padren

No, I wasn't. I was highlighting a group of people that Pangloss has referred to as less than awesome in the past, as a means of inferring the question "what is the difference then?" between a tea-party protester (that he thinks is awesome) and a NWO protester (that I don't think he considers quite so awesome, though I am open to new information if he does) when they both are "engaged, focused on key issues, and not distracted by bigotry." Personally I have no problem with either movement whatsoever or the taking of risky political positions. The polarity of the positions don't matter to me. The content of the message is what matters. When the tea party comes up with a message I'll consider the content, but as of now they have no message other than being "angry" and "upset" and a whole lot of generally abstract ideology that is yet to result in a single concept that actually resembles a course of action, strategy, or solution to a single problem. Claiming we need people in Washington that will listen to the people, have moral integrity, respect people's faith, respect our traditions, will protect the borders, will cut taxes, will cut spending, will cut the deficit...etc is all as great as it is meaningless if they are just tossed around in the abstract. I can say "yeah, those things are good" but they don't even propose a course of action that utilizes them. They just list their favorite things (when not distracted by the list of things they loath) and rally to elect people who claim to like those things too, as if electing people who like those things (I mean, as if Obama didn't like those things?) will somehow create a whole plethora of working legislation that will provide us with solutions not even M.C. Escher could put to pen and paper. Anyway, I have no idea who you are trying to say are herd conformists. I got that you implied sarcasm saying they were "awesome" since you criticize them right after, but I don't know who they are or why they want nothing more than to maintain a persistent herd-culture. Did I miss more sarcasm?

Um, what? I have almost no idea what you're trying to say, but I am pretty sure it doesn't apply to what you quoted.

I think there is also a lot more suspicion overseas about what Western Democracy is all about, and the idea of having the sort of trouble we have is terrifying - we refuse to balance our budget, we have huge lapses in social safety nets, crumbling infrastructure, failing education, and we have at least 50% of the country at any given moment decrying how corruption and illegal abuses of power currently being conducted will cause an end to all we care about as we know it. Our legislative process is pretty much a glass walled sausage factory and it's ugly to look at. Add to that the sheer amount of our wealth that is dependent on a lack of human rights abroad, in terms of cheap manufacturing without labor safety laws or fair wages and it's pretty understandable by some people may want more rights, and want a democratic system, but not consider any current nation a working model of those principles. I don't think it's a question of if it's wanted, but if it's doable, how, when, and what to do between now and then to do it right.

So they are awesome in the same way that Anti-G8/911-conspiracy/NWO protesters are awesome?

It seems to me that fear dominates the conservative pie chart of rhetoric, to the point that it's almost impossible to find someone on the right proposing a conservative solution instead of just fear mongering about liberal ones. Both ideologies utilize fear but it makes up a much larger portion of the conservative platform, to the point it's almost impossible to tell what else it even runs on sometimes. Liberals also tend to self-police better, whereas it's accepted in conservative circles. I think that's the reason why the right get most of the focus of that accusation.

Another way to look at it is the niece and the uncle work together, and while the uncle does all the work that can grow the business the niece does a most of the physical labor. They work out wages and she rents a house from him and everyone is happy with a very equitable arrangement until the economy gets tight and she has to keep loading up credit cards to make ends meet. It's viewed as a temporary solution but when it appears sales won't pick up in time, she has to go to the uncle and say "Look, this is crazy, I can't keep loading up credit cards, I already can't afford to fix my car so all our errands take 3 times as long and I have no idea how to even make rent next month, let alone pay for food." The uncle is unhappy because he's had to cut back a lot himself even though he's not as badly off, but even he has to admit that what was an equitable arrangement is no longer viable and his own wealth and income are threatened by the situation if his niece can't pay rent, eat and therefore keep working. The niece probably made mistakes and bought a few things that depreciated she shouldn't have considering how the economy was. The uncle probably made mistakes thinking there would be enough sales to keep his niece financially secure, and that sales would pick up before it got too bad. All in all, neither of them can make money without the other, both of their assets are in jeopardy and they are both in a bind. The "one time debt clearance" may be all that is needed and she'll be able to get through on her credit cards until the economy picks up. Maybe they'll have to work out something more equitable so they both survive the recession instead of a compensation agreement that only works under economic conditions that don't currently exist. All contracts, all wages, all benefits exist tentatively on the understanding that a healthy deal has been struck that allows a healthy financial system. If these agreements fail by the numbers in given a current state of economy no amount of bellyaching or contractual enforcement is going to make it work. Something has to be addressed or everyone looses. The sad thing is we do have the odd radical socialists (on street corners of course, at least not in US politics) that will always try to convince everyone that only equal shares of wealth can work. We also have odd radical capitalists (many a little too involved in US politics, imho) who believe that if they can convince their nieces to take a bad deal, every penny they keep is theirs and they alone earned it with Galt-scale delusions. IMHO both sorts of radical ideologues need to grow the hell up and try to solve the real problems with real solutions by working out fair agreements that actually work or shut up/be ignored while those that can, do. This UK debt plan could work, but it's an ugly solution to an ugly problem and I really hope it is not necessary. At the very least it is a good thing that the idea is being floated, as it underlines that something equitable has to be done and no one can afford to isolate themselves from the problem.

Oh sure Bush digs us into a huge fear deficit and and you blame it all on the new guy Personally, I would rank these sorts of alerts as "Incredibly unlikely but we don't want to be called asleep at the wheel if something happens right before an election." Moon: tell your son to end every other sentence with "eh" and he'll be fine - but seriously it would be far more risky to backpack around the states and people still do it.

That would be entertaining - the White House endorses this plan, as the Senate quietly passes a bill easing immigration from the UK for those that meet "certain criteria" at the same time. Technically, this is the whole point of constitutional protections - for the "mob majority" to pass a law (and expect it to stand) that impacts the rights of the few in an unconstitutional manner, a constitutional amendment has to be passed for it to be legal. While it is established that taxes can be applied to a citizen's income in the US, to actually "tax" (ie, appropriate) a portion of their accumulated wealth I can only assume an amendment to create the exception under the 4th Amendment would be required. I honestly don't know all the details about property seizure in the US and while I know you can have your property seized and forfeited if it is used to transport narcotics into the country, I assume those liberties don't extend to the point of 50% majority rule to enact arbitrary seizure of property not involved in the committing of such a crime. The whole point, imo of having most laws malleable by a simple majority and others requiring a higher standard and constitutional amendments is important to creating a sense of stability. In the US it's expected that taxes may be adjusted and this can impact your income, but it's also expected that your property isn't fair game within that framework. If a nation decides to change the framework and meets the special case majority requirements (such as a super majority in the US) then even if arguably unfair, it's at least reasonable. The consequences could be incredibly disastrous or benign, but without the staggered requirements people cannot see philisophical shifts in the framework building steam, and that leads to uncertainty. Honestly, the biggest question is if a society allows a simple majority vote to pass a law that overnight allows the seizure of property from a specifically targeted minority, then what other actions can be taken against any minority by the same process? What else about the society can flip on a dime? At that point the question isn't if the specific law targeting a minority is fair, but whether it is wise to entrust a simple majority government to always be fair in targeting a minority. A pretty fundamental principle in the US system is that it is never wise to entrust that much power to a simple majority (emergency provisions not withstanding) and personally I agree with it for the reasons mentioned above. As a side note: What would happen if 50% of those who would be targeted decided to "invest" their wealth in a manner that exempted it from the tax? Would the remaining clearly honest folks have to fork over 40% or would the government just say "oh well" and settle for half?

Best I've heard addressing this event where Obama had a book thrown at him at a rally. "The guy missed because Obama was further right than he expected." The photo actually supports this.

It seems dangerous to me to do this without any sort of mechanism aside from simple majority. I would say it may be reasonable under some circumstances to do so with a simple majority, but for peace of mind I'd want something like a super-majority (60%) of those who would pay the tax to approve it. When you want to do something that is outside the scope of normal powers (whether a tactical 100% tax on income from TARP supported bonuses, or taxing tactical wealth instead of income) I think it is really important to address if the conventional legislative process address the gravity and implications of the practice. If you're doing to be a trailblazer, you want to be sure you start your trails in a responsible way, because they will only be more traveled over time and when it is, there will have to be checks and balances that ensure it's not abused. If a super-majority of those affected would be required it would help ensure that it was only applied in very rare critical situations, and then when those paying (by public pressure or civil duty) have to approve it the danger of asset burying could be avoided. However, if the wealthy end up fearful their wealth could be seized on a whim, they'll react by locking it up overseas one way or another in ways no one currently does. Long story short there will be people who paid taxes once when they earned it, and only have the "wealth" because they want to invest it. Besides, what kind of liquidity does the "wealth" need to be in for it to "count" as taxable?

This is a bit of a late reply, but my best revenge story would be when a friend/coworker of mine posted a flash file on their myspace page that played a very embarrassing drunken voicemail I left another of our friends. I logged into the web server where his flash file was hosted, and replaced it with one of him engaged in coitus (non-explicitly) with a very surprised sheep, so now his own myspace profile proudly displayed his trans-species sexual exploits. We both laughed about it just like we both did about the drunken voicemail, and it was all in good fun. Revenge can be a lot of fun when it's within , which is one of my favorite pranks of all time. As for the darker side of revenge I think people who have trouble "letting go" have less of an issue with the perpetrator, and more with the inability to accept living in a world where someone does something horrible to you and just gets away with it. We have intellectual understandings about the world but emotionally it can be a real challenge to get over. It's also interesting what brings those emotional triggers up. I was almost beaten to death once by three wanna-be gangsters with a baseball bat and while I wanted it dealt with I really didn't have any desire for revenge. I had to dissuade friends who wanted to "teach them golf" and ultimately the key player shot himself in the leg, went to jail, got out, and died that day in a single car accident. One of the officers actually told me this (I already knew thankfully) when he ran into me at the bar and he just happily broke out into the song "ding dong the witch is dead" which frankly both disgusted me, and unnerved me since there were undoubtedly upset friends of this guy there drinking. Another situation where I really did want to seek revenge, involved a friend of mine who had finally overcome a major medical condition that left her largely immobile for about a year was raped at a party, and the officers didn't do anything about it because the rapist was "vouched for" by a "reliable witness" who happened to be both his friend, and also only "reliable" in that he was a drug dealer that got a lot of arrests by wearing a wire to save his skin a few months before. Aside from the futility of attempting to gain any kind of closure from revenge, my friend was the sort who would probably only end up feeling guilty for whatever happened to the guy. Revenge wise, the key trigger for me is when someone tries to physically and forcibly dominate another in a manner that is obtusely unjust in a "well I'm strong and you're not, so I can and will" predatory manner. This extends all the way to using what is "legal" to get away with what clearly isn't right. A client of mine had to shut down his dating website because he received a legal letter (similar tothis onefrom the same company) that by allowing his subscribers to post video, he was in breech of a patent and had to pay what amounts to protection money. The only reason this patent was ever upheld was because the company began only taking on pornographic websites and judges love to rule against internet smut regardless of the justifications, and didn't graduate to attacking non-pornographic websites until after establishing winning precedent. I would still happily take revenge in some legal manner on those patent trolls, and I doubt they could ever be so misguided to believe their intentional targeting of vulnerable (no legal defense fund) businesses is anything other than opportunistic and predatory. Interestingly, I think the key reason I generally didn't into revenge traps was that I always saw the matter as much smaller than the other things I wanted to expend my energies on and thanks to my inflated ego, it generally felt beneath me to waste my time on it.

I understand what you are saying, which basically is the conflict between a world view based on Strong Determinism, and one based on Free Will and Sin/Virtue. It is an interesting side-topic but the long story short of it is we have to work within the framework where our decision making skills exist - and it is impossible to make all our decisions from a deterministic framework. If someone attacks you in an alley then objectively they had no choice, and their happiness is just as objectively valuable as yours - but you can't really apply that information in a useful way. If you are able to use non-lethal force you should, and if you have to use lethal force you should, and they made decisions that should result in them going to jail. We already have the concept "there but for the grace of God, go I" and we already do what we can to protect the lives of those who attack us. That's where "excessive force" comes into play in self defense. It's also why we call prisons "Correctional Facilities" even if we have a long way to go before they live up to that name. I will say we definitely have some blatantly cruel facets to how our society works: We would stagnate horribly with a 0% unemployment, which directly implies that when unemployment gets too low, the market will want it to go up. Since jobs aren't available on the basis of "individual merit" but on a competitive bell curve vs. the skills of other people, this pretty much necessitates that there will always be people at the lower end of the curve that really don't have a lot of room to improve their lives. I do think we should as a society try to do what we can to help people in these situations, and it's theoretically possible to solve these issues at some point. However, I think it's remiss to drop Strong Determinism as a moral hazard into economic policy, since there really is no framework where it is actually useful to us as a decision making aid. For the record Norway, Sweden, and Denmark are also moderate versions of capitalism and if anything demonstrate that a society can encompass a balance of both. I am curious, how you value the individual's right to self determination and independence? Personally I consider all forms of compulsory compliance with community or state level policies in degrees of infringement, but as a necessary evil since some issues cannot be addressed otherwise. We need the social stability provided by reliable police, fire, military, infrastructure and basic social services and as such we accept some of our freedom of choice will be taken away. However, I can't imagine a state justifying it's involvement in everything from wages to commodity values as would be necessary under a pure socialism. Also, consider America's "inefficiently structured social forms, cultural dispositions, and popular attitudes likely to persist" and how well that would translate into a socialist state. If we let our politicians get away with the things they do now, why would our socialist politicians be any less self-serving? What about people like me that aren't after happiness? I hope it's a side-effect of my life, but I'm far more interested in living on next to nothing while I try to strike it big in internet technology. As a gamble I may end up miserable and penniless but it's what I want to do so that I have a chance to privately fund the sort of ventures I want to see realized. Also, you have failed to address that "wealth" isn't a static variable - I went into a lot of detail in previous posts about how supply and demand affect the value of wealth and the commodities people desire. You also failed to address how to help people that consistently spend all their money regardless of how much they have. Lastly, the "advantage evident" is anything but - it seems like a policy to take all direct self-determination out of people's lives through an incredibly artificial monolithic political structure. Keep in mind when you step in forcefully and stop someone from making a bad choice that makes them unhappy, you rob them of the option to make a good choice that makes them happy. I'm all for safeguards that keep the poor from being exploited and ensuring they earn fair wages and I am all for giving people more options to make good decisions, but that can all be achieved within a largely capitalistic model - like Norway, Sweden, and Denmark etc and doesn't require removing almost all personal choice from the equation.

I wasn't suspect that Aboriginal Communities would be pressured to discard cultural traditions to fit in with modern society, I only mean that I am concerned that rapid integration (that fits with iNow's timeframe) could be too overwhelming to both assimilate so much new and appreciate the old. A slower pace may be far more healthy in the long run. If a child is trying to integrate something as vast as internet access and modern technology and their parents can't provide them with any world-view context with which to assimilate it the parents' world view is probably going to be rejected outright. Not only the grub eating and basket weaving skills, but teachings that pass on a sense of place, self identity and self worth in the world - aspects of character building that frankly are even more important when everything from Noble Prize caliber lectures to the most nasty pr0n are a keyboard away. If there is one major risk in modern society, it's that it's easy for someone without a strong sense of self to get lost in it. It's one thing to reconsider your sense of place in the world as you are exposed to more of the world, but it's important that someone has one at all before diving into something so vast. Otherwise, you'll likely get more young men waddling in low pants drinking hennessy on the street corner.

Honestly, I don't think the taxes are going to be a large line-crosser, I think the embarrassment (for both sides) that has been legislative action in the last two years will have a much larger impact. I also don't think most people will be thinking about the budget - the budget is seen as something malleable, where we can go from a deficit under Bush Sr, to a surplus under Clinton, to a deficit again since, and while it does cause a lot of concern the view is it can be dealt with later. The key concern in November, is who the public trusts to get us out of economic crisis and back to low unemployment. Since these elections also depend highly on district-by-district personalities and issues even the economy may take a back seat in some cases. Some of these people are so unappealing you just can't vote for them no matter what the party implications are. I'm sure it'll prove interesting. I don't know what that data would look like, and I'd expect the diversity in variables tracked or otherwise contains a high enough volatility it could never be said conclusively. The logic behind my thinking is that people need a certain amount of stability to be productive, and a lot of people are strained to the breaking point whereby loosing their home, or vehicle to disrepair would push them from "almost but not making it" to "completely not making it" for a long time. They are so close to the "red line" that a little help is cheaper than helping them after they end up at a shelter. Not only is the money spent straight into the economy, but done so in a manner liable to save all of us money. Instead of looking for a stable couch for their kids to stay on, these people can be looking for stable jobs and when they come they'll be supporting the businesses that pay the $210,000 earners who helped them in the first place a lot faster. It strikes me as a pretty consistent logical conclusion, but I definitely welcome your input if I missed some important flaws. If you are curious if I think it will hurt certain individual families in that tax bracket I think it undoubtedly will. It could be the tipping point in expenses where a family decides they can't afford to send their kid to the school they want. I believe it would prevent more collapses than it would cause in disruptions, but I can't argue that everyone individually will net-benefit. If a large enough number of people are at risk of collapsing and did without support I think the costs would be higher than the cost of the tax, but certainly don't have hard numbers on that, and that if done poorly it could be basically wasted. The other thing though is how we think about taxes. I see taxes like a utility bill - I don't always like it and I am often suspect of how much of my money pays people to sit on their butts, but I can't argue with the fact that I can't work in the dark, nor with the fact that unless I move away I am obligated to pay it. If I count my total money before expenses like basic utilities I am doing it wrong. From the first hour of burning electricity on the new bill I am receiving benefits for services rendered, with a differed payment at the end of the month. Taxes pay for our utilities. I don't like all of what they go to, and especially didn't like it during the Bush years, but being able to drive on roads, use the internet, engage in electronic commerce, and simply live in relative peace and security are things I really like. We have a frigg'n wall of nuclear missiles that we acquired during the Cold War to keep the world's only other, largely psychotic superpower at bay so we could live in relative peace while they slowly imploded. We have such an unmatched conventional military we actually get to consider whether or not we are going to just knock down and rebuild other countries that bother us. I personally think a lot of those benefits can be cut back, but the sum result has been a pretty remarkable period of peace and prosperity (from Cold War to Afghanistan) in the face of some pretty huge obstacles. I agree entirely, but honestly I wouldn't even want to cut back on the "crazy Republican" spending right now, not until unemployment drops to the level where it can absorb some momentary turbulence. If we cut back on aircraft carriers (we do have as many as the rest of the world combined) we put a ton of the support industry and contractors out of work. If we don't need them doing those jobs, we should cut them and we do need to. Unemployment is like a toxic build up, say alcohol in the blood stream - normally small jumps in the percent don't do a lot of damage and filter out quickly, but when high levels persist for some time the system gets strained additional brief increases can push the system to failure. The horrible thing is when things are going well no one wants to cut spending - but I do hope this time that people's tolerance has reached a limit. The second we can I do hope we focus on balancing the budget and getting spending under control. I guess it's easy to want to when you can't and everything seems broken, the trick will be if we still want to when we can.

How do we know that the collected tax revenue would go to programs that would help struggling families stave off total financial collapse, who would spend the money immediately to do so? I could see concern that the money could end up in a senate pay raise, which would definitely tick me off, but are you suggesting that the $210,000 earners have an equal or higher pressure to spend their money instead of saving it? It seems self evident to me that in a time of such uncertainty as we are in right now, that the people most likely to spend money are those who have no choice if they want to keep their landlords from evicting them. Out of the say, half a dozen closest people I know, I can cite two that are homeless (one still on the street, the other at a friend's who is being evicted at the end of this month) and another who is facing getting evicted from both his home and his office and is struggling to collect $4,500 to avoid it and that person just happens to be my business partner in NY. I myself got really lucky and managed to stave off eviction with less than 2 days before I would legally be ejected. It's also worth noting that our business has about $20,000 in "dead beat debt" for completed work that people simply cried about because they wanted to but couldn't pay. Some degree of dead-beat debt is expected, but it got really bad last year and hit about $30,000 where I honestly had to ask if I even had a job anymore, despite working nonstop without a penny to spend. We still get months where we invoice for $15,000 of work and get less than $1500 collected within the timeline terms of our contracts, when our monthly obligations are closer to $6,000-$8,000 minimum when you factor the office, two full time employees and another three part-timers that work on commission. Just yesterday I had to do a quick bit of work for $40 for an associate's advertising service and he honestly had to break it up into two payments. Right now the only reason I can eat is because of that $20. I am happy to be self employed and I consider it my own personal gamble, but I definitely feel like a lot of stress and hardship that this economic crisis has brought about is very visible from my vantage point. It's total financial gridlock where all you hear is "the money really really should be in soon, I'll have it to you as soon as possible please don't shut down my business' website" and all I can do is say to my landlord "the money really really should be in soon, I'll have it to you as soon as possible please don't kick me out" who in turn has his own financial obligations. I am seeing people collapse around me. I had two homeless friends stay on my couch for about 4 out of the 10 months I was at my last rental, which was foreclosed on and sold, which promptly left me near homeless because the new landlord had to raise the rent by 20% (post-lease, month to month) to justify the investment when I was already struggling. Luckily I was able to find a place but it did involve a lot of luck. The two moved to find work and eventually had their phone disconnected, I have no idea what happened to them. Another friend stayed with me at my new place, but I had to pay my landlord/roommate (the one with whom I was 2 days away from legal eviction) a few hundred dollars so she could sleep on my floor for 3 weeks, and even then it was only because he felt bad she had been sleeping in the city parks for over two weeks. When the 3 week limit arrived I was about 10 days from being evicted so she went to stay with the friend in a nearby city, who himself is now being evicted at the end of this month due to his roommate bailing on him. I'm not listing all these things for a big "boo hoo" and I don't feel wronged in any way, but I want you to understand where I am coming from and what I see when I look around this economic catastrophe. I don't think it's about tax dodgers. It's about how we all get through this without the bottom falling out with so many surviving on benefits that are expiring and no prospects to hold things together. If you want to go after tax dodgers, you need to refine tax law. Right now we need a means to get the financial traffic jam moving and a key factor in it's slow recovery is that a lot of people can't pay even the basic financial obligations that keep a roof over their head. In the current climate of triage, I think taxing families with a combined income of $210,000/yr who will not be put on the street by it to fund programs to help those most impacted by this crisis who are mentally, physically and emotionally exhausted and still headed for the street is a rational move. It's not something I like, and it's not something I want to happen, but I can see it as both necessary and far far more likely to increase a net-gain in money spent within the economy. I will agree that anyone that tries to bundle families making $210,000 in the same "well off" category as Bill Gates is disingenuous. I thought the issue was "we don't have enough revenue to pay our bills" and taxes is the only way the government really can pay our bills. We can and do borrow (can't call that paying a bill really) but frankly the only thing I ever hear from the "non-socialists" er, conservatives is that when we have a budget surplus, we need to cut taxes, and when we have a deficit, we need to cut taxes, and when we have a recession, we have to cut taxes, and when the economy is good, we need to cut taxes, and even when we have a $13 trillion dollar debt saddled on the next generation that has bought us everything from our infrastructure to our Cold War nuclear deterrent, we have to cut taxes. We have to deal with our debt, we have to deal with our deficit, and we have to deal with our economy. Right now though, I don't know how to deal with the record number of people subsisting on food stamps and unable to find jobs without some sort of social program funding, and while I suppose we could "just borrow more" I really think the responsible thing is to raise taxes a little. I don't think that makes us socialists.

It's also worth noting that these societies probably survived by creating a strong importance tied to instilling these survival skills in the next generation, which is often done through teachings that involve an entire world view. If such a society went from stone age to information age in a single generation there wouldn't be enough time for that generation to learn much at all of their own culture, which would largely obliterate it. This would be imminently visible to the previous generation raising them and they would resist it since it would be antithetical to their world view. If the process was to occur less quickly then you'd have a generation or two that would learn a whole lot about both the modern world and their traditional culture, and still end up modernized eventually but with more of a unique cultural intact. As an aside thought, the idea of a society feeling an urgent need to pass on hard earned stone age techniques to their children seems almost quaint by today's standards, but considering how things looked during the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis it kinda makes one see the idea in doubling down on sticks and stones in a new light as a long game strategy.

When you say critique "except in its own terms" what do you mean? Should I be able to critique a scientific conclusion regarding the composition of Titan's atmosphere on the basis that I really like bananas? If I am going to critique something, I'm going to have to have a point about which I disagree, and the point I disagree about is going to have to have a rational argument. For that, I'm gong to have to understand the premise I am arguing against. The scale really isn't a factor I'm afraid - if you point out a flaw, that flaw unravels the premise. You don't have to be anyone special to do so, but you do need to understand what you are talking about. That doesn't mean we should live in the fantasy that such behavior is anything other than incredibly shortsighted, selfish, and dangerous. What you don't seem to realize is that the "leading experts" have already done their very best to disprove and rip apart the conclusions, and the only conclusion that is drawn is that "the evidence clearly suggests [x] is true to the point it is effectively irrefutable without new contradictory evidence" and if there is any authority at all, it's in trusting that those who published their work has actually been vetted. Science is very competitive and just about every argument that could be made to scientifically challenge evolution has been made, and vetted, and found flawed as the evidence still points to evolution. The reason none of those scientists are making millions off of publishing books that refute evolution, or refuting the the age of the world is because they have the discipline to actually find viable flaws and building a case before publishing such works. To date - they can't, and as such haven't. The only difference between authoritative and democratic sciences as you call them, is in how much of any given science you see. You look at part of one and see reasonable debate over an unsettled issue and call it democratic. You look at another and only see what has been established very robustly as a result of the very same types of debates you call democratic, but at a point in time that there isn't much debate on the premise left. The reason you don't see challenges there isn't from bowing to an authority, it's because no one has any challenges that were robust enough to survive such debates. Any situation where you have self-replicating patterns that make near-perfect copies that the patterns will over generations result in self-replicating patterns that in some way take advantage of their environment in a manner that increases their viability. This is through the process of natural selection. It's an exceptionally simple process. We observe the phenomena in computer applications, in bacteria cultures, in our DNA and all the DNA we have found in nature, in viruses, and in extinct lifeforms. It's not a tautology and not everything is affected by natural selection - only anything that replicates. Your DNA is just a pattern that mutated from an earlier pattern and on and on to the pattern that you, I and all the trees, plants and animals are based on. Your DNA happens to have a pattern that yields a high likelihood of replicating, and since your DNA doesn't tend to replicate asexually, your DNA has a high likelihood of replicating by combining with a compatible pattern. That pattern of DNA, may cause an entire human life to be born, complete with self awareness and abstract thought, but whether that DNA pattern's replicated derivative still exists in the world 5 generations later or not only depends on simple viability. Either it replicated or it didn't, and either it's offspring replicated or it didn't, etc. If creating a self aware animal to surround the DNA pattern happens to help viability - then there are more like that. That's really it. If you choose not to reproduce, then that's a fair decision and a clear "risk" to the pattern's viability, but chances are the events in your life will not lead you to that decision. That is because you are based on a pattern that chose to reproduce, as did it's parent and it's parent on and on back to the primordial ooze. As reproducing patterns go, yours has a pretty high viability. Still, you could choose not to reproduce, and looking back 100,000 of years later sentience itself may be extinct because it caused too much niche specialization. It's a very simple process, and natural selection is that pervasive. And the time for that foresight would be right now. Making due with less resources, if done through the pressures created by their scarcity, will necessitate a great amount of suffering. We don't want to think about effects like natural selection or the implications for our evolution - it's a process that takes too long for it to matter in our scale of time and is better served by our own interests, which may not at all impact well on any given individual's evolutionary viability, like adoption does. I missunderstood you, I thought you were saying that technology would prevent suffering, not be the result of suffering. That "old game" exists because those that played it well survived, reproduced, and we inherited it. It's understandable where it came from, but since we ended up with brains and self awareness we want more than to just improve on the same games - it doesn't matter what the impact is on evolution - we want to live peaceful lives and help others who are suffering enjoy their lives too. If we are going to exist for a minute on this planet as a self aware, and self managing species where we can be stable enough to not always go through these violent cycles it's going to take a lot of effort. That's what climatologists are doing, by studying these trends and trying to predict possible impacts that would cause suffering if not addressed. It's why we keep trying to reform our economic and foreign policies.

I think the point is that while some of those $210,000 income families would have to lower spending to meet the raised tax burden, that overall there would be a net-gain in spending instead of a net-loss. This net-gain would stimulate more jobs than maintaining the tax cut, because even if not every family is stuffing the mattress in that tax bracket enough of them are that taxes here net the highest liquidity. It's also worth noting that those families that are currently pulling $210,000 often depend on a wide range of consumers, and right now a lot of those consumers are right near the breaking point. These "near break" conditions require tactical solutions, because every "full break" causes that person to drop out of the economy in a meaningful way while they try to get back on their feet despite the volatility of couch surfing with kids and staying at shelters. Not only can you be sure these "near break" consumers will spend any assistance they get via the tax immediately, the vast majority will spend it on improving their economic viability and stability.

I am not saying we can't police against corruption, I am saying the core failings in our capitalistic model arise from our willingness to accept morally compromised solutions out of self interest, and those failings would still be present regardless of whether the model is capitalistic or socialistic. I agree entirely with policing corruption, I just saying it's a completely separate issue from that of economic models. What upsets me, is it feels like we didn't even have a chance to find out if the people electing people into it were aligned with your ideals or not - the discussion never advanced to the point of debating universal coverage or even a public option, it was dominated by BS claims of death panels and scary pictures of Nazibama. The only part I blame him for, is he should have been clear what failings we should expect from the modified bill and what problems we should expect to continue to encounter. To oversell the modified bill just to get it pushed through is a pretty big deal to contend with in our leaders. It's worth noting that a lot more happened than the above that I did blame him for, my critiques of him pale compared to my critiques of democrats and especially republicans, and even the voting public.

What is this authoritarian science? I understand if you choose to ignore the growing relevance of scientific understanding in the daily world you may be forced to use non-scientific standards to make up your mind (ie, appeal to authority, etc) but science follows evidence, pure and simple. People sometimes produce biased studies that are ignored to a degree due to a cultural bias, but anyone can challenge that easily and demonstrate factually that the bias is incorrect. People HAVE TO assent to the harsh realities of their environment, and reason is the only long-term viable means of dealing with those realities. I am not advocating a technocracy or anything really. I am saying that science is open to being challenged and if it is science then it always will be. The failure of people to equip themselves with the easily accessible knowledge to challenge scientific conclusions is not the fault of science, nor does it make science authoritarian. You completely misunderstand how evolution works. You can't "avoid" the trials, the only trial is to reproduce. The environment has changed enough that social mastery is more important than environmental mastery of the elements. The fact that these people would not survive a "social collapse" into a preindustrial environment doesn't mean they "insulated" themselves from biological evolution, they just selected for an environmental niche that was unstable and will either adapt or cease to exist when it no longer exists. This all happens within classical biological evolution based on survival-of-the-fittest, plain and simple. You suggest that through technology we can overcome the limitations we currently have that make overpopulation such an eminent concern. Our ability to use technology in this way is increasing in a manner that could be charted, just as the impending resource bottleneck can be graphed. You are suggesting the resource consumption graph will not fall into a critical bottleneck due to technological advances being realized before that happens. This is like a game of chicken - staying on a dangerous course because you are betting the course will be clear before you collide with anything. This is not an optimal approach for something as drastic and globally impacting as population and resource management, the risks are pretty high and even more so are the liabilities.

As much as I agree with you that the bill did not go far enough, I disagree with you that it will be "mistakenly" interpreted as a failure. What do righties always say when their tax-breaks and deregulation laws don't net the results they want, and instead result in disaster? They always say their tax cuts and deregulation measures didn't go far enough, and blame the failure on having to compromise with bleeding heart liberals. If the bill was too small to fully achieve the goals outlined as the basis for that bill - regardless of the cause - then the very basis for it's existence in question. Now, in this case, I think the rallying cry wasn't that the watered-down healthcare bill would solve all our healthcare problems, but was to fix more problems than it introduced. Considering how bad health care has been, I don't think this is an especially hard claim to make - but Obama did settle on a small bill and if that fails to live up to the small expectations for it, that will be his failure. It's okay to blame the other side for why you had to scale back your solution as long as you stand by the goals and costs (even watered down ones) of the result. If scaling back introduces a risk of catastrophic failure or damages that needs to be disclosed as a factor in the watered down bill before it's law. Take nuclear power plant safety - if you introduce a bill for $300mil to do safety inspections due to a real risk of full scale meltdowns, and you end up settling on a $100mil program that just covers the worst risks, and you sign it into law you can't say "Well of course it made the problem worse, without that extra $200mil it couldn't do a damn thing" later on. Before getting the $100mil version through the unaddressed risks have to be disclosed and discussed to differentiate it from the $300mil version. That's pretty fundamental for any collaborative effort where people disagree, and if it was a neocon policy during the Bush years I do suspect you'd hold them to that standard.

It's not capitalism, it's corruption, selfishness and/or apathy. No system can function with a higher degree of efficiency than the integrity of the people running it, and by the people running it I mean everyone from politicians to voters to doctors to patients.

Your first question is answered in your second statement. If you are willing to create a deep enough cognitive dissonance as to ignore all the facts surrounding evolution simply because you dislike the idea, what are the chances you can deal with real-world issues that run directly against such innate drives as expansive reproduction? Your second question has a pretty simple answer too: learn how peer review works, and learn to explore sources. You have to admit - deciding what you want to believe out of convenience is not without severe hazards. We've gotten over that for the most part in industry - no one builds planes that ignore turbulence, or microchips that ignore heat. How does this differ from "applying logic to human life and history" in any way? Isn't such a definition as moot as saying "social bipedalism" is applying "humans have two feet theory" logic to human life and history? Do you know what survival-of-the-fittest means? It doesn't mean toughest, and even a peacock evolves based on the survival-of-the-fittest model. A horribly inefficient display of feathers allows a male peacock to overcome one of the most difficult factors in it's environment - getting female peacocks in the mood. It really doesn't get more basic than the ability to reproduce. Any variation that allows a biological entity to reproduce more is considered "more fit" regardless of whether that is achieved by social interdependence, crazy feathers, or even getting eaten. How, other than through evolution, does biology evolve? I am curious because I do want to try and understand what you are describing here. These unknown solutions would be great - but is it really worth just letting the "resource consumption" line-chart and the "technological solutions" line-chart run amok on the graph in a game of global chicken? It seems horribly irresponsible and dangerous to me.

This literally cannot work. We have a huge number of people who work in fields they may or may not succeed in, but are willing to live on next to nothing for the chance. Not everyone who wants to be an actor or actress, a musician, an artist, or a writer is going to be successful. Many won't even be very good. Some will be, but won't be recognized in their lifetime. Now if someone wants to spend their time trying to make it as a writer while living on what little they can make do with, that's their business and I wish them all the best. If society had to pay them $40,000 a year whether they succeed or fail then the quality of their work and chances for success becomes my problem. It becomes a State matter, and that is untenable. If the state was responsible for "evaluating" if a risky venture (such as the professions above) were viable for the individual, we'd have a pretty bland literary and artistic culture. Yet, if the State had to decide how the People's Money would be distributed to unproven artists, they would be negligent not to. I honestly believe the free market is the only mechanism organic enough to provide this sort of vetting process. I have less decades to live on this planet than I have fingers. How is it "just" that even a majority-mob of people could hijack those years of my life for their own social engineering dreamscape? Forcing someone into a wealth distribution plan that benefits them is just as bad as forcing them into one that hurts them because the operative word there isn't "benefit" or "harm" but "force" which unreasonably limits freedom of choice. There's a fine line between compelling people to comply with a system they don't like in the face of a major catastrophe, but it's a whole other thing just to do it because more people would might be better off than before. How much do you think a pint of beer would sell for if everyone had $40,000 a year coming in? Anyone with a profit motive could charge far more than current prices because people could afford it, since they really want their beer. Of course, the bar owner may want to lower prices because he makes $40,000 regardless and running in the red just means more people come in and it becomes more popular. Or the bar owner may raise prices substantially to attract a more distinguished clientele, and even if he gets only 3 customers a day he makes $40,000. Or the State has to step in, set all the prices for beer, fight with breweries who make different qualities of beer, and "somehow" keep everything "fair" for everyone. The point is once you remove any natural value to the dollar, the numbers you throw around cease to mean anything: $5 trillion won't mean the same thing in terms of beer-buying-power. The numbers become almost meaningless. It's not possible. That's basically taking a good premise and going so far with it that it becomes an incredibly bad idea. We live in a society where we have an unprecedented capacity to generate enough revenue that we can afford major luxuries. It is perfectly reasonable, under a "free market" mentality, to see that a lot of that wealth comes at the expense of uninvolved third parties. We make a killing in the shipping transport industry, and kids suffer greater incidents of asthma due to pollution that (if the costs were factored and attributed to our shipping company) would seriously eat into the company's bottom line. Those aren't generally the result of evil or greed - they are the unexpected side effects new technologies and unforeseen consequences. Companies are reluctant to accept all such "adverse effect claims" because there are those who still believe short wave radios cause cancer and only wrist-worn magnets can protect you from them. So there is a lag time between the detection of the issue, the study and evaluation of the impact, and efforts to either clean fuel additives or tax dirty fuels so the costs are properly distributed, instead of being saddled on the sick children and their parents who never share in the company's profits. Sometimes this lag-time is extended due to stonewalling and outright corruption - but that is a corruption issue, not a wealth distribution issue. The mechanism for appropriate wealth distribution is already there. Just as an aside, if it is a corruption issue, which is caused by human nature, why should it be necessary to re-invent the wheel in a manner that does not even address human nature and corruption? I'm sure there's a Yakov Smirnoff joke in there somewhere. So we make money, we get rich, we can afford luxuries, and we know that (A) it wouldn't be possible if not for a lot of poor people and (B) that there will be costs we are not aware of to others that are not net-benefiting from our wealth. That to me, justifies a healthy income-tax to support the infrastructure, education and purchasing power of my clientele and programs for those in need. However, to completely remove individual self-determination from a society is completely over the top. Lastly, why is it that so much of the discussion about poverty revolving around whether a person has a steady supply of money? Do we need a new word for the "self-sufficiently challenged" that are made visible through poverty? What do we do with people who blow their $40,000 so fast they end up begging for food? For those who's only crime is trying to help out a nice Nigerian prince? There are a lot of reasons to be less than self-sufficient: poor skill training/lack of education, failure to take advantage of education, poor risk assessment, entitlement bias, poor impulse control, psychological issues, mental illness, addiction, a failure to understand even the most basic principles of birth control, physical illness or disability, and of course greedy rich people. Wealth redistribution only addresses one: greedy rich people. I am all for programs that help people get what they need to become self sufficient or help through the rough times we all caused that cost them their self-sufficiency but the issue goes far far deeper than just whether or not someone gets handed $40,000 every year. I do believe that whenever the screws get tightened all round, it's the people with means that usually avoid the brunt of it, and those who can't who get saddled, and I do think this leads to a genuine equality problem. However, it's not possible to just solve it by throwing money around. I support a degree of throwing money around as triage, but it sure isn't a solution.

Do any animals utilize "decoys" of any kind? I can't think of any, but if so much as a spider makes a decoy in a web good enough to fool prey/predator, I think that would constitute a self-portrait. Using a term like "accurate" implies similarity up to a point, and fooling prey/predators would be a fair measure I think even if we could see the difference. Anyone know of any animals that do this? Also, why is this thread titled "Can there be any intelligent science pursued without any philosophy?" when the post has a very different question? I don't know biology well enough, but I imagine we must excrete, create or burble some sort of something other critters don't. The funny thing about evolving on the same rock as every other thing we've ever encountered: all our tricks are pretty much new twists on old tricks. Speaking of funny, do any animals engage in humor? They definitely get excited, have fun, apparently laugh and do play clever tricks on each other, but is the derived satisfaction the result of humor?