npts2020

Well American style socialism anyway.

ecoli; If the prices of telephone service went down because of privatization, I missed it somehow. What is it that profits incentvize? Near as I can tell it incentivizes making money (especially short term) to the exclusion of all other considerations. While the profit motive may be good for innovation, it also encourages cutting corners, creative bookkeeping, and collusion among other things. I guess I would agree capitalism works better for the citizens if only capitalists are considered to be citizens. You assume there is no way to incentivise the government to cut costs (and with the dumb-asses who vote in elections here it may well be true but that is a whole other matter) but I would argue that if executives and/or workers are given reason (proportional bonuses or some other mechanism) to do so it will happen. Good luck with the "market" keeping the worst of corporate abuse in check, you can't even get your food labelled with what is in it. Last time I can think of this being tried we had conditions like those described by Upton Sinclair in "The Jungle" and more than a few of those trying to change things murdered or beaten into submission. I am not sure what you mean by giving corporations freedoms at the expense of individual and societal freedoms being a fase dichotomy. Maybe you can give me an example or two of where we have expanded corporate freedom and not impinged on individual and collective rights. Assuming you are right that low wages and maximum employment is a good thing, why should we have a standard length of workweek, laws against children working, or allow retirement? In fact, we can go back to the good ole days of "Why hire a man for a dollar when you can hire a kid for a dime?". While I would generally agree most corporations don't need big brother watching them 24/7, there is no codified manner in which they are supposed to act. Is it really ok that the only consideration is the next quarter's bottom line? Maybe profit driven innovation only happens in a free market, but I would submit that innovation will happen regardless of the economic system. Would you claim that no innovations came from the Soviet Union or come from China, neither of which is claimed to be a capitalist country AFAIK? The corporate anarchy I am referring to is what pretty much exists today and you and some others seemingly want to expand. A good example of what I am referring to is the Enron debacle. How many people have served jail time or paid fines for that (hint all of the convictions of those still alive are under appeal)? and Enron filed for bankruptcy over 7 years ago! How long do you think it will be before Bernie Madoff (what a great name for a con man) pays any fines or goes to jail? Do you think anyone will see the inside of a courtroom over the current financial crisis where more than a few executives knew exactly what would happen eventually and didn't care so long as they weren't the ones left holding the bag? jackson33; So far as the discussion goes on this thread, it seems to me to be irrelevant whether it is the federal, state, or some other government spending money, the economic effects will be the same. For some crazy reason I believe it is my right to be able to breathe clean air and not be subject to acid rain, yet the government has told power companies it is ok to pollute the air and cause acid rain. explain to me how my rights have not been subjugated to corporations in this instance? So far as losing rights to the government and not corporate interests IMO there is very little difference between the two. For as long as I can remember (at least back to the 60's) corporations have been bribing (promising cushy jobs, donating massive amounts of campaign money, etc.) public officials to do their bidding. This has led to increase of corporate rights and decrease of personal and societal rights, the freedom to do the things you mention are all predicated on having money to do them. A person who has to worry about whether they are going to eat, pay rent, or buy their diabetes medicine this month is likely only going to be concerned about the lowest price of things and not even consider any negative aspects of the way they are purchasing something. If cheap goods is the ultimate goal, why not just go back to the days of robber barons?

Maybe, but who could say for sure? Any beings that knew enough to be able to figure out interstellar travel would likely be pretty far advanced as well in other fields I imagine.

I fail to see how changing control from an entity whose main regard in running an enterprise is the betterment of its citizens (in theory anyway), to one whose only goal is to make a profit will benefit the majority of us. Maybe someone can explain to me exactly how that works. Well, it seems to me the more "freedoms" corporations enjoy, the fewer most of the rest of us have. How is it to anyone's (other than those making money from it) benefit to allow enterprises to cause oil spills in the oceans, dump toxic chemicals into rivers and lakes, or cause acid rain? How is it to the majorities advantage to allow wages to be depressed to the point where the lowest paid workers in the world become the standard? By the standard you have stated above, the last couple of decades of the 19th century should have been among the most innovative in history, is this true (hint, try to think of major corporate advances from that time)? One of the problems with allowing corporate anarchy (or "freedom" if you prefer), is that all of the rights, privileges, and responsibilities I have ever read about in any of our republic's founding documents apply to individuals not corporations. In fact, there is nothing in them that I have ever seen that even gives a corporation a legal right to exist much less any specific rights or priveleges.

The only thing missing from that definition is the organisms.

Are you asking about memes?

Baby Astronaut; If you don't already know the answers to those questions, you do not already know everything about that dog. The point being, why ask questions of a being who you are likely to know more about than they do of themselves?

Perhaps. You have to remember, though, people who build new things are hardly "average" for their time (or probably any time for that matter). My training is in engineering but I would argue that I could build an airplane in less time and better than the Wright brothers. Not because I know more about it than they did but because I know where to get the information and what questions to answer in order to do it. The reason I would expect to be successful at the above proposition is because I realize there is a vast body of information that has accumulated since that time about what they were doing to which they had no access (it didn't exist then). IMO it is this ability to locate information and put it into a usable form that ties human knowledge together for all of us and enables faster advancement, actual understanding is less important than ability to understand.

Jackson33; I would tend to agree that massive govenment spending creates a false bottom, however, I think that applies only to things government does not normally spend money on. The price of things like roads, sewer systems, water supply pipelines, etc. are not much affected by whether the government or someone else spends the money, since it is the government that undertakes the ovewhelming majority of those sorts of expenditures anyway. I don't think individuals should be required to pay income taxes (questionably legal anyway IMO) but the companies they work for should. The reason being that the tax code is so complex that the ones who have to hire accountants anyway should just have them keep track of it all. We can argue about how that is done exactly and at what level but it would simplify things for most people and make one less thing they can get in trouble with their government over. The rest of your post seems to me like a prescription for corporate anarchy, IMO. It seems to me corporate America needs more regulation, not the indvidual citizens giving up their rights to corporations for corporate "freedom".

What I always wondered is why an alien would want to speak to a human anyway. It would be like speaking to a dog you already knew everything about, maybe an interesting communication exercise but not likely to be very enlightening and IMO hardly worth travelling interstellar distances to do, when you already have a dog in your house.

I thought it was because more ballots for Franken were challenged than for Coleman? Am I wrong about this?

Actually, I am a little surprised they even answered it.

At the rate the government is printing money this (the bold part) is a questionable proposition.

CaptainPanic; If there was an efficient nationwide transit system already, I would likely not be arguing for advancing the road technology in as sudden a change as I do. The last time I was in Europe was about 1980 and I can tell you that even then public transit there was much better than it is in most places in America today. There are some local systems that have their act together and provide good service but many do not and the national grid is pathetic for passenger travel. Also the rate of electric train use is far higher in Europe and on local American transit than for freight in the U.S. (I know there are numbers out there but I forget where I saw them). It is true that the cost of rail and interstate highway are comparable (high-speed rail is slightly more though) but I believe that by prefabricating the roadways in sections we can both significantly decrease cost, and increase speed of construction. In urban settings, any construction is going to be both disruptive and expensive so I would think the initial thrust would be to connect different city's transit systems and enable citizens in smaller communities to connect. Space for construction of merges is a problem, too, as you rightly point out. One thing about America is that our streets are mostly wider than European ones, I believe that by running vehicles (the majority anyway) more the size of a Cooper Mini than the size of a Humvee will address much of the problem along with the fact that automated vehicle don't need as much room for safety margins. We will disagree for now about the need for however many cross streets, as I have yet to do any serious consideration of the matter. Here is the link you wanted, it also has a good description of what is and isn't high-speed. Seems like it was the Japanese that did 581 kph not the Germans. The Germans were the previous record holder.

frankcox; You are correct I don't understand the arguments of creationists.....they make no sense. I recommend reading "The Great Monkey Trial" by L. Sprague Decamp. It is long but very interesting book about the "Scopes Monkey Trial" and does a very good job of describing the arguments of both sides used for the trial and giving background for each. The long and short of it is that it was impossible for John Scopes to get a fair trail in the venue he was tried, yet the majority of jurors agreed that he should never have been tried even though they convicted him (the trial was not about the truth or falsehood of evolution, it was about whether he taught it in school as a substitute teacher). BTW I can provide more evidence for evolution than you can provide for "god"

How can one argue against evolution on the one hand, then claim passing on deleterious traits is weakening the human populace on the other?

I would disagree with the notion that taxes are the final resting place for dollars. The government has never successfully run a surplus for any significant period other than to pay off a previous deficit. That means the money has to be going somewhere i.e spent on goods, services, subsidies etc. The biggest problem is that the government is fairly inept at doing it and often gets little return on its dollar. If this can be changed through better oversight and direction of funds, IMO there is no reason government spending cannot significantly help in putting our economy back to a positive direction. Merged post follows: Consecutive posts merged*note: The "multiplier effect" of job creation for military spending should also be true of any other kind, so really does nothing to justify spending on military over anything else

Only if they come into your house or assault you....um, well I guess you could take them quail hunting if you are the vice-president.

I also noticed that the most users ever was just a couple of days ago as well, way to go.

Sisyphus; And the Germans have tested their trains up to 581 kph but America has no similar high speed trains. Very few freight trains are electric either and if you are going to build that kind of infrastructure (electric) anyway, why build it for huge trains that many people will not use for the same reasons SH3RLOCK has articulated. High-speed/heavy rail is the most expensive infrastructure we could possibly build and the least flexible for getting where you want to go. IMO one of the biggest technical challenges for automation is what CaptainPanic has stated about intersections. The problem there is that roadways are based on a centuries old design that predates the Romans "paving" the Appian Way with flagstones, and were never meant for high-speed traffic. Even an automated system will not achieve high speeds in an urban setting where there are pedestrians, bicyclists and the like competing for the same space. Intersections are the point where all of these competitors get in each other's way. While difficult, the problem is not intractable. One way of going about it would be to elevate one direction (N/S or E/W) and have the other run at street level in heavily populated areas. Another might be to redesign some intersections so that they are like a bridge where crosstraffic passes under or over. It would not be necessary to have as many cross streets as there are now for the same reasons every street doesn't cross a river (or even small creek).

frankcox; I would like to see your sources for the assertion that a significant percentage of scientists do not believe in evolution, since I happen to know a few people who make a living as scientists and all of them believe in evolution. Furthermore I would like to know where you get the notion that creationists generally "win" debates with evolutionists about the subject of human origins. The most recent debate in a neutral arena I am aware of where there was a "winner" decided was Kitzmiller vs. Dover board of education. In that debate, the intelligent design (or creationists if you prefer) were represented pro bono by the Thomas More Law Center which has over 300 lawyers working for them. What do you suppose the outcome of that debate in court was? Were those 300+ lawyers unable to understand the subject matter well enough to adequately present the intelligent design side of the debate? The problem with saying the gods created everything is that it doesnt try to explain any mechanism for how he/she/they/it accomplished such a thing. That is where evolution comes in. Evolution only describes a process and allows the large percentage of scientists who are religiously inclined to both believe in evolution and their religious precepts. I have never met a person who believes in creationism or intelligent design who is not deeply religious. Finally, I would say with pretty fair certainty that nothing you have said in the preceding diatribe disproves the ideas of evolution, abiogenesis, or natural selection. The more studies that are done, the more secure those ideas have become not the other way around.

A nine year-old could hardly be considered a consenting adult, which I believe should have some bearing on the matter.

The problem IMO is the way economists view "economic activity". Why is producing a trillion dollars worth of bombs or barbie dolls the same as producing a trillion dollars worth of houses or machine tools? It seems to me that the former will not provide for any vital needs or increase the ability to produce more goods, whereas the latter will. It also seems to me this is why we are in as much trouble as we are at present. How long can any economy last without ever increasing its ability to provide for its citizens or produce tangible goods?

A blimp would be great until the first big storm.

Well if we want to give a blastocyst rights, why not children as well? (Am I the only one who thinks it is probably the same people who want to do the first don't want to do the second?)