However, for the great majority of people who are not high on the socioeconomic ladder... this is obviously going to be an unsuitable answer for citizens in that position
How is that "obvious"? What sort of an adult would want to be doled out resources which they haven't earned? Sure, it's true that we all like getting things for free, but how depraved do you have to be in order to condone the forced seizure of assets for your own personal benefit?
Using the same "logic" we could say that obviously people would be in favor of having their own personal slaves, and that, since whites outnumber blacks, white voters will get together any day now to re-enslave the blacks.
Of course, that's NOT going to happen because civilized people understand that it is wrong to enslave others, regardless of whether or not they have the power at the voting booths.
So the question is, how does one convince the mass of people who need to know what a government can do for them, not how much a government can stay out of their way, to vote for a Libertarian system?
Education?
You pose a valid question, and I'm not sure that there's an easy answer, but I think the best answer is related to the analogy I made above. The best way to get people to vote for more freedom is to show them that it's wrong to do otherwise. The Zeitgeist needs to change.
If the standard of living for the great majority of people were raised to the point where they started to feel that large government disadvantages started to outweigh the advantages, perhaps there would be a shift in popular thinking. This seems unlikely to happen...
Nonsense - it's already happened. A middle class person today lives a longer, healthier, and happier life than even royalty of a few hundred years ago. Our "poor" have wealth which could not have been imagined by the average person of a hundred years ago, and which even the middle-class of some nations do not posses today. The problem is that people are never happy with what they have. As long as we measure poverty relative to the rest of society instead of as an absolute, this isn't going to change.
Actually, I guess you're technically correct since you did say
"were raised to the point where they started to feel that large government disadvantages started to outweigh the advantages"
The problem is that this "feeling" has nothing to do with the standard of living, and I think that's your biggest misconception; people don't become libertarians because they're rich, but they do sometimes become rich because they're libertarians. The person who accepts personal responsibility and doesn't rely on government handouts is much more likely to succeed than is his opposite number, while the person who expects someone else to provide him with everything is going to want more free stuff no matter how much you give him. So when you make the assumption that rich people are libertarians because they're already rich and that the "poor" want handouts because they're poor, I think you're completely ass-backwards about the cause and effect.
This is my personal objection to Libertarian philosophy - I feel it is a philosophy designed for an expanding, resource-rich world, while the world as it is actually becoming is a contracting, constrained, resource-poor world
Another valid point... to an extent. If we were close to exhausting our resources you'd have an excellent point, although it'd be moot since we'd be nearing the point where a technological society would no longer be possible. Under such circumstances, I don't think I'd give a damn what's "fair" - I'd just make my own life as enjoyable as possible while trying to protect my family.
Fortunately, though, we're nowhere near that point. Our resources are only limited if we fail
1. That much space could generate 18,000 watts, more or less. Maybe you should stop staging competitions between collections of air-conditioners and space-heaters.
2. So do the math. I'll wait.
3. I'd love to see your evidence for it being an "extreme added expense". As for the labor fees, please - anyone who knows how to hold a screwdriver would be capable of adding a panel to a pre-existing system. If you're paying for it, you're doing it wrong.
4. I don't see how. Solar panels output direct current. Both the voltage and the amperage are variable, depending on temperature and illumination, so the regulators have to be able to handle a fairly wide margin of input current. Even if the output of your new panels is significantly different, the worst that should happen is that the output voltage gets pulled down and you lose some efficiency. If you have some info that I'm not privy to, I'd appreciate you explaining it in further detail.
If the goal of libertarianism is the minimization of the authority of the state, then the existence of no state authority at all is taking the philosophy to its logical conclusion.
Right. Because the logical conclusion of limiting your caloric intake is not eating at all. Makes perfect sense!
There's a massive difference between anarchy and libertarianism. Anarchy is no government, no laws. Libertarianism is the same as what we have now, minus all the pork and "social programs".
Not much of an issue unless you live in the middle of an industrial park. I installed some sky-lights 2 year ago, and have only had to clean them once since then. The rain washes them off quite nicely. The biggest problem I could see for my area with solar panels would be accumulation of snow in the winter time, but even that wouldn't be an insurmountable problem.
Efficiency loss isn't really a huge issue since you can always attach another panel or two. Adding extra capacity would be quite cheap even assuming that prices remain constant. Sure, it would increase your total investment, but not by much.
Yeah, my GPS has that option... the problem is that it accomplishes it by radio transmission. Which works great if I'm listening to music playing from the GPS, but it's useless if I'm listening to a CD or any other source.
For built-in units it's a great idea - you could wire it to make it's announcements over whatever happens to be playing. But for stand-alone units like the Mio or my Garmin it's not really feasible.
Well, yeah, clearly the solution is to empower the government to do whatever it take in order to "protect" us. I hear that George Orwell wrote an instructional manual on that subject - perhaps you could forward a copy to your local politician, just to get the ball rolling
Because it's pretty ineffective when you've got the music turned up?
I've pretty much disabled all voice functionality on my GPS because I can't hear it half the time anyway, and trying to reach my volume knob is almost as distracting as having to hit that "ok" buton.
Yeah, that's an even better energy source - sarcasm. Not only is it clean and efficient, but it can be transmitted wirelessly AND it's the most abundant resource on the planet.
As wind is best generated (relatively) close to consumption this could in fact improve the situation.
How do you figure? Most large cities don't have the room for large turbines, and small ones are much more inefficient. The two biggest factors in efficiency are the strength of prevailing winds and the availability of land - being close to consumption has nothing to do with it.
Or, was your comment some vague joke about the consumption of spicy food as it relates to the generating of wind? Because, on a second read-over, that makes a lot more sense....
There's problems with every method of power generation - they all remove energy from the environment.
Actually, we have this snazzy new method... it's called nuclear power! Well some people prefer to call it atomic power, or nukeular power, but they're just silly. Anyway, I'm not sure about all the ins and outs of it, but supposedly some science geek with a really messed-up haircut managed to figure out how to turn matter into energy! Weird, I know, but they even say they might be able to make bombs out of it. Imagine that: a power generating method which not only doesn't remove energy from the environment, but adds energy into it! It's mind-boggling...
The placebo effect is observable and quantifiable, but the placebo itself does not do anything. We know this because we can substitute ANY substance, and achieve the same effect. Ergo the placebo effect is caused by something other than the placebo.
Your argument is similar to saying "wood causes fires". Well, no, it doesn't, because we can replace wood with any number of products and still have fire. Except that your argument is even sillier because wood actually is part of the combustion process when ignited, whereas placebos don't even interact with the body.
I don't actually expect you to understand the difference, but I thought I'd clarify anyway. I had to make the effort - reading your comments always makes me smile, so the least I could do is try and educate you a bit.
Even architects have to know the basics. Or their fancy designs would fall over.
You'd be surprised. From what I've seen, architects are like Captain Kirk - always asking for warp 20 on busted dylithium crystals 5 minutes ago. They come up with the fancy plans, then the engineers explain to them why it won't work, and the result ends up being a compromise between the two. Just look at some of the difficulties they were having with the proposed designs for the "Freedom Tower" in New York.
Without getting into the energy requirements... the most obvious problem I can think of is the change in tidal forces. You'd be changing not only the strength of the gravitational influence between the two bodies, but also the orbital velocity of the moon. I don't have any numbers to back me up here, but it seems quite likely that you'd wipe out half the planet in the process.
Granted, the device that could generate the required energy is "BIG", but the last time I checked, the sun keeps going 7/24, in space
Well, yeah, if you brought the sun down to the surface of the earth, it might provide enough power to do what you're proposing. The side-effects might be a problem, though.
The power of a magnetic field falls off exponentially with distance. Even if you could shape your field in such a way that all the leakage doesn't fry electronics for hundreds of miles around, you'd still need an insane amount of power in order to get the kind of speed / distance required for orbit. And by "insane" I mean "not even close to feasible". Using a magnetic rail mass-driver would work better, but is still impractical on the Earth (on the moon, it'd be a lot more effective).
And by the way, pointing at the sun and yelling "LOOK, FREE ENERGY!" is just stupid. We can't even figure out how to effectively harness it for our day-to-day use, let alone for some super-duper Dr. Evil style sciency gizmo thing. If large energy demands are a problem for your proposal, then pointing to the sun is definitely not a solution.
That's a nice experiment that I assume proves that CO2 absorbs IR better than air (and, like a greenhouse, heats up because of stopping convection, unlike the atmosphere).
What in the world....
How do you go from "absorbs IR" to "heats up because of stopping convection"? You've made two contradictory guesses in one sentence. If you expect a response, you need to clarify what you meant.
FYI, the greenhouse effect has nothing to do with convection; the name is somewhat misleading.
No, "placebo" does not mean "no effect", and I would think that everyone knows that. Placebo just means that the "remedy" doesn't actually do anything. A placebo is a trick - nothing more. There's a reason why placebos are only used in situations where their effectiveness is judged subjectively - because in an objective use, such as birth-control, a placebo would quickly show itself to be ineffective in a very distressing manner. When you take a sugar pill you might feel less pain, but you won't be less pregnant.
But the part of your initial comment that convinced me you were making an attempt at parody was this bit:
It is such a powerful force they had to construct double blind studies to attempt to factor out this healing force.
That shows such a complete lack of understanding of science that... well, I figured it HAD to be parody. My mistake.
If you want to understand why that sentence looks so stupid, just examine my slight modification of it:
Dowsing for gold is such an effective technique that they had to construct double blind studies to attempt to factor out this psychic force
Both sentences are equally accurate... and equally ludicrous.
I'm upset because I see inequality of outcome: two people who work just as hard, and contribute just as much to society, will often experience very different levels of reward.
That's generalization at best, and a flawed premise at worst.
In fact, some people who are nothing but leaches on society seem to get rewarded very well.
And that's jealousy. Work on it.
Ah yes, democracy. You seem to think it is only valid the the outcome is what you desire, otherwise, screw those bastages trying to tell you what to do! Tyranny of the majority!
As a psychic, you're a failure.
I mean, if you love democracy so much, why do you complain that people shouldn't have the right to 'coerce' you into doing what they want?
Because any decent democracy respects the rights of the individual first. Your idea of democracy - where the weak and lazy can vote more money for themselves - is a tyranny of the highest order. It ignores individual rights in the name of "fairness". It doesn't matter whether a dozen people get together and "vote" to take away my property, or whether they get together and rob me at gunpoint, the end result is the same. Using the government just makes it easier - you can rob me without actually having to do your own dirty work.
If keeping an open mind and taking a position outside of the mainstream invalidates what someone says
Ah, yes, the "open mind" defense. I never get tired of hearing that one. It doesn't matter whether it's coming from the 9/11 goof movement, holocaust deniers, miracle-crystal healers, moon-hoaxers, perpetual-motion pushers, or the face-on-mars crowd - they ALL seem to have such open minds! It must be such a drag having people like me constantly demanding evidence.
As far as can tell, the more you speak about how "open" your mind is the more likely it is that your brains have entirely leaked out. I don't think you actually understand what the phrase "open minded" means. FYI, it doesn't mean rejecting evidence and uncritically accepting every claim that agrees with your preconceived notions.
I don't know - you'll have to do some serious soul-searching in order to figure that one out. You go on to list all the reasons why you couldn't possibly be jealous, and then close by talking about how unfair it is for the rich to be rich. You need to resolve this internal contradiction before anything I say will make sense to you.
But what you seem to be demanding is that you get to choose both your location, style of governance, and the amount you must contribute
In case you haven't noticed, that's what everyone is demanding. We call it "democracy", and it seems to work pretty good.
Without capitalist fat cats, we would still have jobs, and things would still get done
Without arms and legs we would still have jobs, and things would still get done. However, that's not really a good reason for chopping off our arms and legs.
Or, perhaps a better example - we could still play golf without Tiger Woods, but that's not really a good reason to kill the guy, or to limit his playing abilities.
The biggest problem with your argument is that your "fat cats" (a truly disgusting term which makes you sound weak and pitiful) are a byproduct of a free market. If we allow people to compete against each other, some are going to be more successful than others. What you're proposing is getting rid of success. I'm not sure WHY you want to do that - although jealousy seems like a likely driving force - but the rest of us aren't quite so eager to reject natural competition in favor of a state-enforced "equality".
There is no real reason why someone rich should get a cut of everything that gets done by society.
So now you're arguing for the abolishment of government? Make up yuor mind!
Well as long as you agree that there is just as much evidence for bigfoot as there is for the healing powers of homeopathy... I really don't think we have much to discuss! Thanks! You've made my case for me, better than I could have hoped to:)
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How is that "obvious"? What sort of an adult would want to be doled out resources which they haven't earned? Sure, it's true that we all like getting things for free, but how depraved do you have to be in order to condone the forced seizure of assets for your own personal benefit?
Using the same "logic" we could say that obviously people would be in favor of having their own personal slaves, and that, since whites outnumber blacks, white voters will get together any day now to re-enslave the blacks.
Of course, that's NOT going to happen because civilized people understand that it is wrong to enslave others, regardless of whether or not they have the power at the voting booths.
Education?
You pose a valid question, and I'm not sure that there's an easy answer, but I think the best answer is related to the analogy I made above. The best way to get people to vote for more freedom is to show them that it's wrong to do otherwise. The Zeitgeist needs to change.
Nonsense - it's already happened. A middle class person today lives a longer, healthier, and happier life than even royalty of a few hundred years ago. Our "poor" have wealth which could not have been imagined by the average person of a hundred years ago, and which even the middle-class of some nations do not posses today. The problem is that people are never happy with what they have. As long as we measure poverty relative to the rest of society instead of as an absolute, this isn't going to change.
Actually, I guess you're technically correct since you did say
"were raised to the point where they started to feel that large government disadvantages started to outweigh the advantages"
The problem is that this "feeling" has nothing to do with the standard of living, and I think that's your biggest misconception; people don't become libertarians because they're rich, but they do sometimes become rich because they're libertarians. The person who accepts personal responsibility and doesn't rely on government handouts is much more likely to succeed than is his opposite number, while the person who expects someone else to provide him with everything is going to want more free stuff no matter how much you give him. So when you make the assumption that rich people are libertarians because they're already rich and that the "poor" want handouts because they're poor, I think you're completely ass-backwards about the cause and effect.
Another valid point ... to an extent. If we were close to exhausting our resources you'd have an excellent point, although it'd be moot since we'd be nearing the point where a technological society would no longer be possible. Under such circumstances, I don't think I'd give a damn what's "fair" - I'd just make my own life as enjoyable as possible while trying to protect my family.
Fortunately, though, we're nowhere near that point. Our resources are only limited if we fail
1. That much space could generate 18,000 watts, more or less. Maybe you should stop staging competitions between collections of air-conditioners and space-heaters.
2. So do the math. I'll wait.
3. I'd love to see your evidence for it being an "extreme added expense". As for the labor fees, please - anyone who knows how to hold a screwdriver would be capable of adding a panel to a pre-existing system. If you're paying for it, you're doing it wrong.
4. I don't see how. Solar panels output direct current. Both the voltage and the amperage are variable, depending on temperature and illumination, so the regulators have to be able to handle a fairly wide margin of input current. Even if the output of your new panels is significantly different, the worst that should happen is that the output voltage gets pulled down and you lose some efficiency. If you have some info that I'm not privy to, I'd appreciate you explaining it in further detail.
1. Move out of the Doghouse.
2. See above.
3. Plan ahead.
4. Most are.
Right. Because the logical conclusion of limiting your caloric intake is not eating at all. Makes perfect sense!
There's a massive difference between anarchy and libertarianism. Anarchy is no government, no laws. Libertarianism is the same as what we have now, minus all the pork and "social programs".
Not much of an issue unless you live in the middle of an industrial park. I installed some sky-lights 2 year ago, and have only had to clean them once since then. The rain washes them off quite nicely. The biggest problem I could see for my area with solar panels would be accumulation of snow in the winter time, but even that wouldn't be an insurmountable problem.
Efficiency loss isn't really a huge issue since you can always attach another panel or two. Adding extra capacity would be quite cheap even assuming that prices remain constant. Sure, it would increase your total investment, but not by much.
Of course not. Anarchists are the ones pushing for no government. I'm not sure what you think libertarianism is, but you're clearly confused about it.
Yeah, my GPS has that option ... the problem is that it accomplishes it by radio transmission. Which works great if I'm listening to music playing from the GPS, but it's useless if I'm listening to a CD or any other source.
For built-in units it's a great idea - you could wire it to make it's announcements over whatever happens to be playing. But for stand-alone units like the Mio or my Garmin it's not really feasible.
Well, yeah, clearly the solution is to empower the government to do whatever it take in order to "protect" us. I hear that George Orwell wrote an instructional manual on that subject - perhaps you could forward a copy to your local politician, just to get the ball rolling
Because it's pretty ineffective when you've got the music turned up?
I've pretty much disabled all voice functionality on my GPS because I can't hear it half the time anyway, and trying to reach my volume knob is almost as distracting as having to hit that "ok" buton.
Yeah, that's an even better energy source - sarcasm. Not only is it clean and efficient, but it can be transmitted wirelessly AND it's the most abundant resource on the planet.
And people worry about the environment! Piffle!
How do you figure? Most large cities don't have the room for large turbines, and small ones are much more inefficient. The two biggest factors in efficiency are the strength of prevailing winds and the availability of land - being close to consumption has nothing to do with it.
Or, was your comment some vague joke about the consumption of spicy food as it relates to the generating of wind? Because, on a second read-over, that makes a lot more sense ....
Actually, we have this snazzy new method ... it's called nuclear power! Well some people prefer to call it atomic power, or nukeular power, but they're just silly. Anyway, I'm not sure about all the ins and outs of it, but supposedly some science geek with a really messed-up haircut managed to figure out how to turn matter into energy! Weird, I know, but they even say they might be able to make bombs out of it. Imagine that: a power generating method which not only doesn't remove energy from the environment, but adds energy into it! It's mind-boggling ...
lol
Yeah, I'm glad we got that cleared up :) Cheers.
The placebo effect is observable and quantifiable, but the placebo itself does not do anything. We know this because we can substitute ANY substance, and achieve the same effect. Ergo the placebo effect is caused by something other than the placebo.
Your argument is similar to saying "wood causes fires". Well, no, it doesn't, because we can replace wood with any number of products and still have fire. Except that your argument is even sillier because wood actually is part of the combustion process when ignited, whereas placebos don't even interact with the body.
I don't actually expect you to understand the difference, but I thought I'd clarify anyway. I had to make the effort - reading your comments always makes me smile, so the least I could do is try and educate you a bit.
You'd be surprised. From what I've seen, architects are like Captain Kirk - always asking for warp 20 on busted dylithium crystals 5 minutes ago. They come up with the fancy plans, then the engineers explain to them why it won't work, and the result ends up being a compromise between the two. Just look at some of the difficulties they were having with the proposed designs for the "Freedom Tower" in New York.
Without getting into the energy requirements ... the most obvious problem I can think of is the change in tidal forces. You'd be changing not only the strength of the gravitational influence between the two bodies, but also the orbital velocity of the moon. I don't have any numbers to back me up here, but it seems quite likely that you'd wipe out half the planet in the process.
Well, yeah, if you brought the sun down to the surface of the earth, it might provide enough power to do what you're proposing. The side-effects might be a problem, though.
The power of a magnetic field falls off exponentially with distance. Even if you could shape your field in such a way that all the leakage doesn't fry electronics for hundreds of miles around, you'd still need an insane amount of power in order to get the kind of speed / distance required for orbit. And by "insane" I mean "not even close to feasible". Using a magnetic rail mass-driver would work better, but is still impractical on the Earth (on the moon, it'd be a lot more effective).
And by the way, pointing at the sun and yelling "LOOK, FREE ENERGY!" is just stupid. We can't even figure out how to effectively harness it for our day-to-day use, let alone for some super-duper Dr. Evil style sciency gizmo thing. If large energy demands are a problem for your proposal, then pointing to the sun is definitely not a solution.
What in the world ....
How do you go from "absorbs IR" to "heats up because of stopping convection"? You've made two contradictory guesses in one sentence. If you expect a response, you need to clarify what you meant.
FYI, the greenhouse effect has nothing to do with convection; the name is somewhat misleading.
Um. Wow.
No, "placebo" does not mean "no effect", and I would think that everyone knows that. Placebo just means that the "remedy" doesn't actually do anything. A placebo is a trick - nothing more. There's a reason why placebos are only used in situations where their effectiveness is judged subjectively - because in an objective use, such as birth-control, a placebo would quickly show itself to be ineffective in a very distressing manner. When you take a sugar pill you might feel less pain, but you won't be less pregnant.
But the part of your initial comment that convinced me you were making an attempt at parody was this bit:
That shows such a complete lack of understanding of science that ... well, I figured it HAD to be parody. My mistake.
If you want to understand why that sentence looks so stupid, just examine my slight modification of it:
Dowsing for gold is such an effective technique that they had to construct double blind studies to attempt to factor out this psychic force
Both sentences are equally accurate ... and equally ludicrous.
That's generalization at best, and a flawed premise at worst.
And that's jealousy. Work on it.
As a psychic, you're a failure.
Because any decent democracy respects the rights of the individual first. Your idea of democracy - where the weak and lazy can vote more money for themselves - is a tyranny of the highest order. It ignores individual rights in the name of "fairness". It doesn't matter whether a dozen people get together and "vote" to take away my property, or whether they get together and rob me at gunpoint, the end result is the same. Using the government just makes it easier - you can rob me without actually having to do your own dirty work.
Ah, yes, the "open mind" defense. I never get tired of hearing that one. It doesn't matter whether it's coming from the 9/11 goof movement, holocaust deniers, miracle-crystal healers, moon-hoaxers, perpetual-motion pushers, or the face-on-mars crowd - they ALL seem to have such open minds! It must be such a drag having people like me constantly demanding evidence.
As far as can tell, the more you speak about how "open" your mind is the more likely it is that your brains have entirely leaked out. I don't think you actually understand what the phrase "open minded" means. FYI, it doesn't mean rejecting evidence and uncritically accepting every claim that agrees with your preconceived notions.
I don't know - you'll have to do some serious soul-searching in order to figure that one out. You go on to list all the reasons why you couldn't possibly be jealous, and then close by talking about how unfair it is for the rich to be rich. You need to resolve this internal contradiction before anything I say will make sense to you.
In case you haven't noticed, that's what everyone is demanding. We call it "democracy", and it seems to work pretty good.
Without arms and legs we would still have jobs, and things would still get done. However, that's not really a good reason for chopping off our arms and legs.
Or, perhaps a better example - we could still play golf without Tiger Woods, but that's not really a good reason to kill the guy, or to limit his playing abilities.
The biggest problem with your argument is that your "fat cats" (a truly disgusting term which makes you sound weak and pitiful) are a byproduct of a free market. If we allow people to compete against each other, some are going to be more successful than others. What you're proposing is getting rid of success. I'm not sure WHY you want to do that - although jealousy seems like a likely driving force - but the rest of us aren't quite so eager to reject natural competition in favor of a state-enforced "equality".
So now you're arguing for the abolishment of government? Make up yuor mind!
Well as long as you agree that there is just as much evidence for bigfoot as there is for the healing powers of homeopathy ... I really don't think we have much to discuss! Thanks! You've made my case for me, better than I could have hoped to :)