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Nicky

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Everything posted by Nicky

  1. If the guy wants to learn how to read, there are easier materials to practice on than Atlas Shrugged.
  2. People can plan for falling into a punctuation mark of any kind, ( ), and put it in writing who they want making the decisions (with both their life and their property). If they don't, then, for lack of any better options, it's assumed that they would've wanted their closest relatives to make the calls. And it doesn't compare to abortion in any way. Abortion is a simply every woman's right.
  3. I'm not sure who you're talking about, but unless you are accusing me of turning a blind eye to some atrocity (and I can't imagine you are), I don't see how this is relevant to the topic at hand: the American far right. I've been to Germany, met a lot of people, and, as far as I've seen, Germans are extremely busy people, who occupy themselves with pretty much every activity imaginable (from extremely productive, scrupulous, hard work in the daytime to some of the most libertine expressions of sexuality I've ever seen, at night). Except for one: wallowing in shame. Haven't seen anyone do that. So I find it hard to accept that Germany's defining characteristics are self-denigration or any kind of wallowing. I also haven't come across any expressions of pride over that period of German history (and they really shouldn't be proud of it), but there was zero wallowing. To me, they appeared to have moved on from it, and are now occupying their time with entirely unrelated things. To the extent the people I met had some interest in politics, it was in the economy, and the various issues of the day, not anything to do with Nazi rule. There are of course activists on the far left and the far right who scream and shout their talking points all day, but every country has those. People like that don't define Germany any more than they define any other country. They're irrelevant extremists no one outside their little circle takes seriously.
  4. I agree with the fact that the American "alt right", and even the people who openly call themselves Nazis or white supremacists, are a joke. Immature idiots playing around, pretending to be big bad Nazis. They don't really mean what that entails, and would crap their pants the second they were asked to actually back up their pretend beliefs with action. But that's because the US is a prosperous, peaceful country with an effective judiciary that upholds property rights, free speech and religious freedom. Those aren't conditions a far right ideology would thrive in. Americans have it way too good to fully embrace an ideology that requires absolute submission to the state, and demands that individuals literally sacrifice their lives and their souls, in its service. Which is why it doesn't make sense to judge how dangerous the far right potentially is based on their current level of support. What makes far more sense is to judge the potential danger based on what happened in the past, when conditions became more accommodating to a strongman promoting this brand of fanatical, extreme altruism. What happened is exactly what the Nazi ideology means: millions of citizens of civilized, culturally rich nations willing to happily die and commit moral atrocities of the highest order in the service of the state, and do so with no regard to any of the values, decency or rationality that was integral to the culture of these nations for hundreds (or, in the case of Japan, over a thousand) years through their amazing, rich, benevolent history.
  5. Nonsense. The US has a long history of being a force for good in the world, and it's in its self interest to continue to be that. It may not always be done out of well articulated rational selfishness, but that doesn't change the fact that US foreign policy is contributing to a more free and more prosperous world, and that is to the benefit of the American people. Trump doesn't get that, because he doesn't understand what "good" even is. He has no principles. His idea of good leadership is what thugs like Putin are doing: a cynical, nationalistic drive to raise your country over others, without any regard to principles or decency. That's why he has expressed admiration for Putin.
  6. Objectivists are, as they always have been, opposed to both the collectivist right and the collectivist left. There is a third option your false alternative is seeking to obfuscate: individual rights. Objectivists are staying on that side. And Trump is just as far away from the side of individual rights as Obama was. Even further, if he ever gets around to implementing some of his deeply destructive, rights violating campaign promises.
  7. First off, "ordinary American" is demagogy, plain and simple. No point in even addressing it further. So, that aside, Trump is certainly "upholding" a specific segment of the population (not any more or less ordinary than any other segment) at the expense of others. But it's not really the segments you're describing (describing vaguely, on purpose). For instance, he's not upholding steel producers at the expense of Leftist intellectual elitists, he's upholding them at the expense of the individual rights of manufacturers who buy steel, all consumers who buy their products, and everyone who suffers from the inevitable retaliation to his tariffs. He's not upholding low skill American workers at the expense of college professors and Liberal politicians, he's upholding them at the expense of the rights (and lives) of economic migrants seeking to escape the misery of socialist hell holes. He's not upholding white nationalists at the expense of college professors, he's upholding them at the expense of 99.9% innocent Muslims and Hispanics. And so on and so forth. Whenever he "upholds" a neglected group, he does so by introducing laws that violate other people's rights, and almost never by eliminating laws that violate the rights of the people he's "upholding".
  8. It's hard for a rational observer to accept anything out of Trump's mouth as his honest views, but, to the extent his campaign platform had meaning, he was referring to the time before the Clinton presidency. His (supposed) gripe with American economic policy was mainly the trade agreements that promote a global marketplace. Just like the far left (the likes of Bernie Sanders) he blames the job losses that are an inevitable part of economic change and technological progress on supposedly "unfair trade". He also brought up the post-Reagan over-regulation and taxation, from time to time (and occasionally latched onto Reaganomics, just to placate economic conservatives), but it was mainly anti-globalism rhetoric.
  9. So you think the American government has been exactly the same degree of bad, for every second of its entire existence? You don't see a qualitative difference between let's say the Jefferson administration, the Lincoln administration, the FDR admin, or the Obama admin? No answer to the question which was best?
  10. What do you mean? When was the American federal government at its best? When was government in general at its best? When was American culture at its best? When was the American economy at its best? When was the so called "average American" at their best (although this one is still a pretty vague question, unless you come up with a decent way to define "average American")? When was the nation as a whole at its best? When were living conditions in America at their best? If you're asking "When was the nation as a whole at its best?", then the answer is either "right at the founding", or "late in the 19th century". The founding of the United States was the greatest achievement in North American history, and one of the greatest achievements in the history of mankind. So that would be the obvious answer. But founding something based on an ideal is one thing, and actually making it work, in a sustained way, is another. I think late in the 19th century, they were able to deal with some very major problems, like the civil war (and the divided political environment leading up to it), rapid (and therefor somewhat chaotic) economic development, and large scale immigration (also a source of instability), without severely compromising on the Founders' ideas of a limited government (that has to abide by rules as it attempts to keep the peace in a divided nation). How hard that is to do is evidenced by the fact that future generations failed to do it, and just allowed the government to ignore most of those pesky rules. If you mean something else, please specify.
  11. The concept of an "alpha" individual has a somewhat limited value in understanding human interactions (because one person doesn't always have a set alpha or beta role, they can play one or the other in different situations). And even where it does have value, alpha status isn't really obtained through conflict, it's obtained by being the best at cooperation. (this is true for other species, as well, btw....the "aggressive alpha" behavior is more often than not over-represented, a mistake usually stemming from people looking at the behavior of captive animals rather than animals in nature). In the scenario you describe, the "alpha" would be the person who makes good things happens for the others (i.e. makes sure everyone is comfortable and having a good time, acts as the "common denominator" everyone is friends with, everyone turns to with problems, the person who makes arrangements for parties or getaways, etc.) He/she is also the one who usually brings new people into the group, or welcomes newcomers brought in by others. When you play this role consistently (with or without hot girls around), everyone will turn to you for it, and you will have no problem being the acting "alpha" among your group of friends, at all times.
  12. This woman is handing out terrible advice. Short of a situation where safety is at stake, insisting on employees being on time every single day, without exception, causes unnecessary conflict (and stress and resentment, which leads to poor job performance). If they evaluated and rewarded their employees based on their overall level of commitment to the job, instead of setting up inflexible rules for them to follow, they would have a more productive business and happier clients.
  13. If there's one thing I'm certain about in all this, it's that it should not involve any lawyers. It's not a legal issue, it's an issue that should be dealt with by people talking to each other.
  14. Why not talk to some of the other parents, see what they think? Maybe they agree with you, and you can work together to make sure spending parents' money without asking first doesn't become a habit. But I would definitely pay, this time. There's no reason to embarrass your kid over it. There's also no reason to get upset about it. It's not exactly a big deal. I seriously doubt the guy goes around photographing children out of the blue, and then asking to be paid for it. The school or a teacher obviously contracted him to do this job. In fact they probably went to him, not the other way around. And if you don't pay for the photos, the school (or whichever teacher arranged this) will have to pay for it themselves.
  15. Not gonna go through your whole list of dubious claims, I'll just debunk this one because it happens to be the first: There are very few species that naturally pair into monogamous male/female couples (geese, for instance), and humans most definitely aren't one. Only very religious societies force people into sexual monogamy. In most cultures (including mildly religious western societies), the vast majority of people have multiple sexual partners. Furthermore, genetics shows humans to be a polygynous species. So, if you want to go by what "human nature naturally" does, then it would be dominant males having the exclusive right to mate with multiple females. All humans (who have been tested) descend from a single paternal ancestor, who lived 50,000 to 80,000 years ago, and passed on his genes by mating with many females. In general, there are far fewer male than female lineages...precisely because, through history, only a select few males had access to females.
  16. Finding someone I can love is hard for me too, and I'm straight. And sure, I concede it might be even harder for you...but it's still not as hard (and treacherous) a path as some untested, unscientific scheme you might find, that claims to be designed to change your sexual orientation. So, hard as it is, my advice is to keep looking. If you can't find anyone where you live, look elsewhere. Moving is also easier than what you're suggesting. In western Europe (UK, Netherlands, Germany, the Nordic states), for instance, in my experience at least, there are plenty of gay people who couldn't care less about politics...and if you have a degree and work experience, jobs are easy to find. P.S. There's also Asia. I've never met a Japanese person for instance (gay or straight), who had an issue with my political beliefs.
  17. A loan is a voluntary arrangement. Borrowing stolen money is complicity in the theft, not a "loan". Without any stolen money? No, it's not possible right now. It's also impossible with the amount of stolen money Elon Musk has at his disposal, you'd need a lot more. So if he claims he's going to get to Mars, he's either lying or delusional. The only entity with the necessary funding to get humans to Mars is NASA. Spending $20B/year on NASA, and then handing billions more over to pseudo private entities which are far behind NASA, is pointless duplicate spending meant to line pockets, not to get anyone to Mars. If we're going to use taxpayer money to get to Mars, let's at least be direct and transparent about it. That way, at least there's some public oversight over where the money is going, instead of it being sieved through opaque back channels into politically connected businessmen's pockets.
  18. This sums it up fairly well: http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-hy-musk-subsidies-20150531-story.html#page=1
  19. Guccifer 2, the persona claiming to be the lone hacker behind the DNC breach, logs into one of his social media accounts without turning on his VPN. When you do that, your IP is of course logged, and an IP's geographic location is public knowledge. So now one of the most amazing coincidences ever is also public knowledge: totally lone wolf and independent hacker Guccifer 2 lives on Grizodubovoy Street in Moscow...which, by total coincidence, happens to be the address of the GRU headquarters (Russian General Main Staff Intelligence Directorate, Russia's largest foreign intelligence agency). https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2018/03/dnc-lone-hacker-guccifer-2-0-pegged-as-russian-spy-after-opsec-fail/ This would be a huge scoop...if everything it proves (that the Russians hacked the DNC, and Guccifer 2 is a dummy account they've used to spread the material they obtained through that hack) wasn't already proven fact. As things stand, it's just anotherrock solid piece of evidence for trumpies to ignore.
  20. So you consider sex to be hedonism? Are you a religious fundamentalist?
  21. No, it doesn't. "take what you want" can mean very different things, depending on context. For instance "take what you want, if you feel like dying" and "take what you want, it's free" mean the exact opposite. In this case, the context is crime novels written by Agatha Christie. In them, the phrase "“Take what you want and pay for it, says God.” is presented as a "Spanish proverb" (it probably isn't, she just made it up...she didn't speak Spanish), by several characters, including Hercule Poirot, and is meant to illustrate that actions have consequences.
  22. According to his wikipedia page, Warren Buffett is "an avid Coca Cola drinker". And there's no evidence that he's on any kind of special diet, whatsoever. Seems like he eats the same food he sells. That doesn't really fit your description of what he's doing, does it? Someone knowingly selling what you describe as "poison" wouldn't eat and drink it himself, would he?
  23. I haven't said anything about his engineering. I'm not even aware of any engineering he's done. My posts are about his business practices. They're the same practices the villains in Atlas Shrugged rely on to get rich.
  24. Right. In another thread, I corrected you about a claim you made. It happened to be about Warren Buffett. If it was about Hitler, I would've corrected you all the same. Not out of a desire to defend anyone, but to seek the truth.
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