Re:All bank vaults and locks have also been cracke
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The DRM Scorecard
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Despite the what you may believe, most of us started "at the table". They stepped away when a fringe group of people were making a pretty small dent in their sales. They not only made sure everyone knew about it as an option, but they also made sure the honest people paid for it. Then they crossed the line with the lawsuits, which is when I stopped buying work supporting the RIAA (I try to avoid the MPAA(?), but sometimes I'm weak). I can live the rest of my life with my current CD collection, stored on my hard drive and easily transfered to any device in my home or office.
Not only can you not give it away to your friend, but you can't use it on the fancy new non-iPod media player you just picked up, your phone, your work computer, your media extender/XBox/PS3,...
Re:Geeks do- everyone else doesn't.
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To get DRM-less content they simply have to steal it in the first place. It's actually less hassle to steal a piece of music than it is to buy it. In fact, the only way to get DRM'd content is by buying legally (I assume people don't trade it as is...)
Buy music: Pay for it (requires a credit card) Get DRM Either go to a store or download it.
Steal music: Free (requires an acquaintance who knows where to get it, which most everyone has) No DRM Search the internet and download it.
This is assuming you don't care about stealing it, but that's the user segment the DRM is meant to address anyway.
Personally, I very rarely download music, but if I do pick something up it's either not associated with the RIAA or it's stolen. When they have made reparations for all the idiocy they've participated in I'll start buying music again. Frankly, I think that boat has sailed, but I like to keep an open mind and a little ray of hope alive. Until then, I've pushed more money into the RIAA's coffers than I'm really comfortable with, and it's simply not an option for me anymore.
As an aside, I did download the entire Metallica collection. I don't actually listen to it, but it made me feel good when I did it...
The reds threw out the Czar. My understanding was that the whites were pro-monarchy, but looking it up it appears that was only some of them. From what I can tell from searches, everyone basically agrees they were anti-red.
Again from Wikipedia: "Nicholas II was a deeply conservative ruler. His criteria of virtue--orderliness, family, and duty--were viewed as both personal ideals for a moral individual and rules for society and politics. Individuals and society alike were expected to show self-restraint, devotion to community and hierarchy, and a spirit of duty to country and tradition. Religious faith helped bind all this together:"
Facism only controlled some industries. They were anti-communist, i.e. not left. In reality, they sit on an entirely different part of the spectrum from either capitalism or communism, but that's probably not black and white enough for you. In any regard, you want to define "left" as any country that has a socialist system and has been run by a dictator, and right as a pro-democracy such as the U.S. Being "left" has nothing to do with being authoritarian, just as being "right" has nothing to do with it.
What has come into common use, even though it isn't really correct, is the correlation between religious control of the government and the "right" in the U.S. and Canada. I'm not saying total control, but a push toward enforcement of morality by the government. That's why I labelled the Czar conservative. That's the only reason I'd lump the Nazi's in with the current right, and that certainly isn't what made the Nazi's evil (their method of enforcement was much different...)
Anyway, it's clear you don't really understand the debate, and you have your mind made up, so I'm going to go get some work done and let you reply as you see fit. Neither of us are going to change the other's mind, and this is rapidly becoming a pointless semantic debate.
But I thought it should be on a mouse. If you had two 5 button mice you would be able to use two pointing devices (which could be useful in 3D modelling for instance) and have access to all the required keys. I never considered click order, and I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not.
Learning to use a system like that would be more difficult, but given how much time I spend in front of a computer it would probably be worth the efficiency boost.
I don't know enough about China or Cambodia to comment, but for the other two:
Nicholas II was extremely conservative. He was overthrown by "the left" because they wanted democracy and equality (rights of the individual...). That was effort was diverted, as it often is in a time of civil war, to produce a dictatorship.
The Third Reich had socialist in it's name, but really stood against everything we'd consider "left". Not the best source, but from Wikipedia:
"...ideologies involved the political use of militarism, nationalism, anti-communism, holism, paramilitaries, and intended to create a totalitarian state."
Also from Wikipedia, a short excerpt on gun control in Canada:
"The Criminal Code of Canada enacted in 1892, required individuals to have a permit to carry a pistol unless the owner had cause to fear assault or injury. It was an offence to sell a pistol to anyone under 16. Vendors who sold handguns had to keep records, including purchaser's name, the date of sale and a description of the gun."
Afghanistan's problems stem from the level of control religious leaders had over the populace. For a modern democracy, the U.S. is very right wing, but compared to places like Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, you guys are still a bunch of hippies.
Remaining armed is not what has stopped the government from getting out of control. I live in Ottawa. There is gun control here. There has never been a problem with the government getting out of control. It's pretty useless most of the time, but in a non-threatening sort of way.
There may be a couple other example countries I could draw on...
On the other hand, there are lots of countries with heavily armed civilians with pretty crappy governments. Afghanistan comes to mind. As long as the civilians can't mobilize, being armed is pretty useless. Being able to track terrorists means being able to track revolutionaries as well. And they if they can just make you disappear, great.
As for the people on the left, don't worry. When the government goes out of control, they'll be the ones on the front lines. They almost always are.
That's a great fantasy situation, but it would never be that cut and dried. You wouldn't have a president show up and say, "okay, we're going to do the totalitarian thing now." It would be slow, and the changes would be done in such a way that, at a minimum, a large minority always thinks the changes are justified.
The problem lies in the fact that everyone has a different threshold. The current government is crossing that line for more and more people, but you're still talking about a very small percentage. Add to that the fact that most of those gun-toting rednecks you have your hopes pinned on are the ones propping the current government up, and I think they'd be able to take away a lot more of your freedom before any guns were involved.
Personally, and maybe this is just me, I'd rather avoid the possible future conflict and stop the whole thing before it requires violence.
It's not a yardstick as much as context. The constitution has survived worse. It's getting quite ragged but as long as we have enough guns to throw the bastards out when it becomes necessary we'll be OK.
Do you have enough guns to throw them out now? War is much different than it was during the revolution. Between superior information gathering and superior fire power, I think the government has the upper hand at this point. The last time you revolted it was against a country quite a long way away. Your weapons were similar, soldiers were on foot, and the means of communication were limited on both sides. This time they would have centralized communication, very mobile and highly trained troops, superior firepower, air support, etc. In a straight fight, you'd be lucky to cause them any casualties. You could probably cause trouble and build up support as small "anti-government" cells, but I understand they have been putting a lot of money into the process of finding and destroying such cells...
I typically label gamer generations as such. Atari (70's), NES (80's), Playstation 1/2 (90's-00's). What about the commodore generation, or the Atari ST/Amiga kids? Robot Odyssey on the Apple II, Ultima or Civilization on the Amiga/ST/PC, etc. It may have been a different segment of the gaming back then, but I always considered myself a lot more "hard core" than people playing Mario or Megaman.
Personally, I find Facebook really handy for keeping up with the day to day comings and goings of friends, both past and present.
It would be kind of mundane to call up an old acquaintance half way across the country and discuss her new Kitchenaid and the batch of cookies she just made with it, but as a series of status updates over a couple days it led to a humorous exchange on our changing value systems.
It's also a good way to keep everyone up to date all at once. When my sister-in-law changed her status to "is getting excited" we all knew she must be starting into labour. For the next 24 hours, that status was what kept us up to date, and the pictures showed up right after that for those who couldn't get out of work to go visit immediately. I wish I'd had that option. I had to send out an email when my daughter was born, and I missed a few people I really shouldn't have (I was feeling a little rushed...) Yes, I also called the really important people like siblings and grandparents.
Sure, high school students use it to wrack up hundreds of friends. So what. I don't, and don't feel the need to.
I had a typing class after a smoking break in high school. I found I could type about 40 words a minute for the first 10 minutes of class, and then it would quickly drop to about 30, and by the end of the class often be at about 25. If I didn't make it out for a smoke before class, I generally hovered around the 30 mark for the whole class.
You know your education system is failing you when someone equates the number of chemicals in something with immediate toxicity. There are probably more chemicals in a Twinkie than there are in exhaust fumes (well, depends on the fuel additives I'd imagine), but carbon monoxide is not one of them.
Now, in his defence, there is carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke. Not even close to enough to kill you though.
As an aside, you know there's a problem in a society when someone would even think of suing an organization that is trying to save their life. It reminds me that every time I take a first aid course (lifeguard, ski patrol, etc.) that they caution you to never help anyone in the U.S. Better to watch someone die than try to help them and end up losing everything to a lawsuit because you didn't do everything exactly right. Very sad state of affairs there...
No, I make a lot less than a teacher, and I don't get their benefits. I'm a programmer working for an unfunded startup.
Teachers really don't make bad money. There are some that deserve more, and at least as many who deserve less. Both of my parents were teachers for a reasonable portion of their lives, and they were quite happy with the compensation.
My wife and I have always had a great credit rating. We were able to buy a house on 5% down when we both had low paying part time jobs and were going to university full time. That was based entirely on our credit rating and some insolvent stock I had from my current job. The house is worth about 30% more than it was when we bought it, and we couldn't afford to live where we do if we didn't buy it then (we make a lot less than "middle class", for various reasons).
I've had a credit card since I was 15 or 16, and I've payed it off at the end of each month since I've had it. Indeed, I've earned hundreds of dollars worth of dividends from using my cards, and they cost me nothing to have.
Good credit is easy. Make sure your living expenses are well under your income. Keep at least 3 months backup income in a bank account. Use credit cards to organize and track your spending habits, not to finance big purchases you can't afford. More or less, be responsible with your money and you'll be fine.
That said, I can see it being difficult for people making less than me to make ends meet. My income is a little better than half the nation average for a single earner family (and likely in the bottom 5% in my neighbourhood), but I know there are people who make less. There are still a lot of things I could cut out if I had to (car, internet, cable tv, nice house in good neighbourhood), but at some point it's nice to have a little bit left over to spend on those types of luxuries.
Because if everyone who did it got caught, then there wouldn't be a lot of point in doing it. If everyone who did it wasn't caught, then you stand to lose many multiples of what you hope to gain. It works better if you have to work the fine off in jail rather than just pay it out as well, which someone already pointed out. You can't really implement this for small sample sizes.
The basic point is that the system balances itself out based on how easy it is to get away with the crime. One of the problems with things like identity theft is that it's often really hard to catch the people who do it, and thus the risk:reward ratio is lower than it should be.
It also takes a long time for this to become effective, since you catch the least able crooks with a higher regularity, and thus they get fines higher than they possibly deserve. After a while, if the theory works, you end up with mostly pro's remaining in the space and the fines skyrocket up to the point that anyone caught is basically jailed for life. At that level you aren't really affecting the criminal's decision because they are pro's and that's what they do. You are probably also dealing with people who are less consequence driven. On the plus side, the barrier to entry for a semi-pro goes up, and you have fewer organizations your legal system has to deal with.
Technically, not voting for the winner is throwing your vote away. That's why I vote for who I'd actually like to see in office. I used to vote against the candidate I saw as most dangerous, but after 3 trips to the (Canadian) ballot box that saw king Jean voted in I decided I'd sleep better at night if I voted my conscience rather than artificially propping up a candidate I thought was only marginally less dangerous.
I throw up in my mouth, just a little, every time I remember that I once cast a ballot in favour of Stockwell Day running my country...
This sounds great on paper, but if I need the money, and for some reason think stealing your TV is a good way of getting it, you owning a gun isn't going to stop me. What it's going to do is make sure I bring a gun with me when I break into your house.
Living in Canada, I'm fairly confident that if I intercept an intruder in my house, he probably isn't armed. I'm not saying that's a guarantee, but for the most part there's no reason to bring a firearm to a home robbery in my neighbourhood. You aren't going to end up in a fire fight with the home owner, and it certainly gives you a much stiffer sentence if you get caught.
Besides, one of those laws you like so much is that you can't kill people over property. You shooting someone for stealing your TV is breaking a law, and thus threatens the rule of law as well. I'd suggest in the above case, you just chase the guy down and hold him till the police arrive. There's a good chance you can catch up to him if he is carrying your TV.
There's also a difference between getting sued for shooting someone when you shouldn't have and getting sued because they tripped and broke their back trying to get your TV out the door. The latter should not happen and represents a very serious flaw with your current legal system (outside of it involving way too much cash and too many lawyers...)
If you don't have the money, then you work it off in jail. Maybe you work it off in jail either way, or have a combination of cash up front plus some time behind bars.
The formula is missing some variables, and it doesn't map perfectly to reality, but the point is that it should be a zero sum game (or worse) from the prospective criminal's perspective. If you counterfeit money, and counterfeiting money costs victims/government $1000, there are 3 counterfeit operations, and only you get caught, then you owe $1,000. If two of you get caught (at the same time) then each would owe $500. (This obviously works better with a larger sample size...) The punishment for a crime scales directly proportional to the damage you do and the probability of you getting caught. This only applies to $ crimes in the first place, and is more appropriate for counterfeiting, scams, identity theft, or similar crimes because the people perpetrating those crimes are generally a little brighter and better off than the guy that breaks into your house and steals your stereo for drug money.
I remember a comedian talking about stopping the drug trade once. He said(something to the effect of), "These drug lords aren't scared of the death penalty. If you want to stop the drug trade: Televise, once a week, public crucifixion of the bankers who launder the drug lords money." That's probably true, but it simply points out that people with more to lose are more likely to be deterred by stiff fines.
Violent criminals generally have a different motivation, and it's much harder to deter them with fines or jail time. A lot of the time, the only use jail serves is to keep them off the street for a while. A fine in this case would be almost pointless, or quite probably do more harm than good.
I think the formula for punishment in this case (or indeed most $ related cases) should be: (cost_to_victim_and_state/cost_of_all_similar_crim es_to_victim_and_state) X (number_of_similar_crimes_reported/number_of_charg es_laid_in_similar_crimes)
Paid back to the state (which then could help the victim). This could be cash plus some jail time, or just make them do hard labour at minimum wage until they've worked it off (i.e. you can't just buy your way out)
That's a good point. My (very young) daughter generally won't fall asleep without nursing. During the playoffs, my wife would keep her up during the games rather than miss part of a period. If still played a MMORPG and had an event when I was supposed to be taking care of her, I would have gotten a "you have a problem" speech.
In another vein, nobody seemed worried when I worked 16 hours a day, 6-7 days a week as a teenager. I guess nobody's worried about you getting addicted to your job because sooner or later you'll grow to dislike it?
I've been addicted to games before, so there's no question in my mind whether the state exists. Star Wars Galaxy ran my life for a while, and was such a draw that I had to sell my account (rather than just cut back). The same thing has happened to some extent with Pox Nora (similar to Magic, but online with virtual cards), which is significantly less involved, but still managed to chew up more time than I had. I'm in the process of dumping that account right now.
That said, there a couple issues here...
First, describing addiction as time in front of the screen is stupid. When I was in university full time (and not working), I played probably 5 hours a day average. I got my work done, spent time with my girlfriend, had a social life, and still had time for games. No problem, not an addiction. After I had a wife, job, and mortgage, 5 hours a day was a problem. Now that I have a 1 year old, 2-3 hours a day is a problem (which is why the Pox Nora account is going).
The real measure, which has been pointed out before, is how much it's affecting your life. The real issue is people being unable to recognize when they have a problem. That isn't a medical condition, it's just bad judgement. It's partially a parenting issue. If you've come to understand the logic behind "it's going to hurt now, but it's for the best" then you have a much better chance of making good decisions. If you are able to separate fantasy from reality that's also a bit of a bonus (+2 save vs. fantasy).
Second, there are a lot of variables, and I think distilling it down to "gaming addiction" will probably make it that much harder to deal with it. Not that I expect anyone's going to go to that effort. They'll probably just come up with a pill to give your 14 year old "addict" and everyone will get on with their lives. Considering diet alone has been proven to curb ADD and they still prescribe the pills (not sure if they even mention alternative treatments, it didn't have a TLA when I was in school. If it did, I probably would have caught it.), I'd say there's a certain amount of precedent supporting this prediction...
Is "regressive tax" some sort of slang for "doesn't tax the rich enough?". I don't think I've ever heard it used that way before, and I've seen it about 5 times on this page.
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Despite the what you may believe, most of us started "at the table". They stepped away when a fringe group of people were making a pretty small dent in their sales. They not only made sure everyone knew about it as an option, but they also made sure the honest people paid for it. Then they crossed the line with the lawsuits, which is when I stopped buying work supporting the RIAA (I try to avoid the MPAA(?), but sometimes I'm weak). I can live the rest of my life with my current CD collection, stored on my hard drive and easily transfered to any device in my home or office.
Not only can you not give it away to your friend, but you can't use it on the fancy new non-iPod media player you just picked up, your phone, your work computer, your media extender/XBox/PS3, ...
To get DRM-less content they simply have to steal it in the first place. It's actually less hassle to steal a piece of music than it is to buy it. In fact, the only way to get DRM'd content is by buying legally (I assume people don't trade it as is...)
Buy music:
Pay for it (requires a credit card)
Get DRM
Either go to a store or download it.
Steal music:
Free (requires an acquaintance who knows where to get it, which most everyone has)
No DRM
Search the internet and download it.
This is assuming you don't care about stealing it, but that's the user segment the DRM is meant to address anyway.
Personally, I very rarely download music, but if I do pick something up it's either not associated with the RIAA or it's stolen. When they have made reparations for all the idiocy they've participated in I'll start buying music again. Frankly, I think that boat has sailed, but I like to keep an open mind and a little ray of hope alive. Until then, I've pushed more money into the RIAA's coffers than I'm really comfortable with, and it's simply not an option for me anymore.
As an aside, I did download the entire Metallica collection. I don't actually listen to it, but it made me feel good when I did it...
The reds threw out the Czar. My understanding was that the whites were pro-monarchy, but looking it up it appears that was only some of them. From what I can tell from searches, everyone basically agrees they were anti-red.
Again from Wikipedia:
"Nicholas II was a deeply conservative ruler. His criteria of virtue--orderliness, family, and duty--were viewed as both personal ideals for a moral individual and rules for society and politics. Individuals and society alike were expected to show self-restraint, devotion to community and hierarchy, and a spirit of duty to country and tradition. Religious faith helped bind all this together:"
Facism only controlled some industries. They were anti-communist, i.e. not left. In reality, they sit on an entirely different part of the spectrum from either capitalism or communism, but that's probably not black and white enough for you. In any regard, you want to define "left" as any country that has a socialist system and has been run by a dictator, and right as a pro-democracy such as the U.S. Being "left" has nothing to do with being authoritarian, just as being "right" has nothing to do with it.
What has come into common use, even though it isn't really correct, is the correlation between religious control of the government and the "right" in the U.S. and Canada. I'm not saying total control, but a push toward enforcement of morality by the government. That's why I labelled the Czar conservative. That's the only reason I'd lump the Nazi's in with the current right, and that certainly isn't what made the Nazi's evil (their method of enforcement was much different...)
Anyway, it's clear you don't really understand the debate, and you have your mind made up, so I'm going to go get some work done and let you reply as you see fit. Neither of us are going to change the other's mind, and this is rapidly becoming a pointless semantic debate.
But I thought it should be on a mouse. If you had two 5 button mice you would be able to use two pointing devices (which could be useful in 3D modelling for instance) and have access to all the required keys. I never considered click order, and I'm not sure if that's a good idea or not.
Learning to use a system like that would be more difficult, but given how much time I spend in front of a computer it would probably be worth the efficiency boost.
I don't know enough about China or Cambodia to comment, but for the other two:
Nicholas II was extremely conservative. He was overthrown by "the left" because they wanted democracy and equality (rights of the individual...). That was effort was diverted, as it often is in a time of civil war, to produce a dictatorship.
The Third Reich had socialist in it's name, but really stood against everything we'd consider "left". Not the best source, but from Wikipedia:
"...ideologies involved the political use of militarism, nationalism, anti-communism, holism, paramilitaries, and intended to create a totalitarian state."
Also from Wikipedia, a short excerpt on gun control in Canada:
"The Criminal Code of Canada enacted in 1892, required individuals to have a permit to carry a pistol unless the owner had cause to fear assault or injury. It was an offence to sell a pistol to anyone under 16. Vendors who sold handguns had to keep records, including purchaser's name, the date of sale and a description of the gun."
Afghanistan's problems stem from the level of control religious leaders had over the populace. For a modern democracy, the U.S. is very right wing, but compared to places like Afghanistan or Saudi Arabia, you guys are still a bunch of hippies.
Remaining armed is not what has stopped the government from getting out of control. I live in Ottawa. There is gun control here. There has never been a problem with the government getting out of control. It's pretty useless most of the time, but in a non-threatening sort of way.
There may be a couple other example countries I could draw on...
On the other hand, there are lots of countries with heavily armed civilians with pretty crappy governments. Afghanistan comes to mind. As long as the civilians can't mobilize, being armed is pretty useless. Being able to track terrorists means being able to track revolutionaries as well. And they if they can just make you disappear, great.
As for the people on the left, don't worry. When the government goes out of control, they'll be the ones on the front lines. They almost always are.
That's a great fantasy situation, but it would never be that cut and dried. You wouldn't have a president show up and say, "okay, we're going to do the totalitarian thing now." It would be slow, and the changes would be done in such a way that, at a minimum, a large minority always thinks the changes are justified.
The problem lies in the fact that everyone has a different threshold. The current government is crossing that line for more and more people, but you're still talking about a very small percentage. Add to that the fact that most of those gun-toting rednecks you have your hopes pinned on are the ones propping the current government up, and I think they'd be able to take away a lot more of your freedom before any guns were involved.
Personally, and maybe this is just me, I'd rather avoid the possible future conflict and stop the whole thing before it requires violence.
It's not a yardstick as much as context. The constitution has survived worse. It's getting quite ragged but as long as we have enough guns to throw the bastards out when it becomes necessary we'll be OK.
Do you have enough guns to throw them out now? War is much different than it was during the revolution. Between superior information gathering and superior fire power, I think the government has the upper hand at this point. The last time you revolted it was against a country quite a long way away. Your weapons were similar, soldiers were on foot, and the means of communication were limited on both sides. This time they would have centralized communication, very mobile and highly trained troops, superior firepower, air support, etc. In a straight fight, you'd be lucky to cause them any casualties. You could probably cause trouble and build up support as small "anti-government" cells, but I understand they have been putting a lot of money into the process of finding and destroying such cells...
Personally, I find Facebook really handy for keeping up with the day to day comings and goings of friends, both past and present.
It would be kind of mundane to call up an old acquaintance half way across the country and discuss her new Kitchenaid and the batch of cookies she just made with it, but as a series of status updates over a couple days it led to a humorous exchange on our changing value systems.
It's also a good way to keep everyone up to date all at once. When my sister-in-law changed her status to "is getting excited" we all knew she must be starting into labour. For the next 24 hours, that status was what kept us up to date, and the pictures showed up right after that for those who couldn't get out of work to go visit immediately. I wish I'd had that option. I had to send out an email when my daughter was born, and I missed a few people I really shouldn't have (I was feeling a little rushed...) Yes, I also called the really important people like siblings and grandparents.
Sure, high school students use it to wrack up hundreds of friends. So what. I don't, and don't feel the need to.
I had a typing class after a smoking break in high school. I found I could type about 40 words a minute for the first 10 minutes of class, and then it would quickly drop to about 30, and by the end of the class often be at about 25. If I didn't make it out for a smoke before class, I generally hovered around the 30 mark for the whole class.
You know your education system is failing you when someone equates the number of chemicals in something with immediate toxicity. There are probably more chemicals in a Twinkie than there are in exhaust fumes (well, depends on the fuel additives I'd imagine), but carbon monoxide is not one of them.
Now, in his defence, there is carbon monoxide in cigarette smoke. Not even close to enough to kill you though.
As an aside, you know there's a problem in a society when someone would even think of suing an organization that is trying to save their life. It reminds me that every time I take a first aid course (lifeguard, ski patrol, etc.) that they caution you to never help anyone in the U.S. Better to watch someone die than try to help them and end up losing everything to a lawsuit because you didn't do everything exactly right. Very sad state of affairs there...
Call for your free pamphlet on debt reduction...
No, I make a lot less than a teacher, and I don't get their benefits. I'm a programmer working for an unfunded startup.
Teachers really don't make bad money. There are some that deserve more, and at least as many who deserve less. Both of my parents were teachers for a reasonable portion of their lives, and they were quite happy with the compensation.
My wife and I have always had a great credit rating. We were able to buy a house on 5% down when we both had low paying part time jobs and were going to university full time. That was based entirely on our credit rating and some insolvent stock I had from my current job. The house is worth about 30% more than it was when we bought it, and we couldn't afford to live where we do if we didn't buy it then (we make a lot less than "middle class", for various reasons).
I've had a credit card since I was 15 or 16, and I've payed it off at the end of each month since I've had it. Indeed, I've earned hundreds of dollars worth of dividends from using my cards, and they cost me nothing to have.
Good credit is easy. Make sure your living expenses are well under your income. Keep at least 3 months backup income in a bank account. Use credit cards to organize and track your spending habits, not to finance big purchases you can't afford. More or less, be responsible with your money and you'll be fine.
That said, I can see it being difficult for people making less than me to make ends meet. My income is a little better than half the nation average for a single earner family (and likely in the bottom 5% in my neighbourhood), but I know there are people who make less. There are still a lot of things I could cut out if I had to (car, internet, cable tv, nice house in good neighbourhood), but at some point it's nice to have a little bit left over to spend on those types of luxuries.
Because if everyone who did it got caught, then there wouldn't be a lot of point in doing it. If everyone who did it wasn't caught, then you stand to lose many multiples of what you hope to gain. It works better if you have to work the fine off in jail rather than just pay it out as well, which someone already pointed out. You can't really implement this for small sample sizes.
The basic point is that the system balances itself out based on how easy it is to get away with the crime. One of the problems with things like identity theft is that it's often really hard to catch the people who do it, and thus the risk:reward ratio is lower than it should be.
It also takes a long time for this to become effective, since you catch the least able crooks with a higher regularity, and thus they get fines higher than they possibly deserve. After a while, if the theory works, you end up with mostly pro's remaining in the space and the fines skyrocket up to the point that anyone caught is basically jailed for life. At that level you aren't really affecting the criminal's decision because they are pro's and that's what they do. You are probably also dealing with people who are less consequence driven. On the plus side, the barrier to entry for a semi-pro goes up, and you have fewer organizations your legal system has to deal with.
Technically, not voting for the winner is throwing your vote away. That's why I vote for who I'd actually like to see in office. I used to vote against the candidate I saw as most dangerous, but after 3 trips to the (Canadian) ballot box that saw king Jean voted in I decided I'd sleep better at night if I voted my conscience rather than artificially propping up a candidate I thought was only marginally less dangerous.
I throw up in my mouth, just a little, every time I remember that I once cast a ballot in favour of Stockwell Day running my country...
And now "Plain Old Text" is my default choice...
This sounds great on paper, but if I need the money, and for some reason think stealing your TV is a good way of getting it, you owning a gun isn't going to stop me. What it's going to do is make sure I bring a gun with me when I break into your house. Living in Canada, I'm fairly confident that if I intercept an intruder in my house, he probably isn't armed. I'm not saying that's a guarantee, but for the most part there's no reason to bring a firearm to a home robbery in my neighbourhood. You aren't going to end up in a fire fight with the home owner, and it certainly gives you a much stiffer sentence if you get caught. Besides, one of those laws you like so much is that you can't kill people over property. You shooting someone for stealing your TV is breaking a law, and thus threatens the rule of law as well. I'd suggest in the above case, you just chase the guy down and hold him till the police arrive. There's a good chance you can catch up to him if he is carrying your TV. There's also a difference between getting sued for shooting someone when you shouldn't have and getting sued because they tripped and broke their back trying to get your TV out the door. The latter should not happen and represents a very serious flaw with your current legal system (outside of it involving way too much cash and too many lawyers...)
If you don't have the money, then you work it off in jail. Maybe you work it off in jail either way, or have a combination of cash up front plus some time behind bars.
The formula is missing some variables, and it doesn't map perfectly to reality, but the point is that it should be a zero sum game (or worse) from the prospective criminal's perspective. If you counterfeit money, and counterfeiting money costs victims/government $1000, there are 3 counterfeit operations, and only you get caught, then you owe $1,000. If two of you get caught (at the same time) then each would owe $500. (This obviously works better with a larger sample size...) The punishment for a crime scales directly proportional to the damage you do and the probability of you getting caught. This only applies to $ crimes in the first place, and is more appropriate for counterfeiting, scams, identity theft, or similar crimes because the people perpetrating those crimes are generally a little brighter and better off than the guy that breaks into your house and steals your stereo for drug money.
I remember a comedian talking about stopping the drug trade once. He said(something to the effect of), "These drug lords aren't scared of the death penalty. If you want to stop the drug trade: Televise, once a week, public crucifixion of the bankers who launder the drug lords money." That's probably true, but it simply points out that
people with more to lose are more likely to be deterred by stiff fines.
Violent criminals generally have a different motivation, and it's much harder to deter them with fines or jail time. A lot of the time, the only use jail serves is to keep them off the street for a while. A fine in this case would be almost pointless, or quite probably do more harm than good.
I think the formula for punishment in this case (or indeed most $ related cases) should be:m es_to_victim_and_state) X (number_of_similar_crimes_reported/number_of_charg es_laid_in_similar_crimes)
(cost_to_victim_and_state/cost_of_all_similar_cri
Paid back to the state (which then could help the victim). This could be cash plus some jail time, or just make them do hard labour at minimum wage until they've worked it off (i.e. you can't just buy your way out)
That's a good point. My (very young) daughter generally won't fall asleep without nursing. During the playoffs, my wife would keep her up during the games rather than miss part of a period. If still played a MMORPG and had an event when I was supposed to be taking care of her, I would have gotten a "you have a problem" speech.
In another vein, nobody seemed worried when I worked 16 hours a day, 6-7 days a week as a teenager. I guess nobody's worried about you getting addicted to your job because sooner or later you'll grow to dislike it?
I've been addicted to games before, so there's no question in my mind whether the state exists. Star Wars Galaxy ran my life for a while, and was such a draw that I had to sell my account (rather than just cut back). The same thing has happened to some extent with Pox Nora (similar to Magic, but online with virtual cards), which is significantly less involved, but still managed to chew up more time than I had. I'm in the process of dumping that account right now.
That said, there a couple issues here...
First, describing addiction as time in front of the screen is stupid. When I was in university full time (and not working), I played probably 5 hours a day average. I got my work done, spent time with my girlfriend, had a social life, and still had time for games. No problem, not an addiction. After I had a wife, job, and mortgage, 5 hours a day was a problem. Now that I have a 1 year old, 2-3 hours a day is a problem (which is why the Pox Nora account is going).
The real measure, which has been pointed out before, is how much it's affecting your life. The real issue is people being unable to recognize when they have a problem. That isn't a medical condition, it's just bad judgement. It's partially a parenting issue. If you've come to understand the logic behind "it's going to hurt now, but it's for the best" then you have a much better chance of making good decisions. If you are able to separate fantasy from reality that's also a bit of a bonus (+2 save vs. fantasy).
Second, there are a lot of variables, and I think distilling it down to "gaming addiction" will probably make it that much harder to deal with it. Not that I expect anyone's going to go to that effort. They'll probably just come up with a pill to give your 14 year old "addict" and everyone will get on with their lives. Considering diet alone has been proven to curb ADD and they still prescribe the pills (not sure if they even mention alternative treatments, it didn't have a TLA when I was in school. If it did, I probably would have caught it.), I'd say there's a certain amount of precedent supporting this prediction...
Is "regressive tax" some sort of slang for "doesn't tax the rich enough?". I don't think I've ever heard it used that way before, and I've seen it about 5 times on this page.