13 Forum Posts by "Poly-Wolf"
At 8/29/08 04:19 AM, aranS wrote: Its pretty simple what he means...think of it this way, there are two villages at war. They fight eachother with sticks. The first village decides that sticks are good enough...The second village decides to make a better weapon, so they make a sword.
Now village one has sticks, and village two has swords........whats gunna happen?
That's not what I mean. I want to know which of America's enemies is powerful/technological enough to require us to develop advanced missile technology just to stay ahead of. "Better weapons = win" is common sense.
In response to the original question:
I never really saw much of a problem with "indoctrinating" your children to be religious or whatnot. I mean, as bloated as this issue has become in the modern days, what really is the problem with a child growing up as a Christian or Muslim simply because their parents taught them so? I mean, is it any worse than teaching your child that he should observe ethnic rituals or having him wear traditional clothing?
So I guess that, as an Agnostic that's practically an Athiest, I still don't see a reason to limit a parent's ability to teach religion to a child.
At 8/28/08 02:04 AM, cellardoor6 wrote: ...which is basically the only program right now to keep our forces ahead of our enemies in technology.
This statement intrigues me. Please elaborate.
At 6/19/08 08:23 AM, therealsylvos wrote: lulz. Thats like saying that the government forbidding you from selling MY land is socialist.
The government guaranteeing property rights is NOT socialistic in nature. This should not be difficult to accept.
The USE of an idea is not a property. The government guaranteeing property rights does NOT include giving you the right to HAVE A MARKET MONOPOLY on something just because you came up with it first. It includes the tangible object that is produced, and that's it.
It is not the same from the government forbidding me from selling your land. An idea can possibly be considered and enforced as property only in its truest form (even this is up for debate, BTW) - that is, it is arguable if the government prevents me from plagarizing your research about cold fusion and tackling it under my name. Me using your idea to produce a duplicate of your product using my own resources, on the other hand, is not me "stealing" your property rights to your idea; it would be more analagous to me looking at your house, building one just like it, and selling that one - or, to use your land example: me looking at your plot of land, buying another plot of land, making modifications to that second plot of land so that it looks exactly like your plot, and selling the second plot.
For that, I'll quote this from your first post:
"...the government certifies the origination of an idea and protects its owner's exclusive right of use and disposal."
Exclusive right of [i]use[/i] of an idea. The article also didn't mention that patent laws only lasts for 17 years in the US, which is much less than the average lifespan of a person and is thus inconsistent with the definition of "ownership" (copyright laws would be more arguable in this regard, though that leads to an open-ended philosophical debate). Does your ownership of any of your other property disappear after 17 years (or any period of time) if you choose not to relinquish it? Probably not.
Only if you consider prevention of theft to be socialism, and something that is mutually exclusive to laissez-faire capitalism.
If you do, you do not know what laissez-faire socialism.
Theft is property rights. As I said above, ideas are not included in "property rights" as long as I don't steal your resources to produce my replica of Sylvos(tm) gadget #20.
At 6/19/08 12:31 AM, therealsylvos wrote: This is patently untrue. If anything the socialist view would be to "share" your innovation with the community.
However, that does not change the Socialist nature of patents. In such policy, the government specifically forbids another firm to enter the competition for a patented product unless if the patent holder agrees, thereby giving a monopoly to the holder. That is government intervention in the market, which is definitively Socialist.
There is no "socialist view on ideas." Socialism is, simply, the economic system where a governing body controls all facets of the market instead of the individual. Whether Socialists would be interested in sharing ideas or not does not change the Patent laws, which consists many elements of governmental intervention in the market.
I've mentioned discoveries in the other part of the product, as well; a corporation seeking research can simply have its product and design plagiarized by another in a true free market, so there's zero additional incentive to engage in corporate research without patent laws. As for publications and discoveries of a natural law - similar compensation can be awarded to publishers no matter what the government system is, so that is disregardable.
At 6/7/08 12:50 PM, Cuppa-LettuceNog wrote: (This was an essay done in school. 2 Parts.)
The story of a Econ 101 book. How fun :D.
Since the governments rarely offer any reward to innovators, and since there's no ability to start a new business to offer a new product, there is a crippling lack of innovation and new inventions in socialist states, as well as a lack of ideas on how to make existing products more efficiently produced or sold...
This is certainly true. However:
Since there are multiple companies competing against each other to sell the same product to the same people, companies are forced to innovate; they are forced to bust their asses thinking of ways to make their product better, longer lasting, or more safe then their opponents.
The story of monopolistic competition. Certainly, in mixed markets, this is a true concept. However, it does not hold for a laissez-faire free market. Because of the lack of patents and copyright (Socialist concept: government regulation of market entry), innovation is no longer a profitable venture unless if you have enough capital to protect your innovation from other firms. This limits profitable innovation to a select few products that cannot be disassembled and analyzed, and creates a monopoly on ideas based on capital. All in all, the amount of innovation in a completely free market is not much different from that within socialism - except government incentives are completely out of the question because of your economic structure.
It's like this: if you create LettuceNog(tm) durable A-jackets, another company can copy you and offer Finch co. durable A-jackets. No profit, no additional incentive.
While government regulators may be able to keep product quality high, these regulators will cost money, paid for by increased taxes, which again lowers the amount of money consumers have to buy the improved product.
The argument for this is the exact same as why the economy won't crash into oblivion in a free market economy. As people's purchasing powers decrease, the demand for a good for a given price is expected to decrease, which then causes the corporations to either lower prices or offer less of the product. Most of the time, if they can, they will lower prices; otherwise they run the risk of being undercut and overtaken by a substitute product.
If left to a free market system, word would get out that the product was inferior...
An overly idealistic view. One would only have to look at the industrial revolution to see how quickly information is passed. Certainly, you have the internet nowadays; however, asymmetric information will always exist no matter what level of technology you have. Simply put, even with the internet, you will only hear the opinions of a select group of individuals, and that information is often mixed with half-truths and whitefaced lies. Information isn't that perfect, and with so many incentives to sell inferior products to consumers, you can bet that a firm will use every dirty trick that they know to make you keep consuming McDonalds and buying oil-intensive cars. This is especially true when you add foreign markets and trade.
Wage Controls, while often improving the pay of workers, can serve to either limit a companies ability to higher as many employees as it needs...
I agree with you here. Wage controls increases the capital needed to maintain a firm and drives prices up, and it has a rather horrid side-effect that I won't mention.
the consumer is free to buy from anywhere they choose (even a different nation) to get the exact type of product or service they want, down to the most minor detail
Once again, asymmetrical information.
Secondly, after the price and quality of goods, is the ability to get the product to customers who need it.
I'm going to address this as a whole instead of in parts. This is one of the biggest problems of Socialism: it is a great government structure for a third-world government seeking development, but a first-world market is too complex for most governments to handle. Certainly, mixed markets handle this very well, but a laissez-faire market runs into another problem - the issue of an individual that does not have the best interest of the market in mind.
Let's take a look at a natural monopoly. Suppose that it's electricity, and the provider buys a bunch of land and provides electricity at a greatly inflated rate. Now, it's easy to think that demand for electricity would simply decrease, but the individual depends on this electricity for their everyday living. Therefore, because it is nearly impossible for another firm to enter this market very easily, they have no choice but to comply, thus resulting in overall economic inefficiency.
Now, let's assume that this firm expands into the market of, say, agriculture, and uses its massive capital to undercut farmers and make agriculture an unprofitable business. Farmers will eventually leave the market because they can no longer make a profit, and the firm buys the farmlands and now has a monopoly on agricultural products. Now, you have a genuine duplicate of Rockerfeller in the industrial revolution - monopolies that do not necessarily benefit the market. AT ALL.
While Free Market Capitalism is usually supported by proven facts and statistical figures on what makes the Nation
Free Market Capitalism is supported by almost no facts or statistical figures. The US today is a mixed market system, as is Britain, France, China, Russia, Canada, and pretty much every other non-Socialist nation in the world. If you look at the industrial revolution ages as a posterchild for Free Market Capitalism, well...you'll need to look again unless if horrid working conditions, low wages, subsistence living, and monopoly-controlled market is truly your idea of an ideal world.
If you refer to Economics, one of its highlights is the problems of a true free market. Individuals with capital, externalities, public services, asym. information, and unfair market practices are all problems that require some degree of government regulation to resolve, and these problems grow HUGE over time.
I'm a bit lazy to write anything else, so I'll stop here. Looking forward to hearing your counterargument.
At 5/4/08 08:21 AM, WolvenBear wrote: If we wish to look at history, completely objectively:
Hope you don't mind if I debate this point.
Nazis did far more for their people than all communist societies combined.
You underestimate communism by a longshot. The Soviet Union, under Stalin, has risen from a nation crippled by war to the second greatest power in the world. Communist China, under Mao, had adopted a radical change in mindset, and although Mao was a crap leader, his policies were a major proponent of change within China. Under Deng Xiaoping and later leaders, China's economy went through a rapid turnabout and advanced to first-world status within two decades. Many other (non-European) countries had also experienced positive economic changes under Communism while it's under effect, and unlike the National Socialists, Communism NEVER brought about the ruins of its adoptees through a pointless fight with foreigners.
None of these are true communism; true, but practical communism is basically a modified totalitarian rule, so there's no reason that a communist leader would be unable to reform a nation as well as a Nazi leader. North Korea isn't representative of real-world one-party rule "communism," after all.
Nazi Germany killed less than either Communist China or Russia.
First, we're talking absolute. Nazi Germany had less people than either China or Russia, so when you take the ratios, Germany was considerably worse.
Secondly, most of the statistics that I've seen laughably listed some of the least attributive deaths to Communist leaders. Mao's great leap forward, for example, indirectly killed millions when combined with FAMINE (which, by the way, are included in most statistics as "killed by Mao"). Yet, none of those deaths were the result of GENOCIDE, and attributing them to Mao in the same way that the Holocaust is attributed to Hitler is like saying that George W. Bush is DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE for ALL deaths within the US attributable to decreasing social security. Stalin is more understandable, although his killings were still mostly political and often mixed with statistics from indirect causes that are not racial purges.
There is absolutely no difference between communists and Nazis today. Not one.
Multitudes of difference. Seriously, notice the absense of such things as "racial nationalism" and "white supremacy" in the modern Communist party. Biased much?
At 5/1/08 07:52 PM, CaptainRex wrote: That wouldn't happen and tell you exactly why, Oil is what separates "insurgency" from "a rabble group nomadic goat hoarders" it's the lifeblood of that part of world and what allows them to centralize. Beyond that, all they have basically is the Fertile Crescent. Now you can't really rage war and maintain the various villages and cities all on fresh water and farmland can you? Need something more "real".
And here I was, thinking that the insurgents centralized because, you know, they are terrorists and hate the US (and other applicable non-Islam nations). Of course, why did I never think of the obvious fact that if you build a military base near an oil field and start mining oil, the insurgents are just going to miraculously drop their weapons and bow down to the US because they realize that they can't fund themselves without that one source of oil.
Er, newsflash? OIL is not the lifeblood that allows the insurgents to centralize; HATE is. I highly doubt that the insurgents actually sell oil to the black market to get weapons or anything, and I'm not sure if you've ever taken courses on history, but religion is quite the motivating factor for any lower-class parties. For references, consult your European History textbook.
You can build military bases on every oil field in Iraq if you wish. Military bases do not function without manpower, and manpower means continued devotion to the place. If you just build empty mining bases with a few random guards, whatever militant and/or anti-US leader that takes over the place will blow those bases to kingdom come in no time. No oil; massive public relations crisis. Excellent strategy.
(Or are you just trolling?)
In short, what the fuck happened to some good old fashion CONQUEST?
Nothing happened to it. Without royal incest to back it up and the formation of the United Nations, the good old fashioned CONQUEST rapes your PR to no tomorrow.
At 4/20/08 02:00 PM, Radam wrote: Boycott Olympic sponsors. All of 'em. Don't drink Coke in 2008. Don't eat at McDonald's in 2008. Don't buy Addidas or ship UPS in 2008. Pay your balance (finance charges are more profitable) and cut up your Visa card in 2008. Increase business with direct competitors of Olympic sponsors and certainly with any company who will publicly denounce China or the games (but make sure they walk the walk). And, although it doesn't look at a glance like they're sponsors this year, don't buy any damned Olympic Wheaties, either. It'll be clear why.
Do not make coverage profitable. Don't buy magazines or newspapers with accounts of the Olympics. Don't browse to websites with accounts of the Olympics. And you Nielsen Families, turn the TV off throughout the Olympics. Don't watch MTV instead; there'll be ads telling you Volkswagen is a proud sponsor of blah, blah, blah. Let the guys watching the numbers put two and two together: nobody's watching any ads during the Olympics.
Don't worry about the damned athletes. They're the world's best. This isn't their only shot in the world, and even if it were, are you more concerned with making a handful of 14-year-old gymnasts cry, or with implicitly condoning a legacy of gross disregard for human rights?
Remember, too, that this is about more than Tibet. It's about a record of violent government suppression of free exercise of religion, of the press, of the freedom of speech and the right of the people peaceably to assemble and to petition the government for a redress of grievances -- and worse.
This sounds more like propaganda than an actual argument of any sort. However, since you've so lovingly presented such fine examples, let me make a few of my own.
Boycott all future olympics held within the United States. This is about more than Iraq and Afghanistan. It's about a record of corrupt justice systems, gross violations of human rights, aggressive and violent colonialism, blatant abuse of economic power to manipulate foreigh governments (cold war; too lazy to find source) -- and worse.
Hey, look, I can do the same (and possibly even more for such lovely nations as UK and Germany). Seriously, though - what rights do you have to judge whether China's governments and actions to its own people
On to Tibet. Note that these surpressions conveinently happened right before the Beijing olympics with news broadcasts scrambling to blow this issue into as big of a deal as it possibly can. Certainly, the Chinese government was violent in its dealings, though if I have heard correctly, the Tibetians were in no way less violent in their protests. See: Mass Burnings.
With the scale of the "peaceful protests" and the conveinent occurance before the olympics, you'd think that Tibet knows fully well how China will react to BUILDINGS BEING BURNED DOWN AND MOLOTOVS BEING THROWN and is doing this purely in an attempt to elicit western sympathy. But, of course, that is completely inconceivable. Those Tibetians must have picked the time entirely out of chance and was simply seeking peaceful resolutions, right?
And, of course, they're the good guys! They can never do wrong! I have Tibetian friends who tells me that they're oppressed by the evil Chinese and they must be right! I have Chinese friends who tells me otherwise and they must be brainwashed by the corrupt and lying Communist media! Of course it makes sense - we must all listen to the side that's fighting for freedom since they must always win, excepting for the case of the South because they were slave owners and the Southwest because we liberated those poor pieces of land from the evil Mexicans. Who cares about Hawaii anyway?
Sorry about the rant, but about 3/4 of the Free Tibet protesters that I've met are complete bullshit spewers that talk and argue completely in propaganda and ad hominems. Before you really start spewing things about boycotting the olympics, though, think about what such an event would do to the world; namely, if France and Russia realized that they can boycott U.S. Olympics whenever they disagree with the guy in the white house, the US realized that they can just sit out of Olympic events from places that they don't like, and the entire spirit of the event turns into shit because of a few protestors whose protesting out of their asses because they hate a country's viewpoints on government and let their bias speak for this entire (staged) event that happens in much more radical forms in plenty of other places (should I mention that Tibetian casualties <<<<<< Iraqi casualties?).
Seriously. You can hate China as much as you like, but putting out the Olympic torch and ruining such a symbolic event is just excessive and a fine example of mob mentality thanks to the media.
Air is like Utawarerumono. The premise of the anime is not about its plot, but about the life stories that it tells. It gets really contrived near the end, certainly; however, the show's strong point is as a drama with a random premise to follow, not as an actual story.
At 4/30/08 06:12 PM, CaptainRex wrote: I think going into Iraq was a good idea just executed... poorly. I mean seriously when you think about it these people have been killing each other for thousands of years, no real way to totally "win" here. We should have just finished the little revolution out, Let the Iraqians choose what they want to do, And plop a permanent military base next to biggest oil reserve we can find.
The insurgency will happen regardless of whether the US stayed there, you know. We'd still have a problem that following the war, Saddam's lovely little military would have been anniliated, and even assuming that Iraq votes in a democratic and pro-US congress, they would have no way to obtain military backing quickly enough to secure their position. Insurgency occurs; a radical takes power in Iraq and turns it into Iran #2, and meanwhile, the military base would be lolpwned just after it completely rapes whatever credibility and PR the US has remaining in the world.
Brilliant.
At 4/30/08 01:21 PM, EgoistXIV wrote: If you ask me, Iraq isn't the "worst" war ever. WWII was slightly worse. Everything would be better if the Iraq & Iran had just been nuked right away, and every muslim in america and europe executed right away without any questions. There wouldn't be any terrorists, no dead americans, no Iran with almost ready nukes´and no muslims. The catholics would be happy too.
That would get you impeached and so utterly raped by the media and law that no commander in chief would actually be stupid enough to do it. Also, I would bet that the pope won't be too supportive of something like this, either, and would wash his hands of any administration that would actually attempt this - not to mention the foreign policy issues that would result afterwords. (Yes, I realize that this is a joke.)
To the topic at hand though:
I don't think Iraq is the worst war ever, but I do agree that it's a stupid, pointless, and generally harmful war. Taking our current situation into account, the US basically has three options:
1. Attempt to convert Iraq into its own favor, possibly into a democratic nation in support of the US. Even assuming that everything else goes well and those nice Iraqi children were educated in the benevolent policies of democracy and supporting America, education will take at least a decade or two, during which time a few hundred trils of dollars would have already been invested in the place. Can't wait to see what that does to the homeland, not to mention the problematic rising internal dissent.
2. Pull out of Iraq. As it stands, the current Iraqi army sucks and won't be able to hold their own in the case of an uprising, and I would bet that as it stands now, the militant portion (and possibly good chunks of the civil portion) of the Iraqi populace would put their support behind some guy that is preaching against America, as well. Doubt that congress will actually hold. Oh, and the resulting rise in insurgency and stuff certainly won't be pretty to the public or Iraqi eye.
3. Install a leader sympathetic to the US. See #2 - namely, no workable Iraqi military that's actually worth anything.
So, basically, the US is screwed either way. They'd HAVE to stay in Iraq to prevent it from becoming a insane, massively anti-US version of Saddam (except maybe one that will actually have non-deactivated WMDs stashed somewhere in their soil), though the cost would build up eventually and take a heavier toll on the economy.
There are no women in anime, since lines and colors do not have chromosomes.
