Taxpayer B makes two million and pays $600K in taxes - seems fair, make twice as much, pay twice as much. [...] Since this progressive taxing only applies to those in the middle, how is that fair?
If you're suggesting the rates should continue to go up as income rises, you have my support.
The only reason it seems unfair, however, is that some people have the idea that they should pay the same percent of their income in taxes as everyone else. That's essentially true already for the very rich--and if you consider state taxes such as sales tax, the overall tax system is approximately flat anyway--but it's not the goal. That's not "fair", it's just a flat tax.
The reality is that as your income goes up, you spend less on the necessities of life and more on discretionary items. If you find someone who's making $15k a year flipping burgers, and you take 30% of his income in taxes, that's $375 less per month when he was only grossing $1250 a month to begin with. He may not be able to pay rent, keep his car running, or put food on the table. But if you find someone who's making $5 million a year and you take 30% of his income, what's going to happen? He's still got $3.5 million left over.
Taxing them both at the same rate would be unfair, because one of them would be affected a lot more than the other. A progressive tax system tries to impact everyone equally - in terms of how it affects your life, not just the dollar or percentage figure.
Statistically, half of taxpayers only pay 4% or so of the taxes, The other half pay 96%, so by definition, half of the taxpayers have no incentive curb government spending.
And what percent of the income does that second half make? I'm betting it's more than 96%.
However, studies have shown that people tend to make policy decisions based not on how much they currently earn, but on how much they imagine themselves earning someday. You can see that in the rather broad support for eliminating the Paris Hilton^W^Westate tax, even though very few people were actually affected by it.
The attitude that you have the facts, and those that disagree with you are wrong, is the whole root of the problem and exactly why you shouldn't be in charge of determining who learns what.
I'd say your "factual relativism" disqualifies you just as well. In the real world, some things are factual, others are a matter of opinion, and it's rarely very hard to tell them apart.
Actually, you do. Apparently you neither studied advanced mathematics or logic. Please "prove" algebra starting with no assumptions. I wish you luck.
Yawn. Keep it in philosophy class, buddy. Algebra can be used to get useful answers in the real world, for example, "If we have X gallons of gasoline in the tank already, Chicago is Y miles away, our car gets Z miles per gallon, and gas costs an average of $W, how much will it cost us to drive to Chicago and back?"
You don't need to believe in any assumptions to see that work - you can set up an equation, solve it, drive to Chicago and back, and see that you haven't run out of gas or money. You can complain all the way there and back that maybe we only *think* we're driving to Chicago based on what our fallible senses are telling us, and the assumptions we have about how a gasoline engine works, but no one will care.
Now how would this argument be any different than me saying "My tax dollars are not going to be used to teach Darwinism"?
Very simple: we have a definition of what a scientific theory is, and the theory of evolution--which, in my experience, only kooks call "Darwinism"--meets it. It's falsifiable, and it makes predictions (the details of which are off topic here, but you can easily find them yourself). In science class, we teach science.
If you think everyone should learn the basic tenets of various religions, as a factual study in "this is what religion X teaches, this is what Y religion teaches", then go ahead and suggest a comparative religion or philosophy class. Don't expect to be able to teach them as The Truth, though.
It should be clear if you think about it backwards - what if your kids were forced to go to a religious school or pay double to go to a private school? Couldn't the wing-nuts now use the argument you just used?
They might, but they'd be wrong. The fact is it's not OK to use tax dollars to teach religion; it is OK to use tax dollars to teach other things. See how that works?
In this country, we have a progressive tax system, meaning that as income goes up, the tax rate as a percentage of income goes up as well. There are a number of reasons why this makes sense, and the only thing about it that's unique to this country is how low the top rates are, relative to other countries.
If you have a problem with it, feel free to write to your representatives in Congress. Good luck - you'll have a hard time convincing them that someone who makes $200,000 a year shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than someone who makes $15,000 a year. Most voters believe he should.
Of course they want the government to pay... because THEY don't have to!
You make it sound like government spending is only favored by people who don't pay taxes, which is not the case at all. Pretty much everyone agrees that the government should spend at least some money on, say, health care for the elderly and disabled (Medicare is favored by around 97% of Americans), law enforcement, disaster relief, highway maintenance, and education, just to name a few.
You do not complain that when we build roads with government money, it allows people to get to church, now do you?
A road that passes by a church benefits everyone in the neighborhood, not just the church and its congregation. The road will still be there if the church closes down and becomes a coffee shop.
More importantly, the money to build that road doesn't go into church coffers. My tax dollars are not being used to teach people to love Jesus.
"It's all right for parents to choose, but not if they choose THAT" is clearly anti-religious, demoting such beliefs to an inferior second-tier.
Absolutely not. Look, no one is saying parents can't choose to send their kids to religious school. They just can't expect me and my fellow taxpayers to pay for religious indoctrination.
I fully understand that under a true voucher system, some people will choose some pretty ignorant things.
Ignorance has nothing to do with it.
The alternative is to force everyone except the very wealthy to learn whatever the median voter believes (ie, the current system). Which do you think is more dangerous?
First, "belief" has nothing to do with it. A government-funded school's job is to teach factual information. You don't have to believe in algebra, it just works.
Second, no one is prevented from teaching whatever they want. Children don't spend their entire lives at school; if you can't afford to send your kids to a private religious school, then you can spend every night and every weekend lecturing them about Paul's letters to the Corinthians if you want. If it's too much work, then I guess it really isn't that important to you after all.
The government's job is not to take over for parents, and the purpose of government-funded education is not to teach exactly what parents want their kids to know or believe. The purpose is to give everyone enough basic knowledge to be a productive, informed, and healthy citizen. The public school curriculum is necessarily a lowest common denominator; if you can find another school that teaches the same stuff but does a better job, or costs less, then go for it... but if you just think your kids need some churching up in addition to the factual and practical knowledge they get from school, you can do it on your own dime.
Now we have primarily public funding in college. What do you expect but State-loving socialists instead of true masters of academia?
First off, is there any evidence that professors are hired or not hired based on their political beliefs, particular whether or not they're "State-loving" (an adjective that describes the majority of Americans, in that they want the government to pay for some things)? If not--and I doubt there is--then the argument that government funding of education leads to "State-loving socialists" falls flat.
Second, you present a false dichotomy. You don't have to be an anarchocapitalist to be a true master of academia.
Once you start that logic, you wind up gutting the whole idea of vouchers. Yes, some parents will choose schools that some people don't like under a voucher system.
As the AC pointed out, this is disingenuous. No one is complaining about vouchers causing money to flow to "schools that some people don't like"; they're complaining about vouchers causing money to flow from the government to religious teaching institutions, violating the First Amendment.
There are other arguments against vouchers, but this is the big one. You'd see a lot more support for school vouchers if they weren't able to be used for schools that teach religion in place of biology, geology, or history. If you want your kid to learn that stuff, fine - pay for it yourself.
Er, what did you think I meant by "trad[ing] copyrighted material on P2P services"? Every byte that you download from a P2P service must be uploaded by someone else.
Alcohol is tied to a ton of actions that hurt not only yourself but others. Higher speed is tied to higher chance of accidents as well as more serious accidents, which may involve other people. And at least a few of those copyright infringments are in fact lost sales.
Perhaps I should've said "they aren't directly hurting anyone". It is possible to drink alcohol without beating up your wife, exceed the speed limit without getting into an accident, and share copyrighted material without costing anyone any sales.
In fact, that's probably true in the vast majority of cases: most drinking doesn't result in anyone getting hurt, most speeding doesn't result in an accident (around here, it's hard to find drivers who don't speed), and most music that people download is the stuff they wouldn't have bought anyway.
When there is any harm, it comes later, after the illegal action, as the result of another choice or a lack of judgment. That's why people don't respect the original law - they know (or at least believe) that they can break it without harming anyone or getting caught.
ITYM "something that people don't think is wrong", or perhaps "something that people don't think should be illegal". Basically everyone knows it's illegal to trade copyrighted material on P2P services without permission from the copyright holder, just like everyone knows it's illegal to drive 65 in a 60 zone or cross the street when the sign says DONT WALK, and everyone knew back in the days of Prohibition that alcohol was illegal. They just don't care, because (1) they know they aren't hurting anyone and (2) the chances of getting caught are slim to none.
Only the youngest of children will not understand the cause/effect of violence.
True enough. It's also true, however, that only the youngest of children wouldn't understand the cause and effect of voting, signing contracts, drinking alcohol, having sex, etc.
If we can't expect a minor to fully grasp the concept of "if you have sex, you might get a disease or get [someone] pregnant" or "if you smoke, you might get lung cancer" (which both seem pretty damn simple to me), and therefore we don't let them have sex or buy tobacco, then how can we expect them to fully understand "if you kill someone, you'll spend the rest of your life in jail"?
The whole justification for these age-based laws is that minors are supposedly incapable of considering the consequences of their actions before they act, even when those consequences are easy to explain in one or two sentences. That's why we have a separate juvenile justice system. It's hypocritical to consider them adults when they break society's rules, but children when they want to fully participate in society by voting, working, or forming relationships - to do so is to give them the responsibilities of adults but none of the rights.
Those kids broke serious laws, and are being tried as adults usually because they did something extremely bad (or something not so bad, many times). Their own bad choice is what makes them criminals.
Criminals, yes, but it doesn't make them adults. What kind of message does that send, when the only way to be treated as an adult is to do something extremely bad?
If they're mature enough to take full responsibility for their choices, then let them choose a candidate in elections. Let them choose to put their own health in jeopardy with alcohol and tobacco. Let them choose to sign contracts, seek employment, and appear in porn.
On the other hand, if they're not mature enough... if they can't be allowed to make their own choices because they lack knowledge or experience or whatever else you think they need... then don't hold them to the same standard as adults. Don't tell them that the only way to be taken seriously is to become a criminal.
Video quality is so nice on my 17" CRT monitor that it's just like watching a TV rip
You can't be serious. Last I heard, iTunes video downloads were 320x240. NTSC video resolution is approximately four times that (640x480), and even the rips of The Office that you can download after they've been shrunk and converted to XviD have nearly 3 times the pixel count.
In Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, there is no third-party gold farming market, because anyone who wants to spend their way to in-game wealth can do it by directly paying the company that runs the game.
The game has two currencies: "pieces of eight" (POE) and "doubloons". POE spring freely into existence from NPC battles, admin-sponsored tournaments, etc. just like your typical MMORPG coins. Most prices, prizes, wagers, and wages are set in POE. Doubloons, however, only enter the economy when they're purchased by players spending real dollars. Both currencies exit the economy regularly - POE through taxes, losing battles to NPCs, buying goods from NPC merchants, etc.; doubloons through a "delivery charge" on various items and "badges" that must be purchased with doubloons to unlock game functionality for a month at a time.
Doubloons and POE are traded on an open market, so players who don't have real money to spend can simply earn a lot of POE and trade it for doubloons when they need to buy an expensive item or a badge. Players who'd rather spend money than play for several hours a day can buy doubloons and trade them for POE.
Since items and badges are constantly wearing out and must be replaced using doubloons, there's always demand for doubloons, and since every doubloon in the game has to be purchased with real money, there's always cash coming in to keep the company in business. And since doubloons are traded for POE on an open market, spending your way to in-game wealth doesn't upset the economy: as more doubloons become available, their value in POE drops.
(Note: Only half of the Puzzle Pirates servers use doubloons. The others charge a monthly subscription fee and the above discussion doesn't apply to them.)
There are many thorny issues I could never solve, the biggest of which is people who don't bother to contribute and just wait for others and then steal a copy later.
I don't see that as a problem. If you don't feel strongly about seeing new work from some artist, then you don't have to pay - but you're also taking a chance that it won't get written at all. If it really matters to you whether it gets written or not, then your best bet is to contribute.
And of course, it's not "stealing" a copy later, since everything is released to the public anyway. The contributors are paying for songs to be written in the first place, not for the exclusive right to enjoy them once they're made. There's no point in trying to control copies, since we all know any attempts are doomed to fail.
Not knowing exactly what you're going to get before yu pay is a toughie as well.
Sure, but we have that problem today (to an extent): when you buy a ticket for a movie you haven't seen, all you know about it is what the trailers told you.
We also have exactly the same problem with other service jobs, and it doesn't seem to be too much of a problem. You don't know whether that mechanic is going to do a good job fixing your car, or that barber is going to give you a good haircut, until he's finished. You basically have to rely on the testimony of other people who've used his service - a community rating. An artist with no reputation to stand on won't be able to charge as much as an established artist, but if he's good enough, he'll be an established artist himself in no time.
There aren't many areas now that you can't hear some idiot talking entirely too loudly about some worthless subject, but at least you can usually walk away from them.
Many planes already have phones on them. If you've flown on a non-bargain airline, you've probably seen those Airfone handsets built into the seat in front of you (usually one for every 3 seats). The only difference is, they aren't cell phones - they're owned by a single company that contracts with the airline to provide phone service at $3 a minute.
Your concern about increased yapping on the plane is valid, but not because people don't have access to phones today. They have access; it's just so ridiculously expensive that most people can't take advantage of it.
You can't be suggesting per-listener negotiations, so how does this work in practice?
Picture a web site where you sign up as a music fan. There are forums to talk about music with other fans, share links to music and talk about your favorite artists, etc. There's also a section where artists can post offers, and as a listener, you can follow links to hear their previous work, read their biographies, influences, reviews and community ratings, etc. Each offer says what the artist is going to produce (in as general or specific terms as he wants), how much he wants to be paid (and perhaps his terms for getting paid up front vs. at the end of production), when he'd like to start work, and how long he expects production to take.
If you're interested in one of the offers, you can put some money into a pool, and once it reaches the amount that the artist has determined (or the artist decides the pool is big enough), he starts work. Once it's finished, he checks it in.
If the offer's beginning date comes and goes before enough money has been collected for the artist to start work, the offer is cancelled and the money returned to everyone who chipped in. If the ending date comes and goes but the project isn't finished, the contributors can vote to extend the date, or to cancel the offer and refund whatever money is left in escrow.
The more difficult problem to resolve is what happens when the artist meets deadlines, but the contributors believe what he checked in doesn't live up to what he promised. One extreme solution is to tell them all sales are final, and they've wasted their money. The other extreme is to let them vote to cancel and refund any money that's left in escrow, which might allow contributors to cheat the artist out of his payment by claiming it doesn't meet expectations even when it does. A more moderate solution is to let the contributors petition an administrator, or a panel of judges, to review the offer and the resulting work to decide whether to grant a refund.
In any case, it'd be best for potential contributors to see a history of how often a particular artist has checked in work that met with approval, as well as for artists to see how often their contributors (collectively) have rejected the work that other artists have checked in, so both parties can assess their risk before contributing or starting work.
Feel free to criticize parts of this or suggest changes. The details aren't set in stone. The underlying principle is sound: there's a group of people who want to hear new music and are willing to pay for it, there's another group of people who can write and record new music but want to get paid, and all that needs to be done is set up a way for them to do business with each other.
Can we still come up with a system that rewards people for their efforts? I believe we can. Basically, an artist, programmer, or filmaker would give their product to a government agency [...] The artist would be paid a bounty [...]
There's also a capitalist solution, and it's much simpler: just stop enforcing copyrights.
If there's no copyright, no one will record a song or produce a movie without some guarantee up front that they'll be paid (unless they're not doing it to get paid, in which case kudos are in order). Instead, they'll do what anyone else with a valuable skill does - they'll find customers, negotiate a price, perform their service, and then move on to producing something else for another customer.
They'll be paid for their time--that is, for directly applying their talent to produce something--not for making copies or for having produced something 20 years earlier. And if the price they ask for their time is higher than a single person is willing to pay, as it surely will be, then people will group together to pool their money and fund the production of the kind of art they want to hear.
Since most people haven't forked out $3000+ for a HDTV set, and won't, upscaling isn't very important in the near future. It'll take quite a while for prices to come down to reasonable levels, and by that time, upscaling DVD players will be cheap anyway.
You need both film, and power for a digital camera.
The power's all that matters in terms of bulk, though. Digital "film" takes up virtually no space; a 1 GB card isn't much bigger than your thumbnail.
Batteries are heavier than film, but also less bulky. A backpack full of lithium batteries with a handful of flash cards will last you a lot longer than a backpack full of rolls of film - but if you're going to be gone that long, you should pack some sandwiches too.;)
Only Star Wars Galaxies has ever successfully had an economy, AFAIK, and that generally went quite badly...
Did you leave out a word here? Puzzle Pirates has a pretty successful economy (4 of them, actually), and my understanding is that it works with less interference from the admins than most if not all other MMORPGs.
Since this is impossible, you can't use it in your proof.
Oh? Please explain. It seems to me that if there were a largest prime number ("P"), it would be possible to make a list of all prime numbers between 0 and P. It might not be practical in the real world, but in a mathematical thought experiment, we're only limited by the rules of mathematics.
None of the dogs will have green, purple, or orange spots, because dogs don't come in those colors, therefore they cannot have spots of those colors.
This is the flaw in your analogy - not the "postulate that this has been done" line. You're begging the question by presuming that none of the dogs will have green, purple, or orange spots, since that's exactly what you're trying to prove.
Play time is unlimited, however, the doubloon system allows players to essentially trade money for time. There are two currencies: pieces of eight, which flow freely from NPCs and admin-sponsored tournaments, and doubloons, which only enter the economy when they're purchased with real dollars. The prices for most items are set in both POE and doubloons, the doubloons disappear from the economy as soon as they're spent, and POE can be traded for doubloons on an open market. So if you want to buy that fancy sword, you can either play for a couple weeks to save up POE and trade some of them for doubloons, or spend a couple bucks for a handful of doubloons and trade some of them for POE. The players with money but no time subsidize the ones with time but no money.
Neither POE nor doubloons are finite, but they exit the system regularly, and inflation hasn't been a problem. The economy stays balanced by changing tax rates, changing spawn rates for raw commodities, and providing plenty of opportunities for money to be lost/spent and leave the economy.
Paying to play is entirely optional, at least on doubloon servers (there are also servers where monthly subscriptions replace doubloons). If you don't have the time or money to get doubloons, many parts of the game are closed off to you, but you can still have fun.
Linux is supported, and mentioned on the box, because the game's written in Java. (You can even run it on a Mac and play a special bonus game, "watch the colorful spinning beachball", that isn't available on either Linux or Windows!)
Of course, another big factor that attracts older players is the gameplay itself. You don't need the quick reflexes or hand-eye coordination of someone who grew up playing Nintendo, because everything is a puzzle game, from sailing to swordfighting. If you can play Bejeweled, you can help run a ship.
If Google has DRM that doesn't interfere with use, there is nothing wrong with it. I understand a little copy protection. If I made content, I'd want to be able to put it on my content.
We all want a lot of things; that doesn't mean we deserve them, or that others should allow us to have them.
Some parents want total control over everything their children do, up to age 18 or later, or they want the government to enforce their moral code. Some presidents want to be able to ignore the law when they think the law stands in the way of protecting the country. Some wealthy individuals want their tax bill to be lower.
If we were in their shoes, we might even agree with them. I'm sure it makes a parent's life easier when the government will stop your kids from doing the things you don't want them to do, just as it makes an artist's life easier when the government will stop people from enjoying his work without paying. But as a society, we have to consider how these laws affect everyone, not just the people who benefit. Copy protection is as bad for consumers as it is good for producers, and there are a lot more consumers than producers.
Your argument is interesting because it pretends that everyone can 'create their own stuff' but you and I both know that this isn't true for you and it certaintly isn't true for the rest of the public.
This is funny, because roman_mir went off at me when he thought I was saying just that (although I wasn't):
"You are telling me that everyone is equivalent, that you can do everything that I can do and that I can do everything that the Rolling Stones can do, well guess what. That is a big load of stinking BS and will always be a big load of stinking BS because it is just false."
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Taxpayer B makes two million and pays $600K in taxes - seems fair, make twice as much, pay twice as much. [...] Since this progressive taxing only applies to those in the middle, how is that fair?
If you're suggesting the rates should continue to go up as income rises, you have my support.
The only reason it seems unfair, however, is that some people have the idea that they should pay the same percent of their income in taxes as everyone else. That's essentially true already for the very rich--and if you consider state taxes such as sales tax, the overall tax system is approximately flat anyway--but it's not the goal. That's not "fair", it's just a flat tax.
The reality is that as your income goes up, you spend less on the necessities of life and more on discretionary items. If you find someone who's making $15k a year flipping burgers, and you take 30% of his income in taxes, that's $375 less per month when he was only grossing $1250 a month to begin with. He may not be able to pay rent, keep his car running, or put food on the table. But if you find someone who's making $5 million a year and you take 30% of his income, what's going to happen? He's still got $3.5 million left over.
Taxing them both at the same rate would be unfair, because one of them would be affected a lot more than the other. A progressive tax system tries to impact everyone equally - in terms of how it affects your life, not just the dollar or percentage figure.
Statistically, half of taxpayers only pay 4% or so of the taxes, The other half pay 96%, so by definition, half of the taxpayers have no incentive curb government spending.
And what percent of the income does that second half make? I'm betting it's more than 96%.
However, studies have shown that people tend to make policy decisions based not on how much they currently earn, but on how much they imagine themselves earning someday. You can see that in the rather broad support for eliminating the Paris Hilton^W^Westate tax, even though very few people were actually affected by it.
The attitude that you have the facts, and those that disagree with you are wrong, is the whole root of the problem and exactly why you shouldn't be in charge of determining who learns what.
I'd say your "factual relativism" disqualifies you just as well. In the real world, some things are factual, others are a matter of opinion, and it's rarely very hard to tell them apart.
Actually, you do. Apparently you neither studied advanced mathematics or logic. Please "prove" algebra starting with no assumptions. I wish you luck.
Yawn. Keep it in philosophy class, buddy. Algebra can be used to get useful answers in the real world, for example, "If we have X gallons of gasoline in the tank already, Chicago is Y miles away, our car gets Z miles per gallon, and gas costs an average of $W, how much will it cost us to drive to Chicago and back?"
You don't need to believe in any assumptions to see that work - you can set up an equation, solve it, drive to Chicago and back, and see that you haven't run out of gas or money. You can complain all the way there and back that maybe we only *think* we're driving to Chicago based on what our fallible senses are telling us, and the assumptions we have about how a gasoline engine works, but no one will care.
Now how would this argument be any different than me saying "My tax dollars are not going to be used to teach Darwinism"?
Very simple: we have a definition of what a scientific theory is, and the theory of evolution--which, in my experience, only kooks call "Darwinism"--meets it. It's falsifiable, and it makes predictions (the details of which are off topic here, but you can easily find them yourself). In science class, we teach science.
If you think everyone should learn the basic tenets of various religions, as a factual study in "this is what religion X teaches, this is what Y religion teaches", then go ahead and suggest a comparative religion or philosophy class. Don't expect to be able to teach them as The Truth, though.
It should be clear if you think about it backwards - what if your kids were forced to go to a religious school or pay double to go to a private school? Couldn't the wing-nuts now use the argument you just used?
They might, but they'd be wrong. The fact is it's not OK to use tax dollars to teach religion; it is OK to use tax dollars to teach other things. See how that works?
In this country, we have a progressive tax system, meaning that as income goes up, the tax rate as a percentage of income goes up as well. There are a number of reasons why this makes sense, and the only thing about it that's unique to this country is how low the top rates are, relative to other countries.
If you have a problem with it, feel free to write to your representatives in Congress. Good luck - you'll have a hard time convincing them that someone who makes $200,000 a year shouldn't be taxed at a higher rate than someone who makes $15,000 a year. Most voters believe he should.
Of course they want the government to pay... because THEY don't have to!
You make it sound like government spending is only favored by people who don't pay taxes, which is not the case at all. Pretty much everyone agrees that the government should spend at least some money on, say, health care for the elderly and disabled (Medicare is favored by around 97% of Americans), law enforcement, disaster relief, highway maintenance, and education, just to name a few.
You do not complain that when we build roads with government money, it allows people to get to church, now do you?
A road that passes by a church benefits everyone in the neighborhood, not just the church and its congregation. The road will still be there if the church closes down and becomes a coffee shop.
More importantly, the money to build that road doesn't go into church coffers. My tax dollars are not being used to teach people to love Jesus.
"It's all right for parents to choose, but not if they choose THAT" is clearly anti-religious, demoting such beliefs to an inferior second-tier.
Absolutely not. Look, no one is saying parents can't choose to send their kids to religious school. They just can't expect me and my fellow taxpayers to pay for religious indoctrination.
I fully understand that under a true voucher system, some people will choose some pretty ignorant things.
Ignorance has nothing to do with it.
The alternative is to force everyone except the very wealthy to learn whatever the median voter believes (ie, the current system). Which do you think is more dangerous?
First, "belief" has nothing to do with it. A government-funded school's job is to teach factual information. You don't have to believe in algebra, it just works.
Second, no one is prevented from teaching whatever they want. Children don't spend their entire lives at school; if you can't afford to send your kids to a private religious school, then you can spend every night and every weekend lecturing them about Paul's letters to the Corinthians if you want. If it's too much work, then I guess it really isn't that important to you after all.
The government's job is not to take over for parents, and the purpose of government-funded education is not to teach exactly what parents want their kids to know or believe. The purpose is to give everyone enough basic knowledge to be a productive, informed, and healthy citizen. The public school curriculum is necessarily a lowest common denominator; if you can find another school that teaches the same stuff but does a better job, or costs less, then go for it... but if you just think your kids need some churching up in addition to the factual and practical knowledge they get from school, you can do it on your own dime.
Now we have primarily public funding in college. What do you expect but State-loving socialists instead of true masters of academia?
First off, is there any evidence that professors are hired or not hired based on their political beliefs, particular whether or not they're "State-loving" (an adjective that describes the majority of Americans, in that they want the government to pay for some things)? If not--and I doubt there is--then the argument that government funding of education leads to "State-loving socialists" falls flat.
Second, you present a false dichotomy. You don't have to be an anarchocapitalist to be a true master of academia.
Once you start that logic, you wind up gutting the whole idea of vouchers. Yes, some parents will choose schools that some people don't like under a voucher system.
As the AC pointed out, this is disingenuous. No one is complaining about vouchers causing money to flow to "schools that some people don't like"; they're complaining about vouchers causing money to flow from the government to religious teaching institutions, violating the First Amendment.
There are other arguments against vouchers, but this is the big one. You'd see a lot more support for school vouchers if they weren't able to be used for schools that teach religion in place of biology, geology, or history. If you want your kid to learn that stuff, fine - pay for it yourself.
Er, what did you think I meant by "trad[ing] copyrighted material on P2P services"? Every byte that you download from a P2P service must be uploaded by someone else.
Alcohol is tied to a ton of actions that hurt not only yourself but others. Higher speed is tied to higher chance of accidents as well as more serious accidents, which may involve other people. And at least a few of those copyright infringments are in fact lost sales.
Perhaps I should've said "they aren't directly hurting anyone". It is possible to drink alcohol without beating up your wife, exceed the speed limit without getting into an accident, and share copyrighted material without costing anyone any sales.
In fact, that's probably true in the vast majority of cases: most drinking doesn't result in anyone getting hurt, most speeding doesn't result in an accident (around here, it's hard to find drivers who don't speed), and most music that people download is the stuff they wouldn't have bought anyway.
When there is any harm, it comes later, after the illegal action, as the result of another choice or a lack of judgment. That's why people don't respect the original law - they know (or at least believe) that they can break it without harming anyone or getting caught.
ITYM "something that people don't think is wrong", or perhaps "something that people don't think should be illegal". Basically everyone knows it's illegal to trade copyrighted material on P2P services without permission from the copyright holder, just like everyone knows it's illegal to drive 65 in a 60 zone or cross the street when the sign says DONT WALK, and everyone knew back in the days of Prohibition that alcohol was illegal. They just don't care, because (1) they know they aren't hurting anyone and (2) the chances of getting caught are slim to none.
Only the youngest of children will not understand the cause/effect of violence.
True enough. It's also true, however, that only the youngest of children wouldn't understand the cause and effect of voting, signing contracts, drinking alcohol, having sex, etc.
If we can't expect a minor to fully grasp the concept of "if you have sex, you might get a disease or get [someone] pregnant" or "if you smoke, you might get lung cancer" (which both seem pretty damn simple to me), and therefore we don't let them have sex or buy tobacco, then how can we expect them to fully understand "if you kill someone, you'll spend the rest of your life in jail"?
The whole justification for these age-based laws is that minors are supposedly incapable of considering the consequences of their actions before they act, even when those consequences are easy to explain in one or two sentences. That's why we have a separate juvenile justice system. It's hypocritical to consider them adults when they break society's rules, but children when they want to fully participate in society by voting, working, or forming relationships - to do so is to give them the responsibilities of adults but none of the rights.
Those kids broke serious laws, and are being tried as adults usually because they did something extremely bad (or something not so bad, many times). Their own bad choice is what makes them criminals.
Criminals, yes, but it doesn't make them adults. What kind of message does that send, when the only way to be treated as an adult is to do something extremely bad?
If they're mature enough to take full responsibility for their choices, then let them choose a candidate in elections. Let them choose to put their own health in jeopardy with alcohol and tobacco. Let them choose to sign contracts, seek employment, and appear in porn.
On the other hand, if they're not mature enough... if they can't be allowed to make their own choices because they lack knowledge or experience or whatever else you think they need... then don't hold them to the same standard as adults. Don't tell them that the only way to be taken seriously is to become a criminal.
Video quality is so nice on my 17" CRT monitor that it's just like watching a TV rip
You can't be serious. Last I heard, iTunes video downloads were 320x240. NTSC video resolution is approximately four times that (640x480), and even the rips of The Office that you can download after they've been shrunk and converted to XviD have nearly 3 times the pixel count.
In Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates, there is no third-party gold farming market, because anyone who wants to spend their way to in-game wealth can do it by directly paying the company that runs the game.
The game has two currencies: "pieces of eight" (POE) and "doubloons". POE spring freely into existence from NPC battles, admin-sponsored tournaments, etc. just like your typical MMORPG coins. Most prices, prizes, wagers, and wages are set in POE. Doubloons, however, only enter the economy when they're purchased by players spending real dollars. Both currencies exit the economy regularly - POE through taxes, losing battles to NPCs, buying goods from NPC merchants, etc.; doubloons through a "delivery charge" on various items and "badges" that must be purchased with doubloons to unlock game functionality for a month at a time.
Doubloons and POE are traded on an open market, so players who don't have real money to spend can simply earn a lot of POE and trade it for doubloons when they need to buy an expensive item or a badge. Players who'd rather spend money than play for several hours a day can buy doubloons and trade them for POE.
Since items and badges are constantly wearing out and must be replaced using doubloons, there's always demand for doubloons, and since every doubloon in the game has to be purchased with real money, there's always cash coming in to keep the company in business. And since doubloons are traded for POE on an open market, spending your way to in-game wealth doesn't upset the economy: as more doubloons become available, their value in POE drops.
(Note: Only half of the Puzzle Pirates servers use doubloons. The others charge a monthly subscription fee and the above discussion doesn't apply to them.)
There are many thorny issues I could never solve, the biggest of which is people who don't bother to contribute and just wait for others and then steal a copy later.
I don't see that as a problem. If you don't feel strongly about seeing new work from some artist, then you don't have to pay - but you're also taking a chance that it won't get written at all. If it really matters to you whether it gets written or not, then your best bet is to contribute.
And of course, it's not "stealing" a copy later, since everything is released to the public anyway. The contributors are paying for songs to be written in the first place, not for the exclusive right to enjoy them once they're made. There's no point in trying to control copies, since we all know any attempts are doomed to fail.
Not knowing exactly what you're going to get before yu pay is a toughie as well.
Sure, but we have that problem today (to an extent): when you buy a ticket for a movie you haven't seen, all you know about it is what the trailers told you.
We also have exactly the same problem with other service jobs, and it doesn't seem to be too much of a problem. You don't know whether that mechanic is going to do a good job fixing your car, or that barber is going to give you a good haircut, until he's finished. You basically have to rely on the testimony of other people who've used his service - a community rating. An artist with no reputation to stand on won't be able to charge as much as an established artist, but if he's good enough, he'll be an established artist himself in no time.
There aren't many areas now that you can't hear some idiot talking entirely too loudly about some worthless subject, but at least you can usually walk away from them.
Many planes already have phones on them. If you've flown on a non-bargain airline, you've probably seen those Airfone handsets built into the seat in front of you (usually one for every 3 seats). The only difference is, they aren't cell phones - they're owned by a single company that contracts with the airline to provide phone service at $3 a minute.
Your concern about increased yapping on the plane is valid, but not because people don't have access to phones today. They have access; it's just so ridiculously expensive that most people can't take advantage of it.
You can't be suggesting per-listener negotiations, so how does this work in practice?
Picture a web site where you sign up as a music fan. There are forums to talk about music with other fans, share links to music and talk about your favorite artists, etc. There's also a section where artists can post offers, and as a listener, you can follow links to hear their previous work, read their biographies, influences, reviews and community ratings, etc. Each offer says what the artist is going to produce (in as general or specific terms as he wants), how much he wants to be paid (and perhaps his terms for getting paid up front vs. at the end of production), when he'd like to start work, and how long he expects production to take.
If you're interested in one of the offers, you can put some money into a pool, and once it reaches the amount that the artist has determined (or the artist decides the pool is big enough), he starts work. Once it's finished, he checks it in.
If the offer's beginning date comes and goes before enough money has been collected for the artist to start work, the offer is cancelled and the money returned to everyone who chipped in. If the ending date comes and goes but the project isn't finished, the contributors can vote to extend the date, or to cancel the offer and refund whatever money is left in escrow.
The more difficult problem to resolve is what happens when the artist meets deadlines, but the contributors believe what he checked in doesn't live up to what he promised. One extreme solution is to tell them all sales are final, and they've wasted their money. The other extreme is to let them vote to cancel and refund any money that's left in escrow, which might allow contributors to cheat the artist out of his payment by claiming it doesn't meet expectations even when it does. A more moderate solution is to let the contributors petition an administrator, or a panel of judges, to review the offer and the resulting work to decide whether to grant a refund.
In any case, it'd be best for potential contributors to see a history of how often a particular artist has checked in work that met with approval, as well as for artists to see how often their contributors (collectively) have rejected the work that other artists have checked in, so both parties can assess their risk before contributing or starting work.
Feel free to criticize parts of this or suggest changes. The details aren't set in stone. The underlying principle is sound: there's a group of people who want to hear new music and are willing to pay for it, there's another group of people who can write and record new music but want to get paid, and all that needs to be done is set up a way for them to do business with each other.
Can we still come up with a system that rewards people for their efforts? I believe we can. Basically, an artist, programmer, or filmaker would give their product to a government agency [...] The artist would be paid a bounty [...]
There's also a capitalist solution, and it's much simpler: just stop enforcing copyrights.
If there's no copyright, no one will record a song or produce a movie without some guarantee up front that they'll be paid (unless they're not doing it to get paid, in which case kudos are in order). Instead, they'll do what anyone else with a valuable skill does - they'll find customers, negotiate a price, perform their service, and then move on to producing something else for another customer.
They'll be paid for their time--that is, for directly applying their talent to produce something--not for making copies or for having produced something 20 years earlier. And if the price they ask for their time is higher than a single person is willing to pay, as it surely will be, then people will group together to pool their money and fund the production of the kind of art they want to hear.
Since most people haven't forked out $3000+ for a HDTV set, and won't, upscaling isn't very important in the near future. It'll take quite a while for prices to come down to reasonable levels, and by that time, upscaling DVD players will be cheap anyway.
You need both film, and power for a digital camera.
;)
The power's all that matters in terms of bulk, though. Digital "film" takes up virtually no space; a 1 GB card isn't much bigger than your thumbnail.
Batteries are heavier than film, but also less bulky. A backpack full of lithium batteries with a handful of flash cards will last you a lot longer than a backpack full of rolls of film - but if you're going to be gone that long, you should pack some sandwiches too.
Only Star Wars Galaxies has ever successfully had an economy, AFAIK, and that generally went quite badly...
Did you leave out a word here? Puzzle Pirates has a pretty successful economy (4 of them, actually), and my understanding is that it works with less interference from the admins than most if not all other MMORPGs.
As pointed out in other posts here, if you want to use the special mathematical meaning of the word prove you have to say so.
When we're talking about proving something in the realm of mathematics, that meaning is implied. HTH.
Since this is impossible, you can't use it in your proof.
Oh? Please explain. It seems to me that if there were a largest prime number ("P"), it would be possible to make a list of all prime numbers between 0 and P. It might not be practical in the real world, but in a mathematical thought experiment, we're only limited by the rules of mathematics.
None of the dogs will have green, purple, or orange spots, because dogs don't come in those colors, therefore they cannot have spots of those colors.
This is the flaw in your analogy - not the "postulate that this has been done" line. You're begging the question by presuming that none of the dogs will have green, purple, or orange spots, since that's exactly what you're trying to prove.
Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates attracts gamers of all ages without resorting to those tactics.
Play time is unlimited, however, the doubloon system allows players to essentially trade money for time. There are two currencies: pieces of eight, which flow freely from NPCs and admin-sponsored tournaments, and doubloons, which only enter the economy when they're purchased with real dollars. The prices for most items are set in both POE and doubloons, the doubloons disappear from the economy as soon as they're spent, and POE can be traded for doubloons on an open market. So if you want to buy that fancy sword, you can either play for a couple weeks to save up POE and trade some of them for doubloons, or spend a couple bucks for a handful of doubloons and trade some of them for POE. The players with money but no time subsidize the ones with time but no money.
Neither POE nor doubloons are finite, but they exit the system regularly, and inflation hasn't been a problem. The economy stays balanced by changing tax rates, changing spawn rates for raw commodities, and providing plenty of opportunities for money to be lost/spent and leave the economy.
Paying to play is entirely optional, at least on doubloon servers (there are also servers where monthly subscriptions replace doubloons). If you don't have the time or money to get doubloons, many parts of the game are closed off to you, but you can still have fun.
Linux is supported, and mentioned on the box, because the game's written in Java. (You can even run it on a Mac and play a special bonus game, "watch the colorful spinning beachball", that isn't available on either Linux or Windows!)
Of course, another big factor that attracts older players is the gameplay itself. You don't need the quick reflexes or hand-eye coordination of someone who grew up playing Nintendo, because everything is a puzzle game, from sailing to swordfighting. If you can play Bejeweled, you can help run a ship.
If Google has DRM that doesn't interfere with use, there is nothing wrong with it. I understand a little copy protection. If I made content, I'd want to be able to put it on my content.
We all want a lot of things; that doesn't mean we deserve them, or that others should allow us to have them.
Some parents want total control over everything their children do, up to age 18 or later, or they want the government to enforce their moral code. Some presidents want to be able to ignore the law when they think the law stands in the way of protecting the country. Some wealthy individuals want their tax bill to be lower.
If we were in their shoes, we might even agree with them. I'm sure it makes a parent's life easier when the government will stop your kids from doing the things you don't want them to do, just as it makes an artist's life easier when the government will stop people from enjoying his work without paying. But as a society, we have to consider how these laws affect everyone, not just the people who benefit. Copy protection is as bad for consumers as it is good for producers, and there are a lot more consumers than producers.
Your argument is interesting because it pretends that everyone can 'create their own stuff' but you and I both know that this isn't true for you and it certaintly isn't true for the rest of the public.
This is funny, because roman_mir went off at me when he thought I was saying just that (although I wasn't):
"You are telling me that everyone is equivalent, that you can do everything that I can do and that I can do everything that the Rolling Stones can do, well guess what. That is a big load of stinking BS and will always be a big load of stinking BS because it is just false."