other inmates and are lead to believe that there is nothing for them on the outside.
2. They come out better criminals. Those criminals that don't abuse them, train them. They are taught the right way to break into a house. So next time you aren't even likely to catch them.
If we are going to have prisons, which I agree we do need, then we need them to do two things.
1. Instill a fear of the people via their representative the state. Make it so criminals never want to act against the best interests of the people again. You can do that by withdrawing food for behaviour incongruent with the rules. The rules should include a requirement to do work while in prison. Prisoners should have to pay for their own meal and lodging while in prison by earning it through work.
2. Inmates should never interact. Prisoners should be allowed visitors, but never interaction with other inmates.
The 'lock em up' brigade don't seem to realise the system is broken. They want to punish them by looking the other way when an inmate is gang raped, which just messes up the person in question even further. Prisons should be about fixing people.
Depends, Deus Ex was (in my opinion) a highly mediocre FPS, but the story was so awsome that I 'play' it as often as I watch some of my favourite films. Story line is an area that games have traditionally been very much lacking, but as you say cutscenes are not the answer. You don't need fantastic cut scenes, you need a good story, that naturally lends itself to a long format (like RPG of FPS).
I think you got the GP point without realising it. Microsoft have a monopoly, and can retain it, at this price. If they raise prices they will weaken their monopoly. Having the monopoly is probably worth more to Microsoft medium and long term than retaining profitability short term. However shareholders will demand better short term performance again and again. The result being that Microsoft has to do what the EU tells it to do on account of being between a rock and a hard place. If it doesn't do what the EU says and just pays the fine, shareholders will cry blue murder. If it raises prices to offset the effects of the fine and keep shareholders happy, then it risks its monopoly position. If it does what the EU says, it risks it's monopoly, but will placate shareholders in the short term.
I think you have missed the point. If you spend 3 billion dollars mapping every cubic meter of NYC thats all well and good. If you then don't publish that data, there isn't a thing anyone can do about it. You can keep your data private. If you publish data then you have to convince people that handing you a monopoly on it's replication is a good thing. For the most part a free market capitalis theory of economics would suggest you deserve no protection. Let the market decide what your database is worth. However, it is recognised that protection of some ideas through limited monopoly can be beneficial to the economy by promoting production of the aforementioned.
So now the question becomes, do we want to encourage a 3 billion dollar database mapping NYC to within a few meters? Do we want to encourage phone directories? What about list of movies? Now clearly some of these are useful, and some of them are not. Clearly the market can decide that, so we need some market involvement. You don't have an inherent right to make a profit just because you happen to make a database.
All you questions ask about how business X or business Y can survive. That is completely irrelevant. If they are inefficient, they die. The free market will make sure of it if it is not over regulated. If you cant make a profit out of doing something then clearly not enough people want you to do it or you are doing it inefficiently, so thats tough on you.
But of course there are exceptions. Thats why we have a public sector. So when should the public sector be involved in something, when should we regulate? Well there is the obvious matters of law. There is also national security issues. And there are rights issues (health care, transport). Companies should be restrained so they act in the greater good through law where possible. The military and intelligence services should obviously be completely state run, and there are good arguements for having a public welfare system, health care system, utilities and transport. Then we come to the matter at hand, large projects. The private sector is bad at large projects which while beneficial to the wider public, offer no short term profit. Your database is an example of a large project. Not a very useful large project, but a large one. Large scale science is another example. The production of survey maps yet another. There all have inherent utility but suffer because the projects in question result in readily replicated material. Once the material is produced and distributed to one other person, it becomes worthless. So given that having maps is a good thing we have two options, we can either artificially drive up the price of maps from zero to something which an efficient company would find profitable, or we can nationalise the industry and have the private sector underwrite the cost.
Both options have their advantages. Artificially driving up the cost can be done through government by subsidies, or by sort term monopoly protection of some aspect of the end product, for example copying. In the case of protection from copying however the monopoly is a incentive to release the database. It makes no sense the make the monopoly permanent either, because you only need to offer enough incentive to get the information released and to the public, and because permanent monopolies are woefully inefficient. This has a number of implications. First in the digital age this means that your release must become public domain at some point. You must therefore provide one of two assurances. Either that the data is unemcumbered by copy protection, or that there is a mechanism which will release the material to the public after your monopoly protection is at an end.
Finally we come to what I think should be done about collections of facts. Gathering large collections of facts can be useful. However the market does a pretty good job most of the time. Phone books are a good example, ad revenue pays for the database because prominence in a phone book is worth something. The database you cite is worthless, and you deserve to go out of business for making it. I don't think there is any need for government involvement in this sector of the economy.
That's great, except that you almost always punish the wrong person. The bullies are socially smart. They pick on the kids when you are not looking. If you are always able to look then the environment is no comparison to school. When you are watching a more subtle tactic is employed, you goad the other kid into doing something stupid. Bullies will use whatever system you put in place to pick on other kids and then get them punished for it. You are better off using heuristics to punish the likely culprit. In my experience the vast majority of bullies are stupid.
You have completely missed the point. School is an environment where justice is impossible. You have to reward one group over another. The scenario you list is a classic example.
"I fixed the tripping issue by kicking someone's foot as hard as a could"
And if you had been caught doing this you would be punished. And that would be wrong. Given that you were clearly smart you should have been given pretty much a free run. Another kid picks on you, ends up beaten senseless, his fault for starting the fight.
Anyone who has read Ender's Game can follow Ender's logic exactly. If smart kids are allowed to exert supremacy over the stupid though arbritrary justice then smartness will once against become a valued trait. If we don't crush the resurgent stupid in this world before it is too late, we will enter another religion fuel dark age.
Ah, but selling off company assets can be handled by the private sector, you don't need government to do it, just to sanction that it should be done. You just turn it into a debt owed to the creditors, then to the shareholders. Then the assets are sold in the usual way.
Your system requires a new branch of government that would set 'fair prices'.
Yeah, but lets support geeks by not punishing them when the do this. The defacto assumption is that if a smart student is in a fight, the other person asked for it. Lets show no mercy to the average moron, and then our schools will be places where those members of society who will be useful are supported.
Ah I don't agree with more government involvement. The market does a fine job regulating price when it is allowed to (if there is health competition, no monopolies and no collusion). If you make it so that it is very inadvisable to price fix the shareholders will make sure no one does it. Massive fines and invest that in public research in the field if you don't like the corporate death penalty. Just don't let them get away with it with a tiny fine.
What I meant by this comment is make corporate punishment so severe that any illegal activity or potentially illegal activity will have the shareholders firing the board for fear of thier share value dropping drastically as the assets are sold off and distributed to them (after creditors).
What I meant by this comment is make corporate punishment so sever that any illegal activity or potentially illegal activity will have the shareholders firing the board for fear of thier share value dropping drastically ask the assets are sold off and distributed to them (after creditors).
"You're telling me that when *everybody*, every crack-addicted single mom and every set of end-times Evangelical parents are teaching their kids at home, those kids will be better educated?"
Well, if these parents did the governments job for them and kept them at home, the public schools would probably improve.
Why why why why why when these companies do crap like this don't we just abolish thier corporate charter, sell their assets to their competitors and realse their patents and copyrights into the public domain and abolish their trademarks? I'm getting very tired of hearing about large corporation X acting against the public intrest by breaking the law. Make it so that shareholders will punish them for breaking the law and a corporation will not break the law.
I would suggest that if everyone was taught that way, then everyone would want to talk about WoW... so conversations would be fine.
In all seriousness though, the assumption here is that the problem is with the geek. It is not. Geeks have well defined social structures just as complex (if not more so) as everyone else. Geeks are, contrary to popular opinion, social creatures. I mean the very example you listed is a social game. The problem is that in every society one culture is selected to be vilified at every level. In the US and Britain, it's the geek. Being smart is uncool, you all know the drill. In Japan being stupid will land you in the same position (probably part of the reason Japan has had such sucess turning itself around after WWII). What is needed is a way to manage culture so that those cultures that are negative get vilified (as is the case in Japan), and those that are positive are reinforced. This system is merely a stop gap solution because public schools are little more than places where geeks get beaten shitless day in day out. What is needed is a system where it is the ignorant, the cruel, the useless are punished, irrespective of who started it, whoes fault it is, etc. There can be no justice in school (because the burden of proof is so low), so we are better off just socially engineerig the system to reinforce positive traits.
Yeah the problem you describe is now very serious. What we need to do is to show kids that being smart is rewarded. Here is how I envision the system working. If there is an incident in school, we just assume that the smart kids were behaving apropriately. I mean no system of 'justice' actually works. In school it is the big kids who rule, in the 'real' world the rich rule. Why not set up our schools so that the individuals who win are the most useful?
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See I don't think boycott is the way forward. I think the way forward is to get a government with some balls so that whenever any limited liability company does anything even slightly wrong they are utterly destroyed in the courts. We fine them sums that they will never be able to pay, and then use the money from asset stripping them to prop up pension funds and release all their patents, copyright etc.
As a limited company they have a responsibility to be perfect, and they would be if the economic incentive was there.
With answers like you gave I sometimes wonder if a better legal system wouldn't be to just toss a coin. At least then someone like me would get justice half the time.
I did like your comment about the law being the only leveller left. Last time I checked the laws were all bought and paid for, along with our politicians and civil servants, along with the best lawyer. Our judges vary between incompetant at best, corrupt and political at worst. Our militia, who under normal circumstances would be our last hope are a bunch of mindless hicks who wouldn't know liberty if it hit them in the face with a red hot golf club. Our police force only enforce the laws that their political overlords tell them to, who did I mention are bought and paid for? And to make matter worse fundamental design flaws in the system mean that larger entities are favoured over smaller ones because of their ability to use their greater cost absorbtion potential to extort money from people.
The system is broken, and people are too stupid to fix it because we have gone from living in a representative 'democracy' in which people were told by their betters what was right for them to a geniune democracy (mob rule) where every Tom, Dick and Harry's opinion counts no matter how fundamentally retarded they are. And where do Tom, Dick and Harry go for their opinions. Why the TV, and their favourite political party if they bother to vote. Not that voting makes any difference because just in case Tom, Dick and Harry get wise the system ensures that the small subset of parties likely to win an election are uniformly controlled by money interests. And I wouldn't mind, but it isn't even a conspiracy, it's just the natural evolution of a flawed system which makes the fundamental mistake of assuming that people without a clue will keep thier mouths shut and their backsides out of a polling booth.
You really want to know why people hate lawyers, judges and the police? It's because you have all become pawns, willing pawns, of a system which is out of control and which places the interests of abstract entities above that of an ordinary guy. And which is more, you have all be deluded into developing a hero complex which convinces you that your part of the system is fundamentally right and that if we could just tweak it and fix all the parts you think are broken then societies problems would go away. Well I'm afraid the truth of the matter is you are all useless puppets.
I'm not trying to take away from the good work that you are doing, I'm just pointing out that your belief that the system works in any way shape or form is a falsehood, told to you by people who I've no doubt really convinced themselves of it just as much as you are convinced of it. But it is a falsehood none the less.
Blast a rape horn down the phone.
I stand in a town square and shout out the news. People appreciate it. Do I now have the right to charge people for it?
Last I checked, you, me or anyone else has no 'right to a profit'. If current entertainment is so expensive to produce, perhaps that is because it is a monopoly and woefully inefficient. Monopolies set their prices at such that marginal cost equals marginal revenue, rather than at equilibrium price. That is, monopoly pricing is inherently unfair and usually bad for the rest of the economy.
It is irrelevant how much a product costs entertainment producers. If as an entertainer you want to make a profit, then sell a product that lots of people are prepared to pay for. Don't try to tell them what they can and cant do with the goods they have bought.
Copyright is an agreement between producers of culture and the rest of society. For a limited time, producers get a monopoly on the work they create, to encourage them to create. Producers of culture are going too far. Copyright should be slashed to a matter of a few years, and fair use fully restored. Measures which will prevent works entering the public domain should be illegal as part of the agreement, and the bar for the length of copyright should be set such that royalties will not a pension pay.
The energy imparted would be smaller if the bullet bounced. The momentum imparted would be more, but you are a very massive object compared with a bullet, so you only need recieve a small overal impulse to compensate for the change in momentum. Bouncing bullet do less damage because they impart less energy into the surface they hit, compared with bullets which become lodged, as a general rule.
You don't live in the UK, if you protect yourself here then there is a concept called 'reasonable force'. Unfortunately reasonable force is not reasonable. As far as I'm concerned if I'm going to stand up to a mugger the only safe state for that mugger to be in when I'm finished if either dead or paralysed. Otherwise they might get up again and harm me. That's reasonable force. Unfortunately the law disagrees with me.
Is it really so much to ask that when a criminal attacks a decent member of the community we treat a victim who defends himself as a hero instead of like the scum they just put down?
Nah the real problem is absence of the right to defend oneself, which gun control laws are just a small part of. If I defend myself against a mugger and they end up dead (and frankly if they are still breathing they are still a threat and I should be able to defend my self by beating them upside the head), then I will be prosecuted. I will probably be convicted too, even if said criminal had a record, or an addiction problem, or was long term unemployed.
Why is it that we don't have the concept that if there is impending danger at the time of an event the right of the victim to defend themselves overrides the criminal right to protection from harm, and if the criminal dies as a consequence, well thats just tough.
Well the difference is pretty clear there though. What your parents did was not wrong. What was wrong was that they were prevented from doing something by the state, when what they did did not do harm to others (unless others choose to harm themselves with it). Laws prohibiting the manufacture, distribution and possesion of drugs are silly and should be repealed. Laws which protect individuals property are not stupid. You have a right to own stuff, just as much as your parents had a right to make stuff.
You ever been to the UK? We have an excelent (if abused) welfare system. If someone comes up to you in this country and robs you, it's because they are one of the following:
1. Addicted to something.
2. Mentally 'ill'.
3. Are unemployed and have refused several jobs because they are beneath them, but aparently do not consider theft beneath them.
Of course if you try to get real justice (which you wont get through the courts I might add) and ensure this SoB doesn't repeat his actions, you will be prosecuted, because while police don't get a rats arse about protecting people from crime, they really hate it when they barge in on their monopoly on protecting people from crime.
The problem is that if you send a criminal the jail you can pretty near guarentee that they will never be safe to release because jails combine two factors.
1. They are dangerous. Criminals are taught to fear other criminals, and are taught that rules mean nothing because of the abuse they suffer from other criminals. They are also inherit the cynicism of other inmates and are lead to believe that there is nothing for them on the outside.
2. They come out better criminals. Those criminals that don't abuse them, train them. They are taught the right way to break into a house. So next time you aren't even likely to catch them.
If we are going to have prisons, which I agree we do need, then we need them to do two things.
1. Instill a fear of the people via their representative the state. Make it so criminals never want to act against the best interests of the people again. You can do that by withdrawing food for behaviour incongruent with the rules. The rules should include a requirement to do work while in prison. Prisoners should have to pay for their own meal and lodging while in prison by earning it through work.
2. Inmates should never interact. Prisoners should be allowed visitors, but never interaction with other inmates.
The 'lock em up' brigade don't seem to realise the system is broken. They want to punish them by looking the other way when an inmate is gang raped, which just messes up the person in question even further. Prisons should be about fixing people.
Depends, Deus Ex was (in my opinion) a highly mediocre FPS, but the story was so awsome that I 'play' it as often as I watch some of my favourite films. Story line is an area that games have traditionally been very much lacking, but as you say cutscenes are not the answer. You don't need fantastic cut scenes, you need a good story, that naturally lends itself to a long format (like RPG of FPS).
I think you got the GP point without realising it. Microsoft have a monopoly, and can retain it, at this price. If they raise prices they will weaken their monopoly. Having the monopoly is probably worth more to Microsoft medium and long term than retaining profitability short term. However shareholders will demand better short term performance again and again. The result being that Microsoft has to do what the EU tells it to do on account of being between a rock and a hard place. If it doesn't do what the EU says and just pays the fine, shareholders will cry blue murder. If it raises prices to offset the effects of the fine and keep shareholders happy, then it risks its monopoly position. If it does what the EU says, it risks it's monopoly, but will placate shareholders in the short term.
I think you have missed the point. If you spend 3 billion dollars mapping every cubic meter of NYC thats all well and good. If you then don't publish that data, there isn't a thing anyone can do about it. You can keep your data private. If you publish data then you have to convince people that handing you a monopoly on it's replication is a good thing. For the most part a free market capitalis theory of economics would suggest you deserve no protection. Let the market decide what your database is worth. However, it is recognised that protection of some ideas through limited monopoly can be beneficial to the economy by promoting production of the aforementioned.
So now the question becomes, do we want to encourage a 3 billion dollar database mapping NYC to within a few meters? Do we want to encourage phone directories? What about list of movies? Now clearly some of these are useful, and some of them are not. Clearly the market can decide that, so we need some market involvement. You don't have an inherent right to make a profit just because you happen to make a database.
All you questions ask about how business X or business Y can survive. That is completely irrelevant. If they are inefficient, they die. The free market will make sure of it if it is not over regulated. If you cant make a profit out of doing something then clearly not enough people want you to do it or you are doing it inefficiently, so thats tough on you.
But of course there are exceptions. Thats why we have a public sector. So when should the public sector be involved in something, when should we regulate? Well there is the obvious matters of law. There is also national security issues. And there are rights issues (health care, transport). Companies should be restrained so they act in the greater good through law where possible. The military and intelligence services should obviously be completely state run, and there are good arguements for having a public welfare system, health care system, utilities and transport. Then we come to the matter at hand, large projects. The private sector is bad at large projects which while beneficial to the wider public, offer no short term profit. Your database is an example of a large project. Not a very useful large project, but a large one. Large scale science is another example. The production of survey maps yet another. There all have inherent utility but suffer because the projects in question result in readily replicated material. Once the material is produced and distributed to one other person, it becomes worthless. So given that having maps is a good thing we have two options, we can either artificially drive up the price of maps from zero to something which an efficient company would find profitable, or we can nationalise the industry and have the private sector underwrite the cost.
Both options have their advantages. Artificially driving up the cost can be done through government by subsidies, or by sort term monopoly protection of some aspect of the end product, for example copying. In the case of protection from copying however the monopoly is a incentive to release the database. It makes no sense the make the monopoly permanent either, because you only need to offer enough incentive to get the information released and to the public, and because permanent monopolies are woefully inefficient. This has a number of implications. First in the digital age this means that your release must become public domain at some point. You must therefore provide one of two assurances. Either that the data is unemcumbered by copy protection, or that there is a mechanism which will release the material to the public after your monopoly protection is at an end.
Finally we come to what I think should be done about collections of facts. Gathering large collections of facts can be useful. However the market does a pretty good job most of the time. Phone books are a good example, ad revenue pays for the database because prominence in a phone book is worth something. The database you cite is worthless, and you deserve to go out of business for making it. I don't think there is any need for government involvement in this sector of the economy.
That's great, except that you almost always punish the wrong person. The bullies are socially smart. They pick on the kids when you are not looking. If you are always able to look then the environment is no comparison to school. When you are watching a more subtle tactic is employed, you goad the other kid into doing something stupid. Bullies will use whatever system you put in place to pick on other kids and then get them punished for it. You are better off using heuristics to punish the likely culprit. In my experience the vast majority of bullies are stupid.
You have completely missed the point. School is an environment where justice is impossible. You have to reward one group over another. The scenario you list is a classic example.
"I fixed the tripping issue by kicking someone's foot as hard as a could"
And if you had been caught doing this you would be punished. And that would be wrong. Given that you were clearly smart you should have been given pretty much a free run. Another kid picks on you, ends up beaten senseless, his fault for starting the fight.
Anyone who has read Ender's Game can follow Ender's logic exactly. If smart kids are allowed to exert supremacy over the stupid though arbritrary justice then smartness will once against become a valued trait. If we don't crush the resurgent stupid in this world before it is too late, we will enter another religion fuel dark age.
Ah, but selling off company assets can be handled by the private sector, you don't need government to do it, just to sanction that it should be done. You just turn it into a debt owed to the creditors, then to the shareholders. Then the assets are sold in the usual way.
Your system requires a new branch of government that would set 'fair prices'.
Yeah, but lets support geeks by not punishing them when the do this. The defacto assumption is that if a smart student is in a fight, the other person asked for it. Lets show no mercy to the average moron, and then our schools will be places where those members of society who will be useful are supported.
Ah I don't agree with more government involvement. The market does a fine job regulating price when it is allowed to (if there is health competition, no monopolies and no collusion). If you make it so that it is very inadvisable to price fix the shareholders will make sure no one does it. Massive fines and invest that in public research in the field if you don't like the corporate death penalty. Just don't let them get away with it with a tiny fine.
What I meant by this comment is make corporate punishment so severe that any illegal activity or potentially illegal activity will have the shareholders firing the board for fear of thier share value dropping drastically as the assets are sold off and distributed to them (after creditors).
What I meant by this comment is make corporate punishment so sever that any illegal activity or potentially illegal activity will have the shareholders firing the board for fear of thier share value dropping drastically ask the assets are sold off and distributed to them (after creditors).
"You're telling me that when *everybody*, every crack-addicted single mom and every set of end-times Evangelical parents are teaching their kids at home, those kids will be better educated?"
Well, if these parents did the governments job for them and kept them at home, the public schools would probably improve.
Why why why why why when these companies do crap like this don't we just abolish thier corporate charter, sell their assets to their competitors and realse their patents and copyrights into the public domain and abolish their trademarks? I'm getting very tired of hearing about large corporation X acting against the public intrest by breaking the law. Make it so that shareholders will punish them for breaking the law and a corporation will not break the law.
I would suggest that if everyone was taught that way, then everyone would want to talk about WoW... so conversations would be fine.
In all seriousness though, the assumption here is that the problem is with the geek. It is not. Geeks have well defined social structures just as complex (if not more so) as everyone else. Geeks are, contrary to popular opinion, social creatures. I mean the very example you listed is a social game. The problem is that in every society one culture is selected to be vilified at every level. In the US and Britain, it's the geek. Being smart is uncool, you all know the drill. In Japan being stupid will land you in the same position (probably part of the reason Japan has had such sucess turning itself around after WWII). What is needed is a way to manage culture so that those cultures that are negative get vilified (as is the case in Japan), and those that are positive are reinforced. This system is merely a stop gap solution because public schools are little more than places where geeks get beaten shitless day in day out. What is needed is a system where it is the ignorant, the cruel, the useless are punished, irrespective of who started it, whoes fault it is, etc. There can be no justice in school (because the burden of proof is so low), so we are better off just socially engineerig the system to reinforce positive traits.
Yeah the problem you describe is now very serious. What we need to do is to show kids that being smart is rewarded. Here is how I envision the system working. If there is an incident in school, we just assume that the smart kids were behaving apropriately. I mean no system of 'justice' actually works. In school it is the big kids who rule, in the 'real' world the rich rule. Why not set up our schools so that the individuals who win are the most useful?