You could again say the same of Democratic Republics in war-torn areas.
Their system worked fairly well for them during the 700 years prior to foreign invasion by Western nation-state military forces (which were never able to secure the countryside, only the city centers), and the subsequent Communist system that was adopted after they left.
Note that despite the violence, Somalia has the best mobile phone infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the citizens of Somalia are more than three times richer than their neighbors in Ethiopia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Somalia
Remember, when you compare the relative merits of different systems, it helps to narrow your comparisons by geography. Comparing Somalia to the US or the West doesn't make much sense. Comparing it to a neighbor with a shared history and substantially similar culture and climate, and you see the effect of different policies much more clearly.
Why would you make that equation? When is the last time Switzerland experienced violence because of its militia (which includes just under 19% of the population)? That militia is VERY well armed--every single member has an automatic rifle in their home, and advanced weaponry in their armories. They also have what is probably the lowest rate of violent crime in Europe or the world.
The two party system is a prisoner's dilemma of the highest magnitude. Most of the idiocy and poor design of the human brain comes into play in its perpetuation.
What are you talking about? The US is one of the best educated nations in the world, and we've got the student loan bubble to prove it!
But seriously, the point of revolution in this case isn't to remove those at the top, but to remove the entrenched bureaucracy and reduce or eliminate their powers which have grown exponentially over the last 40 or so years.
Note the "revolution" does not have to mean "violence". Voting in a third party into the White House and Congress, and giving them a mandate to shrink the government would do just fine. That is, so long as said third party were willing to do such a thing.
If we must have a two party system, then at least one of the parties should have a strong libertarian bent. The other one can be a fascist one, whether right or left. It is when both parties are fascist that we have real problems.
Utter bullshit. Land is registered to be TAXED. Cars are registered to be TAXED (if they weren't, it would be a one time thing, not a YEARLY one). Children are registered so local government can get tax money from the Federal and State governments. Marriages are registered because the state thinks it is a church, and secondarily because married people are granted special privileges in our crazy nonsense quasi-theocracy.
Somalia is an anarchic society trying to survive a literally continuous influx of guns and armed thugs trying to impose their will on the locals, with an economy that has never been given a chance to recover since the end of Communist rule.
This is like telling people who like Parliamentary Democracy to move to Kosovo while Serbia was being ringed by Soviets.
The fact that the people of Somaliland have not fallen to these thugs, strongmen, and "elected" governments is a testament to both the resilience of anarchy and the fact that the people DON'T WANT TO BE RULED.
But by all means, keep telling us to move to Somalia, and we will keep telling you to move to Kosovo.
Think of the time you spend cleaning your room. GP wants to send those who enjoy having a clean room back to the time when they were cleaning it, just because they notice that it is getting dirty again. He, on the other hand, has no interest in cleaning his room, so he should see what the end result of that is.
Yeah, the highly pressurized, billion times redundant active safety systems that fail catastrophically at average intervals of a few hundred years (such that with hundreds of systems you get incidents every few years) are so much more simple than the intrinsically safe LFTR, which uses a fan to keep a salt plug in the drain pipe, such that if something happens, all the fuel automatically drains into a safe vessel for future recovery.
Not really. U233 produces lots of gamma rays, which makes it very easy to detect, meaning they could easily be taken out in a first strike. The ability to make a big boom isn't the only consideration in nuke design.
Note that I am just parroting what I heard from the long version of LFTR in 5 minutes on youtube.
I love how you ignore what came BEFORE that so-called guilded age. Backbreaking labor on farms. Families that had to have 10+ children because so many would die due to the conditions on those farms.
You and so many others forget that those factory workers CHOSE to abandon their farms and come to the city to be industrial workers. They wanted a better standard of living for themselves and their children, and they got it. This was how the middle class was born.
tl;dr, if you want to send Libertarians back to the Guilded Age, I want to send YOU to the the age of serfdom. Then you can see the final result of your dumb ideas. Sadly, that curse works on everyone. The Road to Serfdom indeed.
I'm not sure you understand what the tragedy of the commons is (it refers to common property that doesn't have a distinct owner, and as such is not taken care of). You certainly don't understand why it doesn't apply here.
Energy that is so cheap that it is easier to give it away than to sell it will be given away, while money is made from other sources. For example, the energy is so cheap that it might not be cost effective to charge households for its use, but you WOULD charge customers that use more than a certain amount (ie factories, large buildings, etc). This is similar to the way we treat roads now. Yes, we pay a gas tax, but commercial vehicles pay a use tax that is assessed by the mile. If roads were so expensive that they couldn't pay for the roads that way, then it would be more likely for roads to cost money to use for individuals.
I think a major mental block you are dealing with here is the fact that you aren't able to wrap your mind around the way that economies of plenty work. This is understandable because almost all real goods are governed by scarcity economics. Luckily, we have created a realm that is governed by economics of plenty--the internet. Think about the way internet services are provided. Free email. Free websearch. Free porn. Free everything. Yet the services continue to be provided, even by big companies that use expensive infrastructure. There would be nothing to stop a company like Google from providing free power to consumers if they could do it effectively.
They will design things for those 3-D printers. Find new applications for robotics. Train AIs to do their jobs more efficiently. At worst, they become artists, or writers, or Youtube sensations.
Keep in mind that when the robots take over production, they drive costs down to nearly zero. If the markets are even marginally free, then the prices for those goods will fall dramatically, and people will be able to live just fine off of the few bucks they get from doing piecework.
That would be nice, but there are other factors at play, like the $1.75 trillion we spend on regulation each year, which is 10X more than we take in in corporate taxes. Just imagine the compliance costs...
Those will come. A bonus is a half measure when you can't afford to commit to higher wages yet.
Of course, the Chinese government could end their dollar peg and allow the value of those wages to rise, giving everyone in their country a de facto raise.
Start protesting for increased nuclear research and a removal of the de fact ban on LFTR tech. It will be much more effective than bitching about CO2 emission without proposing solutions.
No. But you are defending mass murder because of some petty problem you have with Christianity.
I am an atheist. I also have a moral compass. It tells me that mass murder is bad. Aztecs committed ritual mass murder on a scale never seen before or since. The Mexican people were definitely better off under their harsh Christian rulers than they were before, but not as well of as they would have been under a more liberal form of government.
It sounds pretty refuted to me, just from the summary. 80% of the plankton fell all the way to the ocean floor.
I don't think you understand marine biology very well. There isn't much life in the open ocean, certainly not beneath the reach of the sun. Yes, there is LIFE there, but it's not the vast, sprawling jungle you seem to imagine. It's more like a desert.
Slashdot Mirror
You could again say the same of Democratic Republics in war-torn areas.
Their system worked fairly well for them during the 700 years prior to foreign invasion by Western nation-state military forces (which were never able to secure the countryside, only the city centers), and the subsequent Communist system that was adopted after they left.
Note that despite the violence, Somalia has the best mobile phone infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa, and the citizens of Somalia are more than three times richer than their neighbors in Ethiopia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Somalia
Remember, when you compare the relative merits of different systems, it helps to narrow your comparisons by geography. Comparing Somalia to the US or the West doesn't make much sense. Comparing it to a neighbor with a shared history and substantially similar culture and climate, and you see the effect of different policies much more clearly.
lol, so anything that proves you wrong is a strawman, got it.
Note that you are now defending slavery and indentured servitude as being superior to life for the working class in the guilded age.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cognitive_dissonance
Why would you make that equation? When is the last time Switzerland experienced violence because of its militia (which includes just under 19% of the population)? That militia is VERY well armed--every single member has an automatic rifle in their home, and advanced weaponry in their armories. They also have what is probably the lowest rate of violent crime in Europe or the world.
So you now admit that the US had something worse than feudalism. Thank you for proving my point.
Don't blame me, I voted for Kodos.
The two party system is a prisoner's dilemma of the highest magnitude. Most of the idiocy and poor design of the human brain comes into play in its perpetuation.
Depends on whether or not the Texas militia/national guard can seize the nuclear installations quickly or not.
Any nation that has nuclear arms is guaranteed immunity from direct invasion.
What are you talking about? The US is one of the best educated nations in the world, and we've got the student loan bubble to prove it!
But seriously, the point of revolution in this case isn't to remove those at the top, but to remove the entrenched bureaucracy and reduce or eliminate their powers which have grown exponentially over the last 40 or so years.
Note the "revolution" does not have to mean "violence". Voting in a third party into the White House and Congress, and giving them a mandate to shrink the government would do just fine. That is, so long as said third party were willing to do such a thing.
If we must have a two party system, then at least one of the parties should have a strong libertarian bent. The other one can be a fascist one, whether right or left. It is when both parties are fascist that we have real problems.
Utter bullshit. Land is registered to be TAXED. Cars are registered to be TAXED (if they weren't, it would be a one time thing, not a YEARLY one). Children are registered so local government can get tax money from the Federal and State governments. Marriages are registered because the state thinks it is a church, and secondarily because married people are granted special privileges in our crazy nonsense quasi-theocracy.
Somalia is an anarchic society trying to survive a literally continuous influx of guns and armed thugs trying to impose their will on the locals, with an economy that has never been given a chance to recover since the end of Communist rule.
This is like telling people who like Parliamentary Democracy to move to Kosovo while Serbia was being ringed by Soviets.
The fact that the people of Somaliland have not fallen to these thugs, strongmen, and "elected" governments is a testament to both the resilience of anarchy and the fact that the people DON'T WANT TO BE RULED.
But by all means, keep telling us to move to Somalia, and we will keep telling you to move to Kosovo.
Tell that to the black slaves and the white indentured servants.
Think of the time you spend cleaning your room. GP wants to send those who enjoy having a clean room back to the time when they were cleaning it, just because they notice that it is getting dirty again. He, on the other hand, has no interest in cleaning his room, so he should see what the end result of that is.
AHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
Yeah, the highly pressurized, billion times redundant active safety systems that fail catastrophically at average intervals of a few hundred years (such that with hundreds of systems you get incidents every few years) are so much more simple than the intrinsically safe LFTR, which uses a fan to keep a salt plug in the drain pipe, such that if something happens, all the fuel automatically drains into a safe vessel for future recovery.
FFS educate yourself: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P9M__yYbsZ4
Not really. U233 produces lots of gamma rays, which makes it very easy to detect, meaning they could easily be taken out in a first strike. The ability to make a big boom isn't the only consideration in nuke design.
Note that I am just parroting what I heard from the long version of LFTR in 5 minutes on youtube.
I love how you ignore what came BEFORE that so-called guilded age. Backbreaking labor on farms. Families that had to have 10+ children because so many would die due to the conditions on those farms.
You and so many others forget that those factory workers CHOSE to abandon their farms and come to the city to be industrial workers. They wanted a better standard of living for themselves and their children, and they got it. This was how the middle class was born.
tl;dr, if you want to send Libertarians back to the Guilded Age, I want to send YOU to the the age of serfdom. Then you can see the final result of your dumb ideas. Sadly, that curse works on everyone. The Road to Serfdom indeed.
I'm not sure you understand what the tragedy of the commons is (it refers to common property that doesn't have a distinct owner, and as such is not taken care of). You certainly don't understand why it doesn't apply here.
Energy that is so cheap that it is easier to give it away than to sell it will be given away, while money is made from other sources. For example, the energy is so cheap that it might not be cost effective to charge households for its use, but you WOULD charge customers that use more than a certain amount (ie factories, large buildings, etc). This is similar to the way we treat roads now. Yes, we pay a gas tax, but commercial vehicles pay a use tax that is assessed by the mile. If roads were so expensive that they couldn't pay for the roads that way, then it would be more likely for roads to cost money to use for individuals.
I think a major mental block you are dealing with here is the fact that you aren't able to wrap your mind around the way that economies of plenty work. This is understandable because almost all real goods are governed by scarcity economics. Luckily, we have created a realm that is governed by economics of plenty--the internet. Think about the way internet services are provided. Free email. Free websearch. Free porn. Free everything. Yet the services continue to be provided, even by big companies that use expensive infrastructure. There would be nothing to stop a company like Google from providing free power to consumers if they could do it effectively.
They will design things for those 3-D printers. Find new applications for robotics. Train AIs to do their jobs more efficiently. At worst, they become artists, or writers, or Youtube sensations.
Keep in mind that when the robots take over production, they drive costs down to nearly zero. If the markets are even marginally free, then the prices for those goods will fall dramatically, and people will be able to live just fine off of the few bucks they get from doing piecework.
That would be nice, but there are other factors at play, like the $1.75 trillion we spend on regulation each year, which is 10X more than we take in in corporate taxes. Just imagine the compliance costs...
Having one good year does not mean that the following year will be good. I don't know if you noticed, but there is a worldwide depression on.
Those will come. A bonus is a half measure when you can't afford to commit to higher wages yet.
Of course, the Chinese government could end their dollar peg and allow the value of those wages to rise, giving everyone in their country a de facto raise.
Yeah, how dare they make our decent, self-styled godly fascist CEOs look like money-grubbing scum.
FTFY.
The economy doesn't run on imagination.
Start protesting for increased nuclear research and a removal of the de fact ban on LFTR tech. It will be much more effective than bitching about CO2 emission without proposing solutions.
No. But you are defending mass murder because of some petty problem you have with Christianity.
I am an atheist. I also have a moral compass. It tells me that mass murder is bad. Aztecs committed ritual mass murder on a scale never seen before or since. The Mexican people were definitely better off under their harsh Christian rulers than they were before, but not as well of as they would have been under a more liberal form of government.
It sounds pretty refuted to me, just from the summary. 80% of the plankton fell all the way to the ocean floor.
I don't think you understand marine biology very well. There isn't much life in the open ocean, certainly not beneath the reach of the sun. Yes, there is LIFE there, but it's not the vast, sprawling jungle you seem to imagine. It's more like a desert.
A lot of us are. Nice strawman, though.
Carbon caps. Carbon taxes. No decrease in nuclear regulation. Increases in nuclear protests.
Somehow I don't think you have thought your brilliant plan all the way through.