Yeah I know, but society is so far resisting my attempts at total dictatorial control of public opinion. Fools! As a result, I can only speak for myself.
Kind of off topic, but I find it interesting that this line of reasoning is not used when it comes to disciplining children. Specifically, the slightest spanking is considered "abuse", but pretty much any action that only effects them mentally, abusive or not, is considered OK.
Having a wife who was significantly affected by a father with a toxic tongue and having myself been subjected to routine humiliation as a child I assure you that we do not consider mental and emotional abuse to be OK. Also, while I do not consider all spanking to be abuse I do not personally spank my children (although my wife sometimes does) because my own history makes it difficult for me to do it appropriately.
Why not go after the group that tries to implement there political ideology instead of what economist who are experts in the field say?
That would be the same expert economists that didn't know enough to predict the banking meltdown, right? Why should anyone care what they say?
much like you have been conned by Fox news et. al.
I did tell you I'm not American. If fox news is available where I live, I don't know about it. There is "Foxtel" satellite TV available so it might be on that I suppose, but I doubt there's much market for American Fox News in Australia. I also said "At least it wasn't McCain" which should have indicated to you that my distaste for Obama is not because of any affiliation with the US Republicans. Just to be clear, I didn't want McCain to win because he seemed pretty keen to escalate wars.
Obama was never going to live up to his hype. It doesn't really matter much if he was insincere or if naughty opposing politicians stopped him. All the people who thought he would were suckers who ought now have learned to get a better grip on reality.
I think people in general need to stop being so easily offended. I'm not in favor of limiting speech because they are easily offended.
If you think applauding someone's death at a memorial tribute site isn't enough to be truly offensive then your emotional responses are so far outside the normal range that your opinion will be considered irrelevant by the vast majority of people.
Perhaps there is not such a large difference between physical and emotional abuse as we might have thought. I see no reason why maliciously inflicting pain on others should be tolerated simply because you do not physically wound them. To allow for freedom of speech, you could be allowed to post what you like on your own webpage. Posting offensive messages on a tribute page for the deceased is not necessary for free speech.
It's not that he's a dirtbag, it's that he actually came across as someone who gave a shit--until he got elected.
I don't understand why so many people got taken in like that. As another foreigner my wife and I listened to his speeches it came across to us as empty rhetoric. It baffled us that people who otherwise seemed sensible and educated were so smitten with him.
I guess it just goes to show that even educated people can be conned. At least it wasn't McCain.
combat shotguns that can take a door of it's hinges in two shots, and can carry twenty cartridges in their semi-automatic barrels - and still be so light that a reasonably trained person can duel-wield.
I think you've been watching too many movies. Show me a semi-auto shotgun with 20 rounds that you think you can wield with one hand.
Apple is free to sell its products here in Australia so long as they abide by any laws and regulations imposed by our government. Just because Americans are generally repulsed by consumer protection doesn't mean the rest of the world feels that way.
I think it is an adequate counter to your point that it's not acceptable (and that it's stupid). "I don't believe that it is acceptable."
Then you may as well have said "It's subjective" as your reply to the other poster and left your entire argument at that. Is your only point that acceptability is subjective? When I say "It is not acceptable", it should be obvious that what is meant is "I don't believe that it is acceptable". I am giving my opinion.
You may as well have said "I disagree" and then shut up. You are revealing that you think indecisiveness is ok even in critical situations. Using lethal force is a fairly extreme action and it is not ok to do it in a haphazard or indecisive fashion. If you disagree, you'll just have to put up with being wrong. Yes, that's my opinion.
Now all we need is people who can predict the future with 100% accuracy and ensure that their emotions will never get in the way 100% of the time.
Making a decision is not predicting the future, it is choosing a course of action. Following through on that is a large part of what most of us call "character". It's not rocket science, neither is it magic. It is required by people who wish to be accepted by me, at least to the degree of acknowledging it as unacceptable and working to improve.
I'm sure a lot of people "know" things; then they find out that they were "wrong."
That's not knowing then. I said I think you have an obligation to know, not to think you know.
no it is not acceptable.
Subjective.
Since there is no universal standard of what is acceptable, "acceptability" itself is subjective. That is not an adequate counter to any point in this discussion.
Some people might not be able to handle it
If you can't handle it, it is unacceptable to be carrying a firearm. Even if you thought you could handle it and were wrong. It is unacceptable to be wrong in such a case as carrying and using lethal weapons.
I doubt a criminal who truly wanted a firearm wouldn't already be armed.
Possibly purchased from someone who stole it from a wishy washy moron who armed themselves then refused to defend themselves.
You did make the decision. However, what if someone can't follow through with it (even if they thought they could) at the last minute (because of emotion)?
That's not making a decision, that's being indecisive.
would in hindsight acknowledge that it was stupid.
That probably goes for most people that rely on emotions or act on emotion.
As in your scenario, the person who couldn't follow through their "decision" because of emotion. Yes it is stupid, no it is not acceptable.
If you are going to carry firearms, I think you have an obligation to society to KNOW whether you are willing to use it. Not some fanciful wishful thinking, knowledge, certainty. If your attacker takes your gun because of your weak mindedness, you are then responsible for arming a criminal. It is not acceptable. If you won't use it, stay unarmed. For the record, I do not carry weapons.
As I said before, believing that you'll be able to kill someone when you get the gun and actually being able to do it are two different things.
You can decide either to kill or not to kill in self defence on a rational basis. If you decide to go armed, you should have already made the decision. To not have decided and yet to arm yourself with a firearm is stupid. Making life and death decisions stupidly is not acceptable in my view. If it is acceptable in yours, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
I would bet that someone who acted according to your scenario, if they managed to survive, would in hindsight acknowledge that it was stupid.
There never was a time when money was not fiat money. The value of gold is just that of agreement.
The value of everything is just that of agreement, regardless of its inherent utility. The point is that people value gold whether the government backs its value or not. Paper and electronic currency does not have this property. Its value is derived solely by government decree.
So what makes gold so different from platinum that one is "currency proof" and the other is not?
Nothing has a stable price, everything fluctuates. I haven't been watching platinum but I'll check it out now that you've mentioned it.
And you want to base your money on a pure perception of value?
Nowhere did I say that we should return to a gold standard. My point was that fiat currency, being a product of government and not the free market, should be regulated by government and not the free market. One of the key characteristics of a free market is a limited supply. The government cannot suddenly decide to "print" a billion ounces of gold. Whether that's good or bad is not the point. The point is that fiat money and commodity money are so different because of this that a monetary system developed for one (private banks originating from gold standard times) is not suitable for the other.
Fiat money requires regulation, but that's not a free market failure. That's my point.
There's a big difference between mouthing off at someone and threatening to kill someone while brandishing a weapon. Learn it. The second justifies the target of your threat to kill you.
4 police, 3 fired, tried capsicum spray twice first and it didn't work.
I don't get why anyone cares if it could have been handled differently. He threatened to kill one of the police. I also don't get why no-one cares about the lousy marksmanship of the police.
There is a reason we have regulation, the lack of which allowed the Wall Street banks to make a bad bubble in housing expand to the point it threatens not only the U.S. economy but the entire world's.
The problems we have with banking are not a problem of free market economics per se for the following reason: fiat currency is a product that can exist only by government decree. Also, it is a product that exists to enable the free market in much the same way that courts enable the free market (there is no free market without the enforcement of contracts).
When courts judgements are for sale, we call it corruption. They are supposed to enable the market, not be a part of it. Similarly with legislators, when they are for sale to the highest bidder, we call it corruption, not a free market. Neither of these indicate a failure of free market economics. When currency supply is screwed up by corruption we should call it what it is. It is not a free market failure because currency supply is a function of government, not private enterprise, unless you want to return to a commodity based money supply. It is corruption.
The only reason it is seen as a failure of the free market is because the fraudsters managed universally to get their activities sanctioned by law. There was some validity to free markets in currency when they were based on products such as gold, now we use fiat money there is no such validity, at least not with a fractional reserve system.
You seem to be ignoring the very specific scenario that I laid out for you. You're cornered, someone dangerous is approaching you, you don't want to kill them (even if you can't think clearly or fast enough), and you can't overpower them with anything except a gun.
You seem to be ignoring the preparation to your scenario, ie: you are carrying a gun. If you weren't willing to kill, you shouldn't have armed yourself with a gun.
If you don't want to kill them, don't use lethal force. It's that simple.
Exactly. Don't shoot them in a place that could kill them.
You don't understand, to fire a pistol at someone is to use lethal force, regardless of the actual outcome. The idea that you can shoot quickly and accurately enough to hit someone in a peripheral area while they are attacking you is fanciful nonsense for all but the most exceptional marksmen. Even then, you have arteries in the arms and legs, to be sure of not killing them you're talking about hitting fingers and toes. You need to find out some more about anatomy and/or firearms use before you can comment intelligently on this topic.
You never fire a gun at someone you are not willing to kill. Willing to kill is different from intending to kill. Get yourself some pepper spray or something if you aren't willing to kill and can't overpower them. I know that police, for example, often get counselling after killing someone because it CAN upset them a lot. They don't go around looking for people to kill but if they are in a position where they have to, they do it and deal with their feelings afterwards. That's your option.
They put about 30 rounds into the guy because even after he went down he kept firing rounds at them.
In the absence of the felon wearing body armour, I'm presuming the use of 9mm or.38's, yes? Or did they miss a lot?
During an incident in my country, police fired 11 shots to bring down a knife wielding teenager, due to missing I believe. In the aftermath in the media, everyone was asking whether they were justified to kill him, nobody was asking why police were so hopeless with their weapons. Lots of talk about disciplinary action, I would have preferred to have more firearms training implemented. It's beyond me why anyone thinks that threatening people with a knife doesn't justify the police shooting you, even if you are an angst filled teenager.
When the threat ends, you stop shooting. If that means they drop after 1 shot (admittedly unlikely) you stop shooting.
Unlikely to drop them in one shot? Your tool is inadequate. You need to get yourself a.45.
The only entity in a country that is interested in creating jobs for the sake of getting people employed is the government.
The government can only pay a wage by taxing someone else. Since it is obviously impossible to tax public employee's enough to pay all the public employee's wages, ultimately that wage money has to be taxed from the private sector. So the government can only thrive to the extent that the private sector thrives first.
Scrooge McDuck is a fictional character. The CEO's of the fortune 500 companies do not have vaults of cash they go swimming in. When a company has "cash" it isn't a pile of notes in the basement, it's in a bank. If you got a loan for your home or to start up a small business, that's the sort of place the money you got loaned came from.
Corporations do not hoard cash in a way that takes it out of the economy. Only Grandma with her bundle of cash hidden in the flower pot does.
Slashdot Mirror
Yeah I know, but society is so far resisting my attempts at total dictatorial control of public opinion. Fools! As a result, I can only speak for myself.
Kind of off topic, but I find it interesting that this line of reasoning is not used when it comes to disciplining children. Specifically, the slightest spanking is considered "abuse", but pretty much any action that only effects them mentally, abusive or not, is considered OK.
Having a wife who was significantly affected by a father with a toxic tongue and having myself been subjected to routine humiliation as a child I assure you that we do not consider mental and emotional abuse to be OK. Also, while I do not consider all spanking to be abuse I do not personally spank my children (although my wife sometimes does) because my own history makes it difficult for me to do it appropriately.
Shit! I stand corrected.
Why not go after the group that tries to implement there political ideology instead of what economist who are experts in the field say?
That would be the same expert economists that didn't know enough to predict the banking meltdown, right? Why should anyone care what they say?
much like you have been conned by Fox news et. al.
I did tell you I'm not American. If fox news is available where I live, I don't know about it. There is "Foxtel" satellite TV available so it might be on that I suppose, but I doubt there's much market for American Fox News in Australia. I also said "At least it wasn't McCain" which should have indicated to you that my distaste for Obama is not because of any affiliation with the US Republicans. Just to be clear, I didn't want McCain to win because he seemed pretty keen to escalate wars.
Obama was never going to live up to his hype. It doesn't really matter much if he was insincere or if naughty opposing politicians stopped him. All the people who thought he would were suckers who ought now have learned to get a better grip on reality.
I look forward to your reaction when some random retard mocks the death of one of your loved ones.
Having read some of his posts, I have significant doubt that he is capable of love as most people would describe or experience it.
I think people in general need to stop being so easily offended. I'm not in favor of limiting speech because they are easily offended.
If you think applauding someone's death at a memorial tribute site isn't enough to be truly offensive then your emotional responses are so far outside the normal range that your opinion will be considered irrelevant by the vast majority of people.
Have you considered the article Physical Pain and Emotional Pain Use Same Brain Networks?
Perhaps there is not such a large difference between physical and emotional abuse as we might have thought. I see no reason why maliciously inflicting pain on others should be tolerated simply because you do not physically wound them. To allow for freedom of speech, you could be allowed to post what you like on your own webpage. Posting offensive messages on a tribute page for the deceased is not necessary for free speech.
It's not that he's a dirtbag, it's that he actually came across as someone who gave a shit--until he got elected.
I don't understand why so many people got taken in like that. As another foreigner my wife and I listened to his speeches it came across to us as empty rhetoric. It baffled us that people who otherwise seemed sensible and educated were so smitten with him.
I guess it just goes to show that even educated people can be conned. At least it wasn't McCain.
combat shotguns that can take a door of it's hinges in two shots, and can carry twenty cartridges in their semi-automatic barrels - and still be so light that a reasonably trained person can duel-wield.
I think you've been watching too many movies. Show me a semi-auto shotgun with 20 rounds that you think you can wield with one hand.
Apple is free to sell its products here in Australia so long as they abide by any laws and regulations imposed by our government. Just because Americans are generally repulsed by consumer protection doesn't mean the rest of the world feels that way.
I think it is an adequate counter to your point that it's not acceptable (and that it's stupid). "I don't believe that it is acceptable."
Then you may as well have said "It's subjective" as your reply to the other poster and left your entire argument at that. Is your only point that acceptability is subjective? When I say "It is not acceptable", it should be obvious that what is meant is "I don't believe that it is acceptable". I am giving my opinion.
You may as well have said "I disagree" and then shut up. You are revealing that you think indecisiveness is ok even in critical situations. Using lethal force is a fairly extreme action and it is not ok to do it in a haphazard or indecisive fashion. If you disagree, you'll just have to put up with being wrong. Yes, that's my opinion.
Now all we need is people who can predict the future with 100% accuracy and ensure that their emotions will never get in the way 100% of the time.
Making a decision is not predicting the future, it is choosing a course of action. Following through on that is a large part of what most of us call "character". It's not rocket science, neither is it magic. It is required by people who wish to be accepted by me, at least to the degree of acknowledging it as unacceptable and working to improve.
I'm sure a lot of people "know" things; then they find out that they were "wrong."
That's not knowing then. I said I think you have an obligation to know, not to think you know.
no it is not acceptable.
Subjective.
Since there is no universal standard of what is acceptable, "acceptability" itself is subjective. That is not an adequate counter to any point in this discussion.
Some people might not be able to handle it
If you can't handle it, it is unacceptable to be carrying a firearm. Even if you thought you could handle it and were wrong. It is unacceptable to be wrong in such a case as carrying and using lethal weapons.
I doubt a criminal who truly wanted a firearm wouldn't already be armed.
Possibly purchased from someone who stole it from a wishy washy moron who armed themselves then refused to defend themselves.
You did make the decision. However, what if someone can't follow through with it (even if they thought they could) at the last minute (because of emotion)?
That's not making a decision, that's being indecisive.
would in hindsight acknowledge that it was stupid.
That probably goes for most people that rely on emotions or act on emotion.
As in your scenario, the person who couldn't follow through their "decision" because of emotion. Yes it is stupid, no it is not acceptable.
If you are going to carry firearms, I think you have an obligation to society to KNOW whether you are willing to use it. Not some fanciful wishful thinking, knowledge, certainty. If your attacker takes your gun because of your weak mindedness, you are then responsible for arming a criminal. It is not acceptable. If you won't use it, stay unarmed. For the record, I do not carry weapons.
As I said before, believing that you'll be able to kill someone when you get the gun and actually being able to do it are two different things.
You can decide either to kill or not to kill in self defence on a rational basis. If you decide to go armed, you should have already made the decision. To not have decided and yet to arm yourself with a firearm is stupid. Making life and death decisions stupidly is not acceptable in my view. If it is acceptable in yours, I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.
I would bet that someone who acted according to your scenario, if they managed to survive, would in hindsight acknowledge that it was stupid.
Is that what happened in the LA riot?
There never was a time when money was not fiat money. The value of gold is just that of agreement.
The value of everything is just that of agreement, regardless of its inherent utility. The point is that people value gold whether the government backs its value or not. Paper and electronic currency does not have this property. Its value is derived solely by government decree.
So what makes gold so different from platinum that one is "currency proof" and the other is not?
Nothing has a stable price, everything fluctuates. I haven't been watching platinum but I'll check it out now that you've mentioned it.
And you want to base your money on a pure perception of value?
Nowhere did I say that we should return to a gold standard. My point was that fiat currency, being a product of government and not the free market, should be regulated by government and not the free market. One of the key characteristics of a free market is a limited supply. The government cannot suddenly decide to "print" a billion ounces of gold. Whether that's good or bad is not the point. The point is that fiat money and commodity money are so different because of this that a monetary system developed for one (private banks originating from gold standard times) is not suitable for the other.
Fiat money requires regulation, but that's not a free market failure. That's my point.
There's a big difference between mouthing off at someone and threatening to kill someone while brandishing a weapon. Learn it. The second justifies the target of your threat to kill you.
http://www.theage.com.au/national/teen-shot-dead-by-police-20081211-6wtt.html
4 police, 3 fired, tried capsicum spray twice first and it didn't work.
I don't get why anyone cares if it could have been handled differently. He threatened to kill one of the police. I also don't get why no-one cares about the lousy marksmanship of the police.
There is a reason we have regulation, the lack of which allowed the Wall Street banks to make a bad bubble in housing expand to the point it threatens not only the U.S. economy but the entire world's.
The problems we have with banking are not a problem of free market economics per se for the following reason: fiat currency is a product that can exist only by government decree. Also, it is a product that exists to enable the free market in much the same way that courts enable the free market (there is no free market without the enforcement of contracts).
When courts judgements are for sale, we call it corruption. They are supposed to enable the market, not be a part of it. Similarly with legislators, when they are for sale to the highest bidder, we call it corruption, not a free market. Neither of these indicate a failure of free market economics. When currency supply is screwed up by corruption we should call it what it is. It is not a free market failure because currency supply is a function of government, not private enterprise, unless you want to return to a commodity based money supply. It is corruption.
The only reason it is seen as a failure of the free market is because the fraudsters managed universally to get their activities sanctioned by law. There was some validity to free markets in currency when they were based on products such as gold, now we use fiat money there is no such validity, at least not with a fractional reserve system.
You seem to be ignoring the very specific scenario that I laid out for you. You're cornered, someone dangerous is approaching you, you don't want to kill them (even if you can't think clearly or fast enough), and you can't overpower them with anything except a gun.
You seem to be ignoring the preparation to your scenario, ie: you are carrying a gun. If you weren't willing to kill, you shouldn't have armed yourself with a gun.
If you don't want to kill them, don't use lethal force. It's that simple.
Exactly. Don't shoot them in a place that could kill them.
You don't understand, to fire a pistol at someone is to use lethal force, regardless of the actual outcome. The idea that you can shoot quickly and accurately enough to hit someone in a peripheral area while they are attacking you is fanciful nonsense for all but the most exceptional marksmen. Even then, you have arteries in the arms and legs, to be sure of not killing them you're talking about hitting fingers and toes. You need to find out some more about anatomy and/or firearms use before you can comment intelligently on this topic.
You never fire a gun at someone you are not willing to kill. Willing to kill is different from intending to kill. Get yourself some pepper spray or something if you aren't willing to kill and can't overpower them. I know that police, for example, often get counselling after killing someone because it CAN upset them a lot. They don't go around looking for people to kill but if they are in a position where they have to, they do it and deal with their feelings afterwards. That's your option.
They put about 30 rounds into the guy because even after he went down he kept firing rounds at them.
In the absence of the felon wearing body armour, I'm presuming the use of 9mm or .38's, yes? Or did they miss a lot?
During an incident in my country, police fired 11 shots to bring down a knife wielding teenager, due to missing I believe. In the aftermath in the media, everyone was asking whether they were justified to kill him, nobody was asking why police were so hopeless with their weapons. Lots of talk about disciplinary action, I would have preferred to have more firearms training implemented. It's beyond me why anyone thinks that threatening people with a knife doesn't justify the police shooting you, even if you are an angst filled teenager.
When the threat ends, you stop shooting. If that means they drop after 1 shot (admittedly unlikely) you stop shooting.
Unlikely to drop them in one shot? Your tool is inadequate. You need to get yourself a .45.
How do we show them to have broken a law without going to court?
The only entity in a country that is interested in creating jobs for the sake of getting people employed is the government.
The government can only pay a wage by taxing someone else. Since it is obviously impossible to tax public employee's enough to pay all the public employee's wages, ultimately that wage money has to be taxed from the private sector. So the government can only thrive to the extent that the private sector thrives first.
The dependent is not superior to the provider.
I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing "government spending > private hoarding."
Scrooge McDuck is a fictional character. The CEO's of the fortune 500 companies do not have vaults of cash they go swimming in. When a company has "cash" it isn't a pile of notes in the basement, it's in a bank. If you got a loan for your home or to start up a small business, that's the sort of place the money you got loaned came from.
Corporations do not hoard cash in a way that takes it out of the economy. Only Grandma with her bundle of cash hidden in the flower pot does.