Not very well, but then it really hasn't had a chance. Most of Africa doesn't have a free market economy. In fact, most of Africa doesn't even have much of a public sector either. And if they don't build it themselves they never will. Giving vacinations might help in the short term, but cold hard restructuring of thier economies is what is needed if they are to get themselves out of the rut they are in. Of course none of that is going to count for anything unless we open up our trade with them and provision them with a level playing field by reigning in our large corporations, of which Microsoft is one such offender. The world isn't as simple as you think, you cant just vacinate Africans and think that will solve anything. You have to stop with the protectionist, anti-outsourcing bullshit and make our companies play fair, so that Africans can vacinate Africans.
No no no, that patent is invalid, to make it valid it should read:
"A Method For Comparing Hypocritical Actions Performed By Humans To Hypothetical Actions Performed By Articulate, Similarly Colored Kitchenware ON A COMPUTER..."
However, the problem most feminists fail to appreciate is that Both of these researchers are right when they point out how circumstances disadvantage women and wrong when they discount the research going the other way. The shakey dismissal that Pinker offers about discrimination in departments is clearly refuted by Spelke. The shakey dismissal of social or motivational factors by Spelke is in contrast to the strong evidence presented by Pinker. Women are in short disadvantaged across the board on controllable factors. Where it is pretty clear that they are not disadvantaged is in ability. There are clearly plenty of women with the ability to do science. The number of factors needed to do science are such that although the ability of men in solving mathematical problems is considerable at the high end of the spectrum, I seriously doubt it is the determining factor.
What is needed is a coherent approach to deal with the no-biological factors, because as the studies of male and female aptitude show, science is suffering at the moment because by being predominantly male it is over using certain (important trait) on mean. As a physicist when I look at these studies my thoughts are "we are not making best use of those talents that are available by having such a small number of women involved".
I'm not sure what you mean by a "reductionist, deterministic heritage". Reductionism is pretty much science. We can change lots of things, but we cant change the fact that we are searching for overarching explanations for varied phenomina. Unless you mean scientific reductionism, which is also a cornerstone of the scientific method. We cant change what science is to get more women involved, we can change how we do it.
I'm interested because I like to keep track of what is being done to get applications for physics degrees up. Because discrimination on gender is illegal in my country you cant use affirmative action to get more applications from women. What you can do is have a recruitment drive, try to change the course to make it more appealing to women, try to change the environment, etc. The problem here is that it is okay to say on the one hand "Please for the love of fresh fruit apply to our course" to women, and to try to make the course more inclusive. What is not okay if taking inferior candidates on from one group to try to redress so percieved imbalance in numbers. What we should be doing is taking the number of applicants, looking at the number of admittants and if the ratio of men to women in each group is off from eachother serious question as to why.
Saving someone from TB is good. Saving someone from TB while slowing the US economy isn't. I'm not an American, but I do recognise that America is the powerhouse that drives the world economy (along with other Western States). You slow down those economies, you indirectly kill millions. I wish it were as simple as you seem to think it is. I'm afraid it is not.
Erm, John 'Anaconda' Rockefeller? I think in real terms he is still number one, at least that was the impression I got. Either way, great philanthropy does not make up for shoddy business practices. Microsofts monopoly abuse has had serious consequences for the economy just like Standard Oil did. In the end that has harmed far more people than the philathropy has helped because the market is more efficient than charity.
The politician can still say whatever they like. The Lobbyist can still say what they like. So can you. What you cant do is collectively bargain with government because that is unfair. I'd suggest giving examples where the politician, lobbist, or yourself would have your free speech rights infringed under a situation where you are not collectively bargaining. The press are at liberty to say what they want, but they cant be paid to say what someone else wants. You are at liberty to say what you want, what you cant do is get together with other people and actively lobby government. You can find out facts that show your case. You can individually write to your representative. But you may not claim to represent more than one vote. You may not buy politicians. Now no one is stopping you presenting a petition. That is a list of individuals who have agreed to an idea. What you cant do is submit a list of companies or groups that subsribe to an idea. Individuals have rights that organisations do not.
"Arguably, due process has been tossed out in your "Anyone spending more would be disqualified", since it is depriving me of the right to use my own stuff." Yes, you are being denied the right to use your stuff because it is not in the interests of everyone else. You are restricted from doing things with your stuff all the time. You are buying votes, which is wrong. It is not an infringement of civil liberties that it is against the law to sell or buy a vote (as it is in the United Kingdom) because that undermines the goal of democracy (which is not a right, but rather a means to effective, fair government). Excessive campaign spending amounts to buying votes, which is wrong.
"Actually, forcing the congresscritters to eat in the same cafeteria seems to me to be Cruel and Unusual Punishment." Depends on the cafeteria (Mmmmmm state mandated cheese burgers...). Seriously though, you shouldn't be allowed to buy an elected member of government anything, under any circumstances. And there should be a period after their term in office where they are still paid and subject to not recieving any gifts. They should have to declare the 20p they spend taking a leak at the airport toilets.
Your last point is fair. It is already the case though, the media puts into government whoever pays them the most on their campaign. I'm not trying to fix that problem, I'm tring to fix another one. You want to work out how to stop the media deciding election, be my guest. I have no idea how the square that circle.
Well, first I'm not American, but since you bring up the issue...
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Free speech is not abridge so you are not refering to that. Freedom of the press is not restricted. They are not prevented from reporting opinions or facts, or from investigating individuals. They are prevented from being the paid mouth pieces of politicians. They can say what they want, they just cant be paid to do it by a politician. The right to peaceably assemble is not being infringed upon. You might suggest that the final portion of the amendment has been done in. I think there is a case for doing in this bit if in extends to allowing groups of individuals to collectively bargain. There is nothing to stop me writing a letter to my representativeas an individual. However it would be illegal for me to claim that I represented more than one vote.
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. " Not sure what the problem is here. Trial by jury is still present. Double jepardy is fine. No requirement to witness against onself. Due process of law is still present. Nor has private property been confiscated.
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted." None of these would occur. What our governments are doing to us is treason. Treason carries stiff penalties. Disenfranchisement of most of the population is a very serious crime. The punishmnt is not cruel, unusual or excessive.
As much as I agree with what you are saying there is a flaw in your logic.
"Who do you nuke if Osama turns New York into a parking lot?" - Good question. Maybe not nuke but kill every Muslim on the planet seems like a good start. Followed by every Christian, Atheist, Hindu, etc. That is what you would need to do to prevent it ever occuring again. Until the only people left are those prepared to admit that they don't know anything about this mysticism stuff and that it is all irrelevant anyway.
"you can't nuke a dispersed enemy any more than firebombing Vietnam took out the Vietcong." - Vietnam was a crazy idea, but if the US wanted to win Vietnam it needed to kill pretty much most of the North Vietnamese. There in lied the problem, no political will for a massacre. Same thing will happen in Iraq, if we want to win in Iraq we need to take all of the Shi'ite (yes thats right, the Shi'ites, the religiously insane ones, our so called allies) and put a bullet in their heads. We might stand a chance with the more secular Sunni Muslims but I wouldn't hold your breath.
So while what you are saying is true, there really isn't any good solution. At the end of the day humanity is pretty much a plague on the Earth. An irrational, dangerous plague whose smarter, saner elements are working on giving the 99% of the population who are insane religious zealots bigger guns to point at each other. What we need to do is find a way to remove the (almost certainly genetic) inclination towards religion from our species before it wipes us out. No amount of shooting people abroad is going to fix the problem unless you wipe this trait out of the gene pool in the process.
I'd ban political parties for anything except for a proportionally represented sub set of the government. Everyone has to run as an independent when representing a constituency. Then you have an executive branch that is proportionally elected, with the ability to occupy the legislative branches time in proportion to the number of votes they recieve. Trying to encourage an individual to vote a certain way by lobby groups etc would be a crime. The most a group could do is produce a dossier whose existence would be past on the to peoples represntatives. Members of government would be required to eat food only from an approve canteen in Washington or at the state they are in, or proove that they paid for all food at a meeting with thier own money. It would be a crime to recieve income over and above that which is paid to politicians by the state (which I would increase), punishable as treason. Campaign donations would be a crime and there would be a cap on how much you could spend out of personal wealth. Anyone spending more would be disqualified and tried for treason. Constituencies would be smaller and all running candidates would be given limited time to air their opinions on the media, by law.
That would deal with corruption, and result in a government which had to act in it's constituencies interests, not in the interests of getting re-elected.
I'd argue that the USSR was an atheist state, and that Germany had it's own religion of state. In this context I would suggest the root cause of these problems is Fundamentalism. Fundamentalist Islam, Christianity, Atheism, etc.
Your first point indicates to me you still don't understand that this is not a formal business meeting. It is not a formal business meeting if you meet with someone to tell them they are not doing their job. That is what is occuring here.
You second shows that you consider democracy to be more important than rights. Thats called mob rule. When a significant subset of the population demands to be heard on rights issues they have a right to be. 1% is a significant subset.
And finally you keep listing issues that are not rights issues as counter examples. ID being taught in schools is not a rights issue. Now if 100,000 scientists came up with a petition complaining about the lack of seperation of church and state due to the introduction of religious doctrine in public schools via ID, then you might have a good counter example. It is very clear to me that you do not know the difference between a rights issues and some other issue. Try restricting yourself to rights issues and see if you can come up with an issue that sounds silly. Try some of these.
Blacks in the deep south complain that the police are not properly investigating crimes against them and are discriminating based on race. 500,000 signatures are collected and a sucessful civil liberties campaigner from Canada is chosen to represent them.
Catholics in Northern Ireland complain that they are still being discriminated against. They gather 20,000 signatures in a petition and have a Bishop from the Republic of Ireland present it to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
If you cant see how these are different from: "Jedi Knights demand to see Prime Minister over disturbance in the force" and "Crazy religious groups tries to undermine freedom of religion in the US" then you are beyound helping.
The sheer number of straw men you have constructed I don't know where to start.
"RMS is from America" - The people of France can choose who they darn well like to represent them when it comes to demanding government protect thier rights.
"when you serve 60 million people, do you pay attention to the 59.8 million people who didn't sign the petition, or the 165,000 who signed it?" Both. Thats a ridiculous false dichotomy. Sure most the Prime Minister of Frances current time should be spent solving their labour crisis. But not to the exclusion of protecting the rights of the citizens of France.
"As somebody pointed out in another post, people who declare themselves of the "Jedi Knight" religion in England represent 0.7% of the population there... does that mean that a bunch of people dressed up in cloaks with light sabers (after all, that is *their* formal attire) can walk up to 10 Downing Street and demand an audience with Tony Blair so that they can discuss a great disturbance in The Force?" Now this is the icing on the cake. A true piece of logical lunacy. How about I construct a comparable situation. Someone organises a petition to complain about the lack of seperation of church and state in this country (the UK), and get 100,000 signatures calling for a reform of the Lords Spiritual in the second chamber. They elect that an American constitutional scholar speak on their behalf because they feel he is most qualified to present their case. The prime minister refuses to recieve the petition in person, or even speak with their representative.
I didn't disagree with any of what you said. I pointed out that societies rules are usually defined by the group with authority. All those cases you list merely reinforce what I was saying, that there is more than one culture, the culture of the suit. I then demonstrated that when there is a clash of cultures often those who wear suits think thier culture takes precedent when it does not.
'And when meeting with a head of state, the appropriate dress for the event is MOST CERTAINLY NOT whatever your culture defines as "sloppy business casual."'
Here is the cause of your misunderstanding. When meeting a servant of the public on a rights issue, you should be able to wear what you damn well please. THEY are the servant, you are the one in authority.
"a $50 outfit that is approaching a state of threadbare shabbiness is not the appropriate attire for meeting an important political figure."
This is not an important political figure, this is a political figure NOT doing his job who is due for a darn good telling off by the people with give the money and authority, and when the boss comes round to tell me I need to pull my finger out I don't dictate to him what he can and cant wear.
Ahhhh, now if the criticism is of the tactics, then I can see your point. That is fair enough. RMS isn't picking his battles, I don't know if he should be or not. As to valuing a politicians time. It isn't their time, it's my time, I pay thier wages and (unlike other public sector workers) I am their boss (along with 59,999,999 subjects of Her Majesty) and when I or my fellow subject address our representatives with the backing of a sizeable subset of the population of the kingdom on a rights issue, then we will wear what I damn well like and they can lump it. This is tantamount to the boss coming around to your office to give you a thorough telling off for watching porn all Friday afternoon in the office because you couldn't be bothered to do your work and then missed a deadline.
"If anything, those who insist that people in positions of respect (managers, political officials, etc.) listen to them even if they dress in a slovenly way are the ones guilty of assuming superiority"
"If your audience is important enough, you will respect their culture."
These are the key phrase here. You just assumed that politicians, etc. are in a position of respect and importance. This was my whole point, they are not. Thier culture is not the one which should defacto be the standard in this situation, in fact in any situation. They may be in a position where thier culture is not overidden by thier guests (for example in this case, there is no requirement that they put on jeans and a polo shirt), but it is not the defacto standard because they are servants of the people.
Your thinking is thrown off by the belief that the 'audience' in this case is the Prime Minister of France. Sure, he is the one who is recieving the pitch, but he is not endowed with the privaleges one normally associates with an audience. Why? Because he is a servant. His job is to listen to the people concerned, then decide what is in peoples best interests. He isn't a manager, or a business person. He is not recieving a sales pitch from one of his employees. He is a proxy for a perfect system of government, a servant of the people. He has no right to expect people to wear anything when addressing him and the social norm when meeting a servant is to wear whatever you like. People will wear what they damn well please when they meet him and he had better like it.
You seem to believe that people should respect thier governments or corporate structures when dealing with rights issues. This is where you go wrong. When it comes to protecting our rights, they are the ones who should fear and respect us, not the other way around.
You also seem to believe those individuals who are proxies for perfect systems (managers, political officials) are in positions of respect. The individuals who are in positions of respect are those who do a good job producing something. Art, tools, money, new sciences. If I meet with a CEO of a large company to discuss him or her giving me a grant to do some research you bet I wear a suit. I want something from them that I have no entitlement to. Their culture dominates my own because (1) They have something I want (because they are in a position of respect, because they produce something, in this case money), and (2) I have no apriori entitlement to it. If they want to use the patented design to my new a go-faster stripe on cars that can make them fly, then I wear what the hell I want, and if they were curteous they would learn what I consider to be respectful attire and wear that. Of course they wouldn't, they would wear suits. And here in lies the double standard. Why would they wear suits? Because suits are automatically better as far as they are concerned. Thier culture dominates. And here is the implicit assumption of superiority.
Now when it comes to a representative of over 100,000 people trying to talk to a politician about a rights issue, I think it is clear that neither culture dominates. Yes the Prime Minister of France has something the people RMS represents wants (control over access to thier cultural heritage), but they have a right to it. He has that control because he is a proxy to protect the rights of the people. So whose culture should predominate? Neither. When addressing a servant, one does not change ones clothes, and the servant wears thier work uniform. In this case, that is a suit for the Prime Minister of France, and RMS wears whatever he wants.
This is not pretentious. It is simply the way it should be. Darn right when government infringes on my rights or fails to protect them I disregard the manners and cultural expectation of my 'audience'. They are not doing thier job, and I'm the boss as far as that goes (along with 59,999,999 other subjects of Her Majesty, who, if I want to be heard, I have to convince to join with me in petitioning my representat
Value their time? Value their time? They are politicians! They should value OUR time! If politicians are so short sighted and arrogant as to believe anyone from the unwashed masses is just ignorable, even when they represent upward of 100,000 people, I suggest it's time we got some new politicians.
Erm, no, you miss the point. Copyrights should not be thought of as property rights. They are rights conferred in order to encourage the production of the useful arts and sciences. Now what rights the copyright holders have should all be justified solely on the basis of if they promote the useful arts and sciences or not. DRM does not promote the useful arts and sciences because it enables people to release recordings that can, in principle never enter the public domain. Ergo DRM runs counter to the reason we have copyright. Do I think that I have an inalienable right to do whatever I want with public domain works? Yes, and I think the Founding Fathers might agree with me on this one. I have a right to access the cultural heritage of the country I live in, and of humanity. If you don't agree with that, then fine, but don't dress your objection in the language of property. Come right out and say:
"Hey peasant, you do what your feudal lord tells you, till that field, and don't you even dare think about experiencing the cultural heritage of this nation."
"Just like someone wearing a suit to a LUG meeting might be met with suspicion at first."
I think you are missing the point. Those suits are not like the functional wear of the other professions you described. They exist solely for the purpose of imposing social superiority over other people. You said it yourself:
"If you're sitting on a beach, I am prepared to meet you in shorts (even if I am not)."
Why shouldn't you be wearing shorts? I mean isn't that the dress code. You have made the implicit assumption of superiority, that being that those who wear suits are better than those who do not. This not only is not the case, but is often the completely the opposite to what one experiences in reality. Here is how I think the game goes. Politicians want votes, as such, they have the decency to make an apointment with a man who on the face of it represents over 100,000 people. Heck if he ran a company with over 100,000 people you can be they would have pulled him up a seat faster than you can say "campaign donations". Rule number two, politicians wear those clothes that put the representative of the people they are meeting at ease, not the other way round. Likewise with individuals meeting union representatives, etc. Now we are not ever going to get those social rules, but rest assured, thats the way it darn well ought to be. I would advise not being so darn quick to complain when someone has the social decency to wear the clothing of thier class with pride in it's functional nature, instead of cow towing to the financial and political elite (who are almost never the intellectual elite) and wearing thier clothes just to put those barsteds at ease. At ease is the last thing they should be.
Unless by vote you mean assassinate then I'm afraid you are simply wrong. It is steadily reaching the point where those of you in the US who wish to defend states rights and the liberty of individuals are going to have to do something a little stronger than voting and letter writing. You have tried the soap box. You have tried the ballot box. You have tried the jury box. It is fast approaching the time to reach for the last box on the list.
And most people are pretty stupid and relatively simple to model. They behave in a manner that is predictable and controllable. Our governments are now so big that increasing campaign contributions on a candidate significantly over and above that candidates opponents is usually sufficient to get that candidate elected. It isn't a matter of if X many million people protested would a law still remain. Our system controls us like cattle so that you are lucky if you can get X many thousand on a big issue. Heck even if it was 1 million Britons protested against going to war in Iraq, we have a population of 50 million, thats 1/50th. 30 million is about 3/25 of the US population, those two numbers are about the same order of magnitude. Didn't make a blind bit of difference! What we need is a system that prevents people voting if they don't have requisit levels on knowledge on a subject, and considerably more referendums. Not to mention more local government. The goal of the federal government should be defence and ensuring that entities larger than local government do not interfer with the aforementioned. It's possible you could argue that nationalised services could have funding aportioned at the national level. What you should have is socially restrictive law making at the national level (i.e. the federal government can set taxes, but they cant make things illegal). What you then have enshrined at the national level is protection of citizens rights. Then laws are set locally.
I'm afraid that the world has changed. George Orwell imagined a world in which the law was set up solely for the perpetuation of the state. Aldous Huxley imagined a world in which apathy was the primary tool of control. The modern corporation seems bent on taking the worst of these two worlds and making it our future. And short of revolution, there is not much we can do about it. It turns out that actually as well as buying politicians it is possible to buy the general public. And once a system is big enough that statistical errors are small, you can make that public elect who you want, and who you want will then give you the laws you want. Modern politics in the West is bought and paid for, you are living in a 60's fantasy that wasn't true then and isn't true now.
Erm, when the politicians that are supposed to represent the people don't set rules that are agreed upon by the people then your point kinda loses it's edge. Many Western democracies are two party systems where both parties are bought and paid for by large industries with effective monopolies. At that point the law is meaningless.
"The other way to make this sillines stop is to undermine the music industry's business model, to work on the political front, to set legal precedents"
That would be fine. Expect our political system and legal system are now safely bought and paid for. The only way that will change is if ordinary citizens start shooting politicians until they change our system of government. I don't see that happening any time soon because our system has the illusion of freedom.
Erm, the police do choose what laws to enforce and what to ignore. Pretty much any crime on an ordinary citizen has zero chance of being solved. That would suggest to me that more resources should be devoted to that. If that means completely ignoring copyright infringement, instead of completely ignoring muggings, burglary, etc, then that is something I can live with. Bottom line, the police only care about organised crime, crime involving rape or death (got to keep the proles happy somewhere) and crime that their politician overlords have dictated is important. And what is copyright infringement such a serious crime? Because our politicians are bought and paid for.
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Not very well, but then it really hasn't had a chance. Most of Africa doesn't have a free market economy. In fact, most of Africa doesn't even have much of a public sector either. And if they don't build it themselves they never will.
Giving vacinations might help in the short term, but cold hard restructuring of thier economies is what is needed if they are to get themselves out of the rut they are in.
Of course none of that is going to count for anything unless we open up our trade with them and provision them with a level playing field by reigning in our large corporations, of which Microsoft is one such offender.
The world isn't as simple as you think, you cant just vacinate Africans and think that will solve anything. You have to stop with the protectionist, anti-outsourcing bullshit and make our companies play fair, so that Africans can vacinate Africans.
No no no, that patent is invalid, to make it valid it should read:
"A Method For Comparing Hypocritical Actions Performed By Humans To Hypothetical Actions Performed By Articulate, Similarly Colored Kitchenware ON A COMPUTER..."
A very interesting read.
However, the problem most feminists fail to appreciate is that Both of these researchers are right when they point out how circumstances disadvantage women and wrong when they discount the research going the other way. The shakey dismissal that Pinker offers about discrimination in departments is clearly refuted by Spelke. The shakey dismissal of social or motivational factors by Spelke is in contrast to the strong evidence presented by Pinker. Women are in short disadvantaged across the board on controllable factors. Where it is pretty clear that they are not disadvantaged is in ability. There are clearly plenty of women with the ability to do science. The number of factors needed to do science are such that although the ability of men in solving mathematical problems is considerable at the high end of the spectrum, I seriously doubt it is the determining factor.
What is needed is a coherent approach to deal with the no-biological factors, because as the studies of male and female aptitude show, science is suffering at the moment because by being predominantly male it is over using certain (important trait) on mean. As a physicist when I look at these studies my thoughts are "we are not making best use of those talents that are available by having such a small number of women involved".
I'm not sure what you mean by a "reductionist, deterministic heritage". Reductionism is pretty much science. We can change lots of things, but we cant change the fact that we are searching for overarching explanations for varied phenomina. Unless you mean scientific reductionism, which is also a cornerstone of the scientific method. We cant change what science is to get more women involved, we can change how we do it.
I'm interested because I like to keep track of what is being done to get applications for physics degrees up. Because discrimination on gender is illegal in my country you cant use affirmative action to get more applications from women. What you can do is have a recruitment drive, try to change the course to make it more appealing to women, try to change the environment, etc.
The problem here is that it is okay to say on the one hand "Please for the love of fresh fruit apply to our course" to women, and to try to make the course more inclusive. What is not okay if taking inferior candidates on from one group to try to redress so percieved imbalance in numbers. What we should be doing is taking the number of applicants, looking at the number of admittants and if the ratio of men to women in each group is off from eachother serious question as to why.
Saving someone from TB is good. Saving someone from TB while slowing the US economy isn't. I'm not an American, but I do recognise that America is the powerhouse that drives the world economy (along with other Western States). You slow down those economies, you indirectly kill millions.
I wish it were as simple as you seem to think it is. I'm afraid it is not.
Erm, John 'Anaconda' Rockefeller? I think in real terms he is still number one, at least that was the impression I got. Either way, great philanthropy does not make up for shoddy business practices. Microsofts monopoly abuse has had serious consequences for the economy just like Standard Oil did. In the end that has harmed far more people than the philathropy has helped because the market is more efficient than charity.
The politician can still say whatever they like. The Lobbyist can still say what they like. So can you. What you cant do is collectively bargain with government because that is unfair. I'd suggest giving examples where the politician, lobbist, or yourself would have your free speech rights infringed under a situation where you are not collectively bargaining.
The press are at liberty to say what they want, but they cant be paid to say what someone else wants. You are at liberty to say what you want, what you cant do is get together with other people and actively lobby government. You can find out facts that show your case. You can individually write to your representative. But you may not claim to represent more than one vote. You may not buy politicians. Now no one is stopping you presenting a petition. That is a list of individuals who have agreed to an idea. What you cant do is submit a list of companies or groups that subsribe to an idea. Individuals have rights that organisations do not.
"Arguably, due process has been tossed out in your "Anyone spending more would be disqualified", since it is depriving me of the right to use my own stuff."
Yes, you are being denied the right to use your stuff because it is not in the interests of everyone else. You are restricted from doing things with your stuff all the time. You are buying votes, which is wrong. It is not an infringement of civil liberties that it is against the law to sell or buy a vote (as it is in the United Kingdom) because that undermines the goal of democracy (which is not a right, but rather a means to effective, fair government). Excessive campaign spending amounts to buying votes, which is wrong.
"Actually, forcing the congresscritters to eat in the same cafeteria seems to me to be Cruel and Unusual Punishment."
Depends on the cafeteria (Mmmmmm state mandated cheese burgers...). Seriously though, you shouldn't be allowed to buy an elected member of government anything, under any circumstances. And there should be a period after their term in office where they are still paid and subject to not recieving any gifts. They should have to declare the 20p they spend taking a leak at the airport toilets.
Your last point is fair. It is already the case though, the media puts into government whoever pays them the most on their campaign. I'm not trying to fix that problem, I'm tring to fix another one. You want to work out how to stop the media deciding election, be my guest. I have no idea how the square that circle.
Well, first I'm not American, but since you bring up the issue...
"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances."
Free speech is not abridge so you are not refering to that. Freedom of the press is not restricted. They are not prevented from reporting opinions or facts, or from investigating individuals. They are prevented from being the paid mouth pieces of politicians. They can say what they want, they just cant be paid to do it by a politician. The right to peaceably assemble is not being infringed upon. You might suggest that the final portion of the amendment has been done in. I think there is a case for doing in this bit if in extends to allowing groups of individuals to collectively bargain. There is nothing to stop me writing a letter to my representativeas an individual. However it would be illegal for me to claim that I represented more than one vote.
"No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation. "
Not sure what the problem is here. Trial by jury is still present. Double jepardy is fine. No requirement to witness against onself. Due process of law is still present. Nor has private property been confiscated.
"Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted."
None of these would occur. What our governments are doing to us is treason. Treason carries stiff penalties. Disenfranchisement of most of the population is a very serious crime. The punishmnt is not cruel, unusual or excessive.
As much as I agree with what you are saying there is a flaw in your logic.
"Who do you nuke if Osama turns New York into a parking lot?" - Good question. Maybe not nuke but kill every Muslim on the planet seems like a good start. Followed by every Christian, Atheist, Hindu, etc. That is what you would need to do to prevent it ever occuring again. Until the only people left are those prepared to admit that they don't know anything about this mysticism stuff and that it is all irrelevant anyway.
"you can't nuke a dispersed enemy any more than firebombing Vietnam took out the Vietcong." - Vietnam was a crazy idea, but if the US wanted to win Vietnam it needed to kill pretty much most of the North Vietnamese. There in lied the problem, no political will for a massacre. Same thing will happen in Iraq, if we want to win in Iraq we need to take all of the Shi'ite (yes thats right, the Shi'ites, the religiously insane ones, our so called allies) and put a bullet in their heads. We might stand a chance with the more secular Sunni Muslims but I wouldn't hold your breath.
So while what you are saying is true, there really isn't any good solution. At the end of the day humanity is pretty much a plague on the Earth. An irrational, dangerous plague whose smarter, saner elements are working on giving the 99% of the population who are insane religious zealots bigger guns to point at each other. What we need to do is find a way to remove the (almost certainly genetic) inclination towards religion from our species before it wipes us out. No amount of shooting people abroad is going to fix the problem unless you wipe this trait out of the gene pool in the process.
I'd go a step further.
I'd ban political parties for anything except for a proportionally represented sub set of the government. Everyone has to run as an independent when representing a constituency. Then you have an executive branch that is proportionally elected, with the ability to occupy the legislative branches time in proportion to the number of votes they recieve. Trying to encourage an individual to vote a certain way by lobby groups etc would be a crime. The most a group could do is produce a dossier whose existence would be past on the to peoples represntatives. Members of government would be required to eat food only from an approve canteen in Washington or at the state they are in, or proove that they paid for all food at a meeting with thier own money. It would be a crime to recieve income over and above that which is paid to politicians by the state (which I would increase), punishable as treason. Campaign donations would be a crime and there would be a cap on how much you could spend out of personal wealth. Anyone spending more would be disqualified and tried for treason. Constituencies would be smaller and all running candidates would be given limited time to air their opinions on the media, by law.
That would deal with corruption, and result in a government which had to act in it's constituencies interests, not in the interests of getting re-elected.
I'd argue that the USSR was an atheist state, and that Germany had it's own religion of state. In this context I would suggest the root cause of these problems is Fundamentalism. Fundamentalist Islam, Christianity, Atheism, etc.
Your first point indicates to me you still don't understand that this is not a formal business meeting. It is not a formal business meeting if you meet with someone to tell them they are not doing their job. That is what is occuring here.
You second shows that you consider democracy to be more important than rights. Thats called mob rule. When a significant subset of the population demands to be heard on rights issues they have a right to be. 1% is a significant subset.
And finally you keep listing issues that are not rights issues as counter examples. ID being taught in schools is not a rights issue. Now if 100,000 scientists came up with a petition complaining about the lack of seperation of church and state due to the introduction of religious doctrine in public schools via ID, then you might have a good counter example. It is very clear to me that you do not know the difference between a rights issues and some other issue. Try restricting yourself to rights issues and see if you can come up with an issue that sounds silly. Try some of these.
Blacks in the deep south complain that the police are not properly investigating crimes against them and are discriminating based on race. 500,000 signatures are collected and a sucessful civil liberties campaigner from Canada is chosen to represent them.
Catholics in Northern Ireland complain that they are still being discriminated against. They gather 20,000 signatures in a petition and have a Bishop from the Republic of Ireland present it to the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.
If you cant see how these are different from: "Jedi Knights demand to see Prime Minister over disturbance in the force" and "Crazy religious groups tries to undermine freedom of religion in the US" then you are beyound helping.
The sheer number of straw men you have constructed I don't know where to start.
"RMS is from America" - The people of France can choose who they darn well like to represent them when it comes to demanding government protect thier rights.
"when you serve 60 million people, do you pay attention to the 59.8 million people who didn't sign the petition, or the 165,000 who signed it?"
Both. Thats a ridiculous false dichotomy. Sure most the Prime Minister of Frances current time should be spent solving their labour crisis. But not to the exclusion of protecting the rights of the citizens of France.
"As somebody pointed out in another post, people who declare themselves of the "Jedi Knight" religion in England represent 0.7% of the population there... does that mean that a bunch of people dressed up in cloaks with light sabers (after all, that is *their* formal attire) can walk up to 10 Downing Street and demand an audience with Tony Blair so that they can discuss a great disturbance in The Force?"
Now this is the icing on the cake. A true piece of logical lunacy. How about I construct a comparable situation. Someone organises a petition to complain about the lack of seperation of church and state in this country (the UK), and get 100,000 signatures calling for a reform of the Lords Spiritual in the second chamber. They elect that an American constitutional scholar speak on their behalf because they feel he is most qualified to present their case. The prime minister refuses to recieve the petition in person, or even speak with their representative.
Do you see the difference?
I didn't disagree with any of what you said. I pointed out that societies rules are usually defined by the group with authority. All those cases you list merely reinforce what I was saying, that there is more than one culture, the culture of the suit. I then demonstrated that when there is a clash of cultures often those who wear suits think thier culture takes precedent when it does not.
'And when meeting with a head of state, the appropriate dress for the event is MOST CERTAINLY NOT whatever your culture defines as "sloppy business casual."'
Here is the cause of your misunderstanding. When meeting a servant of the public on a rights issue, you should be able to wear what you damn well please. THEY are the servant, you are the one in authority.
"a $50 outfit that is approaching a state of threadbare shabbiness is not the appropriate attire for meeting an important political figure."
This is not an important political figure, this is a political figure NOT doing his job who is due for a darn good telling off by the people with give the money and authority, and when the boss comes round to tell me I need to pull my finger out I don't dictate to him what he can and cant wear.
Ahhhh, now if the criticism is of the tactics, then I can see your point. That is fair enough. RMS isn't picking his battles, I don't know if he should be or not. As to valuing a politicians time. It isn't their time, it's my time, I pay thier wages and (unlike other public sector workers) I am their boss (along with 59,999,999 subjects of Her Majesty) and when I or my fellow subject address our representatives with the backing of a sizeable subset of the population of the kingdom on a rights issue, then we will wear what I damn well like and they can lump it. This is tantamount to the boss coming around to your office to give you a thorough telling off for watching porn all Friday afternoon in the office because you couldn't be bothered to do your work and then missed a deadline.
"If anything, those who insist that people in positions of respect (managers, political officials, etc.) listen to them even if they dress in a slovenly way are the ones guilty of assuming superiority"
"If your audience is important enough, you will respect their culture."
These are the key phrase here. You just assumed that politicians, etc. are in a position of respect and importance. This was my whole point, they are not. Thier culture is not the one which should defacto be the standard in this situation, in fact in any situation. They may be in a position where thier culture is not overidden by thier guests (for example in this case, there is no requirement that they put on jeans and a polo shirt), but it is not the defacto standard because they are servants of the people.
Your thinking is thrown off by the belief that the 'audience' in this case is the Prime Minister of France. Sure, he is the one who is recieving the pitch, but he is not endowed with the privaleges one normally associates with an audience. Why? Because he is a servant. His job is to listen to the people concerned, then decide what is in peoples best interests. He isn't a manager, or a business person. He is not recieving a sales pitch from one of his employees. He is a proxy for a perfect system of government, a servant of the people. He has no right to expect people to wear anything when addressing him and the social norm when meeting a servant is to wear whatever you like. People will wear what they damn well please when they meet him and he had better like it.
You seem to believe that people should respect thier governments or corporate structures when dealing with rights issues. This is where you go wrong. When it comes to protecting our rights, they are the ones who should fear and respect us, not the other way around.
You also seem to believe those individuals who are proxies for perfect systems (managers, political officials) are in positions of respect. The individuals who are in positions of respect are those who do a good job producing something. Art, tools, money, new sciences. If I meet with a CEO of a large company to discuss him or her giving me a grant to do some research you bet I wear a suit. I want something from them that I have no entitlement to. Their culture dominates my own because (1) They have something I want (because they are in a position of respect, because they produce something, in this case money), and (2) I have no apriori entitlement to it. If they want to use the patented design to my new a go-faster stripe on cars that can make them fly, then I wear what the hell I want, and if they were curteous they would learn what I consider to be respectful attire and wear that. Of course they wouldn't, they would wear suits. And here in lies the double standard. Why would they wear suits? Because suits are automatically better as far as they are concerned. Thier culture dominates. And here is the implicit assumption of superiority.
Now when it comes to a representative of over 100,000 people trying to talk to a politician about a rights issue, I think it is clear that neither culture dominates. Yes the Prime Minister of France has something the people RMS represents wants (control over access to thier cultural heritage), but they have a right to it. He has that control because he is a proxy to protect the rights of the people. So whose culture should predominate? Neither. When addressing a servant, one does not change ones clothes, and the servant wears thier work uniform. In this case, that is a suit for the Prime Minister of France, and RMS wears whatever he wants.
This is not pretentious. It is simply the way it should be. Darn right when government infringes on my rights or fails to protect them I disregard the manners and cultural expectation of my 'audience'. They are not doing thier job, and I'm the boss as far as that goes (along with 59,999,999 other subjects of Her Majesty, who, if I want to be heard, I have to convince to join with me in petitioning my representat
Value their time? Value their time? They are politicians! They should value OUR time! If politicians are so short sighted and arrogant as to believe anyone from the unwashed masses is just ignorable, even when they represent upward of 100,000 people, I suggest it's time we got some new politicians.
Erm, no, you miss the point. Copyrights should not be thought of as property rights. They are rights conferred in order to encourage the production of the useful arts and sciences. Now what rights the copyright holders have should all be justified solely on the basis of if they promote the useful arts and sciences or not. DRM does not promote the useful arts and sciences because it enables people to release recordings that can, in principle never enter the public domain. Ergo DRM runs counter to the reason we have copyright.
Do I think that I have an inalienable right to do whatever I want with public domain works? Yes, and I think the Founding Fathers might agree with me on this one. I have a right to access the cultural heritage of the country I live in, and of humanity. If you don't agree with that, then fine, but don't dress your objection in the language of property. Come right out and say:
"Hey peasant, you do what your feudal lord tells you, till that field, and don't you even dare think about experiencing the cultural heritage of this nation."
"Just like someone wearing a suit to a LUG meeting might be met with suspicion at first."
I think you are missing the point. Those suits are not like the functional wear of the other professions you described. They exist solely for the purpose of imposing social superiority over other people. You said it yourself:
"If you're sitting on a beach, I am prepared to meet you in shorts (even if I am not)."
Why shouldn't you be wearing shorts? I mean isn't that the dress code. You have made the implicit assumption of superiority, that being that those who wear suits are better than those who do not. This not only is not the case, but is often the completely the opposite to what one experiences in reality. Here is how I think the game goes. Politicians want votes, as such, they have the decency to make an apointment with a man who on the face of it represents over 100,000 people. Heck if he ran a company with over 100,000 people you can be they would have pulled him up a seat faster than you can say "campaign donations".
Rule number two, politicians wear those clothes that put the representative of the people they are meeting at ease, not the other way round. Likewise with individuals meeting union representatives, etc.
Now we are not ever going to get those social rules, but rest assured, thats the way it darn well ought to be. I would advise not being so darn quick to complain when someone has the social decency to wear the clothing of thier class with pride in it's functional nature, instead of cow towing to the financial and political elite (who are almost never the intellectual elite) and wearing thier clothes just to put those barsteds at ease. At ease is the last thing they should be.
Unless by vote you mean assassinate then I'm afraid you are simply wrong. It is steadily reaching the point where those of you in the US who wish to defend states rights and the liberty of individuals are going to have to do something a little stronger than voting and letter writing. You have tried the soap box. You have tried the ballot box. You have tried the jury box. It is fast approaching the time to reach for the last box on the list.
And most people are pretty stupid and relatively simple to model. They behave in a manner that is predictable and controllable. Our governments are now so big that increasing campaign contributions on a candidate significantly over and above that candidates opponents is usually sufficient to get that candidate elected.
It isn't a matter of if X many million people protested would a law still remain. Our system controls us like cattle so that you are lucky if you can get X many thousand on a big issue.
Heck even if it was 1 million Britons protested against going to war in Iraq, we have a population of 50 million, thats 1/50th. 30 million is about 3/25 of the US population, those two numbers are about the same order of magnitude. Didn't make a blind bit of difference!
What we need is a system that prevents people voting if they don't have requisit levels on knowledge on a subject, and considerably more referendums. Not to mention more local government. The goal of the federal government should be defence and ensuring that entities larger than local government do not interfer with the aforementioned. It's possible you could argue that nationalised services could have funding aportioned at the national level. What you should have is socially restrictive law making at the national level (i.e. the federal government can set taxes, but they cant make things illegal). What you then have enshrined at the national level is protection of citizens rights. Then laws are set locally.
I'm afraid that the world has changed. George Orwell imagined a world in which the law was set up solely for the perpetuation of the state. Aldous Huxley imagined a world in which apathy was the primary tool of control. The modern corporation seems bent on taking the worst of these two worlds and making it our future. And short of revolution, there is not much we can do about it.
It turns out that actually as well as buying politicians it is possible to buy the general public. And once a system is big enough that statistical errors are small, you can make that public elect who you want, and who you want will then give you the laws you want. Modern politics in the West is bought and paid for, you are living in a 60's fantasy that wasn't true then and isn't true now.
Erm, when the politicians that are supposed to represent the people don't set rules that are agreed upon by the people then your point kinda loses it's edge. Many Western democracies are two party systems where both parties are bought and paid for by large industries with effective monopolies. At that point the law is meaningless.
"The other way to make this sillines stop is to undermine the music industry's business model, to work on the political front, to set legal precedents"
That would be fine. Expect our political system and legal system are now safely bought and paid for. The only way that will change is if ordinary citizens start shooting politicians until they change our system of government. I don't see that happening any time soon because our system has the illusion of freedom.
Erm, the police do choose what laws to enforce and what to ignore. Pretty much any crime on an ordinary citizen has zero chance of being solved. That would suggest to me that more resources should be devoted to that. If that means completely ignoring copyright infringement, instead of completely ignoring muggings, burglary, etc, then that is something I can live with.
Bottom line, the police only care about organised crime, crime involving rape or death (got to keep the proles happy somewhere) and crime that their politician overlords have dictated is important. And what is copyright infringement such a serious crime? Because our politicians are bought and paid for.