Political Leanings?

[Crayz9000]

Before the communists took over, Russia was completely authoritarian. When they took over it still was. Leading up to their downfall, they were too. However, for a little section in the middle, "the Communist government increased freedoms, and the Russian people enthusiastically responded by putting a man in space,..." (from a book on Russia).

What the fuck?

That's the craziest explanation of the Soviet space program that I've heard in my life.

[Ralnia]

Well, either way, they beat us to space.

[Nathan F]

No, the government pays farmers not to farm huge tracts of unused farmland to keep from flooding the market.

Yep, another really ridiculous thing we do - like pumping oil into the ground in Texas.

Pumping oil into the ground? Haven't heard that one...

you need to study some economics and government.

I will.

Good. On that note, I do to, as there isn't any limit to how much one can know.

The Russians were authoritarian WAY before their space program started. Heck, Stalin inherited an authoritarian society.

Before the communists took over, Russia was completely authoritarian. When they took over it still was. Leading up to their downfall, they were too. However, for a little section in the middle, "the Communist government increased freedoms, and the Russian people enthusiastically responded by putting a man in space,..." (from a book on Russia).

What book were you reading? 'Government My Way' by Josef Stalin? The Stalinist/Communist government was very oppressive and authoritarian, and if they increased freedom, then it was only by a small margin after his death. And the people didn't put Gagarin into space, the Russian government did. And there are possibly dozens of brave cosmonauts that died before they finally got one into space with Gagarin.

America has gone authoritarian?

Sorry, "is going". See Patriot Acts I and II.

While I don't agree with alot of the things that the PATRIOT Acts have done, they are hardly a step to an authoritarian police state.

tell me more about these 'flexcars'

Cars are parked around the city, owned by the Flexcar company. When someone in the Flexcar program needs to go on a trip, go to some small town for a funeral, etc., they can put their name on the list to have the flexcar then. Instead of keys to the car, there's a keypad into which you enter a password, and people have a limited amount of Flexcar time per month. The cars are hybrid gas/electric, making them very fuel-efficient, and if you could use mass transit to commute to wrok, you wouldn't even need a regular car.

Owned by the Flexcar Company? I thought all business had been abolished...

So, everyone now has to rent a car to go anywhere? Hmm...

So, you don't think someone has the right to sell their creations?

I think that they have the right to be paid for their inventions, but not the right to hoard them - excessive patentingprevents research.

You are backpedalling now. First you start out with an abolition of patents and copyrights. Then just go with an abolishion of copyrights. And now you say that people have the right to be paid for inventions, just not to hoard them.

Tell me, what are you going to do? Force people to give up their OWN intellectual property to the government and pay them a government-set price? Do you realize how easy that would be for the government to take advantage of? That is the single worst part of a communist government, the ease of the government to get too much power over the people.

Technically, you have already conceded the argument

I've conceded that one, now it's an argument about voting systems.

Condorcet voting. (if math scares you, skip to the next quote) In it, you rank the candidates in order of your preference (before you make the same mistake as RedImperator, no, this isn't IRV). Then, the order is put into a matrix, i.e., A, then D, then B, then C would be:

A B C D
A - 1 1 1
B 0 - 1 0
C 0 0 - 1
D 0 1 1 -

The matrices for each voter are added, and you look at the 1v1 votes. If one candidate beat all of the others, he wins. It's not perfect, since it's possible for unfairness to arise in the tiebraker. You can see www.electionmethods.org for more details, as well as one of Martin Gardner's books with an Easter Egg on the front (if I can find it, I'll tell you the title).

Interesting.... I'll have to look into this more thoroughly before I make any judgement, but, it seems promising.

Not much harder than what we have now - it's currently so complicated that IRS help lines got 25% of the question wrong.

That is beside the point. I am sayign that, with prices that aren't set by the government, price doesn't always reflect quality. It is just so much simpler to use a flat rate tax rate, considering that the effect would be negligible. It is inherintly more complicated to do this by a function of price than by a flat percentage rate.

Did I miss something? If so, what?

Er... Sorry, my bad. I was mixing this up with something else. Sorry!

[phongn]

Well, either way, they beat us to space.

Sputnik was a stunt with little scientific or military application (and at any rate, the US had their own program going on). Yuri Gagarin was first in space, yes, but the US could have done it first but for Von Braun's insistance on another test before manned launch.

In terms of useful applications for space, the West handily beat the Soviet Union with its technical superiority. Mir was an interesting toy, but what real value did it have?

[RedImperator]

All well and good, though you've yet to clarify to what degree abortion would be legalized

As I said above, I'm male, and I'll well justified in really debated the issue of abortion the moment I get pregnant.

When it's legal to abort a fetus with brain wave patterns functionally identical to an adult in an REM state, abortion ceases to be a matter of "it's a woman's body" and becomes a matter of "it's a human being's life".

And this is so much worse than corrupting them with the absolute power...

Again, I said I was leaning toward libertarian.

You've wavered between abolition of business and strict regulation of business with an eye towards paying everyone equally no matter what work they do. That's libertarian like my dick is 18 inches long. Either way would require a vast bureaucracy to run the economy and officials with what amounted to complete control over everyday life.

Abject poverty for everyone except a bureaucratic elite

1. Is that any worse than "Abject poverty for everyone except a corporate elite"? We're going toward that now.

Proof of impending Soviet-level individual poverty in the developed world?

2. Um, the main part of communism that I support is income near-equality.

Which is near impossible to maintain without a gigantic government bureaucratic structure controlling the entire economy. You can't achieve income equality without making it illegal for employers to raise wages to attract more qualified workers in tight labor markets, and outlawing private enterprse and/or setting up a progressive tax rate so steep it's effectively impossible to make more than X dollars. All of this, you remember, has been tried before, and it failed miserably because the market is not a social construct like Marx thought, it's the inevitable result of unlimited wants competing for limited resources, and unlimited wants have been hard-wired into human nature by evolution.

3. I said "abolition of business" just after reading Fast Food Nation, now I'm back to a more normal "heavy regulation of business."

You've taken away businesses' ability to pay what they want to their employees and you're going to have to take away their ability to charge what they want for their product unless you want food riots on your hands. This can work on a temporary basis, as it did during WWII (to keep wartime inflation under control--it should be noted as soon as they were lifted, there was a bout of serious inflation). Should you like to hear firsthand the effectiveness of these methods set in place permanantly, contact a psychic to consult the ghosts of Leonid Brezhnev and Diocletian.

With mandatory income equality, it doesn't really matter one way or another if you abolish business. The economy is entirely in the government's hands.

No problems here. It's a piece of shit. Ashcroft needs to be fired.

What's the current news on Patriot Act 2? Hopefully it's dead by now.

I don't think it's been sent to the judicial commttee yet. It's going to be gutted if it goes there--there's quite a few people on the Hill who are pissed of Justice dicked them around. At any rate, SCOTUS will have a field day with it if it ever gets passed.

"limited" when you decided to abolish all business

See above.

Ditto.

1) make people give up everything they own

Why would they need to do that. Again, limited communism.

Income equality implies banning income from investment, since that's where the majority of people with incomes over a million dollars get their money. Banning investment would include abolishing private property, since it can grow in value, or preventing me from charging more than I paid for it irregardless of its worth when I sell it, which is effectively the same thing. Under Marx, I lose my house, my retirement fund, and my Playstation. Under you, I get to keep the Playstation.

work productively knowing they have no incentive for success

In capitalism, people work for greed - they do whatever gives them the most money. In communism, people work at what they're interested in. If they don't work, they don't get paid (again, limited communism).

Wrong. Under capitalism, people work for greed (there are other reasons, which is why I'm going to teach instead of practice law, but greed is usually the primary motivator). Under Marx's theory, people work for the good of the whole. Under Communism in real life, people show up at their jobs drunk. You've picked choice number three. Yes, there are some glamour careers like medicine or law enforcement where people will work no matter what they're paid, but even in them, they're working for pay and a great many of them wouldn't be doing that job if they weren't getting paid for it (or perhaps Pennsylvania's doctors are going on strike tomorrow to protest rising malpractice insurance rates exclusively because they really really hate laywers). And what about the people who would prefer to sit on their asses all day? You say, "They'll work or they'll starve", which is all well and good and very libertarian of you, but you've taken away any incentive for them to be any good at whatever their job turns out to be. You think my dad spent 10 years crawling around oil refineries 14 hours a day wrestling multi-ton industrial valves in a Nomex firesuit in 100+ degree temperatures because it was fun, or because he was being paid $20.00/hr plus benefits and time-and-a-half? Think he would have done that if he could have been paid the same to sweep the floor for 8 hours a day and take nips out of a flask when the boss wasn't around? Call it limited communism, call it anything you want, you're still going to smack headfirst into the problems of the late Brezhnev era (once the Soviet Union had finished its postwar reconstruction) no matter how many times you tell yourself it'll be all better because you don't want to throw anyone in the gulag.

I'm not sure how you could save government money by banning private ownership of cars.

Studies put the government subsidy of cars at about $5 a gallon - about $660 billion/year. http://www.sierraclub.org/sprawl/articles/subsidies.asp has links to several studies.

Got any studies on how much it would cost to build and maintain a public transportation system so comprehensive that there would be no place anywhere in, say, the Boston-New York-Philadelphia-Baltimore-D.C. megalopolis outside of walking distance of a public transit stop? Flexcars help you, but not much because you'll need tens of thousands of them to service the outer suburbs, and they need fuel and maintenence, too (moreso than private cars, in fact, because people feel much less obligated to be careful with stuff that belongs to everyone than stuff that belongs to them, as you may freely observe in any public housing project). You could, of course, simply force everyone to move back into the cities, which simplifies your logistics greatly, but I'm betting you won't say that because that would show your "libertarian communism" to be a joke.

tell 280 million Americans they have to turn in their cars and give up their God-given (metaphorically speaking) right to go wherever the please when they please?

See "flexcars" and "feet". They're only giving up their right to drive everywhere, no matter how short the distance, in cars that could fit 8 people, not one.

I can't wait to hear the reaction from those same 280 million people when you tell them "see 'flexcars' and 'feet'". And most people who own cars drive everywhere BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO. I'm lucky in where I live during the school year is a very traditionally built small town where I can walk to find the necessities, but where I grew up it was half a mile to the nearest grocery store alone, and that was a relatively dense suburb. Now, of course, it's been private car ownership that facilitated the development of these suburbs to begin with, but seeing as you lack a time machine, you're stuck with the way things are in the year 2003.

and it means I can get paid when other people want to enjoy the fruits of my hard work for no investment of effort on their part

As I've said several times now, the "turd out in East from writing an identical story..." could do so, but you'd still be paid.

In other words, you'd gut intellectual property rights by taking away from me the right to refuse permission to use my work to anyone I please AND the right to charge what I (or my publisher, in my case) please for permission to use that work, because you've already made everyone's incomes equal. I put in the investment of time and effort (and in the case of most patent holders, money) to create something, and you're insisting that someone who didn't do a damn thing to help create it should be allowed to use it for a fee the government sets for me and alter it however he likes and take credit for it, and I and every other patent and copyright holder can suck shit if we don't like it. You keep babbling about how you're a LIMITED communist, you want LIMITED restrictions on this and that, but your ideas are de facto in favor of EXACTLY what I've been accusing you of. Whether this is because you haven't totally thought them through or you're a damned liar is beyond my ability to ascertain at this point.

Condorcet method has a serious mathematical problem called the No-Show paradox

Ummm, apparently you haven't really looked at that site - a similar voting method, IRV voting (the worst system actually used) has that problem, but Condorcet does not. If you'd looked beyond the first page, you'd know that.

I did look at the site, as well as a paper which laid out in detail the No-Show Paradox problem within Condorcet. However, as my exposure to the really deep math in vote-counting methods is limited, I'll concede this point for lack of ability to hold up my end of the argument. However, the reason you used to claim the Bush administration is not legitimate could be applied to every single American adminstration since John Adams (since Washington ran unopposed both times) as well as every single other democratic government that uses plurality. Do please produce the theoretical basis for claiming mathematical quirks in a voting system instantly strip all legitimacy from a democratically elected government.

Constitutional scholar and political expert

You're not one either.

I'm less than two weeks away from my bachelor's in political science, actually, but since I don't need to appeal to my own authority to win this argument, I didn't bring it up.

you stripping away my legal right to be compensated for my creative work

I've stopped counting how many times I've said this, but you'd still get paid.

And for the second time, you've stripped away my ability to charge what I want and refuse access to whoever I want and my ability to prevent others from modifying the work and claiming it as their own, so there's no damn difference.

Education doesn't seem high on your list either.

While we're on the subject of education, do you want a math problem?

I've had quite enough of that, thank you. Since math is totally irrevelant to the part of this discussion not related to the condorcet voting method, which I've already conceeded, and since your knowledge of political theory, economics, history and basic human nature, all of which ARE relevant to this entire discussion is demonstrably deficient, the insult stands.

<snip political compass and other stuff>

A communist government would probably scrap them, and recycle all materials for construction of military vehicles.

And I'd scrap them, then recycle all the materials for other stuff.

Instantly creating a steel glut and causing you to take a net loss on each car scrapped even if you took them without compensation (not counting the armed rebellion you'd have to put down if you did try to confiscate everyone's car without compensation, and maybe even if you did pay them).

I think that his intention by banning automobiles is to increase traffic security,

That and anti-pollution.

Hybrid automobiles reduce pollution already, and if thermal depolymerization works as advertised, fuel-grade hydrocarbons could be produced from carbohydrates for the same cost as extracting petroleum from the ground without a net gain in carbon in the biosphere. And speaking of pollution, the lead from all the bullets you'd have to use to put down that armed rebellion I mentioned is poisonous, and I hear the bullets themselves are pretty harmful when they run into people.

Not without killing a lot of innocents in the process, at least.

As if communists are the only ones who have killed lots of innocent civilians - see "the firebombing of Tokyo" and "A-bombs".

Of course since Communism is a miserable failure and utterly unworkable in any form (limited or otherwise) on the level of the nation state, the people Communists kill die for nothing. At least we won WWII (I'll leave the rest of your statement alone, since I don't feel like yet another damn Hiroshima debate).

[Nathan F]

As if communists are the only ones who have killed lots of innocent civilians - see "the firebombing of Tokyo" and "A-bombs".

At least we won WWII (I'll leave the rest of your statement alone, since I don't feel like yet another damn Hiroshima debate).

But I do. I would like to hear the reasons the he has for not dropping the atomic bomb....

[Ralnia]

Pumping oil into the ground? Haven't heard that one...

My social studies teacher (moderate) told me.

What book were you reading?

No, a book at the library. The next time I go there, I'll find it and tell you the title/author.

they are hardly a step to an authoritarian police state.

They're a step toward it. There's still along way to go, but they're taking us in that direction.

Owned by the Flexcar Company? I thought all business had been abolished...

I was explaining the program here in Seattle. I'd rather have them be owned by the government.

So, everyone now has to rent a car to go anywhere?

No, see "mass transit", "bikes", and "feet". Those would take care of most trips.

First you start out with an abolition of patents and copyrights. Then just go with an abolishion of copyrights. And now you say that people have the right to be paid for inventions, just not to hoard them.

I never started out with "an abolition of patents and copyrights", I started at "abolishion of copyrights" (look back in the thread). I was mistaken in the definition of patent, so I thought that that meant "people have the right to be paid for inventions, just not to hoard them." So I've gone back 1/2 a step, not 2.

Tell me, what are you going to do? Force people to give up their OWN intellectual property to the government and pay them a government-set price?

Two cases.
1. They don't want to be a writer. Under communism, they can do something that they do want to do instead.
2. They do want to be a writer. In this case, they get income from the government for being a writer, and they're writing because they like it, not to get rich.

That is the single worst part of a communist government, the ease of the government to get too much power over the people.

I agree.

It is just so much simpler to use a flat rate tax rate

True. The f(price) idea was just something I tyhought of then, back to my original idea. However, I have alread conceder to a flat sales tax, as long as income level remained similar.

Yuri Gagarin was first in space, yes, but the US could have done it first but for Von Braun's insistance on another test before manned launch.

The American government was scared enough that they poured billions into math&science education. It didn't have a scientific or militaru application, but it had (or acquired) a political one.

the people Communists kill die for nothing

Just curious, what did the Native Americans that Andrew Jackson (the inventor of germ warfare) killed die for?

And speaking of pollution, the lead from all the bullets you'd have to use to put down that armed rebellion I mentioned is poisonous

You could just phase the cars out - start by killing the subsidies for driving. This itself would make driving less attractive, but wouldn't stop it. Then, set a fairly high (hybrid-level) fuel efficiency standard for new cars. The people would still have their old cars, so they wouldn't be very unhappy. After a while, put an excise tax on gas, and raise itslowly until a generation of people grows up knowing that mass transit is much cheaper. Then the cars that did exist could rust away in the junkyards.

you've stripped away my ability to charge what I want

See above.

However, the reason you used to claim the Bush administration is not legitimate could be applied to every single American adminstration since John Adams (since Washington ran unopposed both times)

Only those that would have lost under Condorcet.

as well as a paper which laid out in detail the No-Show Paradox problem within Condorcet

I'd like to see that paper, since I thought Condorcet is relatively free from no-show.

the right to charge what I (or my publisher, in my case) please for permission to use that work

See above.

And most people who own cars drive everywhere BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO

Most people who own cars use them mostly for their commutes. This is exactly the kind of thing that mass transit is perfect for.

Got any studies on how much it would cost to build and maintain a public transportation system so comprehensive that there would be no place anywhere in, say, the Boston-New York-Philadelphia-Baltimore-D.C. megalopolis outside of walking distance of a public transit stop?

Jeez, every post of mine on transportation so far just points out anothert one of "feet", "bikes", "flexcars", and "mass transit". In this case, replace "walking distance" with "biking distance" (put bike racks at transit stops), and it's not unreasonable.

you'll need tens of thousands of them to service the outer suburbs

In this case, see "mass transit".

people show up at their jobs drunk

Then they don't get paid. Since pay isn't automatic, they still have greed as an incentive, also.

(the rest of that post)

Ok, ok, very limited capitalism (especially on business). It's not too much different than limited communism, but it counters most of your post.

Under Marx, I lose my house, my retirement fund, and my Playstation. Under you, I get to keep the Playstation.

Funny.

Income equality implies banning income from investment

Or just increasing the capital gains tax. It wouldn't be complete equality, but I didn't say I wanted that.

I don't think it's been sent to the judicial commttee yet.

Good.

You've taken away businesses' ability to pay what they want to their employees

No, just limited it - I didn't say I wanted complete income inequality, so businesses would still have a fair amount of control.

You can't achieve income equality without making it illegal for employers to raise wages to attract more qualified workers in tight labor markets

But you can have near-equality.

and/or setting up a progressive tax rate so steep it's effectively impossible to make more than X dollars

But you can have near-equality.

Proof of impending Soviet-level individual poverty in the developed world?

Probably not that bad, but read Fast Food Nation.

You've wavered between abolition of business and strict regulation of business

Now more towards the latter.

paying everyone equally no matter what work they do.

No, no pay for no real work, and some variation for quality of work.

ceases to be a matter of "it's a woman's body"

If it's still in them, I'll let them debate it.

But I do. I would like to hear the reasons the he has for not dropping the atomic bomb....

The atomic bomb killed lots of civilians, and not much military materiel. It was used because it was determined that it would be faster and/or cheaper than invasion. (Tossing out a possible strategy, there are probably thousands of others that would have killed less people) We had the power to kill the Japanese navy. Without it, we could have blockaded Japan, which has little natural resources itself. By only sending in food (from our own ships), we could keep them from maintaining their war machine. Japan could have held out for a while longer, but its empire would have crumbled without contact and/or supplies.

[phongn]

Pumping oil into the ground? Haven't heard that one...

My social studies teacher (moderate) told me.

That's all well and good, but what source does he have? Certainly, if he has first-hand knowledge of it, that's one thing, but if he just said it?

they are hardly a step to an authoritarian police state.

They're a step toward it. There's still along way to go, but they're taking us in that direction.

Every so often the United States goes through a phase that is more authoritarian than usual; I doubt that it'll get worse. Certainly, we're nowhere near as bad as, say, when McCarthy was waving his blank sheets of paper or when Hollywood was blacklisting people.

2. They do want to be a writer. In this case, they get income from the government for being a writer, and they're writing because they like it, not to get rich.

But they get no protection from people who copy their work! Cannot another person take the work, slap on their own name and go to the Government Bookseller and have it sold? Is that fair to the original writer? Who will write when charlatans republish their works under a new name, even if just for enjoyment?

Yuri Gagarin was first in space, yes, but the US could have done it first but for Von Braun's insistance on another test before manned launch.

The American government was scared enough that they poured billions into math&science education. It didn't have a scientific or militaru application, but it had (or acquired) a political one.

We were scared, but it was a stunt that was easily latched on to by the public. What did it matter?

As for pouring money into education, that was a good thing, yes - but it was also somewhat misguided. They saw the number of graduate degrees coming from the Soviet Union, but they were highly-specific technical degrees unlike the much broader education an American graduate student would have.

the people Communists kill die for nothing

Just curious, what did the Native Americans that Andrew Jackson (the inventor of germ warfare) killed die for?

The Romans had a form of germ warfare long before the United States existed. If you're referring to using blankets as a smallpox vector, it doesn't work and IIRC hadn't been tried since the Colonial era (and then only in one documented instance). Why did the American Indians die? Because American settlers were heading West, the Indians didn't want them there and a war started.

At any rate, this is a red herring. Don't avoid the question.

And most people who own cars drive everywhere BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO

Most people who own cars use them mostly for their commutes. This is exactly the kind of thing that mass transit is perfect for.

I drive 60 miles per day (total). The time it takes on mass transit (and I used it quite often when visiting my relatives in Chicago) far exceeds the 30-60 minutes I drive each way. Furthermore, with the way my area is layed out, mass transit is not effective. It only works in densely-populated areas.

Jeez, every post of mine on transportation so far just points out anothert one of "feet", "bikes", "flexcars", and "mass transit". In this case, replace "walking distance" with "biking distance" (put bike racks at transit stops), and it's not unreasonable.

Ever live on Gulf Coast Florida? Half of the year it rains every evening. It is unreasonable to expect someone to bike through that.

The atomic bomb killed lots of civilians, and not much military materiel. It was used because it was determined that it would be faster and/or cheaper than invasion. (Tossing out a possible strategy, there are probably thousands of others that would have killed less people) We had the power to kill the Japanese navy. Without it, we could have blockaded Japan, which has little natural resources itself. By only sending in food (from our own ships), we could keep them from maintaining their war machine. Japan could have held out for a while longer, but its empire would have crumbled without contact and/or supplies.

The IJN was already destroyed by this point in time, as well as the majority of their merchant marine and their intracoastal sealift capability (exceptionally important in Japan, as that constituted the bulk of their logistics and transportation.) Food distribution will become impossible - and you can't just leave those ships alone, because they can carry war material just as easily as they can carry rice.

And if you send in food? Do you seriously think that it'll be distributed to the people? Bull: it'll get sent to the soldiers waiting to defend their Emperor. In the meantime, the populace will be starving to death.

[Aeolus]

The atomic bomb killed lots of civilians, and not much military materiel. It was used because it was determined that it would be faster and/or cheaper than invasion. (Tossing out a possible strategy, there are probably thousands of others that would have killed less people) We had the power to kill the Japanese navy. Without it, we could have blockaded Japan, which has little natural resources itself. By only sending in food (from our own ships), we could keep them from maintaining their war machine. Japan could have held out for a while longer, but its empire would have crumbled without contact and/or supplies.

How many people would have died due to the blockade. I don't know but I suspect more than died in the 2 atomic bombings. Seiges are bloody affairs. After all far mor people died in the fire bombing of Tokyo than died at Hiroshema

[Nathan F]

Pumping oil into the ground? Haven't heard that one...

My social studies teacher (moderate) told me.

Your social studies teacher told you...

One of the more important things I have learned in college is that, when it comes to political issues, it is best to backcheck any accusations that are made.

What book were you reading?

No, a book at the library. The next time I go there, I'll find it and tell you the title/author.

Please do.

they are hardly a step to an authoritarian police state.

They're a step toward it. There's still along way to go, but they're taking us in that direction.

My friend, we still have a LOOOOOONG ways to go to get anywhere NEAR an authoritarian state.

Owned by the Flexcar Company? I thought all business had been abolished...

I was explaining the program here in Seattle. I'd rather have them be owned by the government.

Ah, ok.

]

So, everyone now has to rent a car to go anywhere?

No, see "mass transit", "bikes", and "feet". Those would take care of most trips.

You know what I mean... You would have to rent a car to go anywhere that the goverment run mass transit didn't go, which would be ALOT of places.

First you start out with an abolition of patents and copyrights. Then just go with an abolishion of copyrights. And now you say that people have the right to be paid for inventions, just not to hoard them.

I never started out with "an abolition of patents and copyrights", I started at "abolishion of copyrights" (look back in the thread). I was mistaken in the definition of patent, so I thought that that meant "people have the right to be paid for inventions, just not to hoard them." So I've gone back 1/2 a step, not 2.

Nope. You went back two steps. You should have known the definition to what you were saying. Think before you speak (or type). First: Abolition of Copyright. 2: Eh, Limited Abolition of Copyright. 3: Er, nevermind, Don't abolish copyright, just don't let people hoard things.

Tell me, what are you going to do? Force people to give up their OWN intellectual property to the government and pay them a government-set price?

Two cases.
1. They don't want to be a writer. Under communism, they can do something that they do want to do instead.
2. They do want to be a writer. In this case, they get income from the government for being a writer, and they're writing because they like it, not to get rich.

1. Huh? If someone isn't a writer, then why would they do it in the first place? Under communism, and for it to even begin to work, the government HAS to set up jobs for everyone, and job quotas if not that.
2. So, now all writers are government employees? Can you say 'State Run Media'? You apparently do not realize how these thigns you are saying are the building blocks for an authoritarian stalinist state.

That is the single worst part of a communist government, the ease of the government to get too much power over the people.

I agree.

Then why are you still fighting for it?

It is just so much simpler to use a flat rate tax rate

True. The f(price) idea was just something I tyhought of then, back to my original idea. However, I have alread conceder to a flat sales tax, as long as income level remained similar.

Concession Accepted.

[Illuminatus Primus]

I like the concept of communism, but I know it ain't gonna happen.

Unique man.

I find Communism positively perverse.

[Nathan F]

The atomic bomb killed lots of civilians, and not much military materiel. It was used because it was determined that it would be faster and/or cheaper than invasion. (Tossing out a possible strategy, there are probably thousands of others that would have killed less people) We had the power to kill the Japanese navy. Without it, we could have blockaded Japan, which has little natural resources itself. By only sending in food (from our own ships), we could keep them from maintaining their war machine. Japan could have held out for a while longer, but its empire would have crumbled without contact and/or supplies.

First off, do you realize how many people would have been killed in an invasion? Third party estimations put civilian casualties literally in the hundreds of thousands. And then you have the American casualties. Those have been estimated as high as a million. The Japanese were training their own civilians, including, but not limited to, women, children, and the elderly. They were teaching them to fight with pitchforks and wooden boards. They were literally going down to the last man. The A-bomb showed them that we could obliterate their island without loosing a man. Then you add the last ditch army. This was an army of people who were not afraid to fight to the last and sacrifice themselves for their Emporer. Japan was ALREADY blockaded. They were rationing themselves and stockpiling goods. I bring back the point of them dying for their emperor. I am also assuming you have not seen a Japanese Type 99 (i believe that is the number...) 'Last Ditch' rifle. It has crude unadjustable sights (might as well rip them off and point and shoot), rough welds, and a wooden butt plate. This thing was just built enough to shoot a round, and sometimes not that much.

So, here is the option: Loose thirty or forty thousand Japanese civilians in two attacks (or a blockade, you pick and choose), or, loose hundreds of thousands of Japanese of civilians, the ENTIRE Japanese Army, and then the hundreds of thousands of American soldiers that would be lost in an invasion.

Might I also add that I could very well not be here if it wasn't for the A-Bomb. My grandfather was preparing for one of the initial invasion waves. Look up above at the numbers on American casualties, and you will see where I am getting at.

[Nathan F]

Dang, I wish there was an edit button...

Someone just pointed out an error, and I see an error I made.

There were approx 170,000 deaths total in the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. But, it still pales in comparison to the possible millions of civilian and military casualties that would be killed in an invasion or blockade.

[Crayz9000]

Would one of the mods mind un-hijacking this thread?

[Einhander Sn0m4n]

Would one of the mods mind un-hijacking this thread?

LOL! The trouble seems to be one 'Ralnia' bozo...

BTW I'm pretty much libertarian: Low Taxes, Welfare Reform, Separate Church and State, and NO GOVERNMENT MEDDLING IN PURELY MORAL AFFAIRS, SECOND AMENDMENT ISSUES, OR RACE POLITICS WHATSOEVER!

[RedImperator]

Pumping oil into the ground? Haven't heard that one...

My social studies teacher (moderate) told me.

Actually, I've heard of that. It's supposedly cheaper and safer than storing reserves in tanks.

they are hardly a step to an authoritarian police state.

They're a step toward it. There's still along way to go, but they're taking us in that direction.

As phong said, the US swings back and forth between authoritarian and relaxed states. Bad as PATRIOT is, that hug-cuddly liberal Woodrow Wilson signed laws that made it a Federal crime to criticize the government during WWII.

So, everyone now has to rent a car to go anywhere?

No, see "mass transit", "bikes", and "feet". Those would take care of most trips.

I'm getting tired of repeating myself, so maybe a picture will help.



That's the city of Philadelphia and its inner ring of suburbs. The only densely built up urban areas are the city of Philadelphia itself (it's built densely like an eastern city, not spread out like LA or Phoenix), and the smaller cities of Chester and Camden. Everything else is suburbs of varying density. I'd tell you where the clusters of industry and residences are, but that would be pointless--industry is scattered in small islands of industrial parks, and most people live in subdivisions built over farmland and scattered all over the map. The usual model is that houses or factories and warehouses are within around cul de sacs with one or two connections onto an arterial road (the major ones are the ones drawn on the map--the intricate web of minor arteries are invisible at this resolution). There are, within the area depicted on this map, about two million people. Explain to me, WITHOUT repeating your "feet, bikes, and transit" tautology, how to economically get those people to their jobs, schools, supermarkets, and what-have-you, without cars. Then tell me how you're going to do that for every other major metropolitan city in the country (I'm being generous here, by the way--I could extend the region to include the exurbs out in Bucks, Delaware, and Chester counties, or the Trenton and Wilmington regions, all of which are part of the Delaware Valley and linked to Philadelphia.)

First you start out with an abolition of patents and copyrights. Then just go with an abolishion of copyrights. And now you say that people have the right to be paid for inventions, just not to hoard them.

I never started out with "an abolition of patents and copyrights", I started at "abolishion of copyrights" (look back in the thread). I was mistaken in the definition of patent, so I thought that that meant "people have the right to be paid for inventions, just not to hoard them." So I've gone back 1/2 a step, not 2.

So why, exactly, if you put the time, money, and effort into inventing something, which when you factor in things like market research, safety testing, liability research, etc. can take years and cost hundreds of millions of dollars, do you not get the exclusive right to decide who uses that product, and the right to charge whatever you like for its use? And without this right, who do you think is going to spend the time and money to do this? Oh, you might get your Edison wannabees tinkering in their garages, but you think anyone's going to spend millions of dollars (if it's even there to invest) if there's no way to recoup their investment? You're steadily retreating from Communism, and that's nice, but you're still not understanding the importance of the profit motive in driving the advance of society.

Tell me, what are you going to do? Force people to give up their OWN intellectual property to the government and pay them a government-set price?

Two cases.
1. They don't want to be a writer. Under communism, they can do something that they do want to do instead.
2. They do want to be a writer. In this case, they get income from the government for being a writer, and they're writing because they like it, not to get rich.

Case number three, the one which blows your tidy little theory apart because unlike your examples, it actually applies to the real world: People spend months or years writing a novel or screenplay or composing an album, see it become popular, get paid a fraction of what it's worth and see any asshat steal his ideas and get paid the same price for them by the government, give the hell up, and don't write for publication anymore. They push brooms for a living and maybe jot down stories in their free time or put on shows for their friends in thier garage. Trust me, I know writers, both journalists and novelists, and they all say the same thing: once you get over the thrill of seeing your work in print, you want your damn money.

That is the single worst part of a communist government, the ease of the government to get too much power over the people.

I agree.

And in all these kilobytes of pinko argle-bargle, you've yet to explain how to prevent that. Concession accepted, Mr. Libertarian sir.

It is just so much simpler to use a flat rate tax rate

True. The f(price) idea was just something I tyhought of then, back to my original idea. However, I have alread conceder to a flat sales tax, as long as income level remained similar.

So we agree on something, albeit for different reasons.

<snip stuff on space that Phong is handling quite well on his own>

the people Communists kill die for nothing

Just curious, what did the Native Americans that Andrew Jackson (the inventor of germ warfare) killed die for?

Alexander the Great catapulted plague victims over city walls, so Andrew Jackson hardly invented germ warfare. Second, they died for the same thing Gallic Celts, Hittites, Ostrogoths, Nubians, the Indus Valley dwellers, Australian aborigines, the pre-Colombian Mesoamerican civilizations subdued by the Maya and the Aztecs, and countless hundreds of other vanished tribes and civilizations died for: the expansion of a larger, more technically advanced civilization. Is it good that a lot of innocent people died? No. Were abuses committed by the advancing civilization which were barbaric and unnecessary in advancing the goal of spreading across the continent? Yes. Would I trade modern North American civlization--the U.S. and Canada--for what they replaced? No, and neither would you.

Oh, and as for your admission that the people who died in the name of Communism died for nothing? Concession accepted.

And speaking of pollution, the lead from all the bullets you'd have to use to put down that armed rebellion I mentioned is poisonous

You could just phase the cars out - start by killing the subsidies for driving. This itself would make driving less attractive, but wouldn't stop it. Then, set a fairly high (hybrid-level) fuel efficiency standard for new cars. The people would still have their old cars, so they wouldn't be very unhappy. After a while, put an excise tax on gas, and raise itslowly until a generation of people grows up knowing that mass transit is much cheaper. Then the cars that did exist could rust away in the junkyards.

Try not to backpedal straight into an oncoming bus (an efficient component of a functional mass transit system). Now we're going to "gradually phase out" cars. So much for "see feet, bikes, and transit", huh? By the way, my map is still up there. Explain how you're going to build and pay for a transit system that can serve the suburbs, and then justify banning private ownership of automobiles instead of relying on new technology to reduce pollution and, if you insist on reducing car use, intelligent urban planning that makes walking and transit cost effective.

you've stripped away my ability to charge what I want

See above.

I did see above. I refuted above. You're repeating your "you still get paid" tautology. Tell me, if the government pays you, can they quarter soldiers in your house without your permission?

However, the reason you used to claim the Bush administration is not legitimate could be applied to every single American adminstration since John Adams (since Washington ran unopposed both times)

Only those that would have lost under Condorcet.

I like how you snip the second half of my points to make it look like you've totally addressed what I had to say. I told you to produce the political theory that justifies stripping legitimacy from a presidential adminstration over mathematical quirks in the voting method. Dodge the question again, and I'll assume you've conceeded that point as well.

as well as a paper which laid out in detail the No-Show Paradox problem within Condorcet

I'd like to see that paper, since I thought Condorcet is relatively free from no-show.

A strong No-Show paradox...

the right to charge what I (or my publisher, in my case) please for permission to use that work

See above.

Seen, refuted. And stop taking my responses so out of context even I have to go back and re-read what I wrote to figure out what the hell you're talking about. You're not just snipping for space, you're snipping relevant material.

And most people who own cars drive everywhere BECAUSE THEY HAVE TO

Most people who own cars use them mostly for their commutes. This is exactly the kind of thing that mass transit is perfect for.

IF industrial, commerical, and residential areas are clustered together in some sort of order, which they're not in most metro areas, which is the core of your problem. You're mostly right about the commutes--many city dwellers don't own cars, and lifelong city dwellers may not even have liscenses. Unfortuately, you can't eliminate the commutes and you can't economically substitute transit without 1) spending more than you are maintaining a road network, and 2) sapping productive time sticking people on buses and trains that have to travel between widely dispersed clusters of industry and residences. For Chrissakes, it takes longer for me to get to school on the train than it does by car, and the train has an arrow-straight run between here and there and stops in the middle of campus, while when I drive I go at least a mile out of my way to the east over a network of hilly, twisting backroads to avoid the stoplights on Montgomery Avenue.

Got any studies on how much it would cost to build and maintain a public transportation system so comprehensive that there would be no place anywhere in, say, the Boston-New York-Philadelphia-Baltimore-D.C. megalopolis outside of walking distance of a public transit stop?

Jeez, every post of mine on transportation so far just points out anothert one of "feet", "bikes", "flexcars", and "mass transit". In this case, replace "walking distance" with "biking distance" (put bike racks at transit stops), and it's not unreasonable.

BZZZZZZT! WRONG! They have to be within walking distance because even if they bike to one station, they have to WALK to their final destination when they get off at the other station. I've worked in industrial parks where it's impossible to comfortably walk from one warehouse to the next, so you'd need multiple bus or transit stops within one complex. I hope you can fit that many zeroes on a check.

you'll need tens of thousands of them to service the outer suburbs

In this case, see "mass transit".

I mean the exurbs where even by your standards settlement is so dispersed mass transit would be totally impractical.

people show up at their jobs drunk

Then they don't get paid. Since pay isn't automatic, they still have greed as an incentive, also.

No, they don't. They have bare survival. That was their incentive in Communist Russia, too, and in Russia, people knew to read the date stamp on products to make sure it wasn't made on Monday or Friday, because those were the days where everyone was drunk. I love how you think you've outsmarted millions of people with years of experience avoiding work in a system that REWARDS work, and think you can stick them in a system where there's little to no incentive for doing more than the barest minimum necessary to keep food on the table and still have a productive economy. I'd challenge you to prove this, but what would be the point? You know and I know that you can't and I know I've got a mountain of real-world evidence backing up my position to bury any half-assed theory you manage to scrounge up between now and when you post your reply.

(the rest of that post)

Ok, ok, very limited capitalism (especially on business). It's not too much different than limited communism, but it counters most of your post.

No it most certainly does NOT counter most of my post. Believe it or not, but changing the fucking NAME of your theory doesn't change it's fucking content, its predictions, or the fact that it's Goddamn wrong. Concession accepted on every point you thought you'd handwave away with one sentence, especially since you immediately followed it up with an admission that you're not really changing any of your views anyway.

[qupte]

Under Marx, I lose my house, my retirement fund, and my Playstation. Under you, I get to keep the Playstation.

Funny.[/quote]

And true, which you didn't bother to refute. For those of you readers who don't know the original context of that comment, I was refuting his claim that he could mandate income equality without outlawing private property ownership and private investment. Concession accepted, Mr. Limited Communist.

Income equality implies banning income from investment

Or just increasing the capital gains tax. It wouldn't be complete equality, but I didn't say I wanted that.

Making your position so ambiguous you can't get pinned down and hammered does not constitute winning the argument. Do you want income equality or not? If you want equality, complete or otherwise, you can forget investment, because investment wealth is impossible for the government to control without setting a tax rate so high nobody will invest anyway. If you want just wealth redistribution on even the Western European model, you've just admitted Communism doesn't work because wealth redistribution implies somebody is generating wealth.

I don't think it's been sent to the judicial commttee yet.

Good.

I can't confirm that, mind you. I don't feel like trawling through the Congressional Record to find out for sure. I'm not turning up any new news about it, at any rate.

You've taken away businesses' ability to pay what they want to their employees

No, just limited it - I didn't say I wanted complete income inequality, so businesses would still have a fair amount of control.

What the hell is "limited" income equality? Either businesses have the ability to pay the fair market salary to high-value employees or they don't. If they do, you're a capitalist, and concession accepted that communism doesn't work. If they don't, you're back in Leonid Brezhnev land, and concession accepted that communism doesn't work. Even in limited capitalist countries with extremely high tax rates like Sweden prior to 1991 (and I'm being VERY generous with the definition of capitalism here), there's no cap on income.

You can't achieve income equality without making it illegal for employers to raise wages to attract more qualified workers in tight labor markets

But you can have near-equality.

Here on Earth, it doesn't matter how often you repeat something; it won't make it true. You can't have "near equality" and still pay the fair market value for a person's services because the spectrum of value for all the skills required in a modern economy is so broad as to make that impossible. Either you're going to grossly overpay your janitors or grossly underpay your nuclear engineers (or if you fuck it up badly enough, do both at the same time). Doing either takes away all incetive to work any harder than the barest minimum needed to keep food on the table, because you can get paid nearly the same to push a broom as you do for anything dangerous, challenging, or responsible. It doesn't matter if you cap people's income with mandatory salary caps or huge taxes, the effect is the same. The Soviets tried to counteract this problem by rewarding their most important workers with access to better goods and services, but if you advocate that solution, you've just conceded that your system doesn't work.

and/or setting up a progressive tax rate so steep it's effectively impossible to make more than X dollars

But you can have near-equality.

Yammer, yammer, yak and blather--Ralina repeated himself again and thought that refuted my argument. Oh, and you failed to address the individual example I gave you regarding my father working in refineries. I'll take it that for all your pie-in-the-sky theories, you can't solve a relatively simple practical problem. Concession accepted.

Proof of impending Soviet-level individual poverty in the developed world?

Probably not that bad, but read Fast Food Nation.

So the free market produces a better life for people than communism. Concession accepted. As for Fast-Food Nation, if I recall correctly, the academic reviews were not kind to it. I could be wrong on that, though.

You've wavered between abolition of business and strict regulation of business

Now more towards the latter.

Proof you haven't yet constructed a wall of ignorance; bully for you. Unfortunately, you still support policies which are communist in effect if not in name.

paying everyone equally no matter what work they do.

No, no pay for no real work, and some variation for quality of work.

Which is qualitatively the same, as evidenced by your own statements in this post and elsewhere.

ceases to be a matter of "it's a woman's body"

If it's still in them, I'll let them debate it.

What part of "brain waves identical to those of an adult in an REM state" is difficult for you to understand? It's conscious, it's alive, it's human. Whether or not it's attached to someone else is irrevelant, or should conjoined twins have the right to attempt to murder each other?

<snip A-bomb stuff addressed by Nathan

[Nathan F]

Would one of the mods mind un-hijacking this thread?

Still a discussion of political leanings. The communist political leanings of one person, but, still, political leanings.

[Col. Crackpot]

you know, this poll data shows an almost perfect bi-modal distribution. in the political context that makes things quite polarized. no wonder we are always at each other's throats! lol

[RedImperator]

you know, this poll data shows an almost perfect bi-modal distribution. in the political context that makes things quite polarized. no wonder we are always at each other's throats! lol

Wow. You're right. And in a group with less than 1000 total active members, 76 is a pretty good sample size.

[Nathan F]

you know, this poll data shows an almost perfect bi-modal distribution. in the political context that makes things quite polarized. no wonder we are always at each other's throats! lol

Wow. You're right. And in a group with less than 1000 total active members, 76 is a pretty good sample size.

Agreed. 76 isn't a bad sample size, and is probably composed of a good section of the more vocal sides of the issues.

[Iceberg]

I find it fascinating that there are more people here (slightly) on the left than the right...

[RedImperator]

I find it fascinating that there are more people here (slightly) on the left than the right...

No offense to Nathan, but the poll was badly designed. I think if you did the four-corner political compass approach, you'd see a lot of people end up taking "modertately libertarian", at least just judging by the posts in this thread (not counting the two and a half page Ralnia vs. Everyone Else debate).

[Wicked Pilot]

The curve kinda reminds me of breast.

I like this poll.

[Nathan F]

The curve kinda reminds me of breast.

I like this poll.

*LOL*

Does the Air Force just churn out perverts all the time?

[Wicked Pilot]

Does the Air Force just churn out perverts all the time?

Just like great leaders, perverts aren't born, they're trained.