Find a Thai person in your home country other than Thailand and ask him, given that he is not at the moment subject to the laws of Thailand, how he really feels about King Rama IX.
I can answer that for you. He will tell you that King Rama IX brought democracy to Thailand, uses his vast wealth to help poor, rural parts of the country, and is just generally a great guy. He also has gone on record stating that the laws against criticizing the monarch are stupid, and often pardons those convicted of criticizing him.
And no, I am not Thai by any stretch of the imagination.
Well, if your concern is so minute, so minuscule that it doesn't even merit a copy and paste, I'll just assume that you never really wanted it addressed in the first place.
They asked you to violate the law and your own ethics, you gave them perfectly reasonable alternatives that would cost them nothing, and they still overruled you.
Tell me again why you are so attached to this job?
if you tell me that being envious, to any degree, is less of a concern than being selfish, to any degree
I would not agree to such a statement, but of course it is irrelevant. Unless you are prepared to argue that the scale of my envy of another Starbucks patron's coffee, which featured the benefit of an accidental second injection of Dulce de Leche flavoring, is equivalent with your disturbing concern with my level of altruism. (The former situation is, of course, fictitious. If I drank coffee, it certainly would not come from Starbucks.)
As I said before, my level of altruism should not be the business of anyone but myself and my wife. My neighbor should not be concerned with this, and if he has some suspicion that I am not generous enough, as I said before, he could easily satisfy his altruistic heart by being even more generous himself.
In fact, you yourself seem to concern yourself with my level of charitable giving. Indeed I recommend that you ease your conscience by donating a little extra to whatever cause you are so concerned I might be neglecting.
Regarding selfishness, I am not concerned with this. For starters, I do not concern myself with the affairs of others. But more importantly, charity was not invented by Lyndon Baines Johnson and it occurred long before the modern welfare state.
Human nature gives us all a sense of empathy. We don't like to see others suffer, and psychologically, it makes us feel good about our lives to help those in need. As any philosopher will tell you, there are precious few things that give our lives a sense of meaning. Helping others is one of them.
Regarding quoting Shakespeare, I think I will leave the butchering to you and instead quote someone more relevant to the conversation:
As every individual, therefore, endeavours as much as he can both to employ his capital in the support of domestic industry, and so to direct that industry that its produce may be of the greatest value; every individual necessarily labours to render the annual value of society as great as he can. He generally, indeed, neither intends to promote the public interest, nor knows how much he is promoting it. By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention. Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was no part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it.
I hope you know the author and I hope you know the book. Or at the very least, I hope that you can use google to supplement your education.
Can I assume that you have never read Hamlet? You are continuing to misquote it, and furthermore you are misinterpreting the original quote's meaning.
On the flip side, I suppose that I the type of thing that I should expect from a person willing to argue that pathological envy is somehow preferable simply wanting more control over one's own charity or altruism. Wouldn't you agree?
I didn't think so, but since you said a kindergartener could read me, I thought that a person of your superior intellect could offer me some insight.
but some altruistic people are disturbed that some don't give at all
This is a curious statement. Why should someone who is truly altruistic resent those who are not altruistic? Would not the truly altruistic simply give more, in order to compensate for those who refuse to give?
You're willing to grant an awful lot of philosophical leeway to the pathologically envious, given your withholding of it from someone who merely believes that his work is complete.
Are you going to have me believe that there are 30,000,000 people in the US living in train yards with cholera?
All I'm saying is that the overwhelming majority of the official 30,000,000 people in the US living in poverty live like kings compared with someone who lives in actual poverty.
I claim that there do not exist 30,000,000 people in the US who live in true poverty, and you have done nothing to change my mind.
You're going to try to convince me that you actually witnessed a hobo on a train the other day? What year is this? 1952?
And then you call me an "idiot". Cute.
Like I said before. Wake me up when those living in "poverty" in the US can't get clean drinking water, food (food stamps, homeless shelters, etc.), medical treatment (medicaid, forced emergency care), etc.
Furthermore, wake me up when people living in true poverty aren't risking life and limb to sneak into this country to live in "poverty".
You can say tomato and I can say tomahto all day long, but the fact still remains that you'll never convince me that someone with a nicer TV than my own is living in poverty.
and humanity, being selfish as it is, you do have stick a gun to some people's heads to get them to give
Really? How come no one sent me the memo? I guess I need to halt all of my charitable giving.
But I suppose you're right. With what I'm paying in taxes, it's truly silly for me to give away any more money. I've already paid my share and then some.
If my annual income is $150,000, then they should use tax incentives to browbeat me into not buying insurance that has a deductible any lower than, say, $40,000/year.
That would suck very hard for anyone who has chronic health issues. It would also pretty much force my wife to stop working. Yay.
Sort of defeats the point of insurance, too. The idea is that everybody pays into the pot, and whoever is unlucky enough to get sick gets the costs covered. Sure, healthy people pay more than they get out, but they were just as likely to be the unhealthy ones. Distributed risk.
But let's take a family where one person has health issues. That person might as well not even bother to work and contribute to the economy because his or her salary would just go straight to health care, anyhow.
libertarianism is nothing but a code word for selfishness
Libertarianism does not preclude altruism. It merely precludes "altruism", delivered under threat of violence.
If you point a gun to my head and say, "Give to the poor", that is not altruism. So why is it altruism when the government shows up at my house with guns and says, "Give to the poor."?
And what about other costs ? Not being able to work for a while after the second operation, for example ?
That would be covered by most people's short term disability policies that they get through work. If you aren't lucky enough to have such a policy, then go ahead and tack on the extra $8.50/hr for the few days that you are out of McDonalds. Either way, you're not going to get your $10,000,000.00. Sorry.
Also, that sponge is far from harmless. People have died from stuff like that.
From talking to actual surgeons, as opposed to "some guy on slashdot who is not a surgeon", I am informed that this condition is generally harmless (you see it shortly after the operation on the followup X-Ray, then you go back in and remove it).
These types of errors typically happen when someone comes into the ER in a huge state of emergency. Blood and guts everywhere. Things get rushed, the OR is not neat and tidy, mistakes get made. Doesn't happen very often, but it's not unheard of, and it is not a particularly dangerous situation. Certainly not with respect to the state that the patient arrived in.
Here is the dirty little secret of capitalism --- it thrives on a huge class of impoverished workers.
Anyone who thinks that there is poverty in the United States has never visited a third world country.
Wake me when we have people dying in the streets from cholera and tuberculosis due to no clean drinking water. Until then, you need to realize that "only having one video game console to hook up to rented widescreen TV" does not constitute poverty.
Just because they can't afford health care doesn't mean they don't get it.
If you show up at the hospital in the US needing medical attention, they don't just kick you to the curb if you can't produce an insurance card or American Express card, you know.
You want to ban lawsuits against physicians? Very bad idea for obvious reasons.
Not ban them, limit them.
Sure, you can sue your doctor, but only for your actual damages. Surgeon sews you up with a sponge inside? Sure, you can sue, but only for the cost to remove the sponge and treat any infection (unlikely, since those sponges are sterile).
Under the current system, you'd sue for $10,000,000.00. Under my system, you'd be suing for $20,000.00 or so (surgery plus attorney's fees).
That brings down the malpractice insurance premiums, while still protecting the public against malpractice. Hell, even say actual damages plus 10% for pain and suffering if you want to be brave. But none of this lawsuit lottery baloney.
Chinese Community Rallies Behind Student Removed From Clements by Bob Dunn, Apr 30, 2007, 11 57 am
Members of the area Chinese community have rallied behind a Clements High School senior who was removed from the campus and sent to M.R. Wood Alternative Education Center after parents complained he'd created a computer game map of Clements.
About 70 people attended the Fort Bend Independent School District's April 23 meeting to show support for the Clements senior and his mother, Jean Lin, who spoke to FBISD Board trustees in a closed session.
While an agenda document does not specify details, the board is holding a special meeting tonight to address the boy's actions and the discipline that was meted out as a result, sources close to the matter say. The boy's name was not identified last week, and the district has declined to discuss his case.
Richard Chen, president of the Fort Bend Chinese-American Voters League and a acquaintance of the boy's family, said he is a talented student who enjoys computer games and learned how to create maps (also sometimes known as "mods"), which provide new environments in which games may be played.
The map the boy designed mimicked Clements High School. And, sources said, it was uploaded either to the boy's home computer or to a computer server where he and his friends could access and play on it. Two parents apparently learned from their children about the existence of the game, and complained to FBISD administrators, who investigated.
"They arrested him," Chen said of FBISD police, "and also went to the house to search." The Lin family consented to the search, and a hammer was found in the boy's room, which he used to fix his bed, because it wasn't in good shape, Chen said. He indicated police seized the hammer as a potential weapon.
"They decided he was a terroristic threat," said one source close to the district's investigation.
Sources said that although no charges were filed against the boy, he was removed from Clements, sent to the district's alternate education school and won't be allowed to participate in graduation ceremonies with classmates.
"All he did was create a map and put it on a web site to allow students to play," Chen said. "The mother thinks this is too harsh."
FBISD officials declined to comment on the matter Monday. "Our challenge is, people in the community have freedom of speech and can say what they want, but we have laws" covering privacy issues, especially involving minors, that the district has to respect, said spokeswoman Nancy Porter.
Speakers at the FBISD Board's April 23 meeting alluded to the Clements senior's punishment, and drew a connection to the April 16 shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, in which a Korean student shot and killed 32 people.
The Asian community "faces new pressures" as a result of the shootings, William Sun told board members. "We urge the school and community not to label our Asian students as terrorists."
"We should teach our children not to judge others harshly" and not to target people as being a threat because of their race, said Peter Woo, adding that the school district should lead the way in such efforts.
But Chen said Monday he and other community members don't consider FBISD's actions in the case to be racially motivated, and don't think they blew the incident out of proportion.
"They all think the principal has to do something - but how much? We do understand with the Virginia Tech incident...something has to be done," Chen said. "Someone just made a mistake, and we think the principal should understand that."
Slashdot Mirror
Here is Freedom of speech in the USA.
I guess that's just what happens here when we criticize our leaders.
The king realizes this. Read the article. It's some bureaucrat making this noise. Not the king.
Find a Thai person in your home country other than Thailand and ask him, given that he is not at the moment subject to the laws of Thailand, how he really feels about King Rama IX.
I can answer that for you. He will tell you that King Rama IX brought democracy to Thailand, uses his vast wealth to help poor, rural parts of the country, and is just generally a great guy. He also has gone on record stating that the laws against criticizing the monarch are stupid, and often pardons those convicted of criticizing him.
And no, I am not Thai by any stretch of the imagination.
Well, if your concern is so minute, so minuscule that it doesn't even merit a copy and paste, I'll just assume that you never really wanted it addressed in the first place.
Good day.
I have consulted all of your earlier posts, and I have determined that I have addressed each of your thoughtful points.
I'm sorry, I thought I had already addressed each of your points and insights. Which one was it? Any omissions were certainly unintentional.
They asked you to violate the law and your own ethics, you gave them perfectly reasonable alternatives that would cost them nothing, and they still overruled you.
Tell me again why you are so attached to this job?
As I said before, my level of altruism should not be the business of anyone but myself and my wife. My neighbor should not be concerned with this, and if he has some suspicion that I am not generous enough, as I said before, he could easily satisfy his altruistic heart by being even more generous himself.
In fact, you yourself seem to concern yourself with my level of charitable giving. Indeed I recommend that you ease your conscience by donating a little extra to whatever cause you are so concerned I might be neglecting.
Regarding selfishness, I am not concerned with this. For starters, I do not concern myself with the affairs of others. But more importantly, charity was not invented by Lyndon Baines Johnson and it occurred long before the modern welfare state.
Human nature gives us all a sense of empathy. We don't like to see others suffer, and psychologically, it makes us feel good about our lives to help those in need. As any philosopher will tell you, there are precious few things that give our lives a sense of meaning. Helping others is one of them.
Regarding quoting Shakespeare, I think I will leave the butchering to you and instead quote someone more relevant to the conversation:I hope you know the author and I hope you know the book. Or at the very least, I hope that you can use google to supplement your education.
Can I assume that you have never read Hamlet? You are continuing to misquote it, and furthermore you are misinterpreting the original quote's meaning.
On the flip side, I suppose that I the type of thing that I should expect from a person willing to argue that pathological envy is somehow preferable simply wanting more control over one's own charity or altruism. Wouldn't you agree?
Yes. Nice casinos there.
You're willing to grant an awful lot of philosophical leeway to the pathologically envious, given your withholding of it from someone who merely believes that his work is complete.
All I'm saying is that the overwhelming majority of the official 30,000,000 people in the US living in poverty live like kings compared with someone who lives in actual poverty.
I claim that there do not exist 30,000,000 people in the US who live in true poverty, and you have done nothing to change my mind.
But the fact is I do give to charity. I'd be curious to know what you suspect are my reasons, since you seem to think that you can see through me.
You're going to try to convince me that you actually witnessed a hobo on a train the other day? What year is this? 1952?
And then you call me an "idiot". Cute.
Like I said before. Wake me up when those living in "poverty" in the US can't get clean drinking water, food (food stamps, homeless shelters, etc.), medical treatment (medicaid, forced emergency care), etc.
Furthermore, wake me up when people living in true poverty aren't risking life and limb to sneak into this country to live in "poverty".
You can say tomato and I can say tomahto all day long, but the fact still remains that you'll never convince me that someone with a nicer TV than my own is living in poverty.
But I suppose you're right. With what I'm paying in taxes, it's truly silly for me to give away any more money. I've already paid my share and then some.
Slowly but surely, your wish is going to come true. Personally, I can't wait.
linky
Sort of defeats the point of insurance, too. The idea is that everybody pays into the pot, and whoever is unlucky enough to get sick gets the costs covered. Sure, healthy people pay more than they get out, but they were just as likely to be the unhealthy ones. Distributed risk.
But let's take a family where one person has health issues. That person might as well not even bother to work and contribute to the economy because his or her salary would just go straight to health care, anyhow.
If you point a gun to my head and say, "Give to the poor", that is not altruism. So why is it altruism when the government shows up at my house with guns and says, "Give to the poor."?
These types of errors typically happen when someone comes into the ER in a huge state of emergency. Blood and guts everywhere. Things get rushed, the OR is not neat and tidy, mistakes get made. Doesn't happen very often, but it's not unheard of, and it is not a particularly dangerous situation. Certainly not with respect to the state that the patient arrived in.
Wake me when we have people dying in the streets from cholera and tuberculosis due to no clean drinking water. Until then, you need to realize that "only having one video game console to hook up to rented widescreen TV" does not constitute poverty.
Just because they can't afford health care doesn't mean they don't get it.
If you show up at the hospital in the US needing medical attention, they don't just kick you to the curb if you can't produce an insurance card or American Express card, you know.
Sure, you can sue your doctor, but only for your actual damages. Surgeon sews you up with a sponge inside? Sure, you can sue, but only for the cost to remove the sponge and treat any infection (unlikely, since those sponges are sterile).
Under the current system, you'd sue for $10,000,000.00. Under my system, you'd be suing for $20,000.00 or so (surgery plus attorney's fees).
That brings down the malpractice insurance premiums, while still protecting the public against malpractice. Hell, even say actual damages plus 10% for pain and suffering if you want to be brave. But none of this lawsuit lottery baloney.
Since this is slashdotted from here to kalamazoo:
Chinese Community Rallies Behind Student Removed From Clements
by Bob Dunn, Apr 30, 2007, 11 57 am
Members of the area Chinese community have rallied behind a Clements High School senior who was removed from the campus and sent to M.R. Wood Alternative Education Center after parents complained he'd created a computer game map of Clements.
About 70 people attended the Fort Bend Independent School District's April 23 meeting to show support for the Clements senior and his mother, Jean Lin, who spoke to FBISD Board trustees in a closed session.
While an agenda document does not specify details, the board is holding a special meeting tonight to address the boy's actions and the discipline that was meted out as a result, sources close to the matter say. The boy's name was not identified last week, and the district has declined to discuss his case.
Richard Chen, president of the Fort Bend Chinese-American Voters League and a acquaintance of the boy's family, said he is a talented student who enjoys computer games and learned how to create maps (also sometimes known as "mods"), which provide new environments in which games may be played.
The map the boy designed mimicked Clements High School. And, sources said, it was uploaded either to the boy's home computer or to a computer server where he and his friends could access and play on it. Two parents apparently learned from their children about the existence of the game, and complained to FBISD administrators, who investigated.
"They arrested him," Chen said of FBISD police, "and also went to the house to search." The Lin family consented to the search, and a hammer was found in the boy's room, which he used to fix his bed, because it wasn't in good shape, Chen said. He indicated police seized the hammer as a potential weapon.
"They decided he was a terroristic threat," said one source close to the district's investigation.
Sources said that although no charges were filed against the boy, he was removed from Clements, sent to the district's alternate education school and won't be allowed to participate in graduation ceremonies with classmates.
"All he did was create a map and put it on a web site to allow students to play," Chen said. "The mother thinks this is too harsh."
FBISD officials declined to comment on the matter Monday. "Our challenge is, people in the community have freedom of speech and can say what they want, but we have laws" covering privacy issues, especially involving minors, that the district has to respect, said spokeswoman Nancy Porter.
Speakers at the FBISD Board's April 23 meeting alluded to the Clements senior's punishment, and drew a connection to the April 16 shootings at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, in which a Korean student shot and killed 32 people.
The Asian community "faces new pressures" as a result of the shootings, William Sun told board members. "We urge the school and community not to label our Asian students as terrorists."
"We should teach our children not to judge others harshly" and not to target people as being a threat because of their race, said Peter Woo, adding that the school district should lead the way in such efforts.
But Chen said Monday he and other community members don't consider FBISD's actions in the case to be racially motivated, and don't think they blew the incident out of proportion.
"They all think the principal has to do something - but how much? We do understand with the Virginia Tech incident...something has to be done," Chen said. "Someone just made a mistake, and we think the principal should understand that."