And what does a death sentence mean for TEPCO? It gets dissolved, its asset sold. What happens to the low level workers? They're out of a job and are staring poverty straight in the face. What happens to the executives? They're out of a job and are sitting on their porch in Hawaii figuring out which Mouton-Rothschild to have with their unicorn steak.
Who makes the decisions that drives TEPCO towards a death sentence, and who pays for the mistakes? Two different groups, and one of them is statistically more likely to contain sociopaths. You could of course make executives and other employees personally liable, but then nobody would start or run a large company, because no one would be willing to take on that kind of risk.
Let me repeat myself: a theoretical free market does not and cannot exist. Which means that all of its benefits are merely theoretical, and come only into existence as we create an environment that most closely resembles that of a free market. You will create disasters worse than that of any communist dictator if you think that you can just remove all regulation and have the free market spring into existence, like a maiden from the lake.
What do you think The Law is? It's a system designed to regulate human behavior.
I love it when libertarians talk about The Law as if it is some sort of mythical beast, come from the heavens to save the peons - if they would just listen to it! Sounds remarkably like some other boondoggle I can't quite think of right now....
Next up, on "Roman Mir: The Libertarian Age": will he survive the trip to the court house to sue the person he thinks infected him with the Typhus bacterium? Watch as he dodges potential disease carriers, teenage drivers playing chicken with him and a lawyer who is counter-suing him for infecting his client!
Thanks for the chuckle. Apparently, I can do whatever I want, as long as either a) I don't interfere with your rights, or b) kill you. I would really like to see how you would react if you were ever to live in your mythical society. It would be a riot. Hey, maybe there's a thought for a sitcom....
That's the thing, you wouldn't. You would also increase the chance that someone who has been vaccinated gets the disease as well. Vaccination doesn't guarantee immunity, it merely dramatically increases the chance that you don't get sick from the disease.
However I don't see why a sick person cannot be treated the way we treat sick people without criminalizing them, no matter how much you want that.
So what is the consequence to someone who did not get vaccinated, got sick and spread the disease? How should they repay the millions, if not billions of dollars in damage they might have caused? And is your answer the one that will lead to the most efficient and prosperous society? Show your work.
Oh, I'm perfectly clear where you stand on the question of "should people be told what to do by others". I'm curious though what you think individuals should do when in the presence of a known or suspected typhoid carrier - or worse, influenza in 1918. Faced with the possibility that merely being in the presence of a particular person will kill them, what should these individuals do? Would they have legitimate cause to kill someone they have identified as being the carrier of the flu?
Interesting argument. It is not ok for others to mandate that you be vaccinated, but they can wall you in to protect themselves from you? I don't think you're gonna find many takers for that proposition.
Oh, I'm very aware that it is impossible to change your mind. Anyone espousing views like yours lives in a world completely unreachable by reality. That said, it's an interesting exercise to consider your arguments. At the very least, it makes me look at things that I thought were self-evident. And writing thoughts down forces me to structure my thoughts in a way that merely thinking them doesn't.
You don't get the right to take dead people's organs to save other people.
Interesting comment, as it doesn't follow at all from your position of individual responsibility. A dead person is dead and has no say on what happens to them. Control at that point would revert to people designated as caretakers by social custom or rule of law. On the contrary, if the only enforcement that exist is for contracts between consenting adults or to rectify aggression against an individual, then a corpse is the equivalent of a rock - a mere object subject to property law. It has no inherent rights.
If you think you get a right to that, then you want a society that many other individuals are not interested in.
Just judging from the comment history here, your value of "many" is dwarfed by the number of people who are not interested in your society. That has no bearing on right or wrong, but it is a useful metric for judging potential success of implementation.
You want a totalitarian, dictatorial, authoritative command economy type of a society, and I think you do, based on your other comments, but you and I are going to be at odds on this.
I'm very well aware that we are at odds on this statement, because your definitions of totalitarian, dictatorial and authoritative are completely at odds with mine. It makes it impossible to come to an agreement.
It's not going to have to be me convincing people, it's going to be government itself convincing people on this. With every failure that it causes, with economic and societal failures, with failure to promote peaceful coexistence and not war.
True to some extent. Judgment on failure or success is done by individuals, whose opinion is influenced by other individuals. That makes the actual activities of government merely the starting point of the judgment process.
I actually thing the Internet is a good tool to promote the views like mine - of individuals who do not fall in line the way you prefer.
I disagree. The Internet is an amazing tool to promote views like yours - or anybody's. And as much as I consider debating you the equivalent of a trip on the merry-go-round (fun and doesn't really go anywhere), I would never had had the opportunity to do so without it.
The abbreviation you're looking for is AFAICT or AFAIK.
The point is that vaccines only work adequately if everyone is vaccinated. Remove a few people from the vaccination, and everyone's infection risk goes up far more than by just the percentage of people not being vaccinated. The cost that a single unvaccinated individual imposes on the other individuals around him or her far exceeds the cost to the individual of getting the vaccination.
There's also the difference between government and society that you're missing. The benefits that you accrue from living inside a specific society are expected to be repaid by making sacrifices of the approximate value that you receive, or by reciprocating the sacrifices that people around you make to live in that society. Otherwise, it's not a society, but a bunch of lone wolves meeting for mating season. This behavior is enforced by other individuals in that society, and punishment is generally exile. That's just the standard basis of any human society, regardless of what government structure exists on top of it.
Finally, you can build any internally consistent social theory that you want. In order to turn it into a reality, you have to choices: convince others that your theory provides them with more benefits than the current model, or live out an example life based on your theory that others wish to emulate.
Because suing Typhoid Mary for a couple of billions is completely pointless and does nothing to roll back the epidemic, or even remotely put a dent in its cost. People who lived through the major polio, typhoid, flu and other assorted epidemics understand that the cost of required vaccinations is zero when compared to the cost of trying to stop the epidemic after it started.
It's not Science (TM) is scared of them, it's that they're really, really hard to reproduce reliably under lab conditions. Even if you get one person that can reliably do it, it's then even harder to find another person to do it under the same circumstances. End result: you end up with a lot of anecdotes, no data, no theory, no predictions and no way to measure things consistently.
That's why you don't hear science dealing with it.
Get rid of governments, and you get rid of corporations. If corporations stick around, then they do so only by use of aggressive force, making them a form of government, likely a dictatorship, as your correctly point out.
The point is that corporations are guaranteed to stick around once the government dissolves, because they only get their legal charter from it. The infrastructure, payment forms, habits and contacts persist. Which means that corporations require the active involvement of the government in order to not turn into dictatorships. The idea that corporations will be good citizens once the government gets out of the way goes against everything seen in history, against human nature and against what we know about corporations and business today.
Absolutely. Another area is that of machine tool manufacturers. You don't have an economy without machine tools. Feel free to import all your machine tools, but make sure that whoever you import from is far more likely to be a friend than a foe.
Considering that a corporation is set up to be run by one, or at most a half-dozen people, a corporation is the equivalent of a person with resources that dwarf that of a single person. A corporation, left to its own devices, will be as corrupt, violent and destructive as its top decision maker. It is in that sense no different from a government with a dictator at the top. They can be good, they can be bad, but when they're bad, they're really, really evil.
The simple fact is when you have a few big corporations in any market they become too big to fail. There are advantages to having many smaller companies in a market segment than very few super large ones. It can offer more innovation. Now they do not all have to Mom and Pop sized but as a rule more is better then less.
I wish more people would pay attention to this. A free market needs a number of things to operate smoothly, and a sizable pool of competitors is one. Regulation needs to be in place for this, because the theoretical free market, while awesome in theory, is, well, theory. To be turned into reality, it needs to have the right environment - and that can only be created through regulation.
Corporations, as a collection of individuals, seek to create wealth, not destroy it.
A corporation has no power to dictate your life unless it coerces a government that is willing to do so.
Third mistake: a corporation has exactly the power that the government lets it have it. Fourth mistake: outside of government structures, corporations behave exactly like dictatorships.
No wonder liberatrians mostly seem to post anonymous. I wouldn't want to show my ignorance like this either.
They're already getting a federal salary. In other words, they're already getting free money, suckling off of the public teat. Now they want a free education too? Damn slobs.
Slashdot Mirror
And what does a death sentence mean for TEPCO? It gets dissolved, its asset sold. What happens to the low level workers? They're out of a job and are staring poverty straight in the face. What happens to the executives? They're out of a job and are sitting on their porch in Hawaii figuring out which Mouton-Rothschild to have with their unicorn steak.
Who makes the decisions that drives TEPCO towards a death sentence, and who pays for the mistakes? Two different groups, and one of them is statistically more likely to contain sociopaths. You could of course make executives and other employees personally liable, but then nobody would start or run a large company, because no one would be willing to take on that kind of risk.
Let me repeat myself: a theoretical free market does not and cannot exist. Which means that all of its benefits are merely theoretical, and come only into existence as we create an environment that most closely resembles that of a free market. You will create disasters worse than that of any communist dictator if you think that you can just remove all regulation and have the free market spring into existence, like a maiden from the lake.
What do you think The Law is? It's a system designed to regulate human behavior.
I love it when libertarians talk about The Law as if it is some sort of mythical beast, come from the heavens to save the peons - if they would just listen to it! Sounds remarkably like some other boondoggle I can't quite think of right now....
Ah, the classic "They make money - they suck!", or the equally entertaining "They used to be good before everyone knew about them."
Ah, nothing like a false dichotomy based on semantics and a misunderstanding of how individuals prosper.
And round and round we go.....
Next up, on "Roman Mir: The Libertarian Age": will he survive the trip to the court house to sue the person he thinks infected him with the Typhus bacterium? Watch as he dodges potential disease carriers, teenage drivers playing chicken with him and a lawyer who is counter-suing him for infecting his client!
Thanks for the chuckle. Apparently, I can do whatever I want, as long as either a) I don't interfere with your rights, or b) kill you. I would really like to see how you would react if you were ever to live in your mythical society. It would be a riot. Hey, maybe there's a thought for a sitcom....
That's the thing, you wouldn't. You would also increase the chance that someone who has been vaccinated gets the disease as well. Vaccination doesn't guarantee immunity, it merely dramatically increases the chance that you don't get sick from the disease.
However I don't see why a sick person cannot be treated the way we treat sick people without criminalizing them, no matter how much you want that.
So what is the consequence to someone who did not get vaccinated, got sick and spread the disease? How should they repay the millions, if not billions of dollars in damage they might have caused? And is your answer the one that will lead to the most efficient and prosperous society? Show your work.
Oh, I'm perfectly clear where you stand on the question of "should people be told what to do by others". I'm curious though what you think individuals should do when in the presence of a known or suspected typhoid carrier - or worse, influenza in 1918. Faced with the possibility that merely being in the presence of a particular person will kill them, what should these individuals do? Would they have legitimate cause to kill someone they have identified as being the carrier of the flu?
Interesting argument. It is not ok for others to mandate that you be vaccinated, but they can wall you in to protect themselves from you? I don't think you're gonna find many takers for that proposition.
Oh, I'm very aware that it is impossible to change your mind. Anyone espousing views like yours lives in a world completely unreachable by reality. That said, it's an interesting exercise to consider your arguments. At the very least, it makes me look at things that I thought were self-evident. And writing thoughts down forces me to structure my thoughts in a way that merely thinking them doesn't.
You don't get the right to take dead people's organs to save other people.
Interesting comment, as it doesn't follow at all from your position of individual responsibility. A dead person is dead and has no say on what happens to them. Control at that point would revert to people designated as caretakers by social custom or rule of law. On the contrary, if the only enforcement that exist is for contracts between consenting adults or to rectify aggression against an individual, then a corpse is the equivalent of a rock - a mere object subject to property law. It has no inherent rights.
If you think you get a right to that, then you want a society that many other individuals are not interested in.
Just judging from the comment history here, your value of "many" is dwarfed by the number of people who are not interested in your society. That has no bearing on right or wrong, but it is a useful metric for judging potential success of implementation.
You want a totalitarian, dictatorial, authoritative command economy type of a society, and I think you do, based on your other comments, but you and I are going to be at odds on this.
I'm very well aware that we are at odds on this statement, because your definitions of totalitarian, dictatorial and authoritative are completely at odds with mine. It makes it impossible to come to an agreement.
It's not going to have to be me convincing people, it's going to be government itself convincing people on this. With every failure that it causes, with economic and societal failures, with failure to promote peaceful coexistence and not war.
True to some extent. Judgment on failure or success is done by individuals, whose opinion is influenced by other individuals. That makes the actual activities of government merely the starting point of the judgment process.
I actually thing the Internet is a good tool to promote the views like mine - of individuals who do not fall in line the way you prefer.
I disagree. The Internet is an amazing tool to promote views like yours - or anybody's. And as much as I consider debating you the equivalent of a trip on the merry-go-round (fun and doesn't really go anywhere), I would never had had the opportunity to do so without it.
The abbreviation you're looking for is AFAICT or AFAIK.
The point is that vaccines only work adequately if everyone is vaccinated. Remove a few people from the vaccination, and everyone's infection risk goes up far more than by just the percentage of people not being vaccinated. The cost that a single unvaccinated individual imposes on the other individuals around him or her far exceeds the cost to the individual of getting the vaccination.
There's also the difference between government and society that you're missing. The benefits that you accrue from living inside a specific society are expected to be repaid by making sacrifices of the approximate value that you receive, or by reciprocating the sacrifices that people around you make to live in that society. Otherwise, it's not a society, but a bunch of lone wolves meeting for mating season. This behavior is enforced by other individuals in that society, and punishment is generally exile. That's just the standard basis of any human society, regardless of what government structure exists on top of it.
Finally, you can build any internally consistent social theory that you want. In order to turn it into a reality, you have to choices: convince others that your theory provides them with more benefits than the current model, or live out an example life based on your theory that others wish to emulate.
So far, you seem to be failing at either.
Because suing Typhoid Mary for a couple of billions is completely pointless and does nothing to roll back the epidemic, or even remotely put a dent in its cost. People who lived through the major polio, typhoid, flu and other assorted epidemics understand that the cost of required vaccinations is zero when compared to the cost of trying to stop the epidemic after it started.
As someone who missed the show - thanks for the story.
disbarment
I don't think you understand how science works....
It's not Science (TM) is scared of them, it's that they're really, really hard to reproduce reliably under lab conditions. Even if you get one person that can reliably do it, it's then even harder to find another person to do it under the same circumstances. End result: you end up with a lot of anecdotes, no data, no theory, no predictions and no way to measure things consistently.
That's why you don't hear science dealing with it.
Touche.
Gah, garbled my quotes. Oh well.
Get rid of governments, and you get rid of corporations. If corporations stick around, then they do so only by use of aggressive force, making them a form of government, likely a dictatorship, as your correctly point out.
The point is that corporations are guaranteed to stick around once the government dissolves, because they only get their legal charter from it. The infrastructure, payment forms, habits and contacts persist. Which means that corporations require the active involvement of the government in order to not turn into dictatorships. The idea that corporations will be good citizens once the government gets out of the way goes against everything seen in history, against human nature and against what we know about corporations and business today.
Absolutely. Another area is that of machine tool manufacturers. You don't have an economy without machine tools. Feel free to import all your machine tools, but make sure that whoever you import from is far more likely to be a friend than a foe.
Considering that a corporation is set up to be run by one, or at most a half-dozen people, a corporation is the equivalent of a person with resources that dwarf that of a single person. A corporation, left to its own devices, will be as corrupt, violent and destructive as its top decision maker. It is in that sense no different from a government with a dictator at the top. They can be good, they can be bad, but when they're bad, they're really, really evil.
The simple fact is when you have a few big corporations in any market they become too big to fail. There are advantages to having many smaller companies in a market segment than very few super large ones. It can offer more innovation. Now they do not all have to Mom and Pop sized but as a rule more is better then less.
I wish more people would pay attention to this. A free market needs a number of things to operate smoothly, and a sizable pool of competitors is one. Regulation needs to be in place for this, because the theoretical free market, while awesome in theory, is, well, theory. To be turned into reality, it needs to have the right environment - and that can only be created through regulation.
Corporations, as a collection of individuals, seek to create wealth, not destroy it.
A corporation has no power to dictate your life unless it coerces a government that is willing to do so.
Third mistake: a corporation has exactly the power that the government lets it have it.
Fourth mistake: outside of government structures, corporations behave exactly like dictatorships.
No wonder liberatrians mostly seem to post anonymous. I wouldn't want to show my ignorance like this either.
Libertarians - ignorant of even the most basic events in their nation's history. Icebraining was referring to the Internet, numbnut.
They're already getting a federal salary. In other words, they're already getting free money, suckling off of the public teat. Now they want a free education too? Damn slobs.
Yeah, that was sarcasm.
Repeating something that is irrelevant, not to mention wrong, doesn't make it relevant or right.