Teresa N. H.

I've seen A Man for All Seasons and I remember that scene. But Thomas More was a Catholic, and had his faith to bolster him. Perhaps if I thought the guilty would get what was coming to them in the end, I wouldn't be so concerned about it in the beginning and middle. But I don't think that. I don't believe in an afterlife, and so am forced to conclude that Hitler and Mother Teresa are in the same place. Believe me, that sticks in my craw. And I'm also forced to conclude that if the devil gets the benefit of law, while the angels don't get the benefit of ruthless, barbaric devilry, that the devil wins, and I would then see no reason not to take his side.

Very important principle: bad intel is worse than no intel.

Agreed. Is bad intel+good intel worse than no intel? Of that I'm not so sure.

No, it should not. As I said earlier: even if you're incapable of understanding the reasons why we don't do that, you should pretend you understand them so you won't be a pariah. The same goes for us as a nation.

I fully acknowledge--indeed, I learned it a long time ago--that I have to make the choice between honesty and bonhomie. It is a perpetual choice. Every day I am free to abandon my cold logic for the warm bosom of human togetherness. Every day it's no contest. Crime and moral wrongs deserve punishment in measure. That doesn't change if six billion people don't believe it, and no matter how many reports Christopher Hitchens puts out.

T.N.H:

Answer: using normal investigative techniques, real interrogation (the non-violent kind real interrogators do), accumulating evidence -- you know, all the stuff that actually works. . . .

In real life, torturing someone for information about where a bomb is hidden will get you a lot of completely unreliable intel, because the guy will tell you absolutely anything he thinks will make you stop doing what you've been doing to him. You'll waste your time and resources trying to follow up those leads. If you really want to find the bomb, conventional investigative techniques are the way to go.

That may indeed work on the people we have in custody. If so, that's what we should use. However, I know that if I had information that I didn't want to give to someone (particularly someone I hated), I would be more willing to give it up if I were tortured than under standard, non-violent interrogation. But that may be just me.

Being guilty of anything means you should be tortured? Not true. In fact, it's explicitly prohibited in the Bill of Rights. You've also forgotten about the principle of being innocent until proven guilty. Worse, you've forgotten that you're using information gathering as an excuse for torture, and have moved on to advocating torture as a universal punishment.

I was always advocating it as a punishment. I genuinely wanted to know better methods for information extraction (again, against me, there are none--torture me and I'll tell the truth); but I think there are probably some Guantanamo prisoners who deserve it as a punishment.

I remember innocence until proven guilt; I'm just against innocence even after proven guilt.

And no, being guilty of anything shouldn't warrant torture, but being guilty of multiple murder should. Being guilty of terrorism should. If we didn't have laws that shouldn't be enforced, we could be less cautious about punishing the breaking of the laws that should.

See? You've slipped up again, and are advocating torture as a universal punishment for everyone who is suspected or accused of crimes. You're not a patriot; you're a radical totalitarian who wants to suborn and overthrow our system of law and government.

No, I am advocating punishment in measure for all those who are guilty of crimes. Whether or not they are suspected, or accused, or proven to be guilty, if they are guilty, they deserve punishment. But yes, I do want to see the system of law and government remade and perfected.

No. Not patriotically. What you're advocating is contrary to everything America stands for, and is specifically prohibited by our central body of law.

Then we're agreed that support of the America we want, and not of the America that is, is not patriotic? Because I know many people who have claimed to be patriots while supporting radical alterations to the structure of the country and its government.

Wow. You know as much about law as you do about criminal investigation, which in both cases ought to be expressed as a negative number. That theory of yours is characteristic of the nastier sorts of tyrannies. The American legal system would find it abhorrent.

I was speaking of justice, not legality. But tell me, why should I not attempt to achieve my ends through violence and crime? I'm innocent until proven guilty, I would have the advantage of lawyers and trials, I know that I would be exempt from cruel punishment, so if I inflicted it on my victims, I would come out ahead of the game. My theory is abhorrent, but that is palatable?

There are limits of what we can find out about a crime. It's been proven that eye witnesses aren't always a reliable source of information because of the way our brains work, sometimes no one was at the scene of a crime, and sometimes even hard evidence, like DNA, is either unavailable or contaminated. Then there's always the possibility that an accused criminal is being treated unfairly for some reason. It's easier than you think for someone to be accused for a crime they didn't commit. So excuse me if I don't want to torture those that are "proven" guilty for this reason alone.

Then you claim no proof is ever achieved of a crime? No standard or confidence interval, not even the one in practice of "beyond a reasonable doubt" is sufficient to say that someone is guilty? One may as well doubt that a fish is a fish.

However, even if someone is guilty why would I want to be like them and harm another human being? Wouldn't taking joy in someone else's suffering make me a little like that person?

No more so than firing a water gun at someone makes you a little like someone who fires an actual gun at someone. It is the same motion; it is a completely different context. An eye for an eye is justice; life for an eye is not, but neither is a slap on the wrist for taking a life.

However, if we accept that torture taints the torturer even if the victim is himself a torturer, why does this not apply to all punishment? Doesn't fining a robber make us like him? Or imprisoning a kidnapper?

Let me get this straight, it appears that you're saying the US is an anarchistic society with no system of justice?

No, I am speaking of hypothetical anarchy. Imagine a society with no police, no courts, no laws. Criminals who today must work under cover and in secret would freely rob and kill. Thus, they have a natural advantage. This advantage must be countered by civil society. The US is not anarchistic. If someone is breaking into your house to steal your property, you can call the police and they will stop him and make him give it back. The courts may then fine him or imprison him. But nothing can undo the robbery. The man has violated your rights. He is a criminal. He is bad. He requires punishment, not to make him good, not to provide the victim with succor, but simply because justice declares that one bad turn deserves another.

The problem is you're only taking into account one societal value, "justice". Torturing the guilty may be "right" in a society that only valued justice, but our society takes many values into consideration: justice, compassion, morality, fairness... just to name a few. We couldn't have a civil society by just taking into consideration one value.

I value justice supremely. I agree that our society does not, but I do not approve. But justice is not seperable as the other values you mentioned. It is an either/or. A society can be a little compassionate, or a lot. But a society cannot be a little bit just. It is either just or unjust. Some societies, like the Soviet Union, were unjust against the criminals--it called non-crimes crimes, and exacted harsher punishment than deserved. Our society is unjust against the law-abiding. It allows murderers and thieves opportunities to work their evil.

If we truly are willing to sacrifice some victims to criminals in pursuit of feel-good compassion, it's the country's right. I just feel it should be honest about it. And as a member of the country, I'm going to fight against it and for justice.

Our country (USA) is founded upon such beliefs that it is better that 100 guilty men go free than one innocent be wrongfully punished.

Let us say that I patriotically dissent from that belief. The punishment of innocents is an injustice, but the freedom of guilty people is doubly so--once in that they don't suffer for their crimes, and again in that they are free to commit more crimes.

If I may be cynical for a moment, I think the belief you describe is not based on a noble sentiment, but on a cover-our-rears mentality. If we let a killer out and he kills again, well, what can you do, some people are just going to kill. But if we punish someone wrongly, we get called on the carpet.

The investigation and the trial are so that you can determine whether or not punishment is appropriate. How can you justifiably punish someone before you've determined their guilt? On what bizarre world are you living?

and

Wait, why is it wrong to fail to torture the guilty? Even after someone is proven guilty in this country we're not allowed to torture them.

Look, I believe the guilty have rights; I just believe the rights of the innocent outweigh the rights of the guilty. If it takes 10 years to determine guilt, that's 10 years of freedom the guilty person has enjoyed that he shouldn't have, and wouldn't have if we could determine guilt automatically. I say, let's get those 10 years out of the guilty party's hide.

The problem is that in an anarchistic society, the murderer, the robber, the terrorist has a natural advantage. Absent a system of justice, it's always easier to take someone else's property than to make/buy your own. A civil society should vitiate that advantage. Mercy toward the guilty upholds it. Yes, let's follow full, proper investigatory and trial procedure, but once we do and guilt is determined, let's take the gloves off and be as barbaric as the guilty parties as they are to their victims.

No, it's not "rich white politician bad". It's man who's politics we know and those politics include torture and that makes Cheney a bad person. I wouldn't endorse torturing him. I think those that are mentioning torturing Cheney are tryinig to say is that maybe he should try it first before he forces it on others.

Actually my comment was more directed to #13's remark that Cheney might not breathe oxygen. That's dehumanizing. If I had said before his comment that waterboarding Middle Easterners is ok because they don't breathe oxygen like we do, I'd be rightfully excoriated. I think equal excoriation is warranted for #13. Switching the targets was simply my method for doing so.

Well, your scenario presumes we have it already, because if the prisoner tells us he doesn't have the information, and we're not sure, torturing him won't magically give us the truth, even if he doesn't have it. It'll give us what he thinks will make us stop torturing him.

Right, but what process will make him give us the information? I'm accepting for the moment that torture doesn't work. What does?

Flamingphonebook @46: Investigation, then trial, then punishment (if found guilty). Really, it's a very simple sequence, why do you find it so hard to comprehend?

And if, after investigation, and trial, and appeal, and review, we determine that the accused is absolutely guilty, how do we go back and retroactively apply the punishment that he should have been suffering during the investigation and trial?

Is this some misguided attempt at humor? I'll assume for your sake that it is.

Merely sauce for the goose. If one side can dehumanize Vice President Cheney, why can't I do the same to the detainees? Despite what some believe, the "rich White politician--bad; poor brown devotee--good" concept is not settled truth.

There's a reason you always see mob types torturing victims in movies. It's thug behavior perpetrated by thugs. Unfortunately, unlike the movies, torture is more likely to get whatever the victim thinks the thug wants to hear, the truth rarely enters into it.

Then how does one get the truth? Scenario: we have a person in custody, he has a piece of information we need to get, but is completely committed to not letting us get it. We don't care about his safety, rights, or the consequences; we simply need the datum. How exactly do we get it?

Nevertheless, most, if not all of these so called prisoners have not or will not have in the near future, seen a fair trial, meaning that it's nearly certain that some number of these prisoners are innocent of wrongdoing. If you don't see the wrong in torturing innocent people, then I don't think I can help you.

By the same token, some number of them are guilty. It's just as wrong to fail to torture those people as it is to torture the innocent.

I'd say "let's do Cheney next" but I'm not sure that he even breathes oxygen.

Funny, that's how I feel about the prisoners at Gitmo.

And there is a pre-arranged signal to stop waterboarding at Gitmo: tell the questioner what he wants to know.

Wow, clearly you're ignorant of human history both recent and recurrent. The "United States of Amnesia" as Gore Vidal would say.

Let us say rather that I'm taking a "shades of grey" view of history. I see some cases where nominal injustices are used to defend life, liberty, and property, and I see them resulting in no decadence. Abraham Lincoln's suspension of Habeas Corbus during the Civil War, for example. It's where the powerful want to walk us all on the road paved with good intentions that I see the worst atrocities. Naziism, Communism, Islamism, all were born out of, and supported by, ideologies that purported to seek perfection and advancement for all, rather than defend the rights of the individual.

Humans are a part of nature, FYI. We were not created ex nihilo. Human exceptionalism seems an awfully myopic view of the universe.

But surely we don't plan to stop heart disease by arresting and prosecuting arterial plaque? The AIDS virus isn't going to be charged in wrongful death suits?

Humans have free will, which natural causes of death do not. To see them as different is hardly myopic.

That's the real rub revealing itself -- this clash of civilizations garbage philosophy, which is actually just a comfortable disguise for renewed jingoism and xenophobia -- a herd mentality. Let me know when they start book-burning again.

It's not xenophobia--I'm just as much against citizens of my own country descending into the collectivist mentality as I am those in foreign lands. Unless you mean that the philosophy I don't share is the "xeno-." In which case I confess it: I'm fearful of those who hold that I have no rights and am a subject of god or the state.

But judging by your post history, you're not a constitution kinda guy/gal.

To the contrary, I'm following the letter of the Amendment. There is no seizure at issue here, so that's out. And I am simply asserting that the search involved is reasonable, since it is non-invasive. And I'm certainly not in favor of violating the last clause about improper warrants, since I'm in favor of going ahead without any warrant at all.

Antinous: Flaming loves to whip people up with his hate-filled invective. You'd get a better response if you talked to your shoe.

"unless you define 'compromise' as a 'shameful or disreputable concession,' which fits the deal brokered by Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD) to a tee."

"The award for the most bald-faced lie on the House floor Friday, however, goes to Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA)"

"Either she's a liar or a buffoon"

"She's always been both."

I'm sorry, it's I who am hate-filled?

The possibility that a few determined crazy people will carry out criminal acts of violence is the price of freedom for the whole of society.

Then leave your doors unlocked, less you pay the price of your freedom to enter your house without a key. Some security measures are worth the cost. In my estimation, surveillance is one of them.

Furthermore, all of these "security measures" do little to prevent such events, but do much to constrain and meddle in our way of life.

We're discussing wiretaps/data mining, which do nothing to constrain and meddle in our way of life. When they lead to arrests for victimless crimes, I'll complain. As to prevention of terrorism, we don't know how much or little they do.

And, as I've said before, far more people die in traffic accidents, of heart disease, cancer, and AIDS, not to mention the military occupation of Iraq, each year than died in the destruction of the World Trade Center. But does the Federal Government throw heaping piles of money at research into preventing those deaths? No.

Do you see no qualitative difference in those mortal causes that would warrant government interference in one, but not the others? I do: one is caused by men, the others by nature. The right tool for the right job. Against traffic accidents, stronger cars and wider roads; against disease, medicine; but against murderers, government.

If you can't take a little bloody nose, maybe you ought to go back home and crawl under your bed. It's not safe out here. It's wondrous, with treasures to satiate desires both subtle and gross; but it's not for the timid.

- John de Lancie

Then cease your timidity in the face of the government, and don't seek safety from it, while allowing me to satiate my gross desires.

You see, fear and favor cut both ways. We both fear, and we both favor one side of the conflict. You have your standards, and I do not question them. Mine are based on the philosophies involved. The one side says, go forth, master the earth, amass wealth, take pride in your achievements, and seek ever for greatness. The other side says, abase yourself before god, learn rules written and unwritten and follow them even to your own detriment. Subjugate the self, bow the head, and cover the face and body.

Of those, I know who I favor and who I fear.

I am glad the bill passed.

In the first, I am not convinced that surveillance violates a person's rights. An innocent person whose activities become known by another party suffers no change of state because of it. When the surveillance is used in aid of infringing a right that should be held, then the proper response is to uphold the right. DFletcher pointed out on his blog that the same techniques used today against terrorists might tomorrow be used against drug dealers. The solution is to legalize drug sales, not ban the surveillance.

Secondly, I can't see how general surveillance equates with specific surveillance. If they tap phones A-Z, and keep the information from Z while discarding A-Y, Z might have a claim against them, but I don't see the merit of A-Y's rights being violated.

Thirdly, I'm still not clear on whether this data mining concerns actual wiretaps, or merely phone-call metadata (who's calling whom, when, for how long, and where, for cellular phones). If it's only the latter, there's even less claim of rights violation.

In short, my fundamental disagreement is with Zuzu's:

"'Terrorism' is a canard. The United States needs to at least return to its pre-9/11 laws and structure, and put an end to its fearmongering.

The real threat is the police state being constructed with 'anti-terror' legislation."

Terrorism was not a canard for the dead and wounded on 9/11; it was quite real. Why should I expect that a return to pre-9/11 policies, which resulted in, or at least allowed to happen, 9/11, would not produce a similar outcome?

And I do agree with Asuffield's assertion that compromise is always wrong. Rather than bipartisanship, we should conduct direct democracy and determine if the people favor it, or at least let those who wish to cede their information to the government to do so.

#2:If that means declaring Bush, Cheney, FoxNews execs and Rush Limbaugh national threats (no evidence needed anymore, thanks!) and jailing them incommunicado for a year or two, then so be it. If they are allowed to walk free, then democracy means nothing anyway.

#12:Shw m whr ny nt-wr prtstr hs bn rrstd fr nythng thr thn crm lk dsrdrly cndct -- ftr vltng th prmt thy prmsd t bd by. Shw m whr dssnt s bng crshd.

Wow. Summary suspension of liberty for journalists: ok. Pointing out that phone tapping isn't the same as crushing dissent: bad.

"So if a cop comes up to you, and tells you that you need to go shoot someone... you're not guilty of murder?"

I'd have to say no, on this logic. When a man puts a gun to your head and says to shoot someone or he'll kill you, and you do so, then he, and not you, is guilty of murder. To my view, the government always has a gun to the head of the citizen. It's their guilt if you listen.

"FLAMINGPHONEBOOK@15... if the government -- at any level -- comes and requires a wiretap from you without a warrant, you are REQUIRED to say no. There are explicit laws about that, at both the state and federal level.

Despite your ignorance of it, the law is not confusing here."

Yes, I am ignorant of the law, and would like pointers. However, it is very confusing, or at least counterintuitive, that if the government participates in an illegal search that I can be held criminally responsible for not denying them.

It's like, if the government wanted to set up a camera in my home to watch my every move, I would have the right to accept. I have the right to privacy, but also the right to waive that right.

OK, so a phone tap involves a third party, but I am expected to assume they wish to exercize their right to privacy? That is not intuitive to me.

"The law is that if the government wants telecoms to give up phone records or conversations, they need to go to a judge and get a warrant."

Yes, and that's why the Bush administration should be investigated and charged with failing to do just that. But if I'm AT&T, and someone from the Bush administration, Homeland Security, FBI, etc., comes without a warrant, it should not be incumbent on me to decline to co-operate with the government.

It would be like, if the police knock at my door without a warrant and ask to search the place, and I accede, and they find evidence of a crime my neighbor has committed, I haven't violated his rights by allowing the search. It's entirely within my purview to cooperate with a government agency, which often I would be willing to do.

Now obviously that's not a true analogy, because I'm not a phone company. A phone company has to maintain privacy of its users by FCC rules, yes? So what happens when the flip side happens? An agency gets the proper paperwork, but the phone company declines to give over the information because it's worried about prosecution later on.

"Obey the law!"

And if the law says two contradictory things?

The problem this bill solves (notwithstanding the ones it creates) is that without it, it requires companies to act as judges and lawyers. If one government agency comes to a telecom and says, "Turn over your records or we'll prosecute you," and another says, "Keep your records secure or we'll prosecute you," what does a company that wants to keep from the blow of the law do?

"150 years ago we did not use oil... now we do and the planet's dying...what's to argue about?"

150 years ago men wore long beards; now they don't and the planet's dying.

Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

I try to be a consistent agnostic on global warming. Maybe it is, maybe not. Maybe it's our fault, maybe it's natural, maybe a bit of both. Maybe it will be bad for us, maybe not. Maybe we can fix it and cover up the symptoms, maybe we need to reduce emissions. Maybe emissions can be reduced at the production level without affecting consumption. Maybe it can be handled at the market level, maybe we need watchgroups.

Or maybe we need an immediate, broad-reaching, all-world governmental mandate to radically curtail economic activity and force privation on the populus in perpetuity in order to maintain our chances of survival.

My worry is that there are people who want to curtail economic activity and force privation via government for their own reasons, and who would be willing to use any excuse to achieve that end. So we should be sure of our evidence before we act.

My response to universal health care is the same as always: keep cheating on my taxes so I don't have to fund it, and keep paying cash so I don't have to suffer it.

But as far as the police here go, while I'm perfectly fine with them having general arrest powers on the road or the public square, they should have no right to enter a private residence without the consent of the owner.

I don't want to begrudge anyone their emotions or their collective benefits. I just don't want them for myself. I want to be able to look back on my accomplishments, however great or meager they may be, and say that it was all me, and that no one else has any claim to them. Even if all I could last was a week until I died of thirst, the last drink I had would be mine entirely, mine purely, and the pride I could take in that would be euphoric. I still don't think that would be my fate. I still think that a purely logical libertarian society would advance rapidly and not degenerate. But if I am wrong I would accept it. All I ask is my freedom and my rights.

(BTW, I do not only argue these points on the internet. I present them to my family and friends, who either argue back as the people here have, or smile and nod and change the subject.)

GregLondon:

I have several times trafficked in goods without the implied warranty the the government provides, as the goods in question were of dubious legality. I was able to ensure the quality of the goods through researching the providers and listening to other customers' testimonials. On occassion, I have been an early customer of a provider without reputation, going on my own judgement of character. I was never burned on any of the deals, but even had I been, I was prepared to be in order to be able to give a negative testimonial. So yes, I believe that in the long run, caveat emptor is good doctrine, and it has the added benefit of cutting out the middle man.

Xopher 162: I'm not interpreting that passage at all. Don't know about Crowley, but I'll say it here: if it harms nobody, do whatever you want.

And would someone please explain to me how it is trolling if I'm answering questions put to me, engaging in discussion, and presenting my thought processes? The simple fact that my ideas happen to provoke people doesn't mean that that's my purpose in writing them. It isn't. I'd be just as happy to write if everyone agreed with me.

You manage to stay in business selling tainted sausage. Is it moral to allow you to sell tainted sausage?

Yes it is. Because it is still a mutual agreement. Now, if I advertise that my sausage is healthful, while knowing that it is not, then I have committed fraud and it is moral to stop me from selling it and to punish me. However, two parties can agree to engage in an activity that is less than healthful, and no third party has any interest in the transaction.

I have no problem with free transit of information, even to the point of voluntary inspections by the government. They could label businesses with "failed inspection" or "refused inspection," and publish them, letting the market take care of the problem business. However, if enough people can support such a business, no one should stop them. Social deviance that manages to thrive is, by definition, not deviance.

And I am single, enjoy sports as a viewer and an occasional pickup game, and work as a bookkeeper for a private school. No tattoos or distinguishing marks.

Rodriguezseeds: Let's see, you're average intelligence, average education and you've had plenty of liberal peers throughout your life. You're also male and you're poorly-equipped. I don't mean in the military sense.

Wrong about everything except me being male.

Xopher: If this were the principle on which governments really operated, the world would be a lifeless radioactive rock by now.

Why, if we must be motivated by fear of force in order to be good, do we deserve to survive? Personally, I think that if it were, the right people would still thrive.

I think justice is the task of good people. We have not accomplished justice in the world. You are the foe of justice, and you want the government to oppose it too, because you want them to hold your rights above the cumulative rights of any number of others, whereas justice requires that your rights and each of theirs be held to be equal, which means you lose by a billion to one.

There is no such thing as a cumulative right. And if justice requires a conflict of rights, then your definition of rights has failed somewhere. In any case, I am not against justice, I am for perfect justice.

GregLondon: Actually, there are situations where your lack of support for society harms everyone in society. But there isn't much point in going into that with you.

Lack of support is not harm. If I pass a person who is drowning and don't help, I haven't done him any harm. Similarly, if I refuse to pay for someone's operatiion, I haven't harmed them. I didn't give them the disease/injury in the first place.

The simplest example is that bank robbers didn't choose to agree to your set of morals, and if you worship at no god but the god of choice, then you can't force them to do something they didn't choose.

This follows my rule of force. A bank robber initiates force. Therefore I can force them to stop, even though they don't choose to.

And how do you get to enforce the idea that this, and this alone, is the sole extent of what is just? It conflicts directly with the god of choice. I didn't choose that limitation on what is right. And you try to force it on me.

Nice use of semantics, but it still doesn't work. If you're not choosing that limitation on what is right, then you're adding some other case in which it's all right to use force, which means that by my code, it's acceptable to use force to stop you. So my code is consistent.

Now that we are at a disagreement, how do we resolve it?

If all you do is disagree in thought and in word, I have no issue with you. Only when you practice your position do I retaliate.

There is little mystery to this philosophical set of rules: You are a Randian Objectivist. The window dressing you put around it is irrelevant. What matters is what is at the heart of your religion:

Only in the political sphere. Rand also prescribed right and wrong outside of politics, with which I do not agree.

Cantfightthedite:All things considered: the national security of the U.S.A, levels of sectarian violence in Iraq, instability in the region (the kurds vs. turkey, posturing on part of Iran and/or Syria, etc.), the state of the American economy (hello national debt!), the price of oil... how has the war in Iraq been effective in securing the rights or representing the interests of the people of the United States of America with respect to the tremendous cost (6 trillion dollars)???

Excellent question. My answer is that after 9/11 and the retaliation in Afghanistan, if we had not initiated further military action, it would have marked us as predictible and limited by the borders of nations. It would have effectively said that our enemies can carry out n terrorist attacks if they simply establish in n countries. Iraq was the most politically attractive target.

121: Yes there is. It is applied to when one people assumes the separate and equal station among the powers of the earth, and requires an explanation. I am providing such.

122: But how do you know? I can fight and can provide the economic support for a protracted fight. How many of your beggars for health-care can do so?

123: Yes to all four. They are my chosen friends. That choice spurs me to protect them. But not all people are my chosen friends, and to some I have no duty.

127: Yes, one might argue the effectiveness. But many are arguing the moral right. And I am defending it. But to effectiveness, we must measure our cost alone, not the other side's.

129-130: Do I objectively measure my worth against a billion others? No. I measure my right to live against them. The rights of one outweigh the needs of any number, and the rights of one citizen should, in the eyes of that citizen's government, outweigh the rights of any number of non-citizens.

131: My apologies if I ignored you. Yes, I am an absolute libertarian by political persuasion. I am Randian only in this maxim: that the initiation of force into a relationship is unjust, and justifiably met with force. I have not yet found anyone with whom I agree completely, so I consider my ideas original. To paraphrase Nietzche, who is more libertarian than I am, that I may rejoice in his teachings?

I did not vote in 2000 and in 2004 voted for George Bush. This year I will either abstain from voting or cast a blank ballot.

133: True, it is my opinion. But when the government takes on those jobs, while taking my money and ignoring its duty to my security, my opinion is relevant.

A healthy populus might be beneficial, but I must choose to support it. The fact that a forced decision may produce a benefit is no excuse. Kicking a man into heaven is no better than kicking him into hell. Human choice is my god.

117: And my comfort is in being right.

118: How can you claim to know me? Oh, that's right, because you know my group, and you don't believe in individuals, which is the point between us. Well, tit for tat: I've known enough socialists to know you're all going to fall down in the end.

119: Great. Come up with a country strong enough to take me out in a fair fight, and get back to me.

Maybe we need to put up big signs, or blare it from a radio every hour in public, or post it at the top of everyone's internet browser. For now, though, I'll just say it here, and keep repeating it.

It is not the job of the government to get us to Mars.

It is not the job of the government to provide food for people.

It is not the job of the government to heal the sick.

It is not the job of any one country's government to care one whit about the people of any other country.

It is the job of the government to secure the rights of individual people under that government's protection. That's what the Declaration of Independence said, and that's good enough for me. That leaves two jobs for the government to do: catch criminals, and fight off foreign enemies.

I'd kindly ask those who want to persist in these socialistic fantasies to stop doing it with my tax dollars, and to stop doing it in despite of my security. wnt my gvrnmnt wllng t kll blln frgnrs t prtct my lf. wnt my gvrnmnt wllng t lt ppl strv f thy cn't gt thr wn fd. And I want to destroy this illusion of universal brotherhood. No one owes anyone anything as a birthright.

Mintfresh:

I never said conservatives weren't ruining the world. I said that liberals were. The real problem is collectivism, which both sides are guilty of. My point is, Lileks accurately disects the way that liberals illustrate the evils of collectivism, while passing over those of conservatism. When it comes to issues that conservatism doesn't really have consistently arguable positions on, like abortion, sex, religion, he hems and haws and moves on.

Learning about statistics is good, but you have to learn all about statistics. The article talks about mean, or expected value, but makes no mention of variance.

To begin with the gambling example: casinos make a very small return on the games overall. The advantage to the house in some games is less than 1%. But because they play so many games for such high stakes, that advantage adds up, and even if there is a big winner, the house wins in the long run. The gamblers are not, for the most part, stupid. They know that in the long run, the house wins, but they also know that they are such a small part of the house's business, that variance might hit and they can be a big winner.

And the same thing applies to terrorism. Moving the threat from rare occurrences to daily inconveniences may be a bad deal in the long run, but in the short run, a terrorist attack is much worse. You can plan to deal with the crap at the airport; you can't plan for a terrorist attack.

Which is not to say that the measures taken at the airport make any sense. They don't move the threat of terrorism, they leave it there and add new threats. That's just wrong. But if there is a way to stop terrorism by minor inconvenience, we should think long and hard before rejecting it out of hand. The value in being able to anticipate and plan may be worth it.

Ironically deconstructing your trip to Disneyworld was cool about twenty years ago.

Yes, but that's Lileks's schtick--pretending it's the Eisenhower era and the world is Pleasantville and what are all these hippies doing around here? Personally, I wish he'd do more political stuff about how liberals are ruining the world (they are) since he has such a good way with words. But I still read the Bleat every day just because it reads well.

I'm no anarchist. When a person starts hanging people and robbing banks, then it's time to respond with state-based force. To fail to do so is as wrong as to extend the state's power beyond this job. That's what I meant by meeting like with like. There's a thick line between the side of hanging and robbery and the side of discrimination and bigotry.

Takuan: what about the concept of being responsible to one's self? I agree my thoughts are free, I also accept the "bad" ones as my own but I also make judgment on which to encourage and which to let wither.

You can make that judgment. I however can make the same judgment for my thoughts. If they conflict, we can reason with each other until we agree, or either party can terminate all contact, or either party can physically restrict the other. Each choice should be met in kind. Reason with reason, separation with separation, force with force.

Xopher:FPB 69: By "scorched-Earth" Libertarian, I mean that you think that everything, no matter how important, that doesn't conform to your ideal of total freedom must be destroyed.

What is more important than freedom? Whatever it is, without freedom, it can be taken away.

Unfortunately it's impossible to have society if total freedom is expanded that far. Thus the scorched Earth.

I respectfully disagree. The only restrictions I'm disallowing are the ones unilaterally established by force of law. You want to discourage bigotry? Ostracize the bigots. You want to discourage greed? Patronize civic-minded companies. You want to end poverty? Engage in private charity. The fact that you can't reason with the people you disagree with, but need to apply laws to them, tells me that you're probably wrong, but that even if you're right, that your ends justify any means.

And if you are right, and a free society of the current populus would collapse, the right thing to do is let it collapse so that the resulting populus acts the way you believe is right without the prodding of law.

please expand. I agree we "hate" many things, but I do not follow.

Simply this: everything that occurs in the mind of a human being, every thought, every emotion, every opinion, is 100% amoral. Within the skull, you have infinite power and zero responsibility. When people voluntarily exchange ideas, that too is amoral. It's just words. Only when ideas are put into practice is judgment warranted. Sitting down and thinking or talking about how much you hate a party or group should not be prevented, only argued against by other ideas. If someone says, "I'm going to hate this group and nothing you say will convince me otherwise," you should let him be.

But the recent California court ruling is part of that process, no?

Yes. And I'm in favor of that ruling. My worry is that it's going to be taken too far. That rather than enforce justice, legislative shortcuts will be taken to ensure "fairness." Does affirmative action apply? Do Equal Employment rules apply? These are the shortcuts I'm concerned about.

FlamingPhoneBook #53, there's more to this than 1040s. In many states, same-sex couples can't adopt kids. There are cases where one half of a same-sex couple has kids from some earlier relationship, has died, and the kids get grabbed away by some relative because the other half of the couple has no legal standing as a parent.

Oh, of course. I don't mean to make light of their situation. My point is that issues like this need to go through a long, detailed political process before they can be settled. My problem is with people who expect to present a few cases like that and then assume that the debate is over. If we want more radical change, then we need more authority given to smaller jurisdictions.

I'd say calling someone "a rather hateful person" is an ad hominem.

I didn't think it was ad hominem; I just thought it was inaccurate. Remember, I don't assume being hateful is itself wrong.

Moreover, I'd like Xopher to expand on the term "scorched-earth libertarian." I am, I would say, a "by-the-book" libertarian, but I don't understand the scorching of the earth.

63: No difference at all.

I assume that you include people of color, ethnic minorities, other religions, disabled people and women in this statement.

I do. A private organization is the property of its owner(s). He/she/they can design that organization to whatever purpose suits their values. The only thing they may not do (morally) is force others to transact with them.

You're a rather hateful person.

No, I just give equal love to everyone, including the powerful, the hateful, and the avaricious.

Your time is your property. It can be exchanged for other people's property or for money. Or it can be given away for free.

Takuan: There is indeed an obligation for men to be rational in society. I haven't opened my Hobbes in centuries, but the alternatives to making social groups work still seem pretty brutish.

For the least qualified. If you're socially darwinistic, and confident that you're in the select, the alternatives don't look too bad.

When you say nature will deal with the irrational, you implicitly accept the condemnation of the species. All of us. Don't get me wrong, I firmly believe that by any objective standard, humanity richly deserves oblivion. All this gifts and powers granted - and look around us.

That is why I elect to be subjective.

The species may be condemned, but I will neither accept nor deny it. My only caveat is that if it is condemned, I'd much rather like to see it replaced with the ubermenschen than with the termites. That is, the individualistic advance over the collective.

If a man chooses to refuse to learn and as a consequence condemns his brothers to death thereby diminishing us all - well then, teaching or containing that person becomes a matter of self defense.

Precisely. Teaching or containing. Preferably the latter. Send him to Coventry, and if he manages to survive there, it's no skin off our asses. If necessary the former, but not in a situation where if he does not accept the teaching, he's punished. The only kind of irrationality we have the right to defend ourselves against is the kind that presumes the right to take our property by force or by fraud.

Xopher:

I think the last 7+ years make it absolutely clear that the Republicans are not competent to run a country.

I agree with the literal meaning of your words. I do not think that the last seven-plus years show that the Republicans are incompetent to hold the legislative majority and executive office of a limited democracy such as the US.

People can be as homophobic as they want in "fear and hatred" terms. No one should be allowed to discriminate (in any public accommodation etc.).

Only if that public accomodation is a government institution. Private businesses and organizations should have every right to discriminate.

And I think you're optimistic about the GOP. But then I think about 40% of Republicans (and I mean registered Republicans, not the politicians) would fundamentally be OK with seeing all gay, lesbian, and transgendered people put in a camp and gassed to death.

I don't think they'd all admit it, but I do think that's how they feel.

I'd like to know how you come to that conclusion. I know many Republicans from many walks of life and I know of none who have given any indication of a willingness to use violence against homosexuals.

What I have seen is an unthinking prejudice against the practice. It's "just not right" in their eyes. No reason, unless you press them until they mutter something about god's will. But that does not translate to wanting orientational genocide.

But give it time. Many of the people who think that are older folks who had their values canalized in a time when homosexuality was considered immoral. If they don't have to deal with it personally, they've no reason to consider their position rationally. Let them die off naturally, and in a generation or two, the population en masse will be ready for full equality of sexuality. Just because an idea is progressive, doesn't mean the progress happens automatically. It took this country 80 years and a bloody war to overturn slavery, but homosexuals can't wait another day to get a break on their 1040s.

Sometimes I suspect that it's actually about flinging homosexuality in the faces of the homophobic for shock value and schadenfreude than it is about actually obtaining the benefits for the homosexuals. But I have no direct evidence of this.

#48:

I would say that there is no obligation, among men, to be rational. Nature will deal with the irrational in its own time and way. It's no less wrong to discriminate against the irrational than against a race or a sexual orientation.

#49. I think many, but not most, Republicans disdain homosexuality, and hold their nose and tolerate homosexuals themselves. As for November, I would wish them defeat if there were anyone good to defeat them. In my opinion the Democrats' ills are far worse. I cannot think of a single governmental office that I am comfortable with a Democrat holding.

Key principle: Any policy designed to play to voters' homophobia is itself a homophobic policy. And by the way I think Hillary and Barack are both homophobic because they both oppose same-sex marriage. They're just LESS homophobic than McCain and his gang of fools.

And the light dawns! I wouldn't call that homophobic in the fear sense, but it is homophobic in the discriminatory sense, and I agree it should not be done. However, as I said before, while it should be made clear that the government will not aid them in their homophobia, it should also not hinder them. Private homophobia is still a right.

Which still leaves open the question of what does it mean? You apparantly don't want to have an exact definition, because that would mean that I might be able to prove that the Republicans policies don't apply to it. Can I turn it around and say that everyone knows that the Democrats are homophiliac?

Xopher:

FPB...if you think homophobia literally means "fear of homosexuality" then I'm going to shoo you away to read before you post any further on the topic. I have no enforcement powers here, but I'm certainly not going to argue with someone that ignorant.

You can define a term however you like, but I, entering an argument, must assume it means what is in the dictionary. If you want to rigorously define what you mean by homophobia, then I'll tell you whether or not it can be found explicitly in the Republican Party.

And according to your definitions, basically ANY halfway sane government policy counts as socialism. And what you know about communism you can write on a 3X5 card with a Sharpie™.

I guess I know which of my three possibilities I think was the truth.

Again, dictionary definition. Removal of wealth from the wealthy to the unwealthy is socialism. In what other way can you mean the word?

There is no right to be hateful. You're playing mental Twister.

Then there's no right to free thought, therefore no right to free speech, a free press, or freedom to petition the government. If there is no right to be hateful, there are no rights.

@T3knomanser:

Don't you see how that's a double edged sword? If the state has the power to grant tax benefits to married people, it has a vested interest in controlling the institution of marriage.

The state has the power, but not, in my opinion, the right. The state has the power to start rounding up people and shooting them, but no vested interest in banning bullet-proof vests. (no pun intended)

@ Lexica:

The same guarantee that meant the local Catholic church wasn't obligated to perform the marriage when my husband and I got married. It's a private religious organization, not the state government, and we're not members of the congregation. They're allowed to say "no, we won't perform your marriage."

Correct, but your marriage was not in contention, and no one had a particular cause to argue for you. Anitinous answered you better than I can, depsite sarcasm:

Next the government will be forcing people to officiate at interracial marriages and let Jews into country clubs. Oh, the humanity.

This is precisely the case. Unless bigotry, hate, and prejudice are rights defended every bit as much as harmony, tolerance, and love, then the system is unjust.

@Xopher #26:

FPB 17: You are either trolling, or ignorant of communist and socialist policies, or you don't happen to have noticed that explicitly homophobic policies are part of the official platform of the Republican Party.

Let's take the second one first. The essential policy of communism is joint ownership of property, usually though not exclusively by the state. The essential policy of socialism is to have the effect of a communistic policy, without the top-down control. Do you have differing claims of the policies involved?

Now the third. Simply because a policy argues against the desires or benefits of a certain group does not mean the policy is against the rights of that group, and it certainly does not equate to a phobia. While I concede that the party does have policies that tend against the desires and benefits of homosexuals, I challenge you to provide evidence of an official Republican policy that is admittedly or explicitly based on fear of homosexuality.

There are no explicitly socialist policies in play in the Democratic Party. Single-payer health care is not even there, and it's as close as you get. And make a case for communist policies, I dare you.

The first four words on the Democrat party web page concerning their economic agenda are "We will create jobs." The idea that the government is materially responsible when one person hires another implies that that government has power over economic transactions, which is inherently socialistic by my definition above.

The flip side is their tax policy. In legislation and in speeches, the Democrats have consistently advocated for higher taxes on the wealthy. The removal of property from those who have the most of it for distribution to those who have less of it is the essence of communism.

@T3knomanser:

I agree with your premise, but not your conclusion. State-sanctioned marriage is a fundamental right, in the sense that any competent individual may enter into a contract with another competent individual for any purpose, so long as the purpose is legal. If the parties then want to call it "marriage" or "merger" or whatever, that's purely semantics, and the state has no call to interfere.

@The discussion at large:

What I'm most concerned about with gay marriage is the thin end of a wedge. What guarantee do we have that years from now, they will not make performing gay marriages a requirement for any church or group that wants a license to perform weddings? We must protect the rights of homosexuals, but we must also protect the rights of people who hate homosexuals.

Why do conservatives like equating Democrats with communists and socialists?

For the same reason liberals like equating Republicans with bigots, racists, and homophobes.

What do Americans call the game we Brits know as Solitare?

Impatience?

See, because what we call solitaire you call patience, so what you call. . .

I'll shut up now.

@14:

Right on! I won't be driving to work tomorrow because it's efficient; I'll be driving to work tomorrow because it's comfortable, it's climate controlled, it requires a minimum of muscular effort, and there's a radio.

Here's the problem: there are no events where it's acceptable to dress sluttily (skimpily, daringly, sexily, whatever adverb you want to use), but unaccaptable to dress formally or respectfully.

My rule of thumb is that when party A's argument is that they should be able to engage in a practice or refrain from that practice, but party B's argument is that party A must either engage or refrain, then party A is right and party B is wrong.

You think the Irish should have to earn their country back from an invading force who suppressed their language and enforced a feudal system of government that led to the emigration of thousands, and the deaths of thousands more? Good on you.

I think things are tough all over. If we say that terrorism is warranted for some people that we feel sympathy for, then we either have to come up with a criterion list for when it's warranted beforehand, or else admit that there's no rhyme or reason to human existence and give up. If the IRA can kill innocents to get what they want, why can't I kill innocents to get the IRS off my case or to protest the 55 MPH speed limit?

It appears you haven't done any of the above so I would respectfully ask you to leave my country out of your examples from now on.

I didn't bring it up. But A) is a point really worth anything if it can't apply to all examples and B) what does it matter whether a person has sufferred to whether or not his ideas make sense?

So, in a general sense, no matter the rightness of the cause, even if someone else had bombed and acheived the 'correct' outcome - for the population - you would immediately take the other side, and because bombs were involved, bomb for it?
No, I'm saying that if you had to bomb for it, it wasn't the correct outcome. But using bombs to stop bombs is correct, just as taking the property of a robber is.

Whose area? OUR area, or the occupying force's area?
Why would the British have listened to anyone, if they hadn't been fought with? This isn't a problem of decades, it has a history of HUNDREDS of years. With death and oppression for thousands, and a further 20-25% of the whole Irish population, if you include the potato famine, which was remediable.

Why is it your area? And why can't you secure it from the government? If you're so set on independence, build an economic base, outearn the British, and present terms of secession when you're strong enough to warrant it. Violence is a shortcut to something you haven't earned yet.

No, I think your your self-satified, island-state mentality, casually ignoring the crimes against, and exploiation of, the world at large, by your elected government and it's tools, for decades, is morally wrong. I never suggested America 'deserved' to get attacked.

And I never said you suggested that. I said you thought it was worth the cost, based on your "pity/worse pity" claim. But in any case, I support the mentality you describe. A nation is sovereign, not a member state of the world.

It is up to YOU to know what YOU are doing in the world.

I do know, and I act by my own standards, no one else's. If my country does the same, and the standards are good ones, then I would be counted as a patriot.

Yes, burying your head in the sand, and ignoring the reasons things happen is the perfect solution.

Not everything is reasonable. The rantings of a madman are not reasonable. The petulance of the weak is not reasonable. And if an ideology needs violence to gain attention, it is unlikely to be reasonable.

Sarcasm aside, that's not just my view..

Sun Tsu also spoke of winning battles without fighting, knowing when to fight, and making decisions quickly. If you are focussed on your own betterment by your own values, you need not concern yourself with the incorrectness of others.

I am looking at how (an) oppressed people have dealt with their oppression, and how the line between freedom fighter and 'terrorist' is both a matter of perspective, and historical hindsight.
Perhaps, perhaps. But if that be the case, then "oppression" is also a matter for interpretation. Shall I call the attacks of Sept. 11 an oppression, and the FBI's scrutiny of swarthy men a freedom fight?

So you are saying that a united Ireland, or indeed a non-British-ruled Northen Ireland, as a point, is indefensible?

Not now that the IRA has laid down its arms. When it was reaking terror, then a united Ireland was indefensible. No cause should profit from terror.

The violence may be indefensible, but the point? I'll thank you not to tell me, or anyone living in Ireland, what we can and can't want for the future of our land.

Well, put it this way: if I were living in Northern Ireland, and you or anyone else was willing to commit terrorism for the sake of a united Ireland, and achieved a united Ireland, I would immedeately become a terrorist for a *divided* Ireland, since I would conclude that terror was the way to achieve a political aim.

Nor to tell any citizen of any country that they have no right to civil uprising, whether you force the label 'terrorism' onto it or not.

Precisely: *civil* uprising. If you're being killed, fight back. If you're being enslaved, stop working. But if your political preferences aren't being made the law of the land, then argue your point civilly or leave the area.

It's easy to ignore anyone's humanity when you label them a 'terrorist'. You no longer have to think of their history, or the struggle they have gone through to be heard in their own land. No, everyone we call a 'terrorist' is now a faceless, evil doom-bringer, no matter what their political aims.

Again, to give the point sharper relief, if I were to go to Syria and start terrorizing the people there, should they start listening to my political aims?

Are all 'terrorists' "radical right-wing religious believers"?

No, but the ones of the 90s/00s were. I'm referring to the attacks on the WTC in 93, on the Khobar Towers, on the Cole, and on the WTC and Pentagon in 01.

It's a pity it took a few men on some planes, flying into your buildings to make you aware of the world we all live in, but it's a worse pity, after turning around to see, that you still have such a blinkered, black & white view of it all.

And this is the crux of the matter. You think that the black and white, pre-9/11 view was morally wrong, and that 9/11 was worth the cost to shake us out of it. I think that this view is far more insidious than the FBI's suspicion of brown people or America's slipshod view of world affairs. Ignoring the rights of the strong is not better than ignoring the rights of the weak.

@Arkizzle

It contains a lot of views and information, that a great many people may sympathize with (in part or whole). Have you read it before deciding it needs censoring?

I have not said it needs censoring. It should not be censored. But I will not read it, because it was presented in violence. And I will decry the newspapers for publishing it, for the same reason.

# 37

You seem to be expending a lot of effort trying to alienate other commenters. I recommend that you rethink that strategy.

I could say that the other commenters are spending an equal amount of effort trying to alienate me. We have disagreements; we're making our respective points. I'm finding it informative and useful to hear a different point of view.

#38

In these stories we see a nation tying itself in knots trying to fight an unwinnable "war" against a largely imaginary foe, and in the process wasting billions of dollars, causing unbelievable inconvenience to its own citizens and alienating much of the rest of the world, which looks on in amazement.

I do not see that. I see a government trying (and it being a government I see it trying poorly) to establish justice in an unjust time. I see it making its best effort in an awkward situation, but it pursuit of a noble goal. The inconvenience, I see and decry. The amazement, I see and say, "Let them react however they like." The imaginary state of the foe, I do not see. I'm not afraid of terrorism; I'm not even angry at it; I am furious at the ideology behind it, and I am galled that I must give ear to that ideology because it uses terrorism. Before the major terrorist attacks of the 90s and 00s, I didn't have to think about what some radical right-wing religious believers thought about the way the world should work. The government is trying, again incompetently, to preserve my security not to care about them.

The best way to "fight" terrorism is quietly. Without panicking. Without allowing any noticable change to your way of life.

I agree. But no noticeable change of life means that we preserve our dismissal and ignorance of the terrorists' causes.

Any maybe, just maybe, finding a way to give the terrorists a voice that reduces their desire to kill your citizens (are you thinking that's unacceptable? - well, it's working pretty well in Northern Ireland right now).

It's stemmed the terrorism; has it solved the issue? Don't the sympathizers of the IRA still want a unified Ireland?

No, I do not think terrorists deserve a voice. To me, the fact that one has to resort to violence to make a point means that the point in question in indefensible by rational means. When Timothy McVeigh blew up the Murrah Building, we didn't give ear to his ideas about Ruby Ridge. When the Unabomber was at large, we didn't pay heed to his Ludditism (and the newspapers that published his manifesto should be ashamed). But when Mohammed Atta et al committed the terrorism of 9/11, I'm told we should listen to their points about US-Middle Eastern relations. Why the difference?

I wonder if it's because they're brown.

#39

It would be better if the FBI had done the right thing earlier, and said "OK, is there anything that would make real terrorists want to blow up a car ferry?" I think that if anyone had thought about that for five minutes, they'd've said "Naah" and gone back to looking for actual criminals.

If I were a terrorist, I would want to blow up a car ferry, or anything else I could get into with an explosive. If I thought about that, I'd conclude that if terrorists were rational, they wouldn't be terrorists.

#33:

OK, then what qualifies as properly suspicious?

#29 and #34:

I thought that everything after the first sentence in #9 was a serious critique of the technique used. I also thought #6 containted no sarcasm.

But even the sarcasm supports my point. There can't be any story about anti-terrorism effort without a wave of responses that the government is doing too much or (rarely) not enough. And I don't just mean on BB. Any blog or news outlet that has comments.

No commenter uses sarcasm against terrorists. No one calls for terrorists to adjust their tactics to take our rights into account. Which means that on the comment pages of the world, an honest, hardworking anti-terrorist agent gets far shabbier treatment than a terrorist.

Well, if my voice is going to be heard, I'm going to go the other way, and say, without a trace of sarcasm, good job FBI, you did the right thing.

For you not to start your posts with "You people." Once we've got that down, we'll see what else we can negotiate.

Fair enough. Mr. or Ms. Antinous, what form of investigatory government agency will forestall your complaints?

You people. When they arrest people likely to be terrorists, you complain. When they don't arrest people who aren't terrorists, you complain. When they don't arrest people who then turn out to be terrorists, you complain that they didn't connect the dots.

Seriously, what do you want?! What configuration of government is necessary for you to say, "OK, the terrorism problem is being handled in a fair and efficient manner."?

@frenetic

An ISP in its capacity as a provider of that connection service, has little to do with the backbone, and nothing to do with the millions of other subnetworks connected to it.

Then the people who maintain the backbone, they charge the ISPs? Ah, it's all so complicated, but thanks for your help.

I guess here's what I'd do. I have cable internet. If they said one day that they're going to give me DSL speeds on Boingboing and bit torrents and IM, but cable speed on Microsoft and YouTube, from which they're collecting a fee, I'd leave and look for sattelite or something else. But if they said that they're keeping cable speed on Boingboing et al, and giving me faster-than-cable speed on Microsoft et al, while collecting a fee from them, I'd say more power to them.

I don't think we need a law here; I think we need more ISP competition.

Yes, that may very well be true, but the end result is that your taxpayer money (in that case) was used to build a lane that you can't use because BMW paid off the head of the department of transportation.

True, but that's where the analogy breaks down. I can, if I choose, tell my ISP to go to hell and refuse to buy internet until a neutral net ISP arises. I cannot choose to stop paying taxes without dire consequences.

I say this is semantics because it uses the connotative difference between positively benefiting X while not benefiting Y, vs. positively benefitting X at the cost of Y.

You're mistaken: if you increase the bandwidth, but only give access to the increased bandwidth to a subset of your users, then yes you have de-prioritized the other users.

But it's an add-on. It would be like saying that if I give everyone else a cookie, but not you, that it's the same as taking a cookie from you. Those aren't a semantic equivalent.

I guess this is my unease on net non-neutrality: if it means forced downgrades to non-payers, I'm against it. If it means optional upgrades to payers, I'm for it. I'm trying to find out which it means. Saying the two are equivalent only obfuscates the issue.

Would you like a BMW only lane on your local toll-road? How about a BMW only lane that expanded to take up the slower lanes when there were a lot of BMW's on the road, causing you to drive on the shoulder?

Well, the BMW-lane would be an add-on, right? So now I have the same number of lanes, but no BMWs, so I'll go faster. And if the BMWs spilled over into my lanes, at worst I'll be in the same situation I was when I started.

"how do you prioritize one service's packets without de-prioritizing other sites' packets?"

OK, I don't understand everything about networks, so please tell me where I'm wrong here:

If our "tube" that carries traffic currently runs at x pps, and we upgrade to a bigger tube that carries 2x pps, and all the de-prioritized packets are sent through at x pps, but all the prioritized packets get through the tube at 2x pps (or however much of the increased bandwidth we can get), doesn't that prioritize without de-prioritizing?

Catfood: it's the right thing to do, and a tasty way to do it.

Two from my old friend Eric:

Actuaries do it with models
Actuaries do it on tables.

Guess what he did for a living.

I'd gladly give up butter to live in a country with elephant-shaped urinal-cleaning robots.

@#10

Well, then flip it around. Individuals are going "mad with power" over their private data. Next thing they'll start requiring their ISP to encrypt all traffic in the modem/router, and they'll make those ISPs pay for the privilege. They'll demand billing with no identifying data like name, address, or account number. Then they'll say that you can data mine our browsing of boingboing, but not our porn.

Why is an individual's power over himself and his property less insidious and less likely to be a slippery slope than a company's power over itself?

It may be newsworthy, but is it really worth condemnation? After all, when AT&T data-mines its Internet traffic, it's customary to claim privacy and call AT&T the bad guys, with which I'm inclined to agree. Isn't this the same issue? One shouldn't have to give a reason for a decision over one's personal property, whether the one is a private citizen or a corporation that owns a theme park. If "because I said so" is a good enough reason to say, "Stop snooping my browsing!", it's a good enough reason to say, "Don't take pictures of our parking lot."

Look, you can go on believing that there's an unlimited amount of wealth and resources in the world, and that somehow the pot will magically replenish itself as the wealthy drain off the lion's share, and that somehow that will not effect the living standards of the rest of us.

Obviously, the amount of material is finite. But we're far from exhausting it. If we can get off this planet in any meaningful way, we'll up our resources exponentially. More to the point, there are always more ways of parlaying resources into wealth.

You can insist on believing that disparities of wealth are somehow abstract and have nothing to do with things like a regressive income tax, low wages, or huge asymmetries in the ownership and thus control of the means of production.

I'm not saying they aren't. I'm saying that disparities of wealth are not, in and of themselves, bad. I tell you three times, a rich person is no better off for the existence of poor persons, nor is the poor person worse off for the existence of the rich.

Every year, unless you are very wealthy, your living standard and buying power are declining, and your cost of living is rising. Yours, flamingphonebook, not the wealthy's. If you think that the reason that the vast majority of Americans aren't doing better is because we are taxing the rich too much, I can only scratch my head in disbelief.

I am not very wealthy. But my living standard has increased tremendously over the past 10 years. Who is it who's hasn't? The dot-com millionaire who bamboozled some venture capitalist in '96? For him I've no sympathy.

Newsflash: the welfare recipient, the consumer, the worker, and the businessman are all in the same category: the not-rich. You seem to conflating the working man and the businessman with the wealthy, and you are making a category error.

No they are not. The businessman may someday be rich. The welfare recipient will never be. The worker's children may be businessmen. All this IF there is a free economy.

@CastanhasDoPara

And no the capitalist would not be forced into the system, hopefully they would come to recognize the benefits of this system by themselves.

Then we have no real disagreement. As is, the capitalist is forced into a non-capitalist system by the tax, anti-trust, and environmental laws. If you'll allow havens from them, then yours is a far better system for capitalists than the current one.

@Nick D.

You start by reiterating a point that's not even in dispute, that it's possible to work hard and do well in America. So what? I never said it wasn't. I just said you could do it lots of other places, too.

Ah, that's why I didn't understand your point 1. You were not saying that working hard in America doesn't make you rich; you were saying that working hard out of America does. Which is true. What I spoke of was Europe, and I should restrict that to the EU. Countries like Estonia are quite capitalistic. But where the laws tilt toward the worker and the consumer and the unemployed and everyone but the businessman, how easy is it to get rich?

The fact that you know a Korean proctologist or something who wants to come here, doesn't disprove this one simple fact: the world is filled with people who have absolutely no need or desire to come to the US to be happy or well-off. I know it rankles, but try to cope.

You said it was a myth that people wanted to live in the US. Not "every person," but "people." I showed people who do want to live here. Myth busted.

So the starving children in country B should SHUT UP AND STOP WHINING because the children in Country A are being fed? I'll buy you a ticket to Darfur or Rwanda--you can go explain that to them. Make sure to eat a cheeseburger in front of them and not offer them any while you're at it. That will show them!

If it were just food, I might be inclined to shut up about it. But once they're fed, they're going to want water, and then medicine, and then transportation, and then education, and before you know it you've got some bleeding-heart talking about how they feel inferior because their cell phones can't get signal in the grasslands, and what are you going to do about it, America?

If we want to help the people of Rwanda, let's go in with military force, remove the government, establish property rights, and let the people work for money from anyone willing to hire them.

The fact remains that the US, in comparison to a lot of other nations, is stingy when it gives out foreign aid. It's simple math, and neither your national pride nor your contempt for the poor changes that.

No, it isn't. It's generous to the receivers, but not debilitating to the givers. And that causes you to be ungrateful. If the receivers took that attitude, I'd say stop all foreign aid until they grow up.

Who gives a fuck?

I do.

If you understood that the richest are better off in any country in direct proportion to how poor the poorest are, you wouldn't brag about this. But there I go again with the math! I'll wait while you look up "direct proportion."

So you're claiming the ratio of A's utility:A's wealth is inversely proportional to B's wealth (and independent of B's utility)? Now, I'll wait while you look that up, and while you do, maybe you can answer why in the world that would be true?

I mean, let's look at what you're saying here: A rich person sits in his palatial estate in the Hamptons or in Beverly Hills. Someone gives money to a penniless beggar in Detroit. The rich man sits up and says, "I just felt a great disturbance in the force."

Wealth is not not NOT a relative quantity. A minimum wage worker today is more wealthy than Alexander the Great was. A rich person is no better off for the existence of poor persons, nor is the poor person worse off for the existence of the rich.

The working man and woman in the US is getting shafted in order to fund the excesses of the few, but hey, it's OK! Our billionaires are richest! (Cue squelchy sound of credulous worker bee licking clean the ass of a billionaire.)

Shafted by whom? No one is forced to get on a hiring line. There is no slavery. The club or the gun never comes into play. Everyone who "funds the excesses of the few" does so voluntarily. They may whine and hold their nose while doing it, but they can stop any time they want, go on strike, and stop buying from large companies. If they don't, they've no cause to complain.

The guy who wants us to obey giant doing the 1984 cover: irony.

"No, I believe you have missed my point. I personally don't think anybody should have 'great wealth',"

But what if they want it, and can acquire it from agreeing parties? Suppose all the capitalists go off on an island somewhere and agree to a no-tax, free-come-and-go, unlimited-wealth society. Should the Participatory Economists force them into the system?

This is why I am such an ardent capitalist/libertarian: because if you want to form a ParEcon subsystem within a capitalistic system with willing participants, you can. But under no system will you be allowed to form a capitalistic subsystem. That tells me that capitalism is the most fair system.

"Capital is in itself a legal fiction. The only true force of work is labor. When a person works to add value to some process the typical way to rate that is by attaching a dollar amount to it either in the form of wages or profit."

It is no more fictional than wages. Even in a barter system, if I trade for more of a good than I will use, it becomes capital to me. I can then trade the excess again for something else I want, or get more capital. Certainly someone can come along with a club and take the capital away, but they could take away everything I traded for in the first place as well.

"The current capitalist system allows a huge gulf between wages and profits, one going to the laborer and the other going to the moneyed interest (shareholders/corporations). This system is basically unfair and unnecessary."

I disagree. The laborer is almost no part of the value of the produced good or service. A laborer without materials produces nothing. A laborer without a boss produces nothing. A boss with materials and capital but no laborers can still create a one-person shop. Labor is a means of efficiency of production, not production itself.

"Also the determination of what is 'a decent life' is given a wide range of personal variation, meaning that the individual is allowed to achieve what he wants out of the system up to a limit of what is reasonable and sustainable."

If I can prove by reason that I need a billion dollars, I am then free to earn it?

"If you only want to work enough to meet your basic needs you can. If you want to be an ascetic you can. If you want to work really hard and be involved to achieve a very comfortable (yet not exorbitant) life you can."

And what of the person who refuses to work at all? Are they assumed to be ascetics? If you are saying that such persons should not be given aid, I agree with you.

"The important aspect here is that when the work and the resources are being used for the direct benefit of all those that are involved in the system (not the enrichment of a small segment) equality prevails, people have to work less overall and at the end of the day get a better slice of the pie for the work that they do do."

But why should I care about whether you have more for less work? I don't want to be equal with everyone. I want to be better than everyone. If you don't like that, you can not do business with me. But if you use the force of government, I feel justified in taking any action to prevent you.

"If you want people to pay attention to your argument you might do better to avoid the semantic baseball bat, who cares that billion as a word has different meanings on different continents."

I'm just being cute. Hence the smiley.

"However, at a certain degree of wealth the holder of that wealth no longer has to 'work hard' the money does all the work (a good reason that the super-rich stay that way) and that is inherently unfair to the person that has to work exceedingly hard just to get by (usually for paltry wages working for a super-rich person)."

But to attain that certain degree of wealth, a person must work hard. It is not necessarily the holder of the wealth, but it should be. But if I understand your point, you're saying that no one should not have to work hard perpetually to have great wealth. There is an economic problem with that and a moral one. The economic one is that it limits capital movement. When we say that the money does the work, we mean it serves as capital for other people. If I have to keep working, I will keep all my capital to help me with that work. The moral problem is that it's just as unfair to not let people retire in luxury as it is to not give them enough to 'get by.' (What constitutes getting by anyway?)

"So really the optimum wealth would be closer to being a partner with real interest in an organization that one wished to work for/with collectively."

And my argument is that I don't want to work. Or rather, I want to work just enough for the utility I want. Utility is the end of economics, not a side effect.

@Nick D.

I don't get your point one. It's quite true. The fact that there are alternate ways to be rich, doesn't change the fact that if you educate yourself, produce economically, and save frugally, you can become rich. If you have creative talent, so much the better. I knew a man from Wisconsin who started out on the assembly lines of a car company, until he noticed that by altering the machine at his station slightly, he could skip the next station. That little change parlayed into a $60 million company.

Point 2: You don't know them != they don't exist. I can introduce you to my grandmother's oncologist, Dr. Tang from Korea. Or my co-worker Nadia, from Haiti by way of Canada. Or the fifty gentlemen of Hispanic descent who show up every day outside the convenience store to go to work. Good heavens man, look at the people who come here from Cuba! No one's getting on a raft in Miami to go the other way.

Point 3: A) As an absolute, that's still more, yes? That seems a little ungrateful, like saying to your auntie at Christmas, "Thanks for the PS3, but you're rich, couldn't you have gotten me a home theater?" B) Is it the American government you're rating, or all gifts from America?

Point 4: But the rich are better off in America, yes?

@PYROS:

"It is axiomatic in America, as I suppose it is in other places too, that by definition one could not have too much wealth, and it is, perhaps because of this reason that excessive wealth accumulation is not seen as a kind of societal pathology somewhat akin to obesity."

No, it is not axiomatic. It is a result of the axiom that the amount of wealth deserved is a function of the amount earned. An American has every right to cap his own wealth. He also has the right to place no cap on it. However far we've strayed from our principles, we still hold philosophically that the individual is sovereign, not society.

". . . wealth accumulation past a certain point merely points up a flaw in the human status mechanism."

A flaw by what standard of flawlessness?

"There is very little practical difference between having 100 million dollars and 100 billion dollars."

*faceplant* Are you serious?! Try running Walmart, or an oil company, or an airline, on $100 million.

"In a normal environment, we are served by our status mechanism."

Normal by what standard?

"In any case, I don't know that it is true that there are fewer billionaires in Europe."

Well, there are no billionaires in the UK, where the word billion means 10^12. ;) But it isn't just a question of the number of billionaires. It's a question of how many billions have been earned in fair business, and how many appropriated through forced transfer.

"Excessive wealth should be regarded"

By whom?

"as a somewhat accidental and undesirable by-produkt of industrialization much in the same way that high levels of crime, toxic waste, obesity, and unemployment are."

Crime, toxic waste, obesity, and unemployment are undesirable in any numbers (qualified by what is defined as a crime, the cost-benefit of the toxic waste, the health nature of the obese, and the economic nature of the unemployed, but let me get on with it). Wealth is a good thing.

So answer me this: what is the optimum level of wealth? Please give a figure in currency or in commodities, or give me a configuration of material goods that compose the optimum wealth.

@ #5 PYROS:

The one thing Europe doesn't have is the ability to get really, really rich. If your goal is to make as much money as possible, and you're willing to bank on your own ability, the US is the place to be. Lower average, higher variability.

And from the article:

"Treasury Secretary Paulson, meeting with the G-7 Finance Ministers in Washington, tried to reassure them that the U.S. economic slump was only temporary."

Is Mr. Talpin suggesting that the slump could be permanent?

"'Damn and blast British Telecom,' exclaimed Dirk, the words coming easily from force of habit."

-Douglas Adams

Except that I don't care about the cop, the law, or the ticket. I want to get on the road and get where I'm going NOW. That's the only reason to have a road in the first place, and if a cop doesn't like it, he deserves to get shot.

I wonder if Kevin Bacon is going to be arrested.

And if you measure it by intelligence or influence on the world, we're the lion's share.

And what about those of us who think the strong are supposed to exploit the weak? Where do we go for news?

OK, granted that this is a bad generalization, surely some of the people who lost their homes really do hate America, and deserve to suffer. No?

@Englishnerd

Of course. I don't say passive voice is the only problem. What I do say is that it gives people the thought that there can be action without specific actors. This is fine if the actor is really of no relevance. My problem with it comes when people describe negative actions in the passive voice, seeking to avoid blaming or crediting someone.

To take my examples above, if there's no specific entity exploiting the poor, then there's no proper way to stop the exploitation. Passive voice can make people think that it's therefore proper to relieve them of their exploitation, when they may deserve it. On the flip, if the health care is provided by at no cost, then either it's generous donors or public funds. And people should know, so that we can salute the generous, or so the ones against using the public money to provide health care (me), can get mad.

The problem with passive-voice writing is that it leads to passive-voice thinking, which creates philosophical sloppiness. I can't tell you how many times someone has said something to me like, "The poor in this country are exploited!" OK, by whom? The rich? The middle class? The government? The businesses? Or there was the person who said to me, "Women dressing like sluts have to be stopped." By whom and how? By law? By force? By custom?

Using the passive voice in an in-depth discussion is too often a means of avoiding a commitment to an argument, and should be called out as such. In headlines it might be ok, but if the head reads, "Health Care Provided to Children," the story darn well better say who is doing the providing.

"Sorry, but I can't do the gun control analogy. One is a means of self-expression, the other a means of efficient destruction. There is a strong justification for gun control, not for choking freedom of speech."

It's far easier to choke the freedom of speech of disarmed people.

(More to the point, guns are property and the right of property is absolute. From my cold, dead hand)

Just as with guns, the pattern is registration -> regulation -> confiscation.

So, is this a laser that uses unspecified means to annihilate gamma rays or a laser that uses gamma rays to annihilate unspecified targets?

For magicians, giving credit lends an aura of greatness to the trick they're doing. If "the great Houdini died attemptin the trick I'm going to attempt tonight," that's only going to suck the audience in more.