Um... that's pretty nuts. Obama hasn't done anything likely to piss people off enough to actually warrant such extreme actions.
That may be so. Have there not been upturns in firearms sales since it became likely that Obama would win the election? The McCain political campaign or NRA or someone portrayed Obama as anti-gun. Apparently the sales are a response to this. So, if people anticipating new gun laws respond by buying up guns, what do they intend to do? What will happen if those laws are introduced? How will people respond to enforcement? It seems to me that if people were going to comply with gun-ban laws they wouldn't buy the guns. If they don't comply and the government attempts to enforce the law, you have by nature a very volatile situation.
And typically the mechanism to get states to comply with federal government directives is money.
If you don't see any possibility of a problem with this method, you haven't been paying very much attention.
Bush was the most hated president certainly in my lifetime... and Obama is still nearly the most popular.
Bush was most hated by people who happen to be in favor of gun bans, Obama is hated by the pro-gun right.
If states didn't openly rebel against Bush, you think they will against Obama?
So HCR6 in NH doesn't mean anything? Are there not other states considering such resolutions?
If the US dollar collapses, it can change a lot. I just don't think it is out of the question to have armed conflict in the US. I think it possible that there will be, as time goes on, a lot of desperate people, many of them armed.
Why is there an assumption that this is for battlefield use when the US government (and its lackey states) have such a demonstrable desire to spy on its local populace as invasively and pervasively as possible?
Why do you assume that if the US government plans to deploy something domestically that it isn't for battlefield use?
I've heard of several people predicting civil strife in the US in the next couple of years. Guns and ammo have had very high sales for months. Last time I heard, 20 states were preparing resolutions reminding the federal government its powers are limited. Obama thinks he is comparable to Lincoln.
What will happen if a number of states start refusing to comply with federal government directives? I hope it doesn't happen, but I wouldn't consider another civil war to be out of the question.
Is it just me or is criminal law in the US doing a better job of protecting criminals rather than protecting the victims? I mean seriously what. the. fuck. were going to let go an repeat offender caught red handed driving a stolen motorcycle go because the cops profile was set to devious and he made a joke about watching Training Day.
Our legal system is supposed to make it difficult to get convictions, the burden of proof is quite high. That's a response to the excesses of the previous system, where the King could declare "Off with his head!" without any evidence or even an accusation. Since the Magna Carta first limited the powers of the King, the system has been refined regularly, resulting in what we have today. It isn't perfect, but it isn't going to be either. If you ever have to face criminal charges yourself (remember you don't have to be guilty to be accused) you may understand better.
The issue here isn't whether the accused stole a motorcycle, it is whether the court was presented with sufficient proof to convict him of felony possession of a gun. Victims want protection? The same legal system that requires that proof of guilt also allows you to buy firearms to protect yourself.
what about people like me who are anything but clueless but who have incredibly poor memories for certain things?
It's not that I don't have a clue, I've just forgotten it! Honestly!
:)
I don't remember everything either. I just write some scripts, or write useful commands I don't use much but use with similar options each time to a quick reference file. I'm not a IT professional but have used Linux at home exclusively for years and MS Windows hardly at all. Helping my brother in law with his Windows box, I find it quite a bit harder than linux.
Not in the slightest. If a fertilized egg is really a human being, then there are millions of deaths every year.
Death != murder
The rate of death for humans is 100% but we still oppose murder. The rate of "fertilised egg" deaths has nothing to do with whether it is OK to deliberately destroy them or not.
Many people do not define humanity by consciousness, or any particular level of development.
And some people think the Earth is 6,000 years old. Too damned bad for them.
I see you haven't refuted my argument as to why it is a bad idea to classify humanity according to a level of development.
Right, which is why the right wing cries and moans every time a Christian family has a buttload of kids through in vitro fertilization. Oh wait, they don't. At all.
I suppose some could see it that way, if they're total morons. A person asleep will wake up. A person in a coma might wake up. The chances of a fertilized egg waking up: zero.
Not true. Do you think at all before posting? A fertilized egg, given the suitable growing environment, can certainly wake up. Even the people in comas require to be fed and protected from the elements to have a chance at survival. How interesting it is that you accuse people who disagree with you of being "total morons" when you don't even do basic fact checking, and even make wrong statements you shouldn't need to fact check they are so obvious, ie: that "fertilized eggs" can't achieve consciousness. Don't you realise that you were once one of those "fertilized eggs"? Perhaps you don't qualify as fully conscious?
However, are we REALLY so drunk on "stimulus" spending for everything under the sun these days, that refusing to subsidize a particular item means that item is actively "restricted"?
Well, perhaps not we. It's the left wingers. They have a view of people that is fundamentally contemptuous. They do not believe most people are capable of anything worthwhile without government assistance. I haven't worked out exactly why they think the people that run government services are exempted from the general incompetence the rest of the population supposedly suffers from. That's probably because the foundation of left wing philosophy is "feeling" instead of reason.
Incidentally, the first response my wife and I had to an Obama speech was that it sounded great, but we couldn't tell if there was actually an idea there. We concluded he would appeal to the "feelers".
1. According to the Department of Bioethics, anywhere between sixty to eighty percent of fertilized eggs fail to attach to the uterus naturally.
Not only that, since all people die anyway, it's only religious foolishness to say that killing people is wrong. Which is to say, in case you missed the sarcasm, that the natural rate of viability of fertilized eggs is completely irrelevant from a moral point of view.
2. Though a precursor to a fully formed human being, these little balls of cells have neither brains nor senses. They have no qualia, no conscious phenomena.
Many people do not define humanity by consciousness, or any particular level of development. If we do, that level is moveable and could be used to classify many people as disposable. No, it's not fearmongering, see Peter Singer's work, it is already being publicly argued for.
3. If the cells that precede the formation of a human being that will never grow to become even a fetus, much less a fully formed infant, can be used to save lives that exist today, why not? A human that will never be is effectively dead.
The people who oppose embryonic stem cell research generally also oppose the deliberate fertilization of eggs that will be consciously denied the chance to live.
4. All of these things can be taken into consideration without devaluing conscious human life, because conscious human life this is not.
So by this reasoning it is ok to kill unconscious people, since any unconscious person only has the potential to become conscious, you can't prove they will until they do. Would you care for some sleeping pills?
If you believe that human life begins 'when the sperm hits the germ' then every mother that has attempted to get pregnant and failed repeatedly could very probably be guilty of negligent homicide because of point number one.
Trying to produce self-sustaining life and failing is not the equivalent of deliberately producing a life with the intention of killing it.
After a long discussion with my wife, I turned it down, even though there was a very real chance that doing so would have meant losing my house.
So you considered it then. Accepting the offer was an option for you that took a long discussion to reject. Don't get me wrong, I commend your decision, but someone applying as a janitor or secretary, someone without much knowledge or interest in copyright issues, but a house payment due, can you really fault them for taking the job, since you considered the same thing?
In any case, I'm not in favour of saving evil or inept corporations to save good peoples jobs. Otherwise all that is needed to perpetual an evil scheme is to hire some people so you can gain immunity for the sake of their jobs.
I don't care. I just imagined your project in my back yard.
As I said: "all my equipment works off site or is electric and wont disturb the neighbors"
The main thing is the kiln, which is just a modified (insulated, perspex roof, heater, fan) garden shed, quite legal, almost zero noise. No different than having a small garden shed or greenhouse in my yard. Local regulations are such that I can have another 3 without even getting approval because of the small size and the room I have. The log is milled off site. There is no law saying I can't store a few cube of timber in my shed with a clear roof. It's all perfectly legal. Timber doesn't make much noise as it dries. It is the fact that I have economical collection of the raw material (I get paid to remove it) and ability to dry some of it quickly that makes it viable.
According to the bible apostles, including Peter (Cephas) who the Catholics count as the first pope, were married. I Corinthians 9:5 Have we no right to take along a wife who is a believer, even as the rest of the apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas?
You could edit the wikipedia page. You could even sue the person writing the emails and include a section mentioning that on wikipedia. That would probably go a long way to preventing it happening again, as people looking you up would find the real info. If you are going for an interview, you could include in your application the information that the person shares your name but is not you.
Use them for anything interesting and get sued. Patents to cross-license with the upper class members that hold broad patents in your field are not cheap. Or am I missing something fundamental?
Yes, the fact that there is a heap of stuff invented more than 20 years ago that is still profitable to produce, ie: products that have no patents. Not everything is IT, not everything is changing at lightning speed.
As one example, I'm in the process of starting a side business. It doesn't have to support my family, but it could potentially do that down the track. Certainly it can provide a buffer for me that can give me that much more ability to walk away from a deal offered by a corporation. It's furniture timber. I have both timber supply and sales organised. Total outlay will be under $10,000, much less to get started (I already have some of the equipment I need anyway). I'm doing it in my backyard, all my equipment works off site or is electric and wont disturb the neighbors. I anticipate that I can make $1000+ per month doing this without too much trouble. Not too bad for part time. A pretty good back-up that can be expanded in six weeks to quadruple capacity if necessary. Without the availability of cheap technology it would be very difficult. The reality is that productive capacity that used to require substantial investment is now within reach of everyone. Economies of scale favor the large producer, the cost of distribution favors the small local producer. I can move my product in a trailer behind a car! Try that Ikea! I also have no lease to pay, no wages, no shareholders. My product is environmentally friendly (all my timber is recovered from felled trees that would otherwise be in landfill) and my waste product can be sold/used as fuel.
As a bonus, I can teach my kids a bunch of interesting stuff and involve them with my work. All made possible by capitalism. If you're creating technology you may run up against patents, but not by using it.
How can you have a "class" of capitalists when everyone is able to own property ?
It's possible if only members of the upper class have a reasonable chance of bootstrapping themselves into owning enough property to get anything done.
Well that's not the case now. Technology is cheap. Computers, tools, machines (lathes, mills, even CNC machines), power are all accessible by pretty much anyone who wants them. Knowing a number of people (including myself) who own their means of production, some even without borrowing, I can tell you that it is quite attainable.
The problem is that people have been conditioned to subservience and dependence in school. The "chains" of modern western "slavery" are quite fragile, so long as you can overcome the social conditioning. Exchanging subservience to a corporation for subservience to the state is not a solution.
Being a "team" player is in self interest of every smart person. Since every smart person knows that he/she cannot do everything on his/her own.
The stupid person, views self interest at a reptilian level - all for me, none for everyone else.
Yes.
Oh. And BTW, Christianity is the ultimate form of religious communism.
I was with you right up until that. Try reading Matthew 25: 14-30 and see if you can salvage any communism out of that. Or II Thessalonians 3:10-12 "For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread."
If that hasn't done it, then in the middle of the "communist" church in Acts 5 you have Ananias and Sapphira who were told concerning their possession "While you kept it, didn't it remain your own? After it was sold, wasn't it in your power?"
The early church was not communist, they had property rights and those who gave did by choice, not compulsion. Communism is to generosity what rape is to loving sex. The compulsion turns it from a wonderful thing that builds relationship to something that ought to be considered horrendous and destroys any value of the act itself.
There are plenty of dictactors etc that would disagree with you.
Who also continually have to beware of uprisings, assassinations, etc.
There are plenty of cases where you gain more by hurting the community than by helping it.
Generally requiring you to take a very short term view and/or be ignorant of the real consequences of your actions.
A simple example - if you have a chance to betray or screw over your neighbours in return for a large amount of money. The amount of money you gained could be worth more than the relationships with your neighbours would yield.
Only if you do not regard your character to have any value. What do you do with all that money if you've become the type of person you despise? Doesn't sound like much of a benefit to me.
But capitalism is about private ownership of property. Open source is about collective ownership.
Not the way I see it. Open source is about the end-users control of their software. I can modify it, redistribute it, whatever I want really, just like any other product in a capitalist economy. What I can't do is prevent other people from modifying and redistributing their copy, preventing them from enjoying capitalism. Proprietary software is capitalism for a few, FOSS is capitalism for many. In a capitalist economy where price is determined by supply and demand, infinitely copyable goods such as software approach zero in price, which is exactly what we see with Free software now. It is a restoration of capitalism, not it's destruction.
That said, I don't really see FOSS as capitalist idea vs communist idea. When you have some pretty hard right leaning individuals and hard left leaning individuals proclaiming the benefits of FOSS, maybe we need to accept that FOSS is workable regardless of your ideology. It's not inherently left or right, but good and effective. I remember reading about Israelis and Arabs working together on fonts or character sets or something. It's worth thinking about.
Perhaps because community is a very good thing, even if we must balance our need for a community against our own self-interests.;-)
You don't have to balance community against your own self-interest, community is one of those things in your self-interest. So you balance your efforts at obtaining one thing that is in your interest with the other things that are in your interest. It is in my best interest to have workable relationships with neighbors etc.
Regardless of anything else, communism and/or socialism in their many forms are the ideal forms of society. If humans were never selfish and always worked for the betterment of everyone, there would be no need for anything like money, wealth, or capitalism.
The problem is that humans are not perfect. Even the best of us attribute more value to our selves or our families than random strangers. Thus a system is required that meets the challenges of an imperfect society. The most natural form of such a system is a risk/reward system where work is done with the expectation of a possible reward. This is, for better or for worse, capitalism.
So to paraphrase: In a non-existent fantasy world, communism and/or socialism in their many forms are the ideal forms of society. In reality, capitalism is the best system.
Only if one looses a job will a parent be at home.
That's what I'm suggesting could happen, although my main point was that most families don't have someone at home available to teach. I doubt that homeschooling would work very well if you're only doing it because you can't find something else to do anyway.
Smaller schools might help but I think what would help more is decreasing the teacher to student ratio, less students for each teacher.
Well, we could achieve that by killing lots of students I suppose, or maybe by firing administrators and giving those jobs to teachers. Teacher to student ratios is one of the benefits of homeschool too. Student/teacher ratio of 3:1 in my house.
Do you really believe a lot of parents would choose to have children with low intelligence?
No, but intelligence, like any other ability, has to be cultivated and exercised to get the benefit out of it. IMO going to the expense and effort to genetically screen for higher intelligence and then processing people though the current education system would yield very little result. I'm suggesting you could get better results with better education than you could with genetic screening if you had to choose one or the other. Of course we could do both, but genetic screening alone would likely be a waste of time.
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Well you're right about the research thing to an extent. However, people on here have said that punishment and/or prison doesn't drop the crime rate one bit. I think they mentioned studies too - who do I listen to? Any peer reviewed studies out there? But great news - I agree with you if it really does help prevent crimes.
It is one of the mainstays of how you train pets and children. It is applicable to our everyday life all the time. It is even contained in your own ideas, although you want to replace harder punishments with societal disapproval (which is a necessary part of the whole system, I will acknowledge). It is not enough by itself, so watch out for that in any study. Punishment can do a great deal to reduce theft, but not if people are hungry, for example. Just look to any country where people do not expect to be punished for a given crime, then at instances where people do expect to be punished. When, for example, did discriminating against people based on sexual preference become less likely to occur? When people/corps started getting punished. Do people expect to be punished for smoking marijuana? Generally no, and it is widespread. Do harsh penalties for drug dealing stop it? For people with no other viable source of income, no, for people who think they will get away with it, no. Personally though, I know people who have no objection to marijuana but won't get involved in the trade simply because it is illegal and carries punishment.
However there is another side to it also, that if the justice system does not punish, sooner or later individuals will take that into their own hands. A refusal to punish creates vigilantism. I don't have a specific study to point you to but the whole idea that government is necessary at all is that you need an organisation capable of enforcing law, law predominantly being a set of rules designed to protect us from each other. If disapproving of people and asking them to stop was enough, the court system would never have come about.
Well of course, but I mean it's not really the kind of thing that can forced anyway (easy to hide, but the bitterness can still be hidden inside). It's up to each person. I'm just speaking ideally...
Ideally, yes, you are right, everyone should forgive and people would be eager to do good to each other and not evil. However I don't think we should base our court system and laws on that since it isn't real.
You can't actually knock someone down with a bullet unless it's also powerful enough to knock down the guy firing it. In which case it would go straight through anyway (which most non HP bullets tend to do).
What passes for an education these days? Don't you think the difference in weight between the projectile and firearm would make a difference? [Hint: it does] http://kwk.us/recoil.html
Punishments are in general negative, and rewards are positive. If we want to maximize happiness/contentment/well-being (which isn't a zero-sum game of course), then we should discourage punishment which is basically 'revenge' disquised.
Positive results are obtained through positive action. Negative results are obtained through negative action. Behaviourism, while not good as a total philosophy, has certainly been well demonstrated to be effective. If you wish to promote the greatest happiness etc, you implement a system of punishment and reward to encourage positive action and discourage negative action.
As I said before, it's not going to make things better because those who commit stupid crimes would do so anyway.
Nonsense. A portion will, but many people will moderate their behaviour based on expected outcomes, including but not limited to punishments. You clearly have not done even the most cursory research of this topic. Granted, punishment is not enough to stop a behaviour given strong enough reasons to engage in it, but in general it is very effective. I've been told by people who have been to countries with Sharia law that you can leave your wallet on the bonnet of your car and it won't be taken. That's not meant to be an endorsement of Sharia but the claim that punishment doesn't discourage the targeted behaviour is not true.
Punishing them degrades us and them.
According to whose value system? I would say that allowing doers of evil to roam free while the rewards of peoples labor is given to those who didn't work for it degrades us.
It would be sufficient for society to frown upon their actions, and plea with them not to do so (before and after the crime).
Plea with them? HA! You think force won't stop them but asking them nicely will? That has very limited practical application. Don't you think that many of the victims of violent crime beg for mercy if they have the opportunity? There is a reason that armed self defence is less likely to result in injury to the intended victim than passivity. It has to do with criminals finding overwhelming force more persuasive than pleading.
Encouraging people to forgive the offender would be far more constructive, otherwise the victim has the anguish of the crime itself, *and* of the bitter resentment they feel towards the offender. Don't you agree?
I'm well aware of the benefits of forgiveness. However forgiveness, like sex, is wonderful if you choose it but a terrible injustice if it is forced on you. I'd no more have a state enforced system of forgiveness than I would state enforced sex.
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Um... that's pretty nuts. Obama hasn't done anything likely to piss people off enough to actually warrant such extreme actions.
That may be so. Have there not been upturns in firearms sales since it became likely that Obama would win the election? The McCain political campaign or NRA or someone portrayed Obama as anti-gun. Apparently the sales are a response to this. So, if people anticipating new gun laws respond by buying up guns, what do they intend to do? What will happen if those laws are introduced? How will people respond to enforcement? It seems to me that if people were going to comply with gun-ban laws they wouldn't buy the guns. If they don't comply and the government attempts to enforce the law, you have by nature a very volatile situation.
And typically the mechanism to get states to comply with federal government directives is money.
If you don't see any possibility of a problem with this method, you haven't been paying very much attention.
Bush was the most hated president certainly in my lifetime... and Obama is still nearly the most popular.
Bush was most hated by people who happen to be in favor of gun bans, Obama is hated by the pro-gun right.
If states didn't openly rebel against Bush, you think they will against Obama?
So HCR6 in NH doesn't mean anything? Are there not other states considering such resolutions?
If the US dollar collapses, it can change a lot. I just don't think it is out of the question to have armed conflict in the US. I think it possible that there will be, as time goes on, a lot of desperate people, many of them armed.
Why is there an assumption that this is for battlefield use when the US government (and its lackey states) have such a demonstrable desire to spy on its local populace as invasively and pervasively as possible?
Why do you assume that if the US government plans to deploy something domestically that it isn't for battlefield use?
I've heard of several people predicting civil strife in the US in the next couple of years. Guns and ammo have had very high sales for months. Last time I heard, 20 states were preparing resolutions reminding the federal government its powers are limited. Obama thinks he is comparable to Lincoln.
What will happen if a number of states start refusing to comply with federal government directives? I hope it doesn't happen, but I wouldn't consider another civil war to be out of the question.
Posting from Australia, btw.
Is it just me or is criminal law in the US doing a better job of protecting criminals rather than protecting the victims? I mean seriously what. the. fuck. were going to let go an repeat offender caught red handed driving a stolen motorcycle go because the cops profile was set to devious and he made a joke about watching Training Day.
Our legal system is supposed to make it difficult to get convictions, the burden of proof is quite high. That's a response to the excesses of the previous system, where the King could declare "Off with his head!" without any evidence or even an accusation. Since the Magna Carta first limited the powers of the King, the system has been refined regularly, resulting in what we have today. It isn't perfect, but it isn't going to be either. If you ever have to face criminal charges yourself (remember you don't have to be guilty to be accused) you may understand better.
The issue here isn't whether the accused stole a motorcycle, it is whether the court was presented with sufficient proof to convict him of felony possession of a gun. Victims want protection? The same legal system that requires that proof of guilt also allows you to buy firearms to protect yourself.
what about people like me who are anything but clueless but who have incredibly poor memories for certain things?
It's not that I don't have a clue, I've just forgotten it! Honestly!
:)
I don't remember everything either. I just write some scripts, or write useful commands I don't use much but use with similar options each time to a quick reference file. I'm not a IT professional but have used Linux at home exclusively for years and MS Windows hardly at all. Helping my brother in law with his Windows box, I find it quite a bit harder than linux.
Not in the slightest. If a fertilized egg is really a human being, then there are millions of deaths every year.
Death != murder
The rate of death for humans is 100% but we still oppose murder. The rate of "fertilised egg" deaths has nothing to do with whether it is OK to deliberately destroy them or not.
Many people do not define humanity by consciousness, or any particular level of development.
And some people think the Earth is 6,000 years old. Too damned bad for them.
I see you haven't refuted my argument as to why it is a bad idea to classify humanity according to a level of development.
Right, which is why the right wing cries and moans every time a Christian family has a buttload of kids through in vitro fertilization. Oh wait, they don't. At all.
http://www.google.com/search?q=right+to+life+IVF
What is your excuse for making such an ignorant statement? You obviously haven't made the slightest attempt at verification.
I suppose some could see it that way, if they're total morons. A person asleep will wake up. A person in a coma might wake up. The chances of a fertilized egg waking up: zero.
Not true. Do you think at all before posting? A fertilized egg, given the suitable growing environment, can certainly wake up. Even the people in comas require to be fed and protected from the elements to have a chance at survival. How interesting it is that you accuse people who disagree with you of being "total morons" when you don't even do basic fact checking, and even make wrong statements you shouldn't need to fact check they are so obvious, ie: that "fertilized eggs" can't achieve consciousness. Don't you realise that you were once one of those "fertilized eggs"? Perhaps you don't qualify as fully conscious?
However, are we REALLY so drunk on "stimulus" spending for everything under the sun these days, that refusing to subsidize a particular item means that item is actively "restricted"?
Well, perhaps not we. It's the left wingers. They have a view of people that is fundamentally contemptuous. They do not believe most people are capable of anything worthwhile without government assistance. I haven't worked out exactly why they think the people that run government services are exempted from the general incompetence the rest of the population supposedly suffers from. That's probably because the foundation of left wing philosophy is "feeling" instead of reason.
Incidentally, the first response my wife and I had to an Obama speech was that it sounded great, but we couldn't tell if there was actually an idea there. We concluded he would appeal to the "feelers".
1. According to the Department of Bioethics, anywhere between sixty to eighty percent of fertilized eggs fail to attach to the uterus naturally.
Not only that, since all people die anyway, it's only religious foolishness to say that killing people is wrong. Which is to say, in case you missed the sarcasm, that the natural rate of viability of fertilized eggs is completely irrelevant from a moral point of view.
2. Though a precursor to a fully formed human being, these little balls of cells have neither brains nor senses. They have no qualia, no conscious phenomena.
Many people do not define humanity by consciousness, or any particular level of development. If we do, that level is moveable and could be used to classify many people as disposable. No, it's not fearmongering, see Peter Singer's work, it is already being publicly argued for.
3. If the cells that precede the formation of a human being that will never grow to become even a fetus, much less a fully formed infant, can be used to save lives that exist today, why not? A human that will never be is effectively dead.
The people who oppose embryonic stem cell research generally also oppose the deliberate fertilization of eggs that will be consciously denied the chance to live.
4. All of these things can be taken into consideration without devaluing conscious human life, because conscious human life this is not.
So by this reasoning it is ok to kill unconscious people, since any unconscious person only has the potential to become conscious, you can't prove they will until they do. Would you care for some sleeping pills?
If you believe that human life begins 'when the sperm hits the germ' then every mother that has attempted to get pregnant and failed repeatedly could very probably be guilty of negligent homicide because of point number one.
Trying to produce self-sustaining life and failing is not the equivalent of deliberately producing a life with the intention of killing it.
no more than you can disprove the existance of ... Santa Claus.
Nonsense. Of course you can disprove the existence of Santa Clause.
Possibly not, NSW have a lot of outrageous laws and have done for a while.
Such as?
Daylight saving! You cockroaches stay south, here me! And have your mates back!
- Yes, I'm a Queenslander.
After a long discussion with my wife, I turned it down, even though there was a very real chance that doing so would have meant losing my house.
So you considered it then. Accepting the offer was an option for you that took a long discussion to reject. Don't get me wrong, I commend your decision, but someone applying as a janitor or secretary, someone without much knowledge or interest in copyright issues, but a house payment due, can you really fault them for taking the job, since you considered the same thing?
In any case, I'm not in favour of saving evil or inept corporations to save good peoples jobs. Otherwise all that is needed to perpetual an evil scheme is to hire some people so you can gain immunity for the sake of their jobs.
I don't care. I just imagined your project in my back yard.
As I said: "all my equipment works off site or is electric and wont disturb the neighbors"
The main thing is the kiln, which is just a modified (insulated, perspex roof, heater, fan) garden shed, quite legal, almost zero noise. No different than having a small garden shed or greenhouse in my yard. Local regulations are such that I can have another 3 without even getting approval because of the small size and the room I have. The log is milled off site. There is no law saying I can't store a few cube of timber in my shed with a clear roof. It's all perfectly legal. Timber doesn't make much noise as it dries. It is the fact that I have economical collection of the raw material (I get paid to remove it) and ability to dry some of it quickly that makes it viable.
Besides that, my neighbors are like minded.
Hell some of the early popes had mistresses.
According to the bible apostles, including Peter (Cephas) who the Catholics count as the first pope, were married. I Corinthians 9:5 Have we no right to take along a wife who is a believer, even as the rest of the apostles, and the brothers of the Lord, and Cephas?
You could edit the wikipedia page. You could even sue the person writing the emails and include a section mentioning that on wikipedia. That would probably go a long way to preventing it happening again, as people looking you up would find the real info. If you are going for an interview, you could include in your application the information that the person shares your name but is not you.
Use them for anything interesting and get sued. Patents to cross-license with the upper class members that hold broad patents in your field are not cheap. Or am I missing something fundamental?
Yes, the fact that there is a heap of stuff invented more than 20 years ago that is still profitable to produce, ie: products that have no patents. Not everything is IT, not everything is changing at lightning speed.
As one example, I'm in the process of starting a side business. It doesn't have to support my family, but it could potentially do that down the track. Certainly it can provide a buffer for me that can give me that much more ability to walk away from a deal offered by a corporation. It's furniture timber. I have both timber supply and sales organised. Total outlay will be under $10,000, much less to get started (I already have some of the equipment I need anyway). I'm doing it in my backyard, all my equipment works off site or is electric and wont disturb the neighbors. I anticipate that I can make $1000+ per month doing this without too much trouble. Not too bad for part time. A pretty good back-up that can be expanded in six weeks to quadruple capacity if necessary. Without the availability of cheap technology it would be very difficult. The reality is that productive capacity that used to require substantial investment is now within reach of everyone. Economies of scale favor the large producer, the cost of distribution favors the small local producer. I can move my product in a trailer behind a car! Try that Ikea! I also have no lease to pay, no wages, no shareholders. My product is environmentally friendly (all my timber is recovered from felled trees that would otherwise be in landfill) and my waste product can be sold/used as fuel.
As a bonus, I can teach my kids a bunch of interesting stuff and involve them with my work. All made possible by capitalism. If you're creating technology you may run up against patents, but not by using it.
How can you have a "class" of capitalists when everyone is able to own property ?
It's possible if only members of the upper class have a reasonable chance of bootstrapping themselves into owning enough property to get anything done.
Well that's not the case now. Technology is cheap. Computers, tools, machines (lathes, mills, even CNC machines), power are all accessible by pretty much anyone who wants them. Knowing a number of people (including myself) who own their means of production, some even without borrowing, I can tell you that it is quite attainable.
The problem is that people have been conditioned to subservience and dependence in school. The "chains" of modern western "slavery" are quite fragile, so long as you can overcome the social conditioning. Exchanging subservience to a corporation for subservience to the state is not a solution.
Being a "team" player is in self interest of every smart person. Since every smart person knows that he/she cannot do everything on his/her own. The stupid person, views self interest at a reptilian level - all for me, none for everyone else.
Yes.
Oh. And BTW, Christianity is the ultimate form of religious communism.
I was with you right up until that. Try reading Matthew 25: 14-30 and see if you can salvage any communism out of that. Or II Thessalonians 3:10-12 "For even when we were with you, this we commanded you, that if any would not work, neither should he eat. For we hear that there are some which walk among you disorderly, working not at all, but are busybodies. Now them that are such we command and exhort by our Lord Jesus Christ, that with quietness they work, and eat their own bread."
If that hasn't done it, then in the middle of the "communist" church in Acts 5 you have Ananias and Sapphira who were told concerning their possession "While you kept it, didn't it remain your own? After it was sold, wasn't it in your power?"
The early church was not communist, they had property rights and those who gave did by choice, not compulsion. Communism is to generosity what rape is to loving sex. The compulsion turns it from a wonderful thing that builds relationship to something that ought to be considered horrendous and destroys any value of the act itself.
There are plenty of dictactors etc that would disagree with you.
Who also continually have to beware of uprisings, assassinations, etc.
There are plenty of cases where you gain more by hurting the community than by helping it.
Generally requiring you to take a very short term view and/or be ignorant of the real consequences of your actions.
A simple example - if you have a chance to betray or screw over your neighbours in return for a large amount of money. The amount of money you gained could be worth more than the relationships with your neighbours would yield.
Only if you do not regard your character to have any value. What do you do with all that money if you've become the type of person you despise? Doesn't sound like much of a benefit to me.
But capitalism is about private ownership of property. Open source is about collective ownership.
Not the way I see it. Open source is about the end-users control of their software. I can modify it, redistribute it, whatever I want really, just like any other product in a capitalist economy. What I can't do is prevent other people from modifying and redistributing their copy, preventing them from enjoying capitalism. Proprietary software is capitalism for a few, FOSS is capitalism for many. In a capitalist economy where price is determined by supply and demand, infinitely copyable goods such as software approach zero in price, which is exactly what we see with Free software now. It is a restoration of capitalism, not it's destruction.
That said, I don't really see FOSS as capitalist idea vs communist idea. When you have some pretty hard right leaning individuals and hard left leaning individuals proclaiming the benefits of FOSS, maybe we need to accept that FOSS is workable regardless of your ideology. It's not inherently left or right, but good and effective. I remember reading about Israelis and Arabs working together on fonts or character sets or something. It's worth thinking about.
Perhaps because community is a very good thing, even if we must balance our need for a community against our own self-interests. ;-)
You don't have to balance community against your own self-interest, community is one of those things in your self-interest. So you balance your efforts at obtaining one thing that is in your interest with the other things that are in your interest. It is in my best interest to have workable relationships with neighbors etc.
Regardless of anything else, communism and/or socialism in their many forms are the ideal forms of society. If humans were never selfish and always worked for the betterment of everyone, there would be no need for anything like money, wealth, or capitalism.
The problem is that humans are not perfect. Even the best of us attribute more value to our selves or our families than random strangers. Thus a system is required that meets the challenges of an imperfect society. The most natural form of such a system is a risk/reward system where work is done with the expectation of a possible reward. This is, for better or for worse, capitalism.
So to paraphrase: In a non-existent fantasy world, communism and/or socialism in their many forms are the ideal forms of society. In reality, capitalism is the best system.
... and I am happy for you to send me money! I'll put it to good use and will also be voting against Conroy.
Only if one looses a job will a parent be at home.
That's what I'm suggesting could happen, although my main point was that most families don't have someone at home available to teach. I doubt that homeschooling would work very well if you're only doing it because you can't find something else to do anyway.
Smaller schools might help but I think what would help more is decreasing the teacher to student ratio, less students for each teacher.
Well, we could achieve that by killing lots of students I suppose, or maybe by firing administrators and giving those jobs to teachers. Teacher to student ratios is one of the benefits of homeschool too. Student/teacher ratio of 3:1 in my house.
Do you really believe a lot of parents would choose to have children with low intelligence?
No, but intelligence, like any other ability, has to be cultivated and exercised to get the benefit out of it. IMO going to the expense and effort to genetically screen for higher intelligence and then processing people though the current education system would yield very little result. I'm suggesting you could get better results with better education than you could with genetic screening if you had to choose one or the other. Of course we could do both, but genetic screening alone would likely be a waste of time.
How do you quote by the way?
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See the Allowed HTML section when posting. Otherwise if you see formatting you want to use, open that post in a new tab and view the source.
Well you're right about the research thing to an extent. However, people on here have said that punishment and/or prison doesn't drop the crime rate one bit. I think they mentioned studies too - who do I listen to? Any peer reviewed studies out there? But great news - I agree with you if it really does help prevent crimes.
It is one of the mainstays of how you train pets and children. It is applicable to our everyday life all the time. It is even contained in your own ideas, although you want to replace harder punishments with societal disapproval (which is a necessary part of the whole system, I will acknowledge). It is not enough by itself, so watch out for that in any study. Punishment can do a great deal to reduce theft, but not if people are hungry, for example. Just look to any country where people do not expect to be punished for a given crime, then at instances where people do expect to be punished. When, for example, did discriminating against people based on sexual preference become less likely to occur? When people/corps started getting punished. Do people expect to be punished for smoking marijuana? Generally no, and it is widespread. Do harsh penalties for drug dealing stop it? For people with no other viable source of income, no, for people who think they will get away with it, no. Personally though, I know people who have no objection to marijuana but won't get involved in the trade simply because it is illegal and carries punishment.
However there is another side to it also, that if the justice system does not punish, sooner or later individuals will take that into their own hands. A refusal to punish creates vigilantism. I don't have a specific study to point you to but the whole idea that government is necessary at all is that you need an organisation capable of enforcing law, law predominantly being a set of rules designed to protect us from each other. If disapproving of people and asking them to stop was enough, the court system would never have come about.
Well of course, but I mean it's not really the kind of thing that can forced anyway (easy to hide, but the bitterness can still be hidden inside). It's up to each person. I'm just speaking ideally...
Ideally, yes, you are right, everyone should forgive and people would be eager to do good to each other and not evil. However I don't think we should base our court system and laws on that since it isn't real.
You can't actually knock someone down with a bullet unless it's also powerful enough to knock down the guy firing it. In which case it would go straight through anyway (which most non HP bullets tend to do).
What passes for an education these days? Don't you think the difference in weight between the projectile and firearm would make a difference? [Hint: it does] http://kwk.us/recoil.html
Punishments are in general negative, and rewards are positive. If we want to maximize happiness/contentment/well-being (which isn't a zero-sum game of course), then we should discourage punishment which is basically 'revenge' disquised.
Positive results are obtained through positive action. Negative results are obtained through negative action. Behaviourism, while not good as a total philosophy, has certainly been well demonstrated to be effective. If you wish to promote the greatest happiness etc, you implement a system of punishment and reward to encourage positive action and discourage negative action.
As I said before, it's not going to make things better because those who commit stupid crimes would do so anyway.
Nonsense. A portion will, but many people will moderate their behaviour based on expected outcomes, including but not limited to punishments. You clearly have not done even the most cursory research of this topic. Granted, punishment is not enough to stop a behaviour given strong enough reasons to engage in it, but in general it is very effective. I've been told by people who have been to countries with Sharia law that you can leave your wallet on the bonnet of your car and it won't be taken. That's not meant to be an endorsement of Sharia but the claim that punishment doesn't discourage the targeted behaviour is not true.
Punishing them degrades us and them.
According to whose value system? I would say that allowing doers of evil to roam free while the rewards of peoples labor is given to those who didn't work for it degrades us.
It would be sufficient for society to frown upon their actions, and plea with them not to do so (before and after the crime).
Plea with them? HA! You think force won't stop them but asking them nicely will? That has very limited practical application. Don't you think that many of the victims of violent crime beg for mercy if they have the opportunity? There is a reason that armed self defence is less likely to result in injury to the intended victim than passivity. It has to do with criminals finding overwhelming force more persuasive than pleading.
Encouraging people to forgive the offender would be far more constructive, otherwise the victim has the anguish of the crime itself, *and* of the bitter resentment they feel towards the offender. Don't you agree?
I'm well aware of the benefits of forgiveness. However forgiveness, like sex, is wonderful if you choose it but a terrible injustice if it is forced on you. I'd no more have a state enforced system of forgiveness than I would state enforced sex.