Phi for All

Yes, but you seemed to think the views you shared about "culling the herd" and such were more than that, otherwise why bring them up? My views on abortion are NOT shared by the majority of people with whom I associate. My views on marital fidelity are NOT shared by the majority of people with whom I associate. My views on sworn oaths and many other subjects I feel deal with right and wrong are NOT necessarily shared by the majority of people with whom I associate. Nonetheless, they are views I hold for rational reasons, not because I "feel" this way or am swayed by the majority to "feel" this way. We're a species that has developed high intelligence, intricate communication, mutual cooperation, advanced social structure and precision tool use to compensate for being physically weaker than many other species. Why do you think physical strength is a more desirable trait? I'm reminded of a recent post from a creationist where he asked why we don't all have wings by now if evolution was true.

JustinW, I think it's pretty clear you and I have completely different ideas about corporate governance and the responsibility it entails. You seem fine with executives doing anything they like within the law that makes them money, while I think a corporate charter carries with it an accountability to it's investors as well as the people it's made up of and the country or state that grants that charter. People, real people, want security and longevity for their hard work, not short-sighted executives who will sell them out to leverage a quick sale that makes them billions NOW but leaves destitute all the workers who were willing to sweat to make them hundreds of billions in the long run. I don't believe in too-big-to-fail and bailouts, and I also don't believe in too big to prosecute either, but Wall street wants to have their cake and eat it too. Too many of these guys scream free market while they vie for no-bid contracts that squelch competition, and you seem to be OK with that, too. They don't want big government but they want to be subsidized with taxpayer money and again, you shrug and agree. Both of us seem to love our country, but I think things are pretty shitty right now and you don't. I really think you're conflating some of the businesses you've worked for, probably great examples of what corporations should be, with these mega-corporations that can buy political influence and change laws for profit no matter what the cost is to We, the People.

This is a pretty common misconception. In reality though, many economists think it was pressure on the SEC in 2004 to relax the rules that allowed investment banks to increase the level of debt they took on, which in turn increased the number of mortgage-backed securities supporting those toxic mortgages which lead to the financial crisis. How can you call this a one-way street? Business is always going to exploit what they are able to, that's just the nature of the game. They're always going to complain that it's not enough, because they've proven that they can make a profit this way. Spend some money on lobbying to relax the rules, and get a nice hefty ROI on the investment. If you relax the rules too much, you get problems. Look at the insane amounts of profit and cash most of the big corporations are sitting on and then tell me we have a problem with too much restriction of business. Look at unemployment and tell me their promises that less restriction means more jobs is true. Subtlety IS being used on us to restrict our freedoms, but if it comes from the government you can bet it started with a lobbyist for some business group who stands to profit from it. We need to be more vigilant. There is enough for everyone in an economy as big as ours, but we need to be able to help each other out, that's what Americans do. Social programs and government-backed regulations that keep us free from excessive exploitation are absolutely necessary if we're to stand together as the great nation we want to be.

This is technically another topic, but we used to require that corporations that owned media outlets could ONLY own media outlets. We understood the incredible power the media has to shape public opinion. We understood that people looked to media outlets as their main source of news, which the vast majority like to hear unvarnished and as impartial as possible. So you approve of some of the tricks Romney used to make money for his investors, like buying a company that employs thousands of Americans, then bleeding off its cash and forcing it to take on the debts of some of his other holdings, then taking a big tax write-off when it's forced to close its doors and kick those workers to the curb? Is that your idea of free-market capitalism? I think it's horrible when the real heroes of the American economy, those businesses that not only play by the rules but also by the spirit of the rules, are getting hedged out by these mega-corporations that just pay to re-write the rules when it suits them. Do you think any Clear Channel news editor would ever run a story about a Bain Capital holding that laid off a thousand workers and sent their jobs overseas right at Christmas time? Owning 850 radio stations means no one who counts on you for news is ever going to hear a bad word about your other companies. Do you think they would ever run an op-ed piece on how strange it is that the GOP is backing a candidate who is one of the Wall Street kingpin crowd that the majority of economists on the planet says was instrumental in causing the 2008 financial crisis that cost 8,000,000 American jobs adn plunged the whole world into turmoil? They don't have to lie to misuse the power of the press. They can simply not report things they think will harm their employer's other businesses. Clear Channel had a well-known policy of never airing anything critical about George Bush (or any Republican, for that matter). You can't argue that it's out of respect for the office of the President, since they have no such policy regarding Barack Obama. Is that what you want from your news outlet, cherry-picking stories? Is that really what journalism is all about? We don't have to get rid of the media. We just have to repeal the Telecommunications Act of 1996. It was sold to Congress as a way to foster competition in that market, but it did just the opposite. We went from having 50 major media groups in 1983 (who holdings were primarily in media) to 6 in 2005. We decreased the number of media owners while the actual number of outlets increased. Information is power and the media shapes public opinion which elects our legislators. Tell me you see how reducing competition and allowing these companies unbridled access to our lawmakers is a huge conflict of interest, PLEASE! Is that what you think, that once a regulation is in place that "they are hardly ever given any relief"?! What about the people those regs protect? What happens when politicians gut the regulations like Bush II did, to give these corporations some "relief"? Did that end up solving any problems for anybody but the guys at the top? How has that worked out for us?

As Janus mentioned, we have geothermal power already. Your addition of seawater to use as steam to drive a turbine is a problem though. Steam by itself is pretty corrosive to metal machinery, and superheated saltwater is much worse. It's not so much a problem for the atmosphere as it is for equipment.

So far, there has been no evidence (NONE) that can't be explained in simpler terms than "Christianity is correct". As for the threat of going to hell, I look at it this way. If, at the end of my life, I find myself being judged by a God that tells me I'll be tormented forever for not worshiping Him, I'll be happy to tell Him I would never dream of being so cruel to anyone, so who was made in Who's image? If this God tells me I'll be tormented forever because I flubbed on a couple of His commandments, I'll tell Him that even though He etched them in stone for Moses, they got hidden in the Ark of the Covenant, so people couldn't agree on whether to follow the version in Exodus or the one in Deuteronomy. He shouldn't hold that against us, since Someone hid the Ark. And if He tells me I'll be tormented forever because I should have worshiped His son, I'll point out that His son got misused by a lot of people who did horrible things in his name, and I didn't want to take the chance of being one of them. I'm thinking more than "several of those Fridays". Is a soul different from consciousness? Your thoughts are individual to you and don't travel outside your brain. Why is that evidence that Christianity is correct? This is just more circular reasoning, God is real because the Bible says so and the Bible is the word of God, who is real because the Bible says so. This is evidence to support the fact that you didn't read any of the talkorigins links that were given to you. Why? Is flight the ultimate survival benefit for every creature? Is any creature that flies today better suited to our environment than we are? Think about how enormous wings on a human would have to be, and how much more muscle we'd need to use them. Creatures with wings have extremely lightweight bodies with hollow bones. Isn't it better to have dense muscles and arms with hands and opposable thumbs so we can build airplanes?

Those are still justifications. And they will be different between cultures, but my point was that they are rational decisions, justified by supporting the strengths we build our society upon, not "totally derived from our feelings and largely influenced by the feelings of the majority" as the OP stated. For instance, aborting an unborn child repulses me personally. For me, I would have to say it would be the wrong thing to do. But I can rationally allow that giving a woman the right to do as she chooses with her own body, including the potential for life she is harboring, is the right thing to do. Abortion at a predetermined stage in a pregnancy is not murder to me. I override my "feelings" and permit rational thought to support the freedoms and strengths that make my society function.

I didn't make the name up. Thanks to President Clinton, corporations can now own media outlets AND other business sectors as well. By giving vastly wealthy businesses the right to use their control of media to influence federal elections, the SCOTUS' decision in Citizens United v Federal Election Commission has completely undermined what little confidence the voter can have that the popular vote is being handled with integrity. Campaign finance reform has been kicked to the curb once more. Corporations, the really big ones that are capable of spending $84M on lobbying to receive $8.4B in tax breaks, are made up of people but it's the few people at the top who will determine how their freedom of speech is going to be transformed into political collateral. Bain Capitol is a $66B corporation that owns the largest group of radio stations in the country, and they are now unrestricted from political expenditures. Their founder? Mitt Romney. How in the world can that NOT be considered a conflict of our interest in a fair election procedure? I put that right up there with awarding a mega-billion dollar, no-bid contract to the Vice President's former company to service a war he rushed us to engage in. Edit: I started this post back before iNow's joke about Romney but got sidetracked by phone calls. The joke just points up how politicians and corporate CEOs are colluding to give them the best of both worlds and a power base that We the People may never be able to survive.

We recognize that our strengths lie in our numbers, our communication and our cooperation. Some actions either support or are inimical to these strengths, and become fixed as "right" and "wrong". These may be learned responses but I don't think our "feelings" have as much to do with them as our intelligence. Killing other humans can be justified, but when it can't it's usually because it threatens to undermine the strengths we benefit from in our organized society. That's when it becomes murder instead of execution or defending ourselves.

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I'm sure you mean "perpetual" cycle, but are you talking about using seawater on lava to create steam to power a turbine for electricity? What are the big holes in the ground for (or are they to get at the lava)?

Susceptibility ≠ guilty. Fighting confirmation bias is a sign of rational thought, imo. It's not always easy, but knowing you're prone to reject evidence that supports something counter to what you believe can help overcome your biases.

+1

Confirmation bias, and particularly attitude polarization, can often make some beliefs firmer when we're presented with contrary evidence. That seems broken to me, but then that's applicable to any situation where opinion or belief is in question, not just religion.

The one thing I do know about God is that you can't use science to measure something that refuses to be observed in any scientifically meaningful way. I've answered the way I have in order to avoid the personal attack angle inherent in the title. Decisions can be of a broken nature, but the people who make them are not inherently broken, imo.

I'd love to see some startup companies centered around the old concept of "built to last" products. We've become such a disposable society, but most disposable products are insanely expensive in the long run (which is better for the business than the consumer). I can understand one-time use products in the medical sector where they reduce the risk of infection enormously, but many product types are made to be replaced often and we ignore the costs because they're spread out over time. I'm thinking back to the old AT&T telephones. They were leased to their users, and if anything went wrong with them, anything at all, the company fixed or replaced them. They were actually designed to survive being thrown against the wall (frustrations over line static, party lines and long-distance charges were higher back then ). The outer shells were easily changeable for color choice variation, but were made from a plastic that retained its luster, didn't scratch and had a smooth surface for easy cleaning. Hypothesis: If a (very) limited number of companies were given a charter to design and build a common household appliance like a toaster, with enough features to satisfy the vast majority of toaster users, including superior performance (the settings would consistently give you toast just the way you want it), with the provision that fixing any failures, whether through defect or general use, were the responsibility of the manufacturer, the result would be a product that would be extremely cost-effective in its lifetime. I predict further that such a toaster would reduce waste in materials. Also, because of its superior quality, the consumer would gain the satisfaction inherent in using an extremely well-made product. If some kind of provision were made (subsidization? leasing? government mandate?) so that all toasters sold were made to these specifications, mass-production would reduce costs tremendously. I use toasters strictly as an example. There may be better products to start out with. But in the above scenario, wouldn't it all come down to choosing between high quality with limited variety in design and limited quality with high variety in design?

I can understand faith. It seems to be the single uniform aspect of most religions, the belief in something that can't be directly observed. I think worshiping a specific god in a specific way means you have to deny the validity of such worship when others do it for a different god, religion or sect. That's the part that seems broken to me. They can't all be right so how do you make the choice between them without some kind of irrational, broken judgement?

I think the need for such housing would have a shorter life cycle if we educated people better. But you're right, there will always be people who get into circumstances beyond their control and need the help of their fellow countrymen.

You've gussied it up to make yourself sound noble and righteous, but it's essentially the same as saying, "Anyone who doesn't conform to my idea of fairness is going to die horribly!" And it also appears as though disabled people get an automatic reprieve in your world since they could NEVER be cold-hearted. You have an active fantasy world going, so what happens to you when they can cure Asperger's with a pill? You'd be just another non-disabled person with a whole lot of hatred and a desire to impose his will on the rest of society.

The Wall Street banks took mismarked mortgage-backed securities (the infamous toxic subprime loans), chopped them up and repackaged them as AAA-rated investments. That's fraud, and Madoff was the only one who went to jail for it because his clients were rich, instead of the state pension funds, middle income private investors and foreign banks that Wall Street targeted. Bank of America executives outright lied about billions of dollars in bonuses they were paying themselves. Most of the banks involved, like Lehman Brothers, hid billions of dollars in subprime loans from their own investors. That's more fraud. And no one is being charged. The only reason most people aren't outraged is because the securities involved are very complicated financial instruments (but still fraudulently organized). It would be easier for us to understand if it were actual homes instead of loans for homes that were involved. If Wall Street had sold houses that fell down a year after you bought them, I can guarantee there would have been justice. Corporations are necessary but the way they're structured gives their shareholders certain benefits that regular citizens don't have, like limiting their personal liability. Giving corporations personhood under the freedom of speech clause creates a super-person in the eyes of the law, yet this "person" can't be sentenced to jail. Justice John Paul Stevens, in his 90-page dissenting opinion paper, argued that, “[a]lthough they make enormous contributions to our society, corporations are not actually members of it. They cannot vote or run for office.” He also said, “Corporations have no consciences, no beliefs, no feelings, no thoughts, no desires. Corporations help structure and facilitate the activities of human beings, to be sure, and their 'personhood' often serves as a useful legal fiction. But they are not themselves members of 'We the People' by whom and for whom our Constitution was established.” I feel that corporations, by their very nature, will always work towards making the most money, in any way they can as long as they don't get caught. Giving them the ability to change the laws so they can't be found guilty of breaking them is dangerous in the extreme. Corporations are tools, and you don't treat tools the same way you treat people. Especially when it"s the People the Constitution talks about.

This is all a matter of perspective. I get the feeling you'd be absolutely and unequivocally happy if you suddenly had the power to strike dead anyone you felt wasn't being "fair". As the death toll rose, you'd probably gain an enormous amount of pleasure in misusing your power wielding the righteous sword of fairness, convinced you were justified as the-society-of-humans ran screaming from you. Admit it, you're grinning just thinking about it. That's pretty cold-hearted from my perspective

Ah. More Slippery Slope arguments. The risk of possibly bad-mouthing the current US system should preclude discussing eliminating some of its worst aspects in a new system. Not sensible, imo.

Ah, my apologies then. That's why I like the quote feature.

Medicine, as a whole, is not suited to standard business models. If you expect to make a profit and grow your business, you don't obviate your customer's need for your services and products. You figure out ways to make your customers dependent on what you have to sell them. But what we really want from healthcare is to be cured so we can minimize our need for the services doctors provide, to be healthy and strong. I don't know anyone who doesn't want that. Alleviating symptoms is a far cry from curing disease, but it's very profitable for business. We've been trading huge amounts of money and poor health for the "freedom" of getting a pill and not having a doctor "mandate" that we need more exercise and healthier food. And now it's hard to trust that the business side of the medical establishment would ever even try to find simple cures for things like diabetes, one of the most lucrative ways to make money from a captive customer base EVER. I'm not sure what can be done to force such a paradigm shift in the way medicine is practiced, so I settle for advocating a government insurance program so we can at least get the care we need without paying middle men to further make it difficult to be healthy. A necessary step, and moving in a better direction.