I haven't seen any actual reports on inflation, but I have been paying attention to prices, and I'd say it's definitely happening. Just a few examples, off the top of my head: I got my pilot's license in 1991 -- the same Cessna 152 I learned to fly in at $36 per hour now costs $120 per hour to rent; around that same time, I used to fill up my car for ~$1/gallon but it's $3.50 per gallon now; I'm into archery, and the arrows I used to buy for $4 each now cost more like $10 each; and houses in my city have gone from ~$150K to ~$300K. That's 200-300% inflation in 20 years. I know, I know, "anecdote, data, etc." but just about the only thing I can think of where prices have decreased is technology -- computers, hard drives, network gear, cell phones, etc.
If you wait until your kids are teens to start down this path, you already screwed up and sticking your fingers in your ears is going to be just about your only option. You start building a relationship with your kids and a culture of honor and respect the moment your child is born, and you keep at it until they move out of the house (actually, it doesn't even stop then). Your kids need to know that they can trust you to handle their mistakes and help clean up their messes long before they even think about having sex. Otherwise, yeah, you'll be the last one to know, and they won't be open to anything you have to say on the subject.
I pretty much agree with everything you say here. I tend towards a Libertarian philosophy -- small government, minimal intrusion, "that government governs best which governs least" and all that -- but that doesn't mean I want NO government and NO regulation. There is the ideal, and there is practical reality. Understanding that the pure ideal probably won't work (for all the reasons that you've pointed out above), the trick is to find a way to balance the ideals with real life so that you have a government that is minimally intrusive, yet still stable and workable.
Overreact much? By reading comments here, you would almost think that/. selects for commenters who fail in critical thinking and analysis or are just incapable of arguing a point without going for other-the-top sensationalism (sigh). </rant>
Okay, here goes...you are confusing Libertarianism with anarchy. They are not the same thing. There may very well be some overlap between people who claim a Libertarian philosophy of government and those who dream about anarchy, but IMHO, those people are idiots;) My view of how Libertarian government should work is this: enough regulation to provide for the common good, and no more. If you aren't hurting anyone, then government should leave you the **** alone. However, if you are hurting someone, then yes, perhaps there is a need for government to step in.
I understand the point you are making, and I'm old enough and cynical enough to suspect that there is more than just a grain of truth in your argument. Like I said above, I tend to be idealistic although I recognize that when actually putting something in place, it is rare indeed when you can actually implement an ideal -- you've got to be pragmatic and realistic enough to allow for how things work in the real world, so I agree that a pure Libertarian state would probably not work out real well. We are going to need some level of government interference to make a workable society.
However, I disagree that a reasonably Libertarian society is unworkable. What we have NOW is unworkable. Those with money and power already trample the rights of everyone else. Regulation isn't a cure-all in our current situation because those with money and power already buy off the regulators (go look up how Merck, IIRC, lobbied the FDA to fast-track the HPV vaccine for a good example of that) and out-spend the little guy in court.
My view of a Libertarian ideal is pretty simple, really. A friend and coworker expressed it best: "Democrats want to be your mommy. Republicans want to be your daddy. I just want them all to treat me like an adult." This same guy forwarded a YouTube video that explains it in a little more detail: The Philosophy of Liberty. In other words, enough government to create a stable society and no more. I'm not arguing for anarchy, and I'm not saying that the government should never interfere, but I am saying that the level of government interference should be orders of magnitude less than what it is now, particularly on social issues like drug usage, same-sex marriage, polygamy, etc. despite the fact that I am strictly monogamous, straight and have never used any recreational drug stronger than alcohol (sparingly) or caffeine (not so sparingly).
Nah, an ATV isn't big and powerful enough for the snowfall we consistently get up here -- it takes a full-size truck when we get dumped on. Someone else mentioned a Kubota, but I priced those -- they're $20K on Craigslist but I could buy an equipped plow truck for $5K if I shop around. Besides, a fleet of GPS guided, autonomous (Arduino?) R/C front-end loaders, excavators and dump trunks would 1) be more fun; 2) be more education; and 3) trump the **** out of an ATV for geek-factor;)
That's a fair question, and a reasonable point -- no, courts in a Libertarian society probably won't any better than the courts we have now. The difference, IMHO, is that while we will still face all of the problems with corruption and the unfair advantage of power that comes with wealth, we will at least not have a government built on the ideal that grown adults are children who need a mommy and daddy to take care of them. And you are totally right that "you have to have a certain degree of flexibility and pragmatism..."
You can look at it this way: suppose FOSS was Libertarianism. There are those in the Libertarian community who are hard-core, all or nothing, like RMS is about FOSS. And there are those who take a more pragmatic, "here's the ideal, but we might have to tweak it a bit to make it really workable" view of Libertarianism, like Linus' view of FOSS. I'm a Linus;)
Aka, the fracker has violated some sort of law. So in this libertarian world, we have laws about water discharge chemical levels?
It sounds like you are probably trolling, but I'll bite anyway.
Civil law != criminal law, even in a Libertarian Utopia. Civil law allows for people harmed by the negligence of others to attempt to have their grievances made right. Criminal law allows for government to arrest people who are suitably dangerous to society. In my understanding of Libertarianism, the idea is that laws should not be overly restrictive -- that is, there should be just enough legal framework to take action when necessary to keep people from violating each others' freedoms, but neither civil nor criminal law should punish "victimless crimes" because to a Libertarian, there is no such thing. If there's no victim, then how could there possibly be a crime?
As applied to fracking: if you own the mineral rights, then you get to do what you want with the minerals...UNTIL what you are doing with the minerals causes harm to someone else. If you can get oil out of your property by fracking, more power to you. However, if by doing so, you are polluting your neighbors' drinking water, then you've gotta stop, because at that point, you are causing harm to your neighbors.
I am totally going to have to do that. I have a freaking *HUGE* driveway on the side of a mountain, and I'm tired of paying the plow guy to come plow when he finally gets around to it (which usually means "after I've already towed my step-daughter and/or neice out of the ditch"). This probably wouldn't take any longer between snowfall and a clear driveway than the plow guy, would probably be break-even on expenses, but would be a boatload more fun:)
what state allows that? Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois says, one name on the title.
Alaska, for one. My wife has a truck. I have a truck and I have a motorcycle. On every title and DMV registration slip, you will see both of our names. In fact, we get really creative up here. If the title says "John Q. Doe and Jane P. Doe", both of you have to sign the registration to transfer the title to someone else. If the title says "John Q. Doe or Jane P. Doe" then either one of you can sign to transfer the title to someone else. Both options have obvious advantages and disadvantages.
That is odd to have multiple names on a vehicle title.
Only because it's different than what you are used to. It seems odd to me that you can't put both names on the title in Michigan, Indiana and Illinois.
My current wife I have been with 20 years now, she is not hot but normal. Normal is good.
That's a better deal than the nutjob I was dating before I met my wife. She was neither hot nor normal (why did I date her again???). My wife was a big improvement in both regards:)
IMHO, gauauu isn't saying "It could never happen to me." He's saying, "It's (sometimes) hard work, and if I don't commit to this person, it WILL end in divorce...but I'm going to do everything in my power to keep it from getting there." That's neither sad nor self-defeating. It's optimistic (maybe IYHO foolishly so, but I'd disagree), hopeful and *powerful*. That's the way I approached my marriage. This is my first (and by my intentions, only) wife; however, she was married twice before we met. That kind of skews the odds against us a bit (ever become an instant parent to a teenager? I did...holy crap, did I not know what I was in for!), but that was twelve years ago, so we're doing something right.
Some things in life are worth fighting for and worth working hard for. My marriage is one of those things. Apparently, gauauu thinks his is, too. YMMV, but IMHO, the odds of making it are inversely related to how much you expect it to fall apart, so why would you possibly approach marriage expecting it to fail?!?!
Yeah, I was wondering about that when I read TFS and the comments above. I'm not a farmer, but I was under the impression that 2nd generation seeds were significantly inferior to 1st generation, when they were even viable at all -- kind of like copying VHS, only worse.
That occurred to me when I first heard of this (about a year ago). But here's why that doesn't work: Plaintiff (farmer Joe) hires $150/hr lawyer. Lawyer spends about a month on the suit and farmer Joe goes bankrupt. Meanwhile, Monsanto has the law firm of Dewey, Cheatem and Howe on retainer. They spend an equivalent amount of man-hours defending against farmer Joe, and Monsanto pays their fees out of petty cash. Wash, rinse and repeat through the appeals process until farmer Joe is begging on the streets because he's lost his farm, his house and everything else he owned and is only about 1/10th of the way through the appeals process.
Deep pockets cut both ways -- it might make you a juicy target, but it also means you can afford to keep the fight going a lot longer than the other guy 99 times out of a hundred.
The way Monsanto is doing business is, in my opinion, quite frankly unethical. First, they have patents on a product that by design can't be contained. Crops are pollinated by insects, which don't typically respect farmers' boundaries. If Monsanto really cared about their IP, they'd put a boundary in place which would not allow insects to cross-pollinate non-Monsanto fields*. Second, when they send their "seed police" out to bust farmers who are buying 2nd (or later) generation Monsanto seed** for using their IP without paying the licensing fees, and they *KNOW* they are busting farmers who didn't want GM DNA in their fields, then that quite clearly is a travesty of justice. Third, and most in line with what you are saying, creating a single strain of a foodstuffs is a monumentally bad idea. Look up the history of the banana if the problems inherent with a single strain of food crops is blatantly obvious to you (hint: think First Nations and smallpox; now imagine that the entire human race was those First Nations people).
*Yes, that argument is clearly absurd -- but that's essentially what Monsanto is requiring of other farmers. "I don't care if you intended to have our patented genes in your fields or not. They're there and you aren't paying royalties on them. Ergo, you've stolen them from us, you thief!"
Selective breeding and genetic engineering are NOT the same thing. You can breed dogs to have certain traits -- that's why they are called "breeds" of dogs, after all -- but they still contain the same genetic material that dogs had in the past (ignoring, for the moment, the possibility of genetic mutations). GMO's, however, have had genetic material from other organisms grafted in, for example, copying the sequence of genes from that allow lightning bugs to glow in the dark into bacteria to make bacteria that glow in the dark.
A good example of a GMO at the grocery store is the "Grapples" I've seen where I shop. I don't care how carefully and selectively you breed your apples, they won't ever taste like grapes. But a Grapple has had the genes for a grapes flavor spliced into an apple's genetic code, giving a fruit that looks and feels like an apple (well, sort of...it's got kind of a sickly-looking purplish-red skin -- it actually looks pretty disgusting, and I've never been brave enough to try one) and supposedly tastes like a grape.
No, I believe it would be more like catching a 25,000mph bullet while doing 25,000mph yourself. Just make sure you're both going in the same direction...
Sorry -- I should have specified which market I meant. I was checking to see if there was an app for Android, not iPhone;) (but I appreciate the effort, anyway)
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I haven't seen any actual reports on inflation, but I have been paying attention to prices, and I'd say it's definitely happening. Just a few examples, off the top of my head: I got my pilot's license in 1991 -- the same Cessna 152 I learned to fly in at $36 per hour now costs $120 per hour to rent; around that same time, I used to fill up my car for ~$1/gallon but it's $3.50 per gallon now; I'm into archery, and the arrows I used to buy for $4 each now cost more like $10 each; and houses in my city have gone from ~$150K to ~$300K. That's 200-300% inflation in 20 years. I know, I know, "anecdote, data, etc." but just about the only thing I can think of where prices have decreased is technology -- computers, hard drives, network gear, cell phones, etc.
I said "Help them," -- not "Clean it up for them."
What a wonderful, mature, high-minded reason to bring a child into the world...
Agreed, but...did you honestly expect people to behave otherwise?
If you wait until your kids are teens to start down this path, you already screwed up and sticking your fingers in your ears is going to be just about your only option. You start building a relationship with your kids and a culture of honor and respect the moment your child is born, and you keep at it until they move out of the house (actually, it doesn't even stop then). Your kids need to know that they can trust you to handle their mistakes and help clean up their messes long before they even think about having sex. Otherwise, yeah, you'll be the last one to know, and they won't be open to anything you have to say on the subject.
I pretty much agree with everything you say here. I tend towards a Libertarian philosophy -- small government, minimal intrusion, "that government governs best which governs least" and all that -- but that doesn't mean I want NO government and NO regulation. There is the ideal, and there is practical reality. Understanding that the pure ideal probably won't work (for all the reasons that you've pointed out above), the trick is to find a way to balance the ideals with real life so that you have a government that is minimally intrusive, yet still stable and workable.
Overreact much? By reading comments here, you would almost think that /. selects for commenters who fail in critical thinking and analysis or are just incapable of arguing a point without going for other-the-top sensationalism (sigh). </rant>
;) My view of how Libertarian government should work is this: enough regulation to provide for the common good, and no more. If you aren't hurting anyone, then government should leave you the **** alone. However, if you are hurting someone, then yes, perhaps there is a need for government to step in.
Okay, here goes...you are confusing Libertarianism with anarchy. They are not the same thing. There may very well be some overlap between people who claim a Libertarian philosophy of government and those who dream about anarchy, but IMHO, those people are idiots
I understand the point you are making, and I'm old enough and cynical enough to suspect that there is more than just a grain of truth in your argument. Like I said above, I tend to be idealistic although I recognize that when actually putting something in place, it is rare indeed when you can actually implement an ideal -- you've got to be pragmatic and realistic enough to allow for how things work in the real world, so I agree that a pure Libertarian state would probably not work out real well. We are going to need some level of government interference to make a workable society.
However, I disagree that a reasonably Libertarian society is unworkable. What we have NOW is unworkable. Those with money and power already trample the rights of everyone else. Regulation isn't a cure-all in our current situation because those with money and power already buy off the regulators (go look up how Merck, IIRC, lobbied the FDA to fast-track the HPV vaccine for a good example of that) and out-spend the little guy in court.
My view of a Libertarian ideal is pretty simple, really. A friend and coworker expressed it best: "Democrats want to be your mommy. Republicans want to be your daddy. I just want them all to treat me like an adult." This same guy forwarded a YouTube video that explains it in a little more detail: The Philosophy of Liberty. In other words, enough government to create a stable society and no more. I'm not arguing for anarchy, and I'm not saying that the government should never interfere, but I am saying that the level of government interference should be orders of magnitude less than what it is now, particularly on social issues like drug usage, same-sex marriage, polygamy, etc. despite the fact that I am strictly monogamous, straight and have never used any recreational drug stronger than alcohol (sparingly) or caffeine (not so sparingly).
Nah, an ATV isn't big and powerful enough for the snowfall we consistently get up here -- it takes a full-size truck when we get dumped on. Someone else mentioned a Kubota, but I priced those -- they're $20K on Craigslist but I could buy an equipped plow truck for $5K if I shop around. Besides, a fleet of GPS guided, autonomous (Arduino?) R/C front-end loaders, excavators and dump trunks would 1) be more fun; 2) be more education; and 3) trump the **** out of an ATV for geek-factor ;)
That's a fair question, and a reasonable point -- no, courts in a Libertarian society probably won't any better than the courts we have now. The difference, IMHO, is that while we will still face all of the problems with corruption and the unfair advantage of power that comes with wealth, we will at least not have a government built on the ideal that grown adults are children who need a mommy and daddy to take care of them. And you are totally right that "you have to have a certain degree of flexibility and pragmatism..."
;)
You can look at it this way: suppose FOSS was Libertarianism. There are those in the Libertarian community who are hard-core, all or nothing, like RMS is about FOSS. And there are those who take a more pragmatic, "here's the ideal, but we might have to tweak it a bit to make it really workable" view of Libertarianism, like Linus' view of FOSS. I'm a Linus
Aka, the fracker has violated some sort of law. So in this libertarian world, we have laws about water discharge chemical levels?
It sounds like you are probably trolling, but I'll bite anyway.
Civil law != criminal law, even in a Libertarian Utopia. Civil law allows for people harmed by the negligence of others to attempt to have their grievances made right. Criminal law allows for government to arrest people who are suitably dangerous to society. In my understanding of Libertarianism, the idea is that laws should not be overly restrictive -- that is, there should be just enough legal framework to take action when necessary to keep people from violating each others' freedoms, but neither civil nor criminal law should punish "victimless crimes" because to a Libertarian, there is no such thing. If there's no victim, then how could there possibly be a crime?
As applied to fracking: if you own the mineral rights, then you get to do what you want with the minerals... UNTIL what you are doing with the minerals causes harm to someone else. If you can get oil out of your property by fracking, more power to you. However, if by doing so, you are polluting your neighbors' drinking water, then you've gotta stop, because at that point, you are causing harm to your neighbors.
I am totally going to have to do that. I have a freaking *HUGE* driveway on the side of a mountain, and I'm tired of paying the plow guy to come plow when he finally gets around to it (which usually means "after I've already towed my step-daughter and/or neice out of the ditch"). This probably wouldn't take any longer between snowfall and a clear driveway than the plow guy, would probably be break-even on expenses, but would be a boatload more fun :)
Spoken like a true divorce lawyer. They're the only ones who ever really win in a divorce case, anyway.
Hint: if you've got to rag on someone else to feel good about yourself, chances are you're not a "real Man" either. Just sayin'
Hey, I have a bass guitar, you insensitive clod!
what state allows that? Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois says, one name on the title.
Alaska, for one. My wife has a truck. I have a truck and I have a motorcycle. On every title and DMV registration slip, you will see both of our names. In fact, we get really creative up here. If the title says "John Q. Doe and Jane P. Doe", both of you have to sign the registration to transfer the title to someone else. If the title says "John Q. Doe or Jane P. Doe" then either one of you can sign to transfer the title to someone else. Both options have obvious advantages and disadvantages.
That is odd to have multiple names on a vehicle title.
Only because it's different than what you are used to. It seems odd to me that you can't put both names on the title in Michigan, Indiana and Illinois.
My current wife I have been with 20 years now, she is not hot but normal. Normal is good.
That's a better deal than the nutjob I was dating before I met my wife. She was neither hot nor normal (why did I date her again???). My wife was a big improvement in both regards :)
A "real geek" already has a cron job that rsyncs it.
I hate the "FTFY" crowd, but...FTFY ;)
IMHO, gauauu isn't saying "It could never happen to me." He's saying, "It's (sometimes) hard work, and if I don't commit to this person, it WILL end in divorce...but I'm going to do everything in my power to keep it from getting there." That's neither sad nor self-defeating. It's optimistic (maybe IYHO foolishly so, but I'd disagree), hopeful and *powerful*. That's the way I approached my marriage. This is my first (and by my intentions, only) wife; however, she was married twice before we met. That kind of skews the odds against us a bit (ever become an instant parent to a teenager? I did...holy crap, did I not know what I was in for!), but that was twelve years ago, so we're doing something right.
Some things in life are worth fighting for and worth working hard for. My marriage is one of those things. Apparently, gauauu thinks his is, too. YMMV, but IMHO, the odds of making it are inversely related to how much you expect it to fall apart, so why would you possibly approach marriage expecting it to fail?!?!
Yeah, I was wondering about that when I read TFS and the comments above. I'm not a farmer, but I was under the impression that 2nd generation seeds were significantly inferior to 1st generation, when they were even viable at all -- kind of like copying VHS, only worse.
That occurred to me when I first heard of this (about a year ago). But here's why that doesn't work: Plaintiff (farmer Joe) hires $150/hr lawyer. Lawyer spends about a month on the suit and farmer Joe goes bankrupt. Meanwhile, Monsanto has the law firm of Dewey, Cheatem and Howe on retainer. They spend an equivalent amount of man-hours defending against farmer Joe, and Monsanto pays their fees out of petty cash. Wash, rinse and repeat through the appeals process until farmer Joe is begging on the streets because he's lost his farm, his house and everything else he owned and is only about 1/10th of the way through the appeals process.
Deep pockets cut both ways -- it might make you a juicy target, but it also means you can afford to keep the fight going a lot longer than the other guy 99 times out of a hundred.
^^THIS^^
The way Monsanto is doing business is, in my opinion, quite frankly unethical. First, they have patents on a product that by design can't be contained. Crops are pollinated by insects, which don't typically respect farmers' boundaries. If Monsanto really cared about their IP, they'd put a boundary in place which would not allow insects to cross-pollinate non-Monsanto fields*. Second, when they send their "seed police" out to bust farmers who are buying 2nd (or later) generation Monsanto seed** for using their IP without paying the licensing fees, and they *KNOW* they are busting farmers who didn't want GM DNA in their fields, then that quite clearly is a travesty of justice. Third, and most in line with what you are saying, creating a single strain of a foodstuffs is a monumentally bad idea. Look up the history of the banana if the problems inherent with a single strain of food crops is blatantly obvious to you (hint: think First Nations and smallpox; now imagine that the entire human race was those First Nations people).
*Yes, that argument is clearly absurd -- but that's essentially what Monsanto is requiring of other farmers. "I don't care if you intended to have our patented genes in your fields or not. They're there and you aren't paying royalties on them. Ergo, you've stolen them from us, you thief!"
Selective breeding and genetic engineering are NOT the same thing. You can breed dogs to have certain traits -- that's why they are called "breeds" of dogs, after all -- but they still contain the same genetic material that dogs had in the past (ignoring, for the moment, the possibility of genetic mutations). GMO's, however, have had genetic material from other organisms grafted in, for example, copying the sequence of genes from that allow lightning bugs to glow in the dark into bacteria to make bacteria that glow in the dark.
A good example of a GMO at the grocery store is the "Grapples" I've seen where I shop. I don't care how carefully and selectively you breed your apples, they won't ever taste like grapes. But a Grapple has had the genes for a grapes flavor spliced into an apple's genetic code, giving a fruit that looks and feels like an apple (well, sort of...it's got kind of a sickly-looking purplish-red skin -- it actually looks pretty disgusting, and I've never been brave enough to try one) and supposedly tastes like a grape.
I oversimplified, but that was the general point I was trying to make in my last sentence ;)
No, I believe it would be more like catching a 25,000mph bullet while doing 25,000mph yourself. Just make sure you're both going in the same direction...
Must have been the drinking. The guy who taught me to rock climb was a Welshman, and IMHO, his accent wasn't terribly hard to understand.
Sorry -- I should have specified which market I meant. I was checking to see if there was an app for Android, not iPhone ;) (but I appreciate the effort, anyway)