825 Forum Posts by "Draconias"
The workers earn only 60 cents per hour, but the cost of living is three times higher than that. They live in extreme poverty.
Get a new job. The greatest boon of Capitalism is freedom of employment. If a job sucks, don't work it, find another. If no jobs are available on the market, "make" your own job through some other means (acquire some sort of goods, by weaving baskets or gathering fruit, etc.). The Employee has greater power than the Employer, to be honest, it's just that most Employees are too uneducated to realize it.
At 9/16/07 11:38 AM, D2Kvirus wrote: the fact is that a Labour Prime Minister should not be inviting in the former Conservative Prime Minister for a cup of tea and a chat.
Besides your absurd and obvious hatred for the former PM, what exactly is so wrong about a new Prime Minister inviting an experienced, 12-year-veteran ex-PM for a chat for one day? If anything, that's what you should expect each Prime Minister to do at least once with each living ex-PM: spend some time to talk about how the ex-PM ran the country, learn tricks and tips for being PM, and learn what not to repeat.
Sounds to me like you are just pissy in the first place, not that he did anything wrong.
At 9/8/07 12:48 AM, Sajberhippien wrote: Who says a hotel cleaner can't be skilled and hard-working? Or a machinist? I know quite a few hard-working cleaners at my last school. They were very effective; If you had put a doctor or football player to do their work it had probably taken five times longer,
So why haven't the cleaners formed their own business and done contract cleaning, since they are so skilled and quick? They pay would then be based on their own abilities. Those who do not make the best of their skills will get shafted; doctors and football players spend a lot of time seeking the best pay for their skills, so why aren't your cleaners doing the same?
That's the joy of Freedom in Capitalism; if you're smart, you have the freedom to seek the most benefit from your skills.
At 9/7/07 01:52 AM, AapoJoki wrote: Food and a place to live, to name the obvious ones.
Sounds to me like living in a Zoo cage: here is your daily food and fabricated hovel, and some squeeky toys lying around the cage to play with. It does not sound at all mentally or spiritually satisfying to me; you are nothing but a borrowed home and borrowed books.
I don't really know how Marx envisioned the details of the actual distribution process, or if he did at all
His thoughts are irrelevant. You never, ever rely on the thoughts of one person to actually create a workable system. Did the Founding Fathers just implement the ideas of a few Greek philosophers to make a Republic? No, they took that suggestion and developed a workable plan.
In our ancient Darwinian past, the selfish traits that we nowadays often consider negative: greed, envy, gluttony, even laziness, served a purpose.
Okay, we need to get something straight here: those traits are moralistic, subjective judgements that do not actually exist in any absolute sense. Your use of them is not only ignorant, but annoying for the skewed worldview it attempts to force into the discussion.
Greed is an over-extension of the natural and proper desire of Self Benefit, a purely subjective moral judgement. Envy is an aspect of Self Interest and is postivie as a motivator; Coveting, though, is strictly negative and fed by self-hatred and frustration instead. Gluttony is not a trait, but a foolish weakness; Efficiency, though, reasonably suggests eating all the food you have available that can't be stored for later, and storing what can be. It's a survival trait. Laziness is a lack of motivation, not a trait.
Stop talking of these as "evil traits," for they are not, and look at reality.
We're also consuming our resources as rapidly as possible.
No, we are consuming resources at the rate that our actions demand. We could consume them much faster if we wished.
Except evolution.
Evolution favors the overspender in a community system. Who do you think has the largest share of support and the best capabilities for raising children?
Even if this mechanism is our genes and the instincts they provide?
Genetics means absolutely nothing when discussing such a concious, intellectual issue as spending habits and lifestyle decisions. Also, according to you, the genetic instincts you suggest are completely opposite of the current ones in existance, that took billions of years to develop.
We will evolve a natural instinct to desire jobs that will inherently help the society. This already exist to some extent; when you ask a bunch of 5-year-olds what they want to be when they grow up, they say they want to be doctors, nurses, teachers, policemen, firemen.
Stop dreaming. Evolution does not function in that manner, nor can genetics provide such a solution under any circumstances. Young children desire those jobs because they are praised as respectable and exciting and "heroes" through all of the things we teach our children. They are icons of adult society, so children name what they know. Very few 5-year-olds know what an Industrial Engineer is-- so how can any of them want that job?
Not really, considering the vast majority of items manufactured in these capitalist factories are useless crap, which will be discarded and thrown to a landfill within one year from the production date. There will be far less factories in communism, and the working environment in those few factories will be much more pleasant.
Blind dreaming. "Useless" items are produced for entertainment. Entertainment is a requirement in any society. Take off your rosy glasses and take a look at the reality of how economics works, instead of this propaganda-quality "OMG the world is perfect simply because of Communism!" style of thought.
In communism, there is no demand for a mass production of utterly useless items, like there is in our current form of capitalism. Toys and other items we tend to throw away, will be recycled more efficiently. For these reasons, communism produces less waste than capitalism.
Again, what makes you so confident that the desire for such "useless" entertainment items will not still exist? Such items are made because people want them enough that the small cost of making them is worth it. Enough demand exists to cause the production, so how can you say that the demand will disappear?
There are plenty of cases where evolution will favour altruistic traits over selfish traits. Example: Population A, with plenty of altruistic genes in their dna, and Population B, with hardly at all. One day these two populations go to a war against each other.
Utterly wrong.
Population B will have a strong effort to recover the wounded for the simple, non-altruistic reasons of individuals attempting to preserve their social networks; if all of my friends and comrades die, I suffer, so I will put in whatever effort I can to maintain my protective group for my own safety and security.
When altruism is not your motivation, self-concern drives you towards doing everything you can to maintain the solidarity of your Tribal Group for the benefits you recieve from it, such as protection, food and supplies, etc. These desires mean so much more than the empty trash of "I just want to help others" that Population A will express.
However, Population B will not be tainted by a desire to help injured Population A members, nor will it waste effort on those who cannot be saved, since non-altruistic motivation demands that you save as many people as quickly as possible-- even if that means leaving the unsaveable to die. Altruistic motivations would not allow you to ignore those too injured to survive, and thus you waste time, manpower, and supplies on pointless attempts.
Considering complex factors in the long-term, altruistic factors may work against Population A for total growth; for example, would a compassionate person have sex with his dead friend's wife? The surviving males in Population B have more female availability and fewer altruism-triggered obstacles to procreation. Population A, on the other hand, now has more unfit males and hence more females tied into inefficient or unproductive relationships. Population A will suffer more from the battle.
This is reality. The situations is always more complex than your ideals would lead you to believe; actually think about it this time.
It's a shame, though, that these traits are only fully expressed at times of wars and disasters.
I believe the opposite is true. What we see in wartime and disasters is as far from altruism as we can get. Primarily, what we see is the Social Contract in operation; I help you because, Socially, we have agreed that you would help me if I was in the same situation. It's a means for increasing the security for all by pledging aid to those who needs it; it is more of an obligation than a "compassionate desire"-- you don't have time for compassion during a disaster or a battle. For example, with two soldiers, is it altruism to guard and protect your fellow soldiers? No, it's a Social Contract; you guard my back, I guard yours, and we all survive. There's no altruism there, only a universal Self-Concern.
You cannot say that altruism doesn't serve any evolutionary purpose at all, otherwise we would have absolutely none of it. We would be brutish and cruel, and any "morality" we might have, would be based on purely calculative fear of revenge or punishment.
Altruism is not evolutionarily beneficial, but it is a culturally taught trait that manifests itself in some individuals because Society can benefit from those individuals-- regardless of what happens to those people. However, neither are brutish and cruel actions evolutionarily beneficial; not only are they completely pointless, but they generate enemies. The most evolutionarily-favored behaviors are those that discourage violence and help you to develop powerful allies; altruism is not part of that.
At 9/6/07 01:27 PM, AapoJoki wrote: The motivation doesn't have to come from personal economic gain, it can also come from making a contribution to the society. The reward of your work still exists, it's just a collective reward. It doesn't even mean that everyone has to work as much, or get "paid" as much; it means that everyone willingly gives as much as he is able to and then takes as much as he needs for his survival and wellbeing. If the human nature evolves the way I'm speculating, then no one will intentionally slack off, or greedily take more than he needs.
Disregarding for the moment the absurdity of living solely for the group entity, what counts as "needs"? In a very small group in near-death conditions, group survival wokrs because any loss of anyone could mean death for all. However, when you are discussing a society with a very large cushion of wealth, there is no clear line between "want" and "need"-- and no one will be satisfied with only "needs".
When you take out the balancing factors of a capitalistic economy--personal money, individual management of expenses, etc.--you have no real effective mechanism to prevent any individual from massively overspending, or feeling as if they have been slighted if you cut off their spending. Any mechanism that could control group spending in a large system is inherently oppressive and eliminates a large degree of individual freedom.
Well, if everyone has a highly specialized task, set for what each individual excels at, I don't see how they could be more individual.
For what each individual excels at -- Empty statement, impossible to apply.
How do you determine what an individual excels at, if anything, or what if many things? How do you balance between a desire to perform something and what their skills are best suited for? How do you balance the skills available and the skills needed? Communism is never, ever thought through thoroughly, because if you did then it would eventually be obvious that it doesn't work.
It's not like tens of millions of people will be working in factories 18 hours a day, wearing the same kind of gray clothing - that's what capitalism does.
Yes, they will be. If you believe otherwise, you are being a fool; those jobs exist because a need for them exists. Regardless of economic system, someone must do those jobs or your society will collapse.
Evolution, not dictators.
First of all, Communism or not, the same demands for society and the same technologies to fill demands will exist, so cut the stupid "Communism means no pollution, and perfect natural harmony!" crap. It's so blatantly false that it isn't worth discussing.
Second, your situation proposes Communism first, evolution second. Like I explained, Communism could not work first, so the evolution will never occur, and there is no evolutionary drive towards such sheepish and mindless traits in the real world.
Incidentally, did you notice as well how Orwellian Dystopia your idea sounds? The main premise of 1984 was a "utopian" society formed with no distinct leader and roles assigned by society, where active brainwashing and mental-molding was actively used to weed out disbelievers and squeeze the people until they followed the system mindlessly. Even their language and ability to think was being trimmed to drive it towards a perfect "utopian" society where everyone worked for the community alone and never sought to escape or fight it.
That sure sounds a lot like your Communist "utopia" to me.
Individuals do not evolve; populations do. While it may appear that at first glance that evolution favours only traits that help you take care of yourself and those who share your genes, I fail to see why it shouldn't favour genes that help a population survive as a whole.
You misunderstand the dynamics of evolution. What helps the population as a whole is irrelevant. What helps your lineage is surpremely important. Individuals in a society who are purely altruistic will actually be weeded out because they favor the survival of the non-altruistic individuals at the cost of themselves.
Organisms who don't take care of themselves and their lineage first and foremost die out-- and the overly-altruistic traits die with them. There is absolutely no mechanism to favor such individuals because the non-altruistic individuals either survive and benefit with the whole population, or survive while the population declines. The altruistic die when the population declines as they attempt to support the others.
At 9/5/07 05:06 PM, BloodCummer wrote: COMMUNISM REQUIRES A STATE OF CONSTANT DEGRADATION LEADING UP TO A STATE OF REVOLUTION! we are in the current state of degrading, soon there will be a revolution and all of the unsightly non white peoples that have ravished america will rape and murder white people.
We are not in a state of degradation, as the standard of living and our economic strength is continuously increasing. Thus, no such revolution is likely in the near future.
At 9/5/07 07:24 PM, AapoJoki wrote: Human population will evolve towards communism. Logically speaking, communism would be the best system for the wellbeing of the humankind. However, the inherent flaws of our nature: greed, laziness, envy, antisocial behaviour, stand in the way of our utopia. This much everyone knows. In the future, though, the laws of natural selection will see to it that these traits will begin to disappear, and give room to altruism, compassion, team spirit and tendency to work hard for the common good, which will enable us to establish a fully functioning and efficient communist society.
This much everyone knows? Nothing of what you said is true. What you call "inherent flaws" of greed, laziness, envy, and anti-social behavior are not what make Communism unreasonable and unworkable. The necessary traits of self-concern, risk/reward motivation, self-preservation, and independent thought are what make Communism unworkable. not human flaws.
The key concept of Communism, total or near equality, is foolish; it eliminates any form of economic incentives, leaving only social pressure and force to keep a society running. Every individual, intelligently, does a risk/reward analysis for any task; economic incentives, such as increased pay, availability of goods, or economic freedom are necessary to justify dangerous jobs, such as working on an oil rig or as a coal miner; high skill jobs, such as being an engineer or a particle physicist; and high pressure or workload jobs, such as being an ER doctor (20 hour shifts, anyone?) or a factory worker.
In Communism, it is not "laziness" that makes people avoid these jobs, it is an entirely reasonable realization that those jobs are not worth the cost to you, as an individual. It is not "greed" to want self-benefit. Taking care of yourself and your family are the only true obligations for a human; seeking quality of life improvements, better health, extended lifespan, and greater security for those people is not only reasonable, but necessary. Communism ignores such necessary motivations.
Further, Communism seeks to eliminate the status of the individual. If anyone begins to think differently from the community, and realizes that their natural and proper desires can be fulfilled by bypassing Communism, then the system will fall apart. A Capitalistic system will establish itself outside of the bounds of the Communist economy-- a Black Market will form. Communism is simply an inefficient system for allowing each individual to reach the satisfaction they wish to have, and when the system fails them (and Communism's inherent flaws force it to do), they will break away.
The only way for Communism to avoid such a collapse is through social pressure and force, both of which we see expressed in every country that has attempted Communism so far, and both of which lead to a tyrannical and oppressive nation, one which eventually rips itself apart under its own hipocrisy.
For these reasons, not only will those traits you suggest not disappear, but they will likely become more prevalent as the population continues to grow and the borders grow outward into space and other realms. When the system itself grows larger, each individual must be more reliant on his or herself and on the small social networks to which he or she belongs. Protecting yourself, and determining your own life, is even more necessary now than it ever was before, and it will continue to be this way for as long as humanity continues in this same manner.
Forget altruism and those other "soft" traits-- they can only exist after the individual has shown proper concern for his or herself and secured his or her own safe position and state. The "soft" traits will never replace the necessary traits of individuality.
At 9/3/07 09:41 AM, LabBattle wrote: however those to lazy to make something of them selfs have no one to blame buy themselves, and i shouldn't have to pay for their laziness.
You are forgetting one additional, critically important difference:
Training of Ditchdigger: $0, 5 seconds
Training of Doctor: $100,000+, 6+ years
Becoming a doctor is a very large investment, and in an equal-pay system, the doctor is simply unable to repay his investment, or the years of potential work he invested, so not only is there no incentive for anyone to become a doctor, but you are actually strongly discouraging anyone from filling key medical roles necessary to the well-being of our society.
At 8/31/07 03:20 PM, Proteas wrote: But now I question what kind of sick glee you've derived from this bit of news... especially considering this topic's emoticon.
Yeah, it is kind of disturbing. I think hatred for Bush and everyone associated with him has gone too far in some people, to the point that they are happy about a Bush-supporter having cancer.
Spanking just seems unnecessary as it encourages and teaches the WRONG methods of punishment or reaction to negative situations. Punishmnet that has a mental effect, and does not rely on pain, is the best option overall, such as time-outs, etc. for most children.
At 8/20/07 02:42 PM, Memorize wrote: Then i'll say this here and now about the link.
Oh, geez. When I saw the references I assumed it was the end of the article and didn't scroll past them. Whoops. Good data, good data. Unfortunately, I don't have enough time to keep up with this thread right now (moving cities tomorrow), so I'll have to bow out for now.
At 8/20/07 12:56 PM, tony4moroney wrote: "there are more liberals in today's youth, but among the youngest voters, conservatism is actually favored"
"There are more liberals in today's youth, but among the youngest voters, conservatism is actually favored"
There are more liberal-minded people below the age of 18 than there are conservative-minded people, (hence "youth"), but there are more conservative-minded voters in the 18-25 range than there are liberal-minded voters (hence "youngest voters"). This is not over-representation, it's highlighting a shift in opinion that occurs as children come into the majority, get jobs, earn their own living, and move away from many of the propaganda/pressure sources that influenced their prior political opinions.
Liberals are vocally over-represented in forums because they dominate the non-voter population, but their power is just an illusion. The conservative youth, though, has real strength because it is backed up by voting.
says the guy that wrote several paragraphs of fallacies and stereotypes relating to liberals.
Demographic characteristics are different from stereotypes. If I didn't know through personal experience that so many of the people I discussed are like that, I wouldn't have said it.
either way there are more liberal activists and protestors then there are conservative ones as i said.
More topics to complain about doesn't mean more activism. Provide some sources to back up your claims if you're gonna put that up as fact.
nra.. mm yeah would that be the association of gun fetishes?
What were we talking about with misconceptions before? That.
Doesn't detract from the point made - new york is an expensive place to live it's population is wealthier then average, especially inner city which is a thorn in your assumption
I addressed that; the Hooverville quip was more about a general urban sense. The top Big Cities have always been liberal gathering grounds. Paris is a good example of one of the "focal" cities where liberals have gathered for many different movements throughout the decades.
How many 15-18 year olds do you know that are interested in politics? There's a difference between an idiotic strongly despised president and a congress regardless of their ratings.
I'm fairly sure that all of the 15-18 year olds I see on Politics forums are interested in politics, and that population is large enough to be relevant. How much of the total teenage population cares doesn't matter, just that a significantly large portion do.
And the difference between the President and Congress? Bush is a Republican and Congress is Democrat, and it's already obvious that you are biased towards the Democrats, so you will obviously be more lenient and positive about them, even if they are worse than the President in every negative respect.
Also these approval ratings don't measure resentment - democrats im sure would measure in a mild to disgusted whereas approx. slightly more then 50% of people want to impeach him. Polls also say that provided the choice they'd still prefer the democratic majority congress over a republican one.
Is that the SourceCow I hear mooing in the distance, looking for sources to eat? Maybe you should provide some MooSources, or maybe even some normal Sources.
Which they are, ever see the gun control thread? as d2k aptly put they all seem to flock in with the same asinine point "zomg 2nd amendment noobs kthxbye".
Regardless of their idiocy or actual politicial views (they may not have been conservative at all and still had those opinions), doesn't that example reinforce my earlier point about conservative activists? They will react to what they care about. I even provided the NRA for reference.
Wrong. Another fallacy youre propagating. The news networks aren't 'liberally biased' as youd like to think.
MooooooooooooSource? I call the TV media liberally-biased through a direct examination of the news they provide and the manner in which they provide it. Other posters have cited direct examples of the liberal bias. Instead of trying to hide it behind a curtain of words, give me some real (unbiased) evidence otherwise. I am aware of some of the blatantly biased studies that have been crafted to prove it, so don't try to provide those.
No ive seen plenty of republican posters. id go as far as to say there are perhaps slightly more republican posters then there are liberal. of course both you nor i have proof of this so your appeal to statistical probability remains irrelevant.
Isn't the entire point of this thread to discuss the fact that there are more liberals? Seems kind of pointless to reject the entire basis of this thread 3 pages in just to protect one weak point you were trying to make.
@Memorize: By the way, sweet article there. Some good, detailed information, though I only have time to skim it and I could not find any convenient summaries (like a graph) that would be easy to bring directly into threads like this one.
Note: the forum kept giving me false errors with the links, so a few thinks are lacking example links that should be there.
At 8/19/07 11:24 AM, tony4moroney wrote: So what youre saying is conservatives are over-represented in the polls.
No, I'm saying liberals bitch more.
that's pretty well thought out. i suppose the only flaw is that we're the ones that protest and join activist groups while old conservatives get angry about the 'crazy hippy youth'.
Your comment displays a severe misconception of conseravtism and conservatives in general. Conservatives are highly active in many areas, particularly the ones that concern them the most. For example, ever heard of the NRA? Conservatives are active, and they are powerful.
what about places like new york which are heavily liberal? are all those big buildings mcdonalds and wendys?
No, but all the small buildings around them are the Hoovervilles. Inner city regions have always been highly biased towards liberalism, partly from self-interest (free money), largely from race (minorities tend to favor the Democrats, such as the 95% of Blacks mentioned in the article), and undeniably due to some degree of ignorance. Also, in terms of the middle class, the key Big Cities have always been the regions where liberal-minded people have congregated. Remember San Francisco during the Hippy era?
except that on newgrounds most posters seem to be 15-18 yr old conservatives with the most asinine views on anything.
Based on the evidence of this thread and many like it, you're deluding yourself. Have you taken a look at the Bush Thread? Where's the Democratic Congress thread, if conservatives are so strong on Newgrounds? Congress has an even lower approval rating right now than Bush.
or maybe it's because they get enough sexy time from watching fox noise, political soundbites and talkback radio.
That's actually a good point, Talk Radio is domianted by conservatives. So yes, they do favor different channels; liberals get all of the TV media channels except for one, and conservatives get the talk radio channels (which, incidentally, Democrats were trying to wipe away by reviving the Fairness Doctrine).
from what ive seen on these forums though it appears as though the majority of people with decent/ rationalized posts are liberal and older.
There are more liberal posters. Statistical probability.
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At 8/19/07 11:52 AM, GaiusIuliusTaberna wrote: I have a novel theory. I think it's because most teachers are liberal.
Yes, particularly at the college level. (Example, lol @ source)
Shortly after I was old enough to be aware of politics I began to resent liberals more and more and in a very short time (about a week of listening to democrats) I became highly conservative and I've yet to hear a legitimate argument from a democrat.
I know many people quickly became disgusted with the Democrat (and generally liberal) methods og argument, as well as the mudslinging of the Democratic politicians. I have the same reaction to some of the "investigations" and other political ploys I see in Congress right now.
Any way I find it disturbing that so many people have beliefs based on peer pressure I was practically ostracized for being an open republican.
That is actually a common situation for many young conseravtives. Virtually every single young conservative (from urban or suburban areas) who I have talked with for any reasonable amount of time has related a similar experience or has avoided stating their opinions during class discussions or other situations to avoid such an experience.
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At 8/19/07 05:01 PM, RagnarTheRaider wrote: Interesting debate here. It might prove useful to define what a liberal actually is, since I consider my self to be a liberal, a classic-liberal. What are referred to today as liberals are in fact neo-liberals, an entirely different breed, they are in fact left-wing socialist and left-wing socialists advocate only specific individual rights
Yeah, isn't it a tragedy that such a switch happened? Unfortunately, the vocalism of neo-liberals has almost completely erased classic-liberals.
As SmilezRoyal correctly pointed out, the public school system is largely to blame for this trend. I find it humorous and ironic that people are surprised when an inherently socialist system (public schools) produce socialist disciples.
Good point.
Note: I'm not pointing my finger at anyone or trying to incite an argument I'm simply suggesting we all learn our definitions before we begin labeling the youth or anyone else for that matter as liberals.
Sorry, but it seems to me as if you went a bit overboard on over-strict definitions there. When you go to that degree, the definition is irrelevant because it has nothing to do with the intended usage at all.
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At 8/19/07 05:41 PM, Cuppa-LettuceNog wrote: lolfuckyouasshole.
"And this, viewers, is the Wildeliberal in his natural habitat, snorting at challengers to prove his dominance!" If you have to act like that, you don't deserve a decent reply.
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At 8/19/07 08:19 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: Draconias right wing youth speakers can be as beligerant and ill-informed as left wing ones just because they're less prominent, or not as easy to find doesn't make them non-existant.
I never said they couldn't be. Those people exist on every side and are always unusually vocal. However, I think the quoted user above this makes my point: which type are more common? Maybe that should tell you something about the group as a whole.
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At 8/20/07 12:41 AM, RagnarTheRaider wrote: Could the U . S. have won in Vietnam? Perhaps. Could the U. S. win in Iraq? Definitely. Do I think we will win in Iraq? Absolutely not. Why you might ask? I'll tell you why, the majority of Americans are wimps.
I believe in the strength and resolve of Americans, so I am much more inclined to believe that the situation is that the majority of liberal politicians, liberal news media, and liberal sources (like schools) are telling us that we can't win, not that Americans believe the propaganda blared at them incessantly purely through inner weakness. I think it's an intentional attempt to control opinion.
The blaring liberalism of this thread so far is astounding, and is a lot of the misinformation.
1. In terms of who shouts loudest and more, there are more liberals in today's youth, but among the youngest voters, conservatism is actually favored, just as it is in the full population. However, the same influences that contributed to an ultra-liberal youth population a few decades ago still exist:
2. Free money, free time, and free of obligations. When you don't have to pay for your own living, you live comfortably in the middle class, and you leeh off your parents for virtually everything, it seems very easy to begin idealizing politics and favoring "perfect" ideas like Communism and Universal Healthcare-- as long as you don't actually look at the real-world details. It's a matter of baseless dreaming because it's free benefits for you, without costs to you (because you don't have a decent job). Also, such people have a large amount of free time to waste browsing Internet forums and spamming ideas, even if they don't have enuogh to actually think out their ideas first. These are people of words, not action.
3. What jobs these people do get are the worst of the worst-- working at McDonalds, whatever, but they often react to those jobs in a very negative manner because it clashes with their middle class background (and the jobs just suck), so one of the common steps is to jump to the "evils" of Capitalism by some degree.
4. Liberal forumers don't get challenged enough. More often than not, they will "swarm" on a board, reinforcing each other without actually contributing anything meaningful, and ready to ward off any countering opinions that come up.
5. A lot fo the conservative youth don't waste time on forums because it is a matter of what they know, not what they think. If you don't have an ideology that you feel needs to be "spread to the heathens," then you have less urge to go out to forums and such and do so.
6. Purely opinion: I also think liberal youth like to flame and spam more as a matter of personality. and inherent quality.
I don't understand how we can be so weak-willed and so adamant about "ethics" for euthanasia, but we ignore the thousands of murders committed every day, all the deaths we cause through the technology we use (like car crashes), and the thousands we kill through war.
If you support our military, and accept the innocent and enemies who we regularly kill--without regard to the pain caused or method of death--then how could you be ethically against allowing people who believe they are already dead and must only wait through pain to end their time? How is shooting someone any more alloable than allowing someone to willingly end their own life? I don't believe any of us have the right to deny them the choice.
No doctor should be obligated to act in accordance with that wish, but any human being who is in their right mind (or justifiably close) should be allowed to end their own life. Doctors may reject that desire from patients, and it should not be exercised lightly, but it is the right of a person to live or not live by their own choice.
At 8/17/07 07:43 AM, davisev5225 wrote: Well, I'd argue that the media has a liberal bias (except some stations like Fox, that can't be trusted to give the news properly), but you do have a point about the openness of the internet. Perhaps the liberal sites are able to promote themselves better than the conservative sites?
The apparent liberal bias of people on the internet is influenced by the nature of what a conservatives and liberals are individually like.
In general, conservatives tend to be adults with significant obligations: this can range from being a middle class suburbanite supporting your family of five, to a farmer out in the country maintaining 100 acres, to a business owner or entrepreneur working in the city. However, they are almost always adults above age 25 who live a relatively busy lifestyle. As a matter of time, preference, and habit, they don't go to generic public websites for "kid stuff" like flash animations very often. They do have a strong presence on the internet, but it is a focused one, usually on specifically political or business-oriented websites, and they usually demand some level of quality from discussions.
On the other hand, college students and younger people who have never held a job or lived on their own are much more likely to be liberal and have a large amount of free time. These younger liberals are the ones most likely to go to generic or "time waster" websites and forums, and they also tend to be highly vocal (spam). When it doesn't take any thought, you'll have a large presence of these people, but if you start a real discussion, such as the Heathenry one, these people will quickly draw back into the murk and hide because "well thought-out" and "young liberal" don't go together well.
Besides that, everyone also knows that the liberal side is always the highly vocal, more visible one, regardless of the forum (in the real sense), and that's just part of the ideology.
Too bad that I'm not like any of the examples, I was hoping for some company. General ambivalence/tolerance about some topics probably moderated my postion somewhat, but they don't have any examples near me at all. Heck, my quadrant is the only one with no International Leaders in it.
Anyone else near my postion, or at least favoring the moderate-Right, higher-Libertarian?
I need to make sure the tiniest bit of intelligence gets injected into this thread:
He did NOT recommend a draft. He merely said that a draft should not be reasonably ruled out, for the simple (and intelligent) reason that we can never predict what may happen in the future. According to the full news article, Bush is distinctly against any Draft, and does not wish to even consider one, but the possibility of a draft must still remain open.
Looking over the thread so far I primarily see blubbering from people who obviously didn't even take the time to read the actual news articles on the issue, and who seem to merely want an excuse to be mad. Not a good showing for the Politics forum.
At 8/13/07 11:23 AM, FeargusMcDuff wrote: Meh i tried my best but i suppose just mentioning something like healthcare makes people want to ramble without reading the first post :(
It is exactly as one poster mentioned before. If you don't have health insurance, you get slapped with a big bill. If you don't have fire proection, my house burns down as well. Fire, police, and infrastructure are considered community concerns, and for good reason. Individual health is not a community concern except in crisis situations, in which medical insurance is irrelevant and costs are not considered. Regardless, hospitals do not turn away anyone with a valid health issue, it's just the cost afterwards that can be a problem. There is no real comparison between community concerns and individual concerns.
At 8/7/07 06:48 AM, CommanderX1125 wrote: Ack... sorry, I forgot to post the total estimated deaths for Chernobyl, its 54. So at worst there are 54 less people in the world. Harsh.
I'm going to have to disagree with you on that point. It is unreasonable to nail it down to such a specific number, as it can actually only be estimated. Also, the direct deaths should always be mentioned alongside estimates of the total; it wasn't just people dying directly.
Ukrainian Government (via CNN): 4500 total deaths (direct and expected incidental)
International Atomic Enegery Agency (UN): 50 already, 4000 more expected
I believe it is more reasonable to mention that "under 4500 people may have died from effects of the meltdown, but approximately 50 died from direct exposure or accidents." Yes, Chernobyl is grossly over-exaggerated and propagandized, but don't go too far in your statistics or you will simply drive off anyone who might have listened to you.
I do believe nuclear power is the best option we have for power generation, and I especially love some of the ingenious new designs for passive-flow nuclear plants (which are drastically cheaper, safer, and smaller, but still experimental). Some day, people will get over their irrational fear and go forward with nuclear energy. Why do we kill ourselves a little bit each day with coal, oil, and other energy forms simply because we are scared that we "might, possibly, be harmed to a small degree which has an even lower chance of killing us" from nuclear power, but we don't care about the mercury poisoning us in our air from coal power plants. Eh, that's ignorance for you.
At 8/3/07 09:36 AM, Jaketheclonetrooper wrote:At 8/3/07 09:34 AM, K-RadPie wrote: I thought people who made viruses already DO go to jail.Exactly what I was thinking.
The biggest issue is tracking down WHO is doing it, so that we can arrest them, not the strictness of the laws.
How can you identify a specific spell in the jet trails when they are hundreds of feet up in the air? I live in an area with a very high density of jet trails, and I have never noticed a particular smell related to the trails. The way you phrased your post makes this sound like another conspiracy-theorist type attack, not really an honest and open topic.
Also, what exactly is the issue here? Are you trying to argue for the banning of jets and similar aircraft from urban airspace, or what?
At 7/18/07 11:13 PM, TomsPulp wrote: fuck no, let them do what they want, i got an F in gym all the time cuz i cant do 5000 push ups, so fuck them i dont give a fuck about gym, i just wont do it anmore
(sorry for shitty text, its too laggy to correct it..) so fuck of
First of all, what is more likely is that you got an F for your attitude. I have never seen a single Gym class in any school, anywhere that graded you for more than paying attention and maybe tests that are just a joke. If you were the lazy, out of shape kid who couldn't do one pull-up, then maybe you NEED gym or some outside work, but I highly doubt that you would ever fail the course for being weak.
At 7/18/07 10:11 PM, Explosive-Kun wrote: Abortion should be allowed to a point, preferably the end of the first trimester (with some exceptions in extreme cases such as a risk of fatal miscarriage), when the embryo fetusizes and is human enough to be kind of human.
And what about cases of birth defects? Many cases that lead to severe disablement of the child or even to guaranteed death at or shortly after birth are not fully detectable until significantly later in the pregnancy. Should someone who learns at Month 5 that their child will effectively be born dead, or that their child is in fact already dead be forced to carry it to term, since removal would be an "abortion" after the first trimester? Should someone who learns that their child will be born with severe mental disabilities or deformities be forced to bring that child into this world, even if they can't bear to inflict that pain on the child? There is no way to know beforehand whether something devastating like that will happen, and yet you make no allowance for such occurrances in your opinion.
The fact that you have made no attempt to even consider those situations shows that you have never had a child of your own and are merely making statements based on a moralistic, probably virgin position. Anyone who has had a child should know of that horrible period when you worry whether it will be a healthy child, and many also know the horror when they or someone close to them learns that the child is not healthy. Abortion at any stage is necessary for medical and ethical reasons, regardless of the mostly-mythical "baby whore" who wants an aborption simply to avoid consequences and learns nothing from the event.
The way you phrased your opinions also strongly suggests that you are male, as you appear to look at those situations completely impersonally-- after all, if you didn't want a baby you could simpyl walk out on the girl. The pain, both mentally and physically, associated with pregnancy, birth, and abortion all obviously have not registered on you yet, and perhaps never will, but your reasons for your stance on abortion are full of naive assumptions and ignorant faith in the decisions of officials. How can you agree with the Brainwash-Position (the one passed down to children and others without their ever having thought it over) when you don't actually know when a fetus is "like a human" or truly "alive"? There is a lot more to every issue than people ever give it credit for; think about this one a bit more.
I would actually go with "d) Other" because the other options feel like oversimplifications of how the government should act. I thinkt heg overnment, if it gets a surplus, should:
1. First, pay off the National Debt
2. After that is completed or well-progress, do a mixture of the following:
a. Shift funds from "economic recovery" programs and policies to "economic progress" programs; for example, shift the money that was paying off the National Debt interest into R&D or support for Entrepreneurial Businesses (i.e., start-ups).
b. Reduce taxes on the Middle Class to help buffer increasing strain on them from skyrocketing cost-of-living expenses, college costs, and other money pressures.
c. Attempt to further streamline (not cut away at) curent government programs, particular non-developmental agencies (i.e., don't hurt the Research guys and the Military, but examine purely administrative bodies or programs like Social Security).
In general, all of these things can be simplified down to: shore up the strength and quality of our nation using the surplus money that is available instead of wasting it by throwing it all back or investing it in Poverty Programs or other endless endeavors.
Such a test sounds perfectly bureaucratic, but absolutely unreasonable. Consent is usually only tested afterwards, and such a test makes it virtually impossible for any individual to be able to judge whether their soon-to-be-partner is capable of consent or whether they will hit you with jailtime, fines, and a lifetime label of "pedophile." Sorry, but making "consent" even more invisible doesn't sound like a good idea.
I do believe the AOC punishes violators inappropriately in many cases. I do not think it should label sex with a 14+ year old as pedophilia, for the simple reason that most people are sexually matured at that age, and never before in history has the 14-18 age group been so heavily discriminated against based on age (at one point, full adulthood was 13 worldwide).
Sex with sexually-immature individuals should be punished heavily (pedophilia), but it just doesn't make sense to me to treat sex with sexually-matured individuals in the same manner. Banning it is stil okay, but it should be punished differently.
At 7/5/07 08:22 AM, SlithVampir wrote: That shit isn't news. I'm surprised people care about those losers. It's sad when someone gets kidnapped, but we are involved in a war, and at the time of a couple of these things happened Katrina had just hit. It's stupid.
Yes, active kidnappings are news because the police are using a little tactic called attention. If you draw a lot of attention to a kidnapping, you keep interest in it alive, you pressure the kidnapper, you inform people in the area who might spot details, you call out people who might have information, and you rally the population to help find someone before that person dies. For once, the news just isn't about you, it's for people in another region, and too bad if you can't handle that.
For all the trash about celebrities and wasted reporting time, you have no excuse for targetting kidnapping news when it actually has a real purpose.
At 7/2/07 12:01 AM, Memorize wrote: Question: If God exists, then he is responsible for your being here (I don't he picked you out, I mean without him, there wouldn't be a you).
Is Loyalty inherently earned by fatherhood? No. Just as the bastard, disowned son of a Lord does not owe his father loyalty, nor do we owe God our loyalty automatically. And yes, we are all exactly that son: born from a man and himself (his rib), out of wedlock, and after being thrown from God's household (Eden).
Just like you obey your parent's rules, he would want you to obey his.
I obeyed my parents when I was younger because they provided me with home, food, money, education, transportation, guidance, support, and companionship. God is at least fifteen steps behind them in deserving anything from me.
And if the Bible is true, then it proves how people are not loyal and basically tell God to "screw off, we don't need you".
Then maybe it should occur to you that they might have a valid reason for rejecting him. Why would so many people turn against him if he truly deserved loyalty?
And if the Bible is true, then God also came in human form and experienced the same temptation and suffered much more than you or the average person. By being beaten, mocked, whipped, then nailed to a cross by his creation, all to make your life better.
First off, many people suffer much more than that. Starvation, torture, genocide, prison life, and even looking back at Jesus' own time, the thousands of slaves and people who were regularly crucified. What, you thought they came up with that punishment just for Jesus? How many thousands died after Sparticus' slave revolt? Jesus hasn't got jack on a lot of people.
Also, how exactly did he make my life better? By corrupting the Roman Empire with an exclusive religion that may have led to the downfall of one of the greatest nations ever and singlehandedly caused the Dark Ages, which paved the way for the rise of the Islamic empires during the same period, which is now responsible for the terrorism and war that plagues us now. Yeah, thanks a lot Jesus for 9/11 and the war in Iraq.
That would mean that a few hundred or thousand years later, people acknowledge this, but refuse to accept it. Claiming they'd rather live by their own rules rather his God's rules despite his beating and death.
THousands are beaten and die every year in violent regions. Do I devote my entire life and loyalty to them because of it? Getting your butt whooped on doesn't make you a worthy person or God. In fact, I think it demonstrates the very flaws in God's own creation that he got beated and killed for even visiting. Maybe he should have done a better job so he didn't need to implement an Emergency Patch later on.
And if the Bible is truth, then death also does not mean the end because it states that God created heaven and those who follow his rules will live eternally without pain or suffering.
Then why didn't he give those things to us in the first place? Sounds like a blatant scam to me: "Just give us your contact information, your absolute loyalty, and lots of money and you could be entered to win a PS3!" With no proof that he actually has the goods, God is no better than a con artist. I say, show me the goods and I'll show you the money.
So, provided the Bible is true, what have YOU done to earn a spot in that heaven?
What has God done to earn my Faith? I honestly don't care about Heaven or Hell at all; when I die, that will be a major turning point, so major that I don't believe it will still be the "Me" that lived. Eternal pain doesn't mean anything; pain is a physical thing in every form and humans grow numb to it with time. Also, besides the fact that Hell's origin as a story can be traced, eternal damnation is really a downright stupid idea with no real point. Why not just wipe people's souls away and save the effort, but use a story about Hell to scare them?
Heaven is meaningless; "perfect" can not exist because it is an undefined term, and happiness is not promiseable because each individual must define "happiness" for his or herself. Neither of the two are actual things, so they can't be promised, and I would much rather improve the world I currently live in to make it better than Heaven than to screw around on the bet that I'll go to a cool place later.
Me, I expect Obliviion after death. When I die, I am simply gone and no longer exist, period. In all its simplicity and directness, Oblivion can be the most utterly terrifying thing imagineable and the most peaceful and calming result. Oblivion makes sense, answers all questions, and finishes the story; Heaven and Hell are tools used to manipulate people on Earth and meaningless for their undefined and pointless natures. Why waste time with Earth because you, a "perfect" Being made a flawed creation when instead you could make a flawless creation already in Heaven and leave it at that.
I live by my own ethics, my own views of the world,and I believe in the absolute morality of one statement: Do not, through negligence or intention, harm others. If that means stealing money, stealing a life, stealing a wife, or punching someone, I dislike it. In only a strict sense of "harm," that one rule should guide you true. If someone attacks you, you may react and injure him severely, but that is still an immoral/bad thing, it is just justified. For any action, if it harms someone else then you may have a reason to not do it. I don't need 10 commandments, I only need 2 (the second being, Subjectivity is not an excuse or exception to Rule #1).
At 6/30/07 11:52 PM, The-Great-One wrote: If someone kills one of your family members I doubt you're going to think clearly instead of emotionally.
And that's why family members are not the ones who convict and sentence criminals. Regardless of whether or not the person on trial is guilty, angry and grief-stricken family members often wish to take out their anger on the nearest person. Where do you think lynch-mobs and gang retaliations originate from? That is why we, the clear-minded and thinking people must make decisions about how to set up the system, not people who are nearly out of their minds with anger.
Over-emotionality leads to idiotic decisions and plans that fail.
The Death Penalty was put here to punish those for the killing of others.
Punishment becomes irrelevant if you're dead. Our focus should be on why we are killing the person, not a sadistic joy in the execution.
Also do you have valid information of 65,000 "innocent" Iraq People murdered.
Did you not notice the link I provided? I called them mostly innocent because I don't know how many of those civilians actually were, but I do know that a large number of people who didn't commit any crimes have been killed.
Also If you're here to talk about that then IT'S WAR! Innocent people will die! If the Iraq's were coming here then innocent Americans would die. If you want to bring up stuff about War go somewhere else, we are here to talk about the death penalty in the United States of America not wars of death!
I completely support the war, and it is entirely relevant to this discussion. If our government is willing to kill thousands of people who have not committed crimes to protect its citizens then you can not argue that it can't kill people who have committed crime. The point is that any "ethical" complaints against the Death Penalty are baseless because you are not applying your "ethics" equally.
HAVE A NICE DAY!
It's night-time.
At 7/1/07 07:27 PM, Empanado wrote: If you ask me, there's suffering and all because (and I'm trying my best not to sound too emo in here) life without suffering is just plain boring. Why do people think that God is somehow obliged to create some sort of merry-go-lucky Carebear world where everything's unicorns and lollipops? I mean, that'd be like totally gay. You really think anybody could be happy in there?
First of all, the entire premise of Pain or Evil being necessary and/or beneficial is complete trash. Not only are they not necessary, but life appears undeniably better to me without either of the two. Grief, anger, and frustration are natural parts human society, but pain and evil never seem desirable. Murder, theft, exploitation, rape, mental illness, trauma and injuries, genocide, hatred, extortion, lying, war, violence over power, starvation, illness, we can do without all of them.
None of that is necessary for an "interesting" life. Very rarely does it directly impact you, so do you think your life is completely "boring"? I thoroughly enjoy myself and achieve mental and physical fulfillment without any of those Pains and Evils, so they are obviously not necessary to life. I don't believe a single person who actually had to deal with Pain and Evil would agree that those "interesting" events are worth having.
Now, on to the point of God's obligations to Humanity. Even if he is the Lord who rules over us, Rule is not a one-way street. While loyalty is demanded from below, protection and support is required from above. If God is so lax in his duties that he fails to protect his Citizenry, and even throws ills down to plague them for no justifiable reason, then he has not earned our Loyalty. An un-deserving Lord is worse than a disloyal follower because the Lord betrays all of those below him and deceives them into still following him.
If God is to earn my belief and loyalty, then he must demonstrate his worthiness first. What has he delivered to me to honor his side of the deal? He is not responsible in any way for my current "good fortune"; that comes from the work of myself and my family members. He is not responsible for my good health; that comes from my relative youth, regular physical activity, and good habits. Even if I won the lottery, it would be as a result of my action, not anything from God, so why should I lay my Loyalty at his feet?
If God--and the Church below him--does not hold up their side of the bargain, I see no reason to support either. I will not be scammed, exploited, and used by those who do not return anything to me. It's all that simple; if God does not earn my Loyalty, he does not deserve it. Regardless of his existance, he must earn Faith, and his failure to protect and serve those I see means we should not serve him in return.
