At 7/4/09 06:47 PM, RubberTrucky wrote:

At 7/4/09 06:37 PM, Elfer wrote: because most humans have a built-in incapability to just ignore emotions.

We can't stop laughing, we can't stop crying, but we can stop making a big deal out of it.

You can do that about as much as you can ignore pain under torture.
Wow, pain is just like ELECTRICITY and NERVES like it totally devalues it, right?

Nnnnope
You don't become less drunk because you know what makes you drunk just the same you don't become less in love even if you understand love down to the atom.

At 7/3/09 02:47 PM, zephiran wrote:

Judging from the OP´s view on things, I suppose it would be something like "barter trade"

I mean, how shitty is that? Seriously? Barter trade? It would ruin the world economy in exactly 1 second.
Barter trade only works in primitive societies where there's only like 3 goods. You know what happens otherwise? People with different goods you've never heard of come here and tell you that it's worth whatever crazy price and then they screw you.

That's what happened to native americans. They had no idea what a mirror or a cauldron was worth or the kind of gold mine they were sitting on all along.

Arhem. Remember that governmentional system I mentioned earlier in this thread?

It sounds like the opposite of anarchy..like..a. government or something.

private companies are so darn good at what they do that they can probably cut costs drastically and up efficacy ginormously. Governments are EEEEEVUL!

Private companies are owned by people who want one thing: to make money. Never EVER forget that. Once someone has found a way to exploit a loophole to make more money, they will do it. This includes cutting wages of employees, violating environmental rules, doing shady deals, destroying anything in their paths or making shitty products.
And in a natural monoply, this would not be any different. Since there would be no competitors, people would be forced to pay any price for their service, or live without it. Can you imagine no running water, electricity or sewage system?
People would be subject to random price fluctuations, ownership changes and catastrophic Enronisms. You could just acquire a public utility, run it for 5 years, line your pockets and then take a plane to the Cayman islands, never to be seen again.

That shit would happen DAILY. Consumer confidence in EVERYTHING would probably plummet which in turn would make economic growth go negative pretty fast.

Last and final issue on my list to tick off is natural resource management. Really, I don´t know what to say here except to repeat the ol´ "governments are ill-suited to manage anything"- argument.

Well some management is better...like..MUCH MUCH BETTER than none.

You won't make it to 50.

And no, this probably won't have any long-term effects on your body. Just don't do this every week.

At 7/2/09 09:52 PM, THEJamoke wrote:

At 7/2/09 09:48 PM, biohasard wrote: I'm sorry, But Newgrounds isn't exactly full of gourmet chefs.

<---------- Gourmet chef, right here

4 years culinary school, chef certification w/ degree in food science & nutrition + 9 years experience in the kitchen.

Ask away.

What's the best coconut shrimp recipe?

At 7/1/09 11:03 PM, Saen wrote:

At 7/1/09 10:29 PM, poxpower wrote:

I can't explain where he came from but I sure can explain everything else about him.

Oh, well go ahead. You wouldn't be the first.

Yes that's my point: no one cares how much you can "explain" about God, show me the evidence.

Tell me how you believe Satan. What concepts convinced you?

It was revealed to me in a dream by angels. I knew this was no ordinary dream because I clearly felt different.
The after that day weird things started happening. I would ask for rain, and it would rain like 20% of the time I tried it. That's amazing in case you didn't know. And I could just feel the evil in people. For instance when Saddam died, I felt his evil go out from the world, because the angel gave me the power to sense evil you see.

So that's pretty strong evidence right there.

I have already admitted that I do not know what God looks like or what God wants.

You keep repeating over and over how you know that God has an effect on humanity.
This assumes you are able to isolate a God effect from a non-God caused effect . Of course, you haven't said how you do that.

I haven't applied or forced anything to anyone. You have done this through your scenarios. What actions have I disagreed with? I do not base my actions on my beliefs. Relevance?

Look, the point is that it doesn't MATTER wether YOU base your actions on your faith or not, just the fact of basing parts of your reasoning on faith makes it instantly impossible for you to argue anyone out of a faith-based action. By what right will you tell them that their beliefs are wrong when you have nothing but hot air to back yours?

At 7/1/09 11:35 PM, CBP wrote:

not the text of the bible, during the Middle Ages many manipulated the Church, but that was all fixed in the 2nd Vatican Council in the sixties.

What do you mean, "all fixed"?
Last I heard, boy-fucking is still rampant and they're running around telling Africans that condoms don't work.

Not all of them, but a few yes.

How can popes THEN be bad, but NOW be the representative of God? How exactly are YOU qualified to evaluate this subject?

We do that as well, we just also ask others to pray for us, and some of them happen to be dead.

Why would you need to ask more than one, ever?
God is the one who'll answer all prayers anyway.
Praying to anyone BUT God is evidently nothing but polytheism repackaged and completely useless if you follow any description of God that religious people will give you.

I neither know nor care about them.

You don't care about the 8 animals spirits? ( mantis, tiger, zebra, triceratops, shark, gremlin, horse, beetle )
Well you can't go to Zarban if you don't align your chookahs with the spirits :O Only through the Beastmaster will your spirit-avatar be saved from the torments of Karkos mountain.

Wait this probably sounds fucking retarded to you because you're closed-minded. If only you'd open your mind and allow for more possibilities than your own point of view!

At 7/1/09 10:16 PM, Saen wrote:

Go ahead then. You'd be the first.

I can't explain where he came from but I sure can explain everything else about him.

Not going to even get into this. I already argued this with you, except you replaced the word satan with fairies.

You mean you replaced it with "God".

Hardly, you presented a scenario that theists have already taken into consideration. I provided a full explanation, a process.

No, you didn't at all.
Satan exists, he's the son of God but he betrayed him but he's too powerful for God to kill so he went to hell. This is what I believe because angels told me.

Argue me out of it. I triple-dare you.

I do not base my trust in God by my actions.

This has nothing to do with what I said.

If I said my belief in God makes me beat kids, you'd go "wow that's wrong" but if I say my belief makes me bake cookies for orphans, suddenly you don't question me.

Above.

You didn't explain or refute anything.
You clearly act based upon what you feel is right in accordance to what you think God wants. You've said it.

But you apply a double-standard to others where they can't base their actions on beliefs if you don't agree with those actions.

Oh, well I guess we should assume that the violence done by criminals doesn't make those criminals violent.

Buy some glasses.

At 7/1/09 09:03 PM, Saen wrote:

God, you cannot explain the possibility of his existence logically

Yeah, I can. I can find a trillion ways to explain him logically.
What I can't find is evidence of him existing.

No one else has provided any varying possible proof of God's existence.

What's a "varying possible proof"?
And yes, here goes: Satan exists because I feel him in my heart tempting me to do evil. I know you don't believe me that it's Satan and that you think it's just something else, but trust me, it's Satan.

Well one your confusing me with someone else, I have never God has granted prayers.

I never said you believed God grants prayers.
I said that the evidence you offer for your claim of God would never convince you of anything else anyone would try to convince you of. I just gave you my evidence for Satan the same way you gave us evidence of God. Are you convinced?

There are others methods of acting, acting is not limited to sacrifice. I strive to be kind and thoughtful towards others, not to hinder potential knowledge, give aid to those in need.

How does that make your belief correct? That's just what I've been saying all along: you base actions on your beliefs but if I suggest that someone else does it, you pretend like it's not the same because they do things you personnaly think are evil ( based on your own beliefs, you hypocrite).

If I said my belief in God makes me beat kids, you'd go "wow that's wrong" but if I say my belief makes me bake cookies for orphans, suddenly you don't question me.

This is EXTREMELY SIMPLE AND EASY TO UNDERSTAND.

"Your only recourse would be violence" You said that a person's only action will be violence, but you also say that doesn't make the person violent. Even still, it's good to know that you truly think I'm not violent, even without evidence.

I don't think you're NOT violent, I never said you ARE violent.
And I never said that if you come to violence, it doesn't make you violent.

You fail just at simple reading comprehension, how can we expect you to argue complex ideas? Jesus. You're only 17 though so I guess it could be worse.

At 7/1/09 07:43 PM, Saen wrote:

never expanding the concept of logic, sticking to the definition.

Explain how WE'RE the ones who need to expand our logic.
You flat-out admit that you wouldn't take the proof you have from anyone but you. How can you possibly expect us to side with you, ever?

If someone told you that bigfoot grants prayers, you would not, in a TRILLION YEARS, believe them.

Admit it.

I haven't sacrificed anything to believe in God, and I intend not to sacrifice anything.

You're saying that you get to believe whatever you want AS LONG AS you don't act upon it???

Don't get me started on violence. I do not ever resort to violence and it is wrong of you to accuse me of doing so.

???
I never said you were violent.

If you were more careful when you read other people's posts, maybe you'd understand their arguments.

Saen, the problem with your entire line of thinking is that you have a double standard.
You say that YOU get to believe in what you want because you like it, but you would never allow other people to do the same as you, aka base you actions on your beliefs.

If someone decided to vote all the black people into jail based on their religion, you would be against it but there's nothing you could say logically to convince them out of their position because you have already sacrificed your intellectual integrity to wishthinking and blatantly so. If it goes for you for ONE SINGLE THING, it goes for EVERYONE for EVERY SINGLE THING.
Your only recourse would be violence.

At 7/1/09 06:49 PM, CBP wrote:

Very few Catholics actually consider the pope truly infallible, almost all of us are aware that papal infallibility was just a way for the old Church to control people by saying that the leader can do no wrong. We do believe that he is a very holy man, and that he is as close to God as a living human can

Ok so in case you hadn't realized what you just wrote: you believe that the POPE, the closest thing to God on earth, manipulated the body of the church and the text of the bible to expand his power.

But let me guess, he doesn't do that anymore, right? It's always all the OTHER popes, those were the bad popes.

I assume you are a Protestant, so think about this: if you are sick, or need help with something do you not want for people to pray for you?

His point is: why not pray directly to God?

All humans are born with original sin

And don't forget the 8 eternal animal spirits.

Saving the polar bears is worth exactly 0$

Here's the worst that will happen: your kids will read a book about animals and see "polar bears" as "extinct" and go "aw" for like 10 minutes. The end.

At 7/1/09 12:55 PM, MercatorMap wrote: God is above your silly math and science.

The Flying Spaghetti monster is above your silly God.

holy shit

Your anarchy starts with the government deciding who owns what too. (See my first statement above)

What are you talking about arrrrrr

If you prefer David D Friedman, you advocate gradually privatizing services; reducing government functions until everything eventually get's sold.

I love your plan for privatizing everything! That way I have to pay a different guy every time I:
- Use a road, go to a park, get my garbage picked up, send my kids to school and so on.
Poor people will have a lot of fun living in your utopian society.
I predict a sharp rise of crime and pollution within 20 years and no one to stop it.

people are generally more willing to make deals with each other than they are willing to kill each other to acquire each others property.

Yeah no shit, but those who ARE willing to won't have any opposition. The incentive to gang up and be violent becomes dramatically higher.
Especially when they have no money left from paying all the roads and are too stupid to work at McDonald's because they can't even read numbers thanks to the lack of public schools.

bob jimmy bobadoodle

Nowhere in your giant wall of text do you actually address points head-on. You always go into a giant straw man story that leads nowhere and assumes that everyone is educated, well-fed and pacific.

Like you're trying to explain economics to me to answer shit like "who's gonna stop a mafia-like organization from running an entire city?". Answer: NO ONE.

This solves the problem of making sure that government property falls into the hands of those most willing to put it to it's most efficient use.

This was never EVER the argument. The argument is that there are some things no one wants to own or that would create a monopoly if owned.
Example: Power lines. If one company owned all the power lines for a city, they would hold the city hostage. There can't be a competitor who starts his own power lines.
Same goes for sewers, water pipes, bridges etc.

Of course, I'd much rather starve to death (If they can raise the price of bread they can raise the price of any good) than live in a world with traffic jams.

The hell are you talking about now

If you're talking about publicly owned toll roads, the government can put as many tolls as it likes and for as high a price as it likes

except they don't. And don't HAVE to.
If you own a road and expect people to pay for the priviledge to pass on them, you NEED a toll booth.

unconditional taxation.

Oh no.... not one of those people...

If you're talking about roads where the government lends the roads to private companies

Well I'm not. Whew.

At 6/29/09 05:06 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

You unintentionally are helping my argument. The additional costs of paying for separate private police to guard individual tolls would make it more profitable for a few tolls

Dude, the number of tolls is not optional. You need one per road. period. You can't own 10 roads and put 3 booths.

You make it sound like this is all SO easy. As soon as the higher benevolent authority disappears, since humanity is so depraved everyone will just conspire to exploit one another.

Yeah well you can't seem to offer any arguments against, you just make up stories about what you think would happen in ONE tiny situation between two random dudes you invented.

First of all, consumers throughout most of history have not relied on government to check to see if a product is safe or if it is not.

The fuck are you on? The FDA approves just about everything you put in your mouth. Companies are FORCED to maintain certain standards in their products through testing. You know why? Because they didn't use to do it and PEOPLE DIED BECAUSE OF THIS.

Plus you ignore the fact that there's no one to police reputations or brands. Yeah you think you're so smart buying a product from this "reputable brand" but WHOOPS you got swindled and there's nothing you can do about it. Boo hoo, do not pass Go, do not collect 200$

What keeps your electrical appliances from killing you? It's not the government, it's a private company that relies on nothing but universal recognition as being honest, reliable

There are rules and regulations for what you can and cannot put on the market. Companies are there to make money FAST. Companies have a boss, who is a dude, and he wants to get rich and once he's rich, that's it, he doesn't give a fuck.

At any time, a reputable company can go down the drain LIGHTNING-FAST if the director is an asshole. There's nothing that could stop a giant death toll as there would be no organisation to test appliances and even if there was, what the fuck would they do? Put a sticker on it? With no law against duplicating those, you could print all the "blablabla approved" crap you want and slap it on your brands.

You still assume the world worlds like a frickin Huron village.

Governments cannot succeed, they have no competition, They don't suffer financially from poor decisions. (Our government debt has done nothing to the personal wealth, power, and good looks of our president) Governments are virtually unaccountable to their clients. Governments

And yet they're better than anarchy.
Boy that sure is a hard pill to swallow, eh?

Yes I am. When the European empires battled in World War I

Blahblah
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I _casualties
Look at the % of death compared to population. It probably averages 2% tops.

This happened once for most of these people.

Now let's take a dumbass clan system where people fight each other several times during their lives, each time killing someone else. Do the math genius.

So you admit that your model of social organization doesn't hinge on reciprocity; it simply hopes that the oligarchy is enlightened enough.

blahblah fucking blah
100% of your argument is only stating the flaws of governments, not answering the holes of anarchism.

The only one you've attempted to answer is the roads problem and that's not going too well I gotta say.

Your argument for the military makes no sense, you keep evading the cop question, not to mention tons of other problems like public schooling, public utilities, monopolies, consumer protection, social nets etc.

At 6/29/09 05:51 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

Government ownership of the means of production will inherently lead to resource mismanagement.

It's better to have a mismanaged resource than NO RESOURCE.

Speaking of which, I still wait for your argument about protecting the ocean and emitting fishing and hunting quotas.

If your thesis on the geographic / population size being inversely proportional to the violence that a state exerts on its people

Wow what the fuck, I never said that.
I clearly wrote that wars between humans become less frequent the bigger the groups they organize in. Tribes and clans fight ALL THE TIME.

I'm sorry to say that I'll be gone for about a month, I'm going on a summer tour... incase you think I'm a liar trying to avoid your argument.

You probably don't need to bother replying when you come back.

At 6/29/09 04:59 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: There are two fundamental assumptions behind all of your seemingly Reducto Ad Absurdum arguments, and I think I'd better address them now before you read anything else I've written and continue to use them.

No, quit typing giant wall of texts that are just you stroking your ego about how much you think you understand economy and human nature.
I want answers to very specific questions.

At 6/29/09 05:00 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

At 6/27/09 04:59 PM, poxpower wrote:

At 6/27/09 02:59 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

Your argument again hinges on the assumption this would happen.

Yeah I'm pretty sure it would happen if you removed not only all light, but all SIGNS, LINES, ZONES ETC.
You keep focusing on one example of a small city who replaced a measly 12 lights with roundabouts and that's all you have to stand on to say that the abolition of all road rules would make NYC more efficient and safer????
That and your endless musings about how people driver better when they think they're in danger. Yes, thank you for reminding me of that thing I already knew and wasn't talking about for the 100th time.

At 6/30/09 02:18 PM, Elfer wrote:

They don't. Whenever there's some sort of crazy contradiction, people say "Yeah but God is of a nature such that everything is super crazy and doesn't have to make sense"

The mechanism that is offered to explain the grand canyon DIRECTLY contradicts his entire young earth viewpoint.
He can't honestly let it go at this point, too much of his philosophy rides on it. What he did is downright dishonest.

At 6/29/09 11:16 PM, KidneyThief wrote:

Until they show active aggression

I'm pretty sure that pointing missiles at people is a sign of aggression.

North Korea will probably eventually have to be taken down Iraq-style.

At 6/30/09 09:35 AM, Elfer wrote:

He's saying he's going to drop the subject as evidence for his argument as he feels he doesn't currently have the competence to argue it effectively. I can respect that.

He's basically ignoring a really simple proof that he's dead wrong on the basis of extreme laziness.
You can respect that?

At 6/29/09 11:55 PM, ThunderboltLegion wrote:

Disappearing information would be the opposite of the most basic principles of evolution.

Nope

Evolution requires that something is created, improved or otherwise increased.

Wrong again

Combining information is a little more complicated, nevertheless nothing new is actually created.

Jesus, drop the "information" thing, it had NOTHING to do with evolution.
Evolution is not about anything but genetic change of any kind.

When this happens the result is not the sum of the two parts responsible but rather more of an average.

If that was true, then the height of everyone on the planet would eventually average out. Ever think of that?

The second law of thermodynamics states (in my paraphrased words) that; in a closed system, the complex will tend toward the simple, not the other way around.

Holy.

Shit.

Seriously.

all the individual elements that compose everything will not tend toward something more complex but will wind down (so to speak).

Yeah IF YOU TAKE THE ENTIRE UNIVERSE AND MAKE AN AVERAGE.

The same is true of DNA; it will not become more complex over time but more simple.

What does that even mean? How do you measure the "complexity" of DNA?
By how long the strand is? By how many sequences it has? By how random it is?

Yes, I am aware of that.
For the time being I concede as I am unprepared to debate this topic.

How can you just "concede" this fact that PRETTY MUCH BLOWS YOUR CREATIONISM OUT OF THE WATER??????????????????????

You can't do that. You can't go "ok well I concede to this point that ends my argument completely, but let's continue this other avenue here about how I am right about my argument".

I love how people will go "yeah men are totally retarded" ( even men ) and say how all the problems in the world are men's fault ( even men ) but then go "hey don't say a woman is a bitch! Something must be wrong with YOU since you're the guy!".

Here's my lesson: everyone except me is an idiot. Especially teenagers.

At 6/28/09 05:39 PM, SupraAddict wrote: For starters, I just want to say when I went to the theater, I was expecting a movie that would wrap the entire movie series up, develop the characters even more, and have original context from the original 1986 movie that I know and love.

Are you retarded?

I don't think he would store it in his closet for two years, and not reflect upon the time he had from before.

The forte of Shia Leboeoeoeuf is that you are never surprised when characters he plays do something stupid or nonsensical.

Aside from that, He goes to a certain college and is met by the college girl which is actually a robot/Decepticon.

Wow that's hot. How this related to Transformers in any way, shape or form? No idea. I guess Michael Bay always wanted to direct a Terminator movie but never could because God wouldn't allow it, so now he's taking his revenge.

I'll skip the bots that have over-exaggerated features (the two twin bots, oldass bot with a cane, etc).

Yes, old robots. That was a fun concept from the original. Kup was like 70 million years old ( no kidding ). Hot Rod was only, like, 30 million apparently. What a little youngster.

I understand that Michael Bay was trying to add humor with these personalities, but he added so much that it took away from the actual story itself.

Nah he's not to blame for that.
The guy who did Gollum is to blame for that. He's the poster child for every mo-cap asswipe who ham up their part to a point where you feel bad for their mental retardation.
You just imagine them sitting in the stupid black suit with ping-pong balls in a stupid wildly gesturing and speaking crazy imaginary lines about cubes and rings.

Comments?

Yes, why did you waste any money on that? You know you're only encouraging the further desecration of cool things, right?
Now they've raped G.I.Joes too. Keep going to those movies and they won't stop until captain planet is an alien from the future who wears a robot jumpsuit and has to save the earth from terrorists.

This is endless and just a rehash of the same easily-defeated arguments everyone here knows by now.
HEY LIKE HOW COME BLAH COINCIDENCES BLABLABAKF

Here's one for you: there's trillions of atoms in a glass of water, what are the chances that ALL OF THEM be EXACTLY where they are in the universe as I pour the glass? HOLY SHIT IT'S LIKE SO SMALL HOW CAN IT EVER HAPPEN? Miracle!

Yes, what else is new?
Keep it in here for now: http://www.newgrounds.com/bbs/topic/1074 798

At 6/28/09 08:16 PM, BrianEtrius wrote:

At 6/28/09 08:15 PM, Jon-86 wrote: The politics forum should have a "politics forum rules" thread. It helped quite a bit in the programming forum after it was put together and eventually made official!

Well, time to plug in again this listof what I'm sure most mods agree on for the politics rules.

Plus, if you have suggestions, PM me.

Damn, who wants to read that?
My simple 5 rules usually deal with 99% of the shit I lock and delete anyway.

Hopefully this clears some things up.

1. Does your thread contain your opinion or did you just paste a news story / article / video?
2. Is your opinion more than 2 lines long?
3. How many threads are there on the first page that deal with what you want to talk about? More than 2-3? The don't waste your time.
4. Does your topic relate in any way to politics, science or philosophy?
5. Are you ready to stand behind your opinion or do you just want to put it "out there" and not have to argue for it?

If you make a thread, all 5 of these criteria have to be fulfilled.

And for future reference: no, the politics forum is not just for strictly political discussion. Feel free to open debates on anything you think is cool, thought-provocative and worth talking about.

Ignoring the fact that you view Ireland as being an uncivilized Rabble, it took England 1000 years to conquer Ireland

In the last 50 years, warfare has COMPLETELY changed. This argument is irrelevent as it was just dudes with horses and swords fighting over little pieces of land. Now we have cruise missiles and jets. What the fuck would they do today?

all of japan fell to the United States.

Instead of being at war for 1000 YEARS which you seem to like way more.

You're the one who implies comparing medieval Ireland to modern governments.

No, YOU are. You keep bringing up how some podunk shitty ancient civilizations scraped by on some kind of semi-anarchism to try and convince me that anarchy is totally great and would work today.

I say Ireland was better than the rest of medieval Europe

Well China was better than Ireland. So what? Wow, look at me and my great proof!

You're views are predicated on the faith that people in government are the only people who can save us from destroying ourselves.

Blablabla EXPLAIN HOW IT WORKS, GO.

No, everywhere that works by Government Kleptoracy is a horrible dump and no one would want to live there today.

You mean a DICTATORSHIP? Yeah it's almost like, when there's a dictatorship, people are left to fend off for themselves and IT NEVER SEEMS TO WORK. Bizarre. You'd think at one point some bunch of brilliant anarchists would have organized everyone according to your principles and formed the best, most free society ever!
But there's always someone with a gun who ruins their fun. Wow, I wonder why that is? Maybe some kind of problem with national defense or law enforcement. Wait, where have I heard that point brought up before? Hmm

blablabla

You keep naming all the flaws of government but you never answer direct points ( cept for the road thing). When I say "what about national defense?" Instead of offering a solution, you say irrelevant things like "well terrorists are doing..stuff in iraq" and "too bad the government manages the postal system!"

It's obvious that there's a ton of things that could be privatized. I'm not claiming otherwise. And I'm also not naming those things.

The US governments policy of attacking Germany destroyed Fascism but crippled eastern Europe and gave the USSR the power to expand their own empire.

BUT, YOU KNOW, WON THE WAR.

The Armistice of World war I caused World War II and the Armistice of World war II lead to the Cold war. Had the United States never fought in world war I, some business investments might have gone toxic, but millions of lives would have been saved.

You have no idea what would have happened.

The fact that you blame bad governments on leaders being "Evil" is just proof of that view of the world.

And now we are in the segment called "Smilez refutes his own straw man for 500 words".

If there is a demand for honest businessmen, businessmen who are honest will attract the demand and profit and businessmen who are dishonest will push consumers away and suffer.

Yes just like the CEO of Enron. What you seem to forget is that it's possible to be dishonest JUST ONCE and be set for life and there's nothing anyone could do about it in your little craptopian society.
If there is, tell me right now.

At 6/27/09 02:59 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

the effects that road rules and road design have on the human psyche

All it says is IT'S SAFER.
Not more viable, efficient, livable etc.
My argument isn't that it would make New York less safe to drive in. My argument is that it would make New York almost IMPOSSIBLE to drive in.
No parking rules? Entire streets would be blocked by assholes for days with no one there to tow the car. That's just ONE problem out of DOZENS AND DOZENS. NYC would become the world's largest traffic jam exactly one day after your brilliant idea.

They're accessible for free if you're interested (which I doubt).

I don't want to read their books, I want to hear their arguments.

Oh my goodness how did the soviet union privatize it's industries since nobody owned them before?

Ok so your anarchy starts with THE GOVERNMENT deciding who owns what? Well done, well done.

For instance, why don't supermarkets charge people one hundred dollars per every hour they spend in the supermarket. Or why They don't raise their prices to 1000 dollars for a loaf of bread?

No this doesn't compare. A toll booth SLOWS TRAFFIC DOWN. Again, welcome to jam city, the city of anarchy.

The owner of a highway would face a net loss of revenue if he/she tried to inconvenience customers.

As we can plainly see from the numerous annoying-ass toll booths spanning the size of the entire country of the USA.

If road owners screw consumers, they screw themselves in the long run.

You do realize that in ADDITION to building extra toll booths, each road owner would need to hire private security to put just about anywhere in case you decide not to pay their little toll? If everything works well, you'll have build about a billion new toll booth and hired thousands of road guards with guns. And shit, roads are a monopoly. Roads owners could just ban and raise road prices to crazy heights, what the FUCK are you going to do if you need to drive to work? Fly? You think they'll just let you walk there on their road? They could raise it to some crazy price that is barely affordable and that would work, they have a trapped workforce. Same goes for the subway. Right now, the government can step in when that sort of thing happens ( and it does ) but now, they couldn't.

All you ideas are always "well ok assuming everything else stays the same, here's how this little piece would work".

the same thing goes to people who are selling homes.

You can get screwed buying a house RIGHT NOW. With all the protection agencies looking out for you! Imagine if you just had to take it on faith that the house is built to "code" ( there would be no code ). If your house falls apart within 3 years, you're fucked. That's it. The price that people pay for insurance would be ridiculous.
And just buying insurance would be one fun adventure too! Those companies are already notoriously crooked even with courts to watch them, imagine if there were none?

So you'd either have to pay usury rates for insurance or just randomly trust that you didn't buy a shit house, a shit car or a shit anything.

If a landowner in a residential area had a reputation for randomly charging super-high tolls on homeowners who HAD to pass through the streets to get onto the highways, people would know about it and no one would do business with him

Ownership of roads could change at any time.
Hell, someone could just GIVE UP taking care of a road. What are you gonna do about it? Move every time?

But why don't you sit me down and explain to me how the government keeps roads in order

?? What do you want to know??

When answering how something will be done, the statist throws his hands up and says 'The government will do it'.

With a government, we KNOW IT WORKS, albeit shittily at times. If you claim to have an alternative, yeah, guess what? You have to explain it. Every last point.

Regardless, it helps to compare the Tuath to the 'civilized' social hierarchy of Feudal Europe.

snore GET TO THE POINT dear lord

Warfare between feudal lords was also a constant affair in Europe.

Yeah that's why A BIG UNIFYING GOVERNMENT IS GOOD. Instead of a ton of shitty lords and chiefs.

This is even more profound in Iceland where clan wars were simply 'Feuds' where only a handful of men would be involved

If by "handful" you mean "all able-bodied men".
You're saying that a ton of small fights are somehow better than a few big fights.

So compare the numbers and let's find out. I don't have em.

Irish kings didn't have the authority to wage war either

Sounds like a great form of GOVERNMENT.

Stop comparing past societies to modern societies and start comparing them to existing societies of the time.

No, because that leads to shit like : "ok well polytheism is awesome because the greeks and the egyptians were and they had awesome empires, but the dark ages were ushered in by monotheism, so clearly we need polytheism".
Convinced yet?

No one in Ireland had the power to manipulate currency or force a particular currency on other people, so the currency used by the Irish was whatever the overwhelming majority of people within the society viewed as legitimate.

Yes, try to live like that today, without money. Have fun.

At 6/27/09 03:12 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: Irish Law was by modern standards, more civilized than European Law.

But CURRENT law is more civilized than Irish law! Hurray!
Now you typed that whole giant thing for no reason :,(

(In the modern day we have more sophisticated methods of finding out the value of a service

It's called printed money.

liar liar pants on fire

The kind of warfare you think of, where armies in the thousands rather than the hundreds meet face to face and clash,

No. I'm talking about clan warfare. That's just as shitty to live in.
You tried to pass it off like it was peaceful, but that's bullshit. Every kid was a trained warrior because they were constantly fighting each other for resource with no one to answer to but the winner of the fight.

And the sad thing is that it's not a system like the Kings. When the kings ruled, the bad laws and the wars was their own fault. They could have avoided it if they hadn't been a bunch of assholes. But the way the irish were organized would always end up with clans fighting each other, like it has with the native americans, the africans, the incas etc. etc. Every time humans split into a lot of small groups, they fight each other.
The bigger the groups, the less frequent the fights.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-DLvp9OSa R4

And here's my example: EVERYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD WHERE THE GOVERNMENT MANAGES FOOD PROPERLY.
All you can do is show examples of a state grossly abusing power and mismanaging ressource. Show me an example of an anarchist population of millions managing food and then I'll be convinced.

You describe a society where a handful of people appoint themselves the sole authority protect you by pain of death, where in some places they make it a crime to protect your life rather than wait for THEM to take pictures of you and throw you into a body bag, after the fact.

Good job, this doesn't answers any of my claims, it just betrays your clear anti-government stance.

The reason they have failed to take control of the country is because of a handful of insurgents that have resisted them.

What's going on in Iraq is not a war for ressource in a strict sense. If the US wanted, they could get in, raze the place and take control of all the things they want.
And that's what would happen eventually under world anarchy. One bunch of people would run out of resource due to mismanagement or a distaster and then band together to steal other people's shit until it spirals into a giant army of people who will raze the country like locust.

At 6/27/09 02:09 PM, RubberTrucky wrote:

At 6/27/09 01:42 PM, poxpower wrote: Show me one parent who tries to enforce Santa for one kid's entire life.

How many religious people have actively forced their religion onto you already?
In my case: 0.

What does this have to do with anything?
???

No I'm not, I'm only reversing this argument.

Equating science WITH THE EXACT OPPOSITE OF SCIENCE, basically is what you did.
Using the classic insane argument that "science makes nukes" ???

Again: ARE YOU SHITTING ME? HOLY BALLS.

That's EXACTLY like saying "well you can overdose on medicine...so medicine is like car crashes, because car crashes sometimes kill murderers!".

That's your guess. Lemaitre was a priest for chrissakes and got a strong position within the Church even after his publications about the Big Bang.

Ok I'll rephrase it: religious people are hella stupid when it comes to religion.
Not ignorant, but downright STUPID.

At 6/27/09 12:31 PM, RubberTrucky wrote:

We're poisoning our youths minds with telling them fairytales and making them believe in Santa and the Easter bunny.

Yeah if you never tell them it was a fairytale, you are.
It's called a religion. Show me one parent who tries to enforce Santa for one kid's entire life.

And science finds new ways to kill more and more people at once with their nuclear missiles and biological weapons and screxw the world over with their new ways of poluting stuff. Science is only inventing ways to kill ourselves. Scientists are stupid.

You can't possibly be serious.

Tell me this, if religion makes you weak and stupid

Woah, smart guy! HEY IF NOT WASHING REGULARLY PROMOTES DISEASES, HOW COME WE'RE ALL STILL HERE? SKDFSAFDS

I'll let you answer your own question.

Anyway I'm sure there's a lot of smart "religious" people but my guess is that they don't give a shit about religion and they just follow it to fit in. I've yet to see ANY religious debater not get completely trashed.

Show them to me. I want to see a religious dude lasting one entire debate without relying on one logical fallacy.