DanLane
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Posts posted by DanLane
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I think the concern is the portion of terrorism that is funded through multiple middle men by people who have no idea where their money is going. The government will theoretically be able to choose scapegoats to prosecute among the suckers
half a dozen transactions removed from any terrorist organizations. I'd have to read the proposal, but hopefully there is something in it to prevent such abuses.
Revoking the citizenship of those who support nations or organizations we are at war with is justified, and I support it, but there is a fine line between terrorism and "idealogically motivated crime". A step or two down the line, a law like this
could morph into a situation where robbing a grocery store means you do time, but robbing a grocery store and coincidentally disagreeing with the party in power will lose you your citizenship as well. That's a stretch though.
Hopefully this will deter terrorists' use of US citizenship to achieve their ends without violating anyone's rights, but, knowing the ominous meaning of bipartisan legislation that comes during a panic, this may be just another emergency that
can't be allowed to go to waste.
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This survey is disquieting. The summary indicates that between 21 and 33% of progressives can answer basic economic questions correctly, meaning that their evasions are fully conscious to the point of split personalities or they are altruistic enough to actually want to exterminate humanity rather than just preach about it. I would have hoped that the ignorant majority who are just along for the mythical free ride would be much larger, like 99.9%. Maybe some just guessed wrong on the questions. I thelps to speak very slowly and provide pictures.
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Arabs could simply steadily move across the border (thereby nullifying its existence), offer a lower price for their labour, etc etc, and render Israel non-existent.
What happens during etc etc in that statement? I don't see the connections between wages and nationhood. A general response that might help: there is no right to a job, there is no right to a wage, and the only states that deserve to exist are the ones which will protect the rights of all its citizens regardless of the will of the majority.
Edit: If you are implying military takeover or terrorist attacks of somekind would occur it has already been stated that 'open' borders are not literally open to anyone.
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No mater what, there will be droves of people running around in circles screaming "The market has failed!" when the fallout from this administration's crimes starts getting heavy, but the straw man will be much bigger if the GOP is in power. When it comes to 2012, I think I would definitely support this ticket if the congress goes back to blue, and abstain otherwise. I prefer actually voting for deadlock, since the "slow boat" wasn't so slow last time, but in this case the idea of putting Obama's name on a ballot is absolutely nauseating so I would compromise. On the other hand if the conservatives prove they have some balls before then I might vote for them regardless. Too early to tell.
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So, I guess blackmail law is just another broken part of our legal system?
What exactly is the legal justification that is used for its classification as a crime? Could someone challenge it in court?
The courts have a bad history of not knowing what force is. Blackmail is currently illegal largely for the same reasons that minimum wage laws stay in place: monetary incentive is widely believed to be synonymous with force. Money is considered a "dirty" value which distorts what is truly meaningful, and of course you can't tell the difference on your own. That and, in connection with what I said before, politicians hate the idea of contracts being made outside their explicit control. It would be great if someone fought this in court and won, but it's low on the priority list of current rights violations imo since its morality is questionable in the first place.
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That's an interesting take on it. Still is there any real reason why blackmail couldn't be made into a formal contract? It could be drawn up by attorneys bound by confidentiality agreements with copies of the contract given to only the two parties involved.
I can't think of anything wrong with that. So yes, I guess blackmail doesn't have to be all cloaks and daggers.
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In many ways blackmail is analogous to a settlement in court. You pay in order to preserve your reputation. The difference is that blackmail is not backed by a formal contract, and the only way to enforce its original terms is to resort to force. It tends to escalate, so it makes things easier on law enforcement to just throw a blanket ban over the whole thing.
Since the sensitive information involved is not necessarily concealing a crime, however, I see no reason for it to be illegal. Maybe someone can sucessfully argue something to the effect that government must root out unofficial contracts in order to enforce the legal ones, but that seems like a stretch. Either way it remains an incredibly stupid situation to get oneself into. It is also involves an evasion of reality in most cases.
If someone threatens to reveal embarassing but accurate information about you your rights are not violated, but does blackmail ever extend to "your money or your life" situations or is that always the domain of theft and assault? The differentiation is the use of force, so the challenge is to think of a blackmail scenario in which the threat implies the use of force, but does not constitute outright robbery. How about if I threaten to report you for tax evasion? It is an act which is not rightfully illegal, but its disclosure will cause a third party to violate your rights. Of course in a rights-respecting society such situations do not emerge, but it is worth considering.
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The new law, bill JCX-44-8, reads like this: "In general, the provision imposes tax on certain US citizens who relinquish their US citizenship and certain long-term US residents who terminate their US residency. Such individuals are subject to income tax on the net unrealized gain in their property as if the property had been sold for its fair market value."
If they can do that, why not just tax citizens of foreign countries too? If everyone lived here, the government would have all kinds of cool stuff to steal. Who do these foreigners think they are denying us that? It isn't fair.
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True enough. Technology will facilitate growth, growth will facilitate technology, and government will create new ways to disrupt that cycle and starve people to create panics which facilitate calls for more government.
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That's right, population growth is an exponetial function, and the end is coming any day now. I'll let you in on a little secret though, there is an organization that has been operating deep underground for decades on an intergalactic colony ship. I put in a good word and ensure your safe passage for a mere $2500, but it has to be cash so the multinational banking corporations don't get word and send their assassins. PM for details.
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Thanks for the link.
The more I think about it, the more I wish I could go on a mining op or a mission that wasn't thought of as "for the good of the corp". Of course what I do now is on a strictly voluntary basis for the fun of the game, keeping what I produce or investing it into corp projects based on how much I expect to benefit. On the other hand, the mindset of the people I do it with is one of carrying out a duty for the sake of the newer or less active players, competing to see who can build the most free replacement ships or ferry the most station fuel.
I might put in an app eventually.
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Concerning EVE online and TTI, their web site gives me an "Internet Explorer cannot display...". Last I heard they still had a fairly solid alliance going but that was a while ago. I might try making contact in game. I'm not interested in leaving the corp I have, but I'm curious about how TTI operates and where they have sov.
In game characters: Steroidonkey, main. (started out as a tauren warrior with a much better resemblance)
metalmetalmetalmetalmeta (metal indeed, and I now know the name length is limited to 24 characters)
Rightwingextremist (sarcasm, see http://www.capmag.com/articlePrint.asp?ID=5506 by Thomas Sowell)
Been playing close to a year now. My alliance (Animosity Conclave, not exactly roleplaying as Objectivists) is trying to sneak some 0.0 within a couple weeks. The former owners are friends who are circling the wagons and downsizing in preparation for a likely upcoming invasion. We have a handfull of carriers and such but if we get noticed, i.e. obliterated by said attackers, it'll be back to lvl4s, lowsec and wormholes.
I recommend the game to anyone who has any interest in MMOs. It has the most complex and player-driven market in the genre. Play it well enough and you can trade in-game profits for a 30-day game card. Skills train passively for those who have other things to do at any given time, but after the first few weeks your "level" affects your role and tactics in a fight rather than always deciding its outcome. The pvp is hardcore, your wrecks will be looted when you die. The makers are dedicated to a hands off policy when it comes to limiting game mechanics, and they release enormous free expansions every 8 months or so. You can own and develop space, and is has lazors.
Orders of magnitude better than WoW, never looking back.
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Thanks for the news. Haven't played DotA in years but this could definately bring me back. I bought Demigod despite the reviews and it just wasn't as deep.
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None of what I said above takes principles into account. Theft is a denial of the right to property is a denial of the right to life, including the right to life for the dying woman. Without a society with the rule of law and property rights, everyone concerned would probably have died of hunger in infancy.
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No. Consider the question: If you spent years of your life coming up with a cure for a disease, and then that cure was immediately and thanklessly stolen, how many more diseases will you cure? Assuming you care more about helping the sick than profit, how will you produce any drugs after all the means of their production are stolen? How about the patient who was willing to pay and who will now be denied treatment?
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I liked Avatar to the extent that I was able to mix suspension of disbelief with my own interpretation. I saw it as a film that looked back on history, specifically colonization an industrialization, and used sci fi concepts to create a scenario in which the mysticism of natives and the irrationality of environmentalists would actually (though inadvertently) apply. In this ironic context, the natives have developed their "home tree" into a functional center of civilization, primitive and collective as it may be. It can be considered their property, even though its outside appearance is still that of a tree. Not only that, but every living thing is interconnected, forming a database which can go so far as to store the minds of rational beings in a kind of afterlife. I'm waiting for them to come out with glasses which will put the villains into 3D along with the rest of the movie, but the point of their existence in contrast to the heroes is that one must always maintain an active mind and look beyond appearances when making decisions which could potentially violate peoples' rights. If this attitude was made explicit, with better plot/character developement, Avatar would be an excellent pro-reason, pro-life movie.
That said, I can't ignore that the tone of the film was anything but ironic. At some level Avatar is not intended as a differentiation between what does and does not violate rights, but is meant to be a blatant allegory claiming that what is happening or our world is identical to the events on Pandora. Viewers were intended, just for a fleeting moment, to see you and me and every supporter of capitalism and individual rights in the cockpits of those hellicopters going up in flames to the sounds of cheers. We don't have another world to go back to, so I wonder what the proposed solution would be?
Luckily, most people aren't ready for such a message, including the creators of the film. The way the whole thing was crafted is harmlessly ambiguous, divided between the latter message, which is at its core, and the former, which most viewers will walk away with by thier own choice. It will be a while yet before hollywood writers get creative enough to make a pure propaganda film that actually sells, so they will continue to be diluted with enough meaningful and enjoyable elements to keep me in the theater. Like many of you have already implied, the fact that Avatar was created via a big budget technological achievement means that nobody takes it too seriously, or sadly, that nobody has the philosophical foundations to know what to think one way or another.
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1. Twin Earth doesn't matter to me ethically. I have no concern.
2. The brain is responsible for one death either way. It might as well flip a coin.
Edit: I assume it controls the trolley during normal operation. Is the malfunction the fault of the brain? If not, then it isn't even responsible for one death.
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Those are both excellent, as well as everything I saw on the blogspot. Keep up the good work.
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I'm not an expert on the subject by any stretch, but my first instinct is to say psychological coercion or distortion (seperate from lieing) is only a violation of an adult's rights in the context of a forced relationship, i.e. it can only come from goverment officials or someone who is already committing a no-no harassing/stalking the victim.
Buyer beware.
Of course for a child there are all sorts of other considerations to make, but preventative measures against harmful interactions are the best course. Don't send your kid to public school on "Sing the Praises of our Furor" day or whatever Obama calls it, or at least arm them with objective knowledge about it beforehand.
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If there was one person on the planet, he would not own the planet, just as two people could not lay claim to a half-and-half split. They could never see all of their "property", let alone make any use of it. This is why every resource starts logically as unowned rather than mutually owned. If someone seeks to make use of an unclaimed resource(on unclaimed land), they may claim as much as they can use on a first-come first-served basis regardless of whether their claim constitutes an equal share. "But there would be monopolies and people would claim more than they could earn through their own effort!" Look around. There were some power struggles in such frontiers as the American west, but the injustice you might percieve can be discounted if one simply considers that no one has the right to come upon free, unowned land, and that those who did were simply lucky. Luck cannot be rationed without rights violations, so the question is, which alternative is worse? If that isn't enough, consider the modern world. I defy you to name a resource in today's world which can be monopolized without employing (government) theft. It is not a coincidence or the result of any legislation that there are no such resources. And if someone managed through some superhuman feat of business prowess to bring something like oil under his control, good for him. Nobody has an inherent right to oil. Reality has proven time and again that just as "Money will not serve the mind that cannot match it." (Ayn Rand's Atlas Shurugged, Money Speech), neither will land or anything on it, in it, or above it.
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I can't picture Hollywood doing anything but mercilessly butchering Atlas Shrugged, but maybe it would at least attract some interest in Objectivism. I know nothing about actors, but no big names come to mind.
"Negative liberties" a logical fallacy?
in Political Philosophy
Posted
What your friend needs to know is the difference between force and voluntary interaction. To say that the government's protection of rights falls under the same category of action as market transaction, and therefore that it constitutes interference, is to ignore this difference. Trade is a voluntary interaction. If the govenment is doing its job, what kind of voluntary action would be prevented or altered? The actions that government does properly interfere in are actions of force and fraud, which have nothing to do with economics.
He goes on to equate wealth with power. First, if a government is constitutionally limited to protecting rights, what favor can you buy from it? Why wouldn't his massive proletariat underclass, as the overwhelming majority, be able to keep you from giving more power to that government by voting? Incidentally, where does wealth come from, and when did it become a limited resource for so few to hoard?
Hope that helps, or at least leads to the right train of thought.