Phi for All

Biggest what? Bigger what than the BB? Again, the BB was not an explosion into anything, it was an expansion of everything. I haven't read through the paper yet, but I don't see how the BB relates to this at all.

And not everyone has practice with critical thinking. Growing up, I loved reading mystery fiction, and I think it taught me a better framework for approaching my inquiries. It's not just the pertinent information you gather, it's also how you apply an ordered methodology to organize it in your own mind.

What we've found is that the new members who read the rules aren't prone to this type of behavior in the first place. The folks who don't acknowledge what an argument in good faith is also don't tend to read rules. Also, this might be a problem of not knowing what you don't know. If someone is lacking in understanding due to gaps in their knowledge, it's sometimes difficult to know how to correct that. Many don't know the right way to ask, rather than being too lazy to ask the right way.

https://www.icrar.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/2002.01291.pdf This paper was mentioned in the BBC article, so I'm not sure why you're looking elsewhere. It mentions the "explosion", but doesn't relate it to the Big Bang (since that wasn't an explosion). The pop-sci terms may be foiling your searches.

More of a factor the OP omitted (or "general attitude" as they put it) that could influence the disposition of the public. Punishment and rehabilitation are more about the criminal, where justice for the victims and removing bad elements are more about what society gets from the system, imo. In some cultures it's hard to convince folks people can change, so perhaps that's what the OP is noticing. Not a predisposition to punish so much as a skepticism about sincerity.

I recommend making amendments in future posts rather than revising the original. It keeps us all intellectually honest.

Kudos for naming your own logical fallacy. You've assumed a LOT, you make claims of studies with no citations to support the claims, and you dabbled in some common sense guesswork wrt pre-agrarian legal systems. And besides punishment and reform, why aren't you including incarceration's other obvious benefit, removing criminal actions from the society? Besides justice, a community should experience less crime if the perpetrators of it are locked away.

Perhaps you thought I meant the right was objecting in a reasonable way? I didn't. I meant that the right, since it's practically required to deceive its own, strawmans Sanders' position by suggesting he likes everything about Castro or the Sandinistas, that he embraces them. The few candidates left of Sanders (no major ones) and the centrists don't need such tactics. They object for reasonable reasons, so I disagree with your false equivalency.

While this may be true, Capitalism is automatically more susceptible to corruption, given the requirement to turn a profit. I think the corruption happens when one of these tools is overused/misused, such as with the US' overfocus on private ownership. I still say it's a big mistake referring to these tools as systems. A democracy like ours promises the People that some things can't be taken from them, and for that you need public ownership, not total Socialism. In cases where remote locations can't attract private investment for whatever reasons, sometimes it's necessary for the State to own a business (the Tennessee Valley Authority is a State-owned corporation that provides energy and environmental services to a region hit hard by the Great Depression, where private interests couldn't meet the needs of the People). And if we let Capitalism take over, we'll end up with a king again, someone who owns it all and lets us share in their prosperity with our hard work (private, public, or state, the outcome for us is the same if we only use one of these economic tools). Bernie Sanders tries to say this exact thing about some leftist regimes, but gets crucified by the right. Even with the preface that he doesn't approve of the authoritarianism, followed with praise of education and healthcare for the masses, the right paints him as embracing these regimes rather than sympathizing with some of their highest ideals.

"Significantly less military spending" is very specific and accurate to what Sanders said (and has been saying most of his career). Along with the rest of the articles in context, it's clear this is about cleaning up the Pentagon's swamp. "A sizable reduction in the US military" is the kind of rhetoric we get in the US from FOX News, hinting that the forces will shrink. Then their pundits kick around the idea that Sanders wants to strip our troops bare because lefties hate the troops. The real intent is lost and a sizable chunk of America is misinformed about one of the two major political party's intentions. I'm probably hyper-focused on this sort of influence, but I feel it's largely responsible for so many of my fellow American's POV on progressive issues. The right has to misrepresent the left in order to get so many working class People to vote against their own ownership in this country. It's not a case of wording, it's a case of manipulation.

It not the wording. Excellent quote, and helps underscore my point, that he NEVER says he's shrinking the military. He says he's not going to continue to spend so much money on it in favor of more domestic spending. He's not going to involve us more in unnecessary conflicts. And in the other article you cited, he makes it clear it's more of a mean/lean/clean approach to spending more wisely. No more blank checks, no more bogus accounting, no more no-bid defense contracts. If you can find where his plans include actually removing personnel rather than just reorganizing and firming up our military budget, I'm happy to change my assessment of Sanders' intentions wrt your argument. Otherwise, it just seems like rhetoric designed to make it look like he hates the troops.

I disagree with your assessment that "significantly less military spending" is synonymous with "a sizable reduction in the US military". This is the sort of rhetorical phrasing that makes many Americans abnormally afraid of progressive initiatives. We understand how Sanders' strategy works for a business to create a leaner, more competitive and effective model, but we're led to believe the same strategy would simply result in a smaller military.

I'm not a doctor like you, but it seems easy to understand why we need drastic action while containment is still a possibility. Are you telling us the truth?

I want instructions, and I get philosophical guidance with drawings by Escher. 😝

Interesting choice of words, and most likely exaggerated. Even if you could sterilize the whole elevator every hour, it's non-sterile the moment someone enters. If anything, I'll bet they sprayed some Lysol into the cab. I wonder if they chose not to write "disinfected" because it implies the elevator used to be "infected"?

But Sanders isn't calling for "a sizable reduction of the US Military". He wants to stop our involvement in undefined confrontations, he wants to stop throwing so much money at defense contractors by reviewing sweetheart deals, and he wants more accountability from a military that hides behind the excuse of massiveness in the face of poor spending practices. He also wants to end the practice of having to increasing funds for the military every time leadership wants some social funding for The People. His detractors call it reduction, but Sanders' plan has the potential to make the military more effective. Ultimately, the US leadership needs to wean themselves away from continually increasing military spending. It's something that unfairly enjoys bipartisan support, mainly because our conservative movement has many Americans terrified of being attacked. Bernie has consistently voted against blanket spending on anything, and the military is just the biggest culprit.

In the US, the extremist capitalists use all kinds of emotional ambushes to avoid paying taxes while making sure public funds are available only for their "investment opportunities". They'll court the racists who don't think people of color are worthy of social support, they'll court the evangelicals who don't think anyone but Christians are worthy of anything, they'll court the conservatives who think anything liberal is drug-related, and they'll court any fringe group as long as their arguments can be turned into less taxes/more exploitation for themselves. The Koch Brothers takeover of the Tea Party Movement is a classic example. What really puts a strain on an economy are those who put personal, private enrichment above all else. An economy isn't one person and their wealth. This focus on private prosperity is what causes most of our problems when you think about it. Traffic is caused by those looking to beat everyone else to the destination. Corruption involving misuse of public funding come mostly from private contractors scamming the system rather than recipients. Most of our laws revolve around treating everyone equitably and avoiding selfishness, and the biggest problems stem from those who consider themselves above that. The world is a colder place when nations put themselves above the interests of the global community. Yet the extremist capitalists are able to convince the half of the Republican party that isn't rich to support measures that only support the rich. What puts a strain on an economy is when there is so much disparity between the wealthy and poor parts of it. I think Socialism puts a strain on a billionaire's perspective on personal enrichment. If they could let that go, they might find an economy that's energized from the bottom up could be even more lucrative for them.

Exactly. Just like we're seeing with solar electric right now, the profits aren't high enough to attract investors to cheap electricity. Our main choices are either nationalize the effort and keep it super cheap and available to everyone, or be willing to subsidize whatever profits and restrictions private investors feel is best for them. And remember that they're going to push back when it comes to servicing remote areas that cut into their profit. The folks who need access to cheap energy most get screwed when profit is first and foremost.

I think many Americans agree with you. I think it's wrong to think in terms of -isms, though. Nobody is talking about public ownership of everything. It's still an extreme left position to have publicly-owned manufacturing, for instance. I think it could work in the case of a national solar panel system, where The People are offered work making panels to be employed as part of a grid, but I would argue that public ownership is the wrong tool for making automobiles and mattresses. I appreciate the lure of economy of scale; if one publicly-owned company made all the pots and pans and cookware Americans used in their kitchens, and the aim was quality and durability instead of bigger/better profit, the best quality would be affordable by all. But I concede that complete Socialism would assume a lot about what products and services The People require/desire, something I think a free market is better designed to do. But of course, we don't have a free market either, with all the influence extreme wealth has on the politics of our economy.

Standard insurance involves a pooling of resources by all involved, and in that it resembles a program defined and owned by the public, but since it only involves a small portion of the population, it's a far cry from a national risk pool that benefits heavily from economy of scale. I wish people would stop focusing on the tools we use to fix problems instead of solving the problems themselves. Let me ask you this, do you go out to your garage, pick up a hammer, and then go looking for things that need hammering? Most folks I know look at a problem first, figure out the best solution, and then use the appropriate tools. If you start out stubbornly planning to use your hammer no matter what the problem is, you'll probably make things worse (unless you sell hammers, in which case things will just be worse for others). This is part of the problem in the US, we took smart public works (like utilities, roads, and other critical infrastructure sectors) and privatized them, which shifted the focus from serving the many to enriching the few. I think it's sheer hypocrisy that the extreme capitalists warn about socialism when they're applying private growth models to infrastructure solutions and failing us so badly. These models seem to suggest that the best tool to use is to wait until a structure falls down, then force the taxpayers to hire a private company at exorbitant emergency rates to come to our rescue.

Notice how these tools are referred to in the collective, as an -ism, like you need to pick one and stick with it. This strategy lets people who don't consider working class folks worthy of social spending frame the issue as "Capitalism is our only hope". Communism failed, and socialism is just a step away, so capitalism must be the best choice, right? But we formed our democracy because our king wasn't treating us right and he owned everything. And it's easy to show that 100% private ownership leads to one person owning everything, so it's obvious some of these capital extremists want to be king. So they misrepresent the argument, and insist we give up our saws and drills and only use the hammer. The hammer is good, the hammer does a lot, but it's not the best tool for everything.

Trickery, imo. That slogan is basically misrepresenting the issue, and getting conservative voters to say "I'd rather pay $1000 to a private company for something than have my taxes go up by $500 to pay for it." Roughly half of Republicans send their kids to public schools, and I think they're the ones being tricked into voting against their own best interests.

A risk pool is basically a group-oriented strategy, which is more akin to public ownership than private. I disagree that regular insurance is anti-socialism. It's a pretty straightforward capitalist deal made between private entities, and value can be determined and agreed upon by both parties. As long as the terms of a claim are clear, everybody benefits. The weirdest part about it is that you're technically betting something bad will happen to you, and the insurer is betting it won't. Health insurance is a whole different matter, imo. It should never be handled privately, and should always be part of a publicly-owned program aimed at health and not profit, using as large a portion of a country's population as possible to reduce costs and maximize effectiveness. An effective social system is like a tapestry. It's easy to pick apart individual threads and break them, but the whole is very strong, beautiful, and resilient. On the other side, you'll have those millions to pay out because you've saved millions on different aspects of your society. If the US did more for working class folks, there would be less crime. If we went back to socialist approaches to our legal system, and got rid of jails-for-profit, we could reduce our prison system drastically (currently, the US has about 1/20th of the world's population, but it's hybrid privatized system has 1/4th of the world's prisoners). You'll have even more millions because people will have access to better healthcare, where studies show us we'll spend less because we'll catch more before it gets bad, and people won't resort to ER care because they can't afford insurance. Sick people are bad for your economic concerns. To me, it's really simple. Private, public, state ownership, they're all tools to use for the right job. Private ownership drives growth, so it's great for things you don't mind having potentially unlimited growth for. But you don't do that with things like roads and energy, because you only need so many/so much of those things. Education is another good example, since the vast majority only need to know what will help them have the life they want. As for socialism putting a "strain" on the economy, that sounds like the argument of someone who owns a private road construction company. It goes like this: "I employ hundreds of workers at my company who keep our city streets maintained." "Yes, but your roads have tons of potholes because you let us drive on the asphalt before it's cured." "It's for your convenience that we keep construction wait times to a minimum." "But you charge us to re-pave every other year. In Germany, the road crews close off the section of road they're paving for three months to let it cure." "THREE MONTHS! Americans would never stand for that!" "The Germans only have to re-pave a road every 10 years. Because they treat the roads as more important than the profit or the economy, they spend far less for far better roads. The Autobahn is world-famous." If we went back to public services for energy and other areas where it makes sense, the overall population would have a LOT more money to spend. Historically, it's not the wealthy who spend it if they got it. Wealthy folks are sitting on their cash right now, but if the middle and working classes were to get a break on utilities or education, they'd go right out and spend that savings on something they've wanted. Rather than it being a drain, policies based on socialism would boost the US economy considerably, imo.

! Moderator Note I think discussion is the wrong approach for someone who is convinced they "know" something. There's no room for learning when obsession sets in, and it clearly has blocked reasoned thinking in your case. You tend to ignore and pretend not to understand when a reply doesn't support your way of thinking. The most appalling strategy you have is to jump to other questions IMMEDIATELY after being told something that should make you STOP and reconsider your whole perspective (stars aren't stationary). You don't bother to take data on board so you can turn it into useful information, or correct flawed thinking on your part. This learning strategy is practically guaranteed to spiral downward into more and more confusion and misinterpretations. It doesn't help you learn what your species has discovered about the universe. History shows you'll ignore this warning and continue to guess about science while mainstream explanations are offered, and then complain that nobody answers you. This is a form of soapboxing or preaching, and it's against our rules. You're going to start receiving Soapboxing warnings if you keep it up. Suspension and banning could follow. Whether this is all an act or not, it ends now. We don't allow conspiracy, we don't allow trolling, and we're not well set up to teach you the basics you seem to lack. This is a science discussion forum.

... and might end with an unjust law being changed. I don't know about Canadian law, but in the US, the courts don't overturn bad laws on their own, they need people to break them and then argue in court why it was the right thing to do.