When the right to bear arms was placed into the constitution, the bayonet was still the most important, deadly, and most used weapon on the battlefield. There's a reason you don't read about mass shootings from a lone gunman back in the early 1800's, given the time it took to reload a musket. Native Americans had more rapid firepower in their bows and arrows.
But I have mixed feelings about gun control, because I do think that a population armed with pistols, shotguns, deer rifles and such could provide at least some deterrence against the abrupt rise of a despotic regime or the swift passage of tyrannical laws. Of course a handgun isn't going to stop a tank, but the revolt in Libya showed that a nation that rises up with handguns can raid military outposts to quickly arm themselves with weapons more suitable for modern combat.
That said, restricting gun ownership from people with a violent history or mental deficiencies could help to reduce the frequency of these types of events. And by violent history I'm not saying convictions only, but even a record of gang involvement, threats against others, bullying behavior, and even posts on Facebook or Slashdot should be considered. And gun owners should be required to secure their guns from unqualified persons - no more lending your gun to others without verifying through a web portal that their gun license is valid on the day they lend the weapon.
There have been plenty of deranged arsonists who have tried to kill more people by fire than with guns. But I think the mentality is what lies behind the motivation. Movies and games do tend to glorify the man with a gun. The psychological experience of the gunman is very different from that of the arsonist. The gunman kills his victims almost effortlessly, in an instant, seeing the terror in their victim's eyes fade to death's blank stare. And the gunman can repeat this experience over and over until his victims are either dead or fled or he has run out of bullets or is tackled or killed. Setting off a bomb from a distance or setting a fire does not compare to the adrenaline rush of the mass-murderer with a gun. Of course, if you take away guns some deranged schizo or fanatic is going to find a creative alternative, but the fantasy of wielding a modern firearm to terrorize an entire crowd of people might indefinitely delay the plans of many would-be terrorist gunmen if procuring a gun was more difficult for them. Perhaps, in addition to the standard background check, if potential gun owners needed to provide a certificate from a qualified psychologist that the individual had no identified propensity for violence, emotional disturbance, or any other mental deficiencies that should disqualify them from gun ownership. In most of the worst gun-related mass murders in recent history there were clear signs of serious problems with the mental health of the assailants. There also needs to be more restrictions for gun owners to allow others access to their firearms. In Texas private citizens can still sell handguns and assault rifles at a garage sale without checking the ID or background of the buyer or reporting the transfer.
I'll presume that your response is not the actual troll, A.C., and give you the unearned dignity of a response. A man in a tin can is just another trip into orbit, fine, I can accept that, despite the dozens of scientific experiments that have piggybacked on just about every manned mission beyond the stratosphere. But the effort required to put a man or a group of people permanently on the Moon or Mars would require technology and research that does not yet exist, and there are potential alternative uses for that research that might not have ever been funded otherwise. Suppose there never was a space program; here are some of the things that may not have ever been seen in our lifetime:
remote sensing GPS systems satellite television freeze-dried foods The cordless drill WD-40(water disbursement fromula 40) KEVLAR LEXAN (high impact plastic) HEPA filtering MEMORY FOAM that is used in making bed mattresses, etc. SMOKE DETECTOR
And the list goes on. Not to mention incredible improvements in weather forecasting, long distance communications, astronomy, earth sciences, and computing that were accelerated by financing the space program. For what it's worth I'd have to agree with some space program detractors that the program was NOT a complete success because we picked up some moon rocks and never went back. The ability to successfully and permanently settle regions beyond our planet would open many doors for human society. In the process of forcing ourselves to learn how to live sustainably with very limited resources we would also learn ways to improve how we can live sustainably on earth. There is potential to harvest rare minerals and potentially sources of energy from asteroids and other bodies. And while it may be fascinating to see what the Mars rovers can do, there is so much more that just one human can do on his own in the flesh.
Steroids have been around for a long time and comparatively speaking there is just less of a chance that research into ways to help one athlete recover from the damage caused by his performance enhancing drugs is going to spill over into other fields of medicine. Not to say that some research could be beneficial, but we're talking about a "broken-window" effect. If you don't understand, just look up the broken window theory of economics in Wikipedia for an explanation.
I enjoy driving and I like to play sports too, but nobody is going to pay money to see me play. I'm sure that Mario Andretti would love to race cars even if all he could do was drag race against his buddies down some deserted road. The fact that there is a lot of money and fame to go along with it probably suits Andretti just fine. If you love what you do for a living you'll never work a day in your life. But imagine the Mario Andretti hugging the turns on his way down a tight-curved mountain road. Now imagine, would Andretti ever take any performance enhancing drugs to increase his alertness and reaction time as he traveled alone down that road without any observers. In fact, take the money, fame, and observers out of the picture and you've got a lot of people who love to play and compete, but the motivation to take potentially destructive drugs would be all but absent. The drugs are just a form of cheating and there is never any fun in cheating when you're testing your own potential at the sport - it's like cheating in solitaire - totally unsatisfying. Maybe it's something I'll just never understand as I usually don't watch sports; I only play them.
I know this is way off-topic, but the fact that Microsoft is developing products with Linux - shouldn't that in some way invalidate the claims that they have against Linux, making accusations that Linux is infringing on Microsoft patents? If I order food at a restaurant and the food is sub-par to my standards, and if I object and say that I am not paying for this sub-par food - if I go on to sit for another 15 minutes completely devouring the so-called "sub par" food and licking the plate, I could be expected to pay the full bill. If I refused to pay and the restaurant sued me, the fact that I ate the food anyway after I complained would be justification that my claims were invalid and the judge would order me to pay the meal ticket, plus the cost of court fees and plaintiff's legal expenses. Maybe even punitive damages to boot.
Obviously even the best and most advanced yet affordable 3D printers won't mean that people could just print out every product they ever needed. But even in our mass-produced world, final production of many products is just a process of assembling - by hand - several stamped, machined, forged, or molded components. The possibility that I could mold many of my own components, and the possibility that I could download and upload drawings, designs, instructions, and codes to print such components could help keep manufacturer's prices in check.
As some other post have already pointed out, this type of technology could help DIY-minded people fix their own products rather than replace them or spend exorbitant amounts of money of spare parts. One of the best uses for 3D printers is for aspiring inventors to build prototypes and cheaply test their designs. The machines could definitely be handy for those living in remote parts of the world where having just the right type of plastic part produced on-site very quickly can fix a problem that otherwise would be a really hassle to deal with. A cheap 3D printer, a $100 laptop, wireless internet access, and on-site renewable power generation - can you see what these types of technologies could possibly offer for people living in developing countries? Factor in the latest advancements in sustainable agricultural and architectural practices and the 3rd world may end up being the envy of the developed world after we reach peak oil.
I think there could be a "threat" to commercial producers in the future if these trends continue. More "Open" sharing of information, technology, media, and code. Online collaboration of like-minded consumer-producers, the advantage of extreme customization possible with printing your own products, the proliferation of hackerspaces, and the possibility that intelligent robotics could be developed to make more desktop fabrication possible. Imagine a pair of robotic arms with articulated hands that could assemble more complex products. There are a lot of hobbyists experimenting with all sorts of manufacturing technologies, from traditional blacksmithing all the way to growing crystals in precision controlled pressure furnaces.
Mass production means that the cost of production decreases per unit, but that doesn't stop companies from charging 10 or 20 times that amount when competition is light and their customers aren't used to making a similar product of their own. And how often is it that the mass-produced item just isn't designed the way you would have preferred or the quality is substandard - below what you could have done on your own? More 3D printers and similar rapid prototyping technologies in homes, offices, and small businesses would force the mass producers to increase their quality, lower their price, offer better designs, and ways to customize their products to the specific needs of their customers. Everybody wins (except Wall Street).
P. S. Ultimately, if humans are going to live sustainably and independently in environments like the Moon, and especially Mars, such small-scale highly flexible and customizable fabrication technology will be required.
Ok, so we still haven't decriminalized mere possession of marijuana for personal consumption, but since there's money to be made by big corporations we want to not only allow but encourage the use of performance enhancing drugs in sports? How long before steroids becomes mandatory for junior high football? Those games bring a lot of money in to those schools. Think of the tax burden on the top 10 percent of earners pay 70.42 percent of the taxes. They're taxed enough already! Steroids for kids could boost attendance at these events, drive up ticket prices, fund the schools and reduce the tax burden.
no there is only a universal morality....homosexuality is universally ok. societies that consider it wrong are engaging in violating the human rights of the individual
You're presuming that all cultures do or should uphold the rights of the individual over the welfare of the collective. While I learn toward individual rights over the collective, it is easy to see why some seemingly trivial matters such as sexual relations can be a life or death situation for a group of people struggling to survive. For instance, lets consider a small tribal community with primitive agriculture. As is the case in many 3rd world countries today, imagine that each person needed to have as many kids as possible, since many kids would die young from illness or other reasons, more labor is needed to tend to the farm, and without enough kids there won't be enough resources to care for you in your elder years. Imagine you, your spouse, your kids, your extended family, and five other families make up a small isolated village and you have to work together diligently to survive. Disputes and arguments that make it harder to work together have to be reduced or eliminated. In such a society one act of adultery could divide the group and jeopardize the whole groups ability to survive since individual humans really don't fare so we'll entirely on their in the wilderness. So the society implements some rules, maybe even a death penalty for adulterers. Homosexuals that won't be having 20 kids might be outcast as contributing little to the community (apparently by choice since the village wouldn't have access to the science and research we have today).
Now living in the convenience of our modern era where a person can prosper as an individual it might be easy to condemn the primitive society. Yet the members of this society may condemn you for allowing your neighbor to live homeless and hungry while you have more resources than you need to survive and potentially the capacity to meet the basic living requirements of many people.
But don't Nike and Adidas already do this in the pro-sports world? How often is an athlete paid to imply on a TV commercial that x-brand shoes give him an edge in his sport?
An adventurer taking a one-way trip to Mars could be making a contribution to advance society. When an athlete pushes his body to the breaking point and takes possibly dangerous performance enhancing drugs, just to attempt to break a record for a rule-based sport by a fraction of a percent, how does that advance our society?
So the sport is appealing for the same reasons that gladiators were appealing to citizens of Rome. I wonder if a famous driver didn't occasionally die in a fiery crash would the sport be as popular as it is today.
True to the letter. Maybe part of the reason I'm not much of a pro-sports fan. That and I have a natural aversion to glitter and hype. Seriously, when a person spends 100% of their life's energy on the possibility of winning a prize and maybe some short term financial rewards, I don't see how I should be impressed that they can play their sport better than me. I don't teach my kids to look at these athletes as role models. Beyond entertainment and the redistribution of wealth from the masses to a select few, what value do pro-sports bring to society?
One work-around that already exists is to hire an American or other foreign "personal shopper". You can also access sites directly through a US based proxy server. But even if you get access to the blocked site that doesn't mean the retailer will ship to your Australian address or accept your Australian currency, credit card, etc.. Again, the personal shopper becomes the solution. They can even package and consolidate multiple orders from multiple businesses as one single shipment to save on transportation costs.
The problem with your AusFlix argument is that in international business the governments of nations don't just care about the legal entity operating within their borders, but also the relationship the legal entity has to other companies and individuals outside the country For instance, the UBS branches operating within the US are completely separate legal entities set up to serve the American market, but the US government was able to put pressure on UBS in Switzerland to reveal the names, addresses, and account details of American citizens holding accounts at the Switzerland based locations. The Australian government could put the same kind of pressure on "AusFlix" to force NetFlix to comply. Now, of course, NetFlix could found and then completely sell off "AusFlix" before trouble starts, but then they would miss out on all future profit from the spinoff. Considering the costs to spinoff such a company it might not even be worth it for NetFlix.
Your piracy argument is a good example for how governments could bring pressure on foreign firms to bring equality to the market. But would it be worth the damage to international relations to break so many anti-piracy treaties they have already signed?
Either way, it's a decision for the Australian government, and they have the power to make it work with most major multinational companies, just the same way the US government looks out of US business interests in other countries. The US was even able to get Swiss banks to hand over the names and address of American tax dodgers, something that they couldn't do for decades. The reason is the ability to put pressure on multinational firms who want to do business in your country. Naturally, if an American website owner has a prejudice against Australians and want to block them, there's not much that Australia can do about it. But it can apply pressure to the major multinationals and that is the intent with this campaign. Naturally, the Aussies may make special exceptions when they want to keep their citizens from accessing specific US sites.
1. Access the sites through a proxy server based in the target country. Then you won't be blocked. 2. See if you can hire a local travel agent. They can probably get even bigger discounts and sometimes can find other carriers with even better prices. 3. Use the services of a host-country based "personal shopper" to conduct the transaction on your behalf if the foreign company has a problem with your IP address, mailing address, shipping address, your bank or your currency.
Naturally these services aren't free, but if you conduct enough business with companies in the other country then these services could save you a lot of money.
So the real problem is stupid laws. I would like to point fingers at some other country, but the US and US states are probably the world's worst offenders. Right now there's some guy serving a four year prison term in Florida for violating Florida's "obscenity" laws, but he never set food in Florida until an extradition order had him arrested in his home state of California and transported to Florida in a prison van to be tried by a jury of his non-peers. Why was this allowed? Because he had a p0rn site, his web hosting company used servers in Florida, and he mailed DVD's all across the country - including Florida. Now the material this guy produced WAS obscene, but if California did not see a reason to prosecute him then that should have been the end of the case unless he relocated to Florida to run his business.
"States Rights" sounds like some sort of great idea until you consider that the focus is on the right of the state over the rights of individuals. For instance, there is a myth that the Civil War was fought over slavery, but this is not true - it was fought over States Rights, such as the right to enslave their own people. Given that we live in an age of light-speed telecommunications, overnight shipping, a national highway system, and frequent flyer miles, the notion that every American needs to be intimately familiar with all of the laws, legal precedent, and nuance for how these laws are enforced in all 50 states while they go about their daily affairs is just no longer practical.
Maybe the US needs to overhaul the Constitution and reorganize. Somewhere between six and ten administrative regions might be more appropriate. After fixing our internal problems then we should tackle some of the nonsense with our international relations.
You've made a lot of statements that need a little clarification, and I think it would help if I added some comments from my American perspective:
what a twisted world you must imagine to live in for you to consider G4S debacle "fortunate" in any way.
In the US, when an incumbent or majority in a legislature is the opposition party, doing everything possible to make sure that government policies and programs fail miserably is standard operating procedure, regardless of how devastating to the average citizen. For example, voting out Obama in 2012 is the Republican Party's unifying objective. Republicans would not agree to any health care reform bill without the individual mandate to buy insurance, as the alternatives such as universal coverage or a public option as they would be too "socialist". But now they are targeting the individual mandate specifically in their campaigns. To be fair, the Dems did this to George Bush senior - they wanted to increase taxes after Bush made his famous "read my lips..." quote. After Bush compromised with the Dems to sign their tax increase into law the Dems hammered Bush for turning back on his word (and it worked). Given that there haven't been any major incidents like a terrorist attack in light of the G4S follies, their failure could actually be a good thing, not just for UK, but as a lesson to all countries that privatization of essential government service is dangerous.
"...shouldn't be provided by anybody whose managers I cannot vote out of office" - and you can't as those managers would be civil servants, not politicians
In a political office the "manager" is the politician. He then appoints civil servants. Some posts, such as judges, are insulated from politically motivated removal, and for good reason. In the US it used to be commonplace to sack all officials in bureaucratic posts and replace with cronies who contributed to the presidential campaign. This still happens somewhat, like when Bush put his cronies in charge of FEMA, despite being totally unqualified for the job. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/08/AR2005090802165.html. But for the most part a top performing official will keep his post if he is doing his job well and doesn't have a rabid hatred for the new administration. This system works. Privatization doesn't have anything to offer to make this any better.
private companies have to compete for contracts
You mean like when Halliburton was handed the primary contract to support US operations in Iraq - by their ex-CEO Dick Cheney- without even an opportunity for other companies to bid?
their managers can be sacked by shareholders
Most of the world's publicly listed companies are owned primarily by institutional investors, such as banks and mutual funds. Most Americans invest in these companies through their 401k plans yet they usually don't have any voting rights over the management of the companies the funds, trusts, and plans invest in. Also, shareholders don't have "equal" votes. Shareholders get one vote for each share they own. In a world where a disproportionate few wealthy people own or control most of of the world's wealth, even if citizens held individual stocks and cared enough to understand the implications of their votes, and even if these citizens organized to vote for changes in corporate governance (regarding issues such as pollution, corporate lobbying of government, treatment of workers, unfair business practices, etc.) they could very well not have enough voting power to implement change. Keep in mind that the poor and the struggling working class are not likely to have many shares, if any, of any company.
Futhermore, shareholders are generally motivated by the potential return on investment (which is how it is supposed to work). Some w
Slashdot Mirror
When the right to bear arms was placed into the constitution, the bayonet was still the most important, deadly, and most used weapon on the battlefield. There's a reason you don't read about mass shootings from a lone gunman back in the early 1800's, given the time it took to reload a musket. Native Americans had more rapid firepower in their bows and arrows.
But I have mixed feelings about gun control, because I do think that a population armed with pistols, shotguns, deer rifles and such could provide at least some deterrence against the abrupt rise of a despotic regime or the swift passage of tyrannical laws. Of course a handgun isn't going to stop a tank, but the revolt in Libya showed that a nation that rises up with handguns can raid military outposts to quickly arm themselves with weapons more suitable for modern combat.
That said, restricting gun ownership from people with a violent history or mental deficiencies could help to reduce the frequency of these types of events. And by violent history I'm not saying convictions only, but even a record of gang involvement, threats against others, bullying behavior, and even posts on Facebook or Slashdot should be considered. And gun owners should be required to secure their guns from unqualified persons - no more lending your gun to others without verifying through a web portal that their gun license is valid on the day they lend the weapon.
There have been plenty of deranged arsonists who have tried to kill more people by fire than with guns. But I think the mentality is what lies behind the motivation. Movies and games do tend to glorify the man with a gun. The psychological experience of the gunman is very different from that of the arsonist. The gunman kills his victims almost effortlessly, in an instant, seeing the terror in their victim's eyes fade to death's blank stare. And the gunman can repeat this experience over and over until his victims are either dead or fled or he has run out of bullets or is tackled or killed. Setting off a bomb from a distance or setting a fire does not compare to the adrenaline rush of the mass-murderer with a gun. Of course, if you take away guns some deranged schizo or fanatic is going to find a creative alternative, but the fantasy of wielding a modern firearm to terrorize an entire crowd of people might indefinitely delay the plans of many would-be terrorist gunmen if procuring a gun was more difficult for them. Perhaps, in addition to the standard background check, if potential gun owners needed to provide a certificate from a qualified psychologist that the individual had no identified propensity for violence, emotional disturbance, or any other mental deficiencies that should disqualify them from gun ownership. In most of the worst gun-related mass murders in recent history there were clear signs of serious problems with the mental health of the assailants. There also needs to be more restrictions for gun owners to allow others access to their firearms. In Texas private citizens can still sell handguns and assault rifles at a garage sale without checking the ID or background of the buyer or reporting the transfer.
I'll presume that your response is not the actual troll, A.C., and give you the unearned dignity of a response. A man in a tin can is just another trip into orbit, fine, I can accept that, despite the dozens of scientific experiments that have piggybacked on just about every manned mission beyond the stratosphere. But the effort required to put a man or a group of people permanently on the Moon or Mars would require technology and research that does not yet exist, and there are potential alternative uses for that research that might not have ever been funded otherwise. Suppose there never was a space program; here are some of the things that may not have ever been seen in our lifetime:
remote sensing
GPS systems
satellite television
freeze-dried foods
The cordless drill
WD-40(water disbursement fromula 40)
KEVLAR
LEXAN (high impact plastic)
HEPA filtering
MEMORY FOAM that is used in making bed mattresses, etc.
SMOKE DETECTOR
And the list goes on. Not to mention incredible improvements in weather forecasting, long distance communications, astronomy, earth sciences, and computing that were accelerated by financing the space program. For what it's worth I'd have to agree with some space program detractors that the program was NOT a complete success because we picked up some moon rocks and never went back. The ability to successfully and permanently settle regions beyond our planet would open many doors for human society. In the process of forcing ourselves to learn how to live sustainably with very limited resources we would also learn ways to improve how we can live sustainably on earth. There is potential to harvest rare minerals and potentially sources of energy from asteroids and other bodies. And while it may be fascinating to see what the Mars rovers can do, there is so much more that just one human can do on his own in the flesh.
Steroids have been around for a long time and comparatively speaking there is just less of a chance that research into ways to help one athlete recover from the damage caused by his performance enhancing drugs is going to spill over into other fields of medicine. Not to say that some research could be beneficial, but we're talking about a "broken-window" effect. If you don't understand, just look up the broken window theory of economics in Wikipedia for an explanation.
I enjoy driving and I like to play sports too, but nobody is going to pay money to see me play. I'm sure that Mario Andretti would love to race cars even if all he could do was drag race against his buddies down some deserted road. The fact that there is a lot of money and fame to go along with it probably suits Andretti just fine. If you love what you do for a living you'll never work a day in your life. But imagine the Mario Andretti hugging the turns on his way down a tight-curved mountain road. Now imagine, would Andretti ever take any performance enhancing drugs to increase his alertness and reaction time as he traveled alone down that road without any observers. In fact, take the money, fame, and observers out of the picture and you've got a lot of people who love to play and compete, but the motivation to take potentially destructive drugs would be all but absent. The drugs are just a form of cheating and there is never any fun in cheating when you're testing your own potential at the sport - it's like cheating in solitaire - totally unsatisfying. Maybe it's something I'll just never understand as I usually don't watch sports; I only play them.
I know this is way off-topic, but the fact that Microsoft is developing products with Linux - shouldn't that in some way invalidate the claims that they have against Linux, making accusations that Linux is infringing on Microsoft patents? If I order food at a restaurant and the food is sub-par to my standards, and if I object and say that I am not paying for this sub-par food - if I go on to sit for another 15 minutes completely devouring the so-called "sub par" food and licking the plate, I could be expected to pay the full bill. If I refused to pay and the restaurant sued me, the fact that I ate the food anyway after I complained would be justification that my claims were invalid and the judge would order me to pay the meal ticket, plus the cost of court fees and plaintiff's legal expenses. Maybe even punitive damages to boot.
Yes, RepRappers is the proper term. A RepRapist is one who uses a RepRap without consent.
Obviously even the best and most advanced yet affordable 3D printers won't mean that people could just print out every product they ever needed. But even in our mass-produced world, final production of many products is just a process of assembling - by hand - several stamped, machined, forged, or molded components. The possibility that I could mold many of my own components, and the possibility that I could download and upload drawings, designs, instructions, and codes to print such components could help keep manufacturer's prices in check.
As some other post have already pointed out, this type of technology could help DIY-minded people fix their own products rather than replace them or spend exorbitant amounts of money of spare parts. One of the best uses for 3D printers is for aspiring inventors to build prototypes and cheaply test their designs. The machines could definitely be handy for those living in remote parts of the world where having just the right type of plastic part produced on-site very quickly can fix a problem that otherwise would be a really hassle to deal with. A cheap 3D printer, a $100 laptop, wireless internet access, and on-site renewable power generation - can you see what these types of technologies could possibly offer for people living in developing countries? Factor in the latest advancements in sustainable agricultural and architectural practices and the 3rd world may end up being the envy of the developed world after we reach peak oil.
I think there could be a "threat" to commercial producers in the future if these trends continue. More "Open" sharing of information, technology, media, and code. Online collaboration of like-minded consumer-producers, the advantage of extreme customization possible with printing your own products, the proliferation of hackerspaces, and the possibility that intelligent robotics could be developed to make more desktop fabrication possible. Imagine a pair of robotic arms with articulated hands that could assemble more complex products. There are a lot of hobbyists experimenting with all sorts of manufacturing technologies, from traditional blacksmithing all the way to growing crystals in precision controlled pressure furnaces.
Mass production means that the cost of production decreases per unit, but that doesn't stop companies from charging 10 or 20 times that amount when competition is light and their customers aren't used to making a similar product of their own. And how often is it that the mass-produced item just isn't designed the way you would have preferred or the quality is substandard - below what you could have done on your own? More 3D printers and similar rapid prototyping technologies in homes, offices, and small businesses would force the mass producers to increase their quality, lower their price, offer better designs, and ways to customize their products to the specific needs of their customers. Everybody wins (except Wall Street).
P. S. Ultimately, if humans are going to live sustainably and independently in environments like the Moon, and especially Mars, such small-scale highly flexible and customizable fabrication technology will be required.
Ok, so we still haven't decriminalized mere possession of marijuana for personal consumption, but since there's money to be made by big corporations we want to not only allow but encourage the use of performance enhancing drugs in sports? How long before steroids becomes mandatory for junior high football? Those games bring a lot of money in to those schools. Think of the tax burden on the top 10 percent of earners pay 70.42 percent of the taxes. They're taxed enough already! Steroids for kids could boost attendance at these events, drive up ticket prices, fund the schools and reduce the tax burden.
no there is only a universal morality. ...homosexuality is universally ok. societies that consider it wrong are engaging in violating the human rights of the individual
You're presuming that all cultures do or should uphold the rights of the individual over the welfare of the collective. While I learn toward individual rights over the collective, it is easy to see why some seemingly trivial matters such as sexual relations can be a life or death situation for a group of people struggling to survive. For instance, lets consider a small tribal community with primitive agriculture. As is the case in many 3rd world countries today, imagine that each person needed to have as many kids as possible, since many kids would die young from illness or other reasons, more labor is needed to tend to the farm, and without enough kids there won't be enough resources to care for you in your elder years. Imagine you, your spouse, your kids, your extended family, and five other families make up a small isolated village and you have to work together diligently to survive. Disputes and arguments that make it harder to work together have to be reduced or eliminated. In such a society one act of adultery could divide the group and jeopardize the whole groups ability to survive since individual humans really don't fare so we'll entirely on their in the wilderness. So the society implements some rules, maybe even a death penalty for adulterers. Homosexuals that won't be having 20 kids might be outcast as contributing little to the community (apparently by choice since the village wouldn't have access to the science and research we have today).
Now living in the convenience of our modern era where a person can prosper as an individual it might be easy to condemn the primitive society. Yet the members of this society may condemn you for allowing your neighbor to live homeless and hungry while you have more resources than you need to survive and potentially the capacity to meet the basic living requirements of many people.
But don't Nike and Adidas already do this in the pro-sports world? How often is an athlete paid to imply on a TV commercial that x-brand shoes give him an edge in his sport?
OK - so it wouldn't work for the Olympics. But the corporate sponsored pro-sports world would likely embrace it.
An adventurer taking a one-way trip to Mars could be making a contribution to advance society. When an athlete pushes his body to the breaking point and takes possibly dangerous performance enhancing drugs, just to attempt to break a record for a rule-based sport by a fraction of a percent, how does that advance our society?
Hey, I'm not competing in the Enhanced Olympics unless they allow my Li-ion powered exoskeleton. Bring it!
So the sport is appealing for the same reasons that gladiators were appealing to citizens of Rome. I wonder if a famous driver didn't occasionally die in a fiery crash would the sport be as popular as it is today.
True to the letter. Maybe part of the reason I'm not much of a pro-sports fan. That and I have a natural aversion to glitter and hype. Seriously, when a person spends 100% of their life's energy on the possibility of winning a prize and maybe some short term financial rewards, I don't see how I should be impressed that they can play their sport better than me. I don't teach my kids to look at these athletes as role models. Beyond entertainment and the redistribution of wealth from the masses to a select few, what value do pro-sports bring to society?
Mod this SCORE 5: FUNNY.
One work-around that already exists is to hire an American or other foreign "personal shopper". You can also access sites directly through a US based proxy server. But even if you get access to the blocked site that doesn't mean the retailer will ship to your Australian address or accept your Australian currency, credit card, etc.. Again, the personal shopper becomes the solution. They can even package and consolidate multiple orders from multiple businesses as one single shipment to save on transportation costs.
See my reply to Stupid Solution above.
The problem with your AusFlix argument is that in international business the governments of nations don't just care about the legal entity operating within their borders, but also the relationship the legal entity has to other companies and individuals outside the country For instance, the UBS branches operating within the US are completely separate legal entities set up to serve the American market, but the US government was able to put pressure on UBS in Switzerland to reveal the names, addresses, and account details of American citizens holding accounts at the Switzerland based locations. The Australian government could put the same kind of pressure on "AusFlix" to force NetFlix to comply. Now, of course, NetFlix could found and then completely sell off "AusFlix" before trouble starts, but then they would miss out on all future profit from the spinoff. Considering the costs to spinoff such a company it might not even be worth it for NetFlix.
Your piracy argument is a good example for how governments could bring pressure on foreign firms to bring equality to the market. But would it be worth the damage to international relations to break so many anti-piracy treaties they have already signed?
Either way, it's a decision for the Australian government, and they have the power to make it work with most major multinational companies, just the same way the US government looks out of US business interests in other countries. The US was even able to get Swiss banks to hand over the names and address of American tax dodgers, something that they couldn't do for decades. The reason is the ability to put pressure on multinational firms who want to do business in your country. Naturally, if an American website owner has a prejudice against Australians and want to block them, there's not much that Australia can do about it. But it can apply pressure to the major multinationals and that is the intent with this campaign. Naturally, the Aussies may make special exceptions when they want to keep their citizens from accessing specific US sites.
Some suggestions:
1. Access the sites through a proxy server based in the target country. Then you won't be blocked.
2. See if you can hire a local travel agent. They can probably get even bigger discounts and sometimes can find other carriers with even better prices.
3. Use the services of a host-country based "personal shopper" to conduct the transaction on your behalf if the foreign company has a problem with your IP address, mailing address, shipping address, your bank or your currency.
Naturally these services aren't free, but if you conduct enough business with companies in the other country then these services could save you a lot of money.
I don't care...without being pestered with unskippable...warnings from foreign police organizations like the FBI...
You mean you don't take notice of FBI warnings? How dare you show such contempt for the global jurisdiction of the US Government!
Please explain what is "leftist" about the Australian consumer group Choice?
So the real problem is stupid laws. I would like to point fingers at some other country, but the US and US states are probably the world's worst offenders. Right now there's some guy serving a four year prison term in Florida for violating Florida's "obscenity" laws, but he never set food in Florida until an extradition order had him arrested in his home state of California and transported to Florida in a prison van to be tried by a jury of his non-peers. Why was this allowed? Because he had a p0rn site, his web hosting company used servers in Florida, and he mailed DVD's all across the country - including Florida. Now the material this guy produced WAS obscene, but if California did not see a reason to prosecute him then that should have been the end of the case unless he relocated to Florida to run his business.
"States Rights" sounds like some sort of great idea until you consider that the focus is on the right of the state over the rights of individuals. For instance, there is a myth that the Civil War was fought over slavery, but this is not true - it was fought over States Rights, such as the right to enslave their own people. Given that we live in an age of light-speed telecommunications, overnight shipping, a national highway system, and frequent flyer miles, the notion that every American needs to be intimately familiar with all of the laws, legal precedent, and nuance for how these laws are enforced in all 50 states while they go about their daily affairs is just no longer practical.
Maybe the US needs to overhaul the Constitution and reorganize. Somewhere between six and ten administrative regions might be more appropriate. After fixing our internal problems then we should tackle some of the nonsense with our international relations.
You've made a lot of statements that need a little clarification, and I think it would help if I added some comments from my American perspective:
what a twisted world you must imagine to live in for you to consider G4S debacle "fortunate" in any way.
In the US, when an incumbent or majority in a legislature is the opposition party, doing everything possible to make sure that government policies and programs fail miserably is standard operating procedure, regardless of how devastating to the average citizen. For example, voting out Obama in 2012 is the Republican Party's unifying objective. Republicans would not agree to any health care reform bill without the individual mandate to buy insurance, as the alternatives such as universal coverage or a public option as they would be too "socialist". But now they are targeting the individual mandate specifically in their campaigns. To be fair, the Dems did this to George Bush senior - they wanted to increase taxes after Bush made his famous "read my lips..." quote. After Bush compromised with the Dems to sign their tax increase into law the Dems hammered Bush for turning back on his word (and it worked). Given that there haven't been any major incidents like a terrorist attack in light of the G4S follies, their failure could actually be a good thing, not just for UK, but as a lesson to all countries that privatization of essential government service is dangerous.
"...shouldn't be provided by anybody whose managers I cannot vote out of office" - and you can't as those managers would be civil servants, not politicians
In a political office the "manager" is the politician. He then appoints civil servants. Some posts, such as judges, are insulated from politically motivated removal, and for good reason. In the US it used to be commonplace to sack all officials in bureaucratic posts and replace with cronies who contributed to the presidential campaign. This still happens somewhat, like when Bush put his cronies in charge of FEMA, despite being totally unqualified for the job. See http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/08/AR2005090802165.html. But for the most part a top performing official will keep his post if he is doing his job well and doesn't have a rabid hatred for the new administration. This system works. Privatization doesn't have anything to offer to make this any better.
private companies have to compete for contracts
You mean like when Halliburton was handed the primary contract to support US operations in Iraq - by their ex-CEO Dick Cheney- without even an opportunity for other companies to bid?
their managers can be sacked by shareholders
Most of the world's publicly listed companies are owned primarily by institutional investors, such as banks and mutual funds. Most Americans invest in these companies through their 401k plans yet they usually don't have any voting rights over the management of the companies the funds, trusts, and plans invest in. Also, shareholders don't have "equal" votes. Shareholders get one vote for each share they own. In a world where a disproportionate few wealthy people own or control most of of the world's wealth, even if citizens held individual stocks and cared enough to understand the implications of their votes, and even if these citizens organized to vote for changes in corporate governance (regarding issues such as pollution, corporate lobbying of government, treatment of workers, unfair business practices, etc.) they could very well not have enough voting power to implement change. Keep in mind that the poor and the struggling working class are not likely to have many shares, if any, of any company.
Futhermore, shareholders are generally motivated by the potential return on investment (which is how it is supposed to work). Some w