rkbabang

And of course fleets of autonomous ground vehicles are only a steppingstone to the ultimate advancement in human transport. Fleets of autonomous ground/air vehicles. https://www.facebook.com/NowThisNews/videos/879764938780298/

I like that quote, but when it comes to the nature vs. nurture debate, I think it is a little of both.

What would you suggest? Voting? Yeah, hundreds of millions of people already do that every four years and this is the outcome. Run for president myself? Sorry, but I don't have the time or money to attempt such a thing. And besides I'm not a megalomaniac sociopath that wants power and control over how a few hundred million people run their lives. You can manage your own life, just leave me alone.

This article applies equally to Trump as well as that guy from Vermont. Bernie Sanders's fear of immigrant labor is ugly — and wrongheaded "The philosopher Michael Huemer has a great thought experiment making this point. Imagine a man, Marvin, is starving to death, and goes to a marketplace to buy bread. Another man, Sam, forcibly stops him and prevents him from buying bread. Marvin starves to death. That's wrong, right? And it's still wrong if the harm caused is less severe. Say Marvin isn't going to the marketplace to buy bread, but instead to sell it. If he sells it at that particular marketplace, he will make 15 times more money than if he sold it at the other marketplace in town. But Sam stops him, by force, from selling at the lucrative marketplace, forcing him to settle for the other market, where he makes 15 times less. The analogy is not exactly subtle: Marvin is a potential immigrant (in this case from Nigeria; recall that moving from Nigeria to the US raises an average migrant's earnings 15-fold), and Sam is a US border patrol agent. If you think Sam is hurting Marvin by barring him from selling bread from the good market, you've got to think that border agents are hurting immigrants by keeping them from coming to work in the US."

Cars are dangerous and people are still going to be hurt and killed (hopefully much less than now though), so insurance will be necessary. You will still need liability insurance against accidents from mechanical malfunctions, from software glitches, from hackers, and from situations the software simply wasn't anticipating and/or didn't know how to deal with. As long as there is something flammable in the machine such as fuel and/or batteries you will still probably need fire and theft insurance as well. All of these adverse events should be relatively rare compared with today, so the insurance should be much cheaper. And if I'm correct and things move away from private ownership and towards the large fleet model, then there should be much fewer cars and many fewer insurance policies in existence.

What happens to the candlestick makers when the electric light bulb catches on? Yes there is a huge amount of change coming and it will not benefit everyone equally. Change never does.

How about someone that is blue collar and not an economic elite? I'd vote for that person blindly. There's always this guy http://bennorton.com/2016-us-presidential-election-endorsement-vermin-supreme/ He's not a member of any economic elite. And I, for one, would love to see the president sitting in the Oval Office with a boot on his head.

Politics is Destroying Your Soul

It doesn't matter who the next president is. It is all for your entertainment anyway. The politicians all differ on some social issues or minor other things, but regardless who wins nothing substantial will change in anyway that matters to the elite. Just look at Obama. He campaigned on ending Bush's wars and repealing the Patriot act. LOL, maybe he was even naive enough to think he could.

Yes it is. If it isn't 100% authoritarian how could it not be? I have a Chinese neighbor in his 70's who is fascinating to talk to. He's lived in China, Tawain, South Korea, England (got his PH.D. there), spent decades in Canada where he met his wife and got married, and has lived in the U.S. for the last 25 years. He says it cracks him up when conservatives in the U.S. call China "communist", he says that he tells them that the U.S. is more communist than China. He tells them, if the U.S. isn't communist how come I pay for your kids schooling? Go try to tell your boss in China that you are sick and can't come in to work today and see what that gets you, or that you've worked more than 40 hours and want overtime, or that you'd like to take a vacation, or that you are not happy with your working conditions! He tells them that in the U.S. if you are poor your government gives you food and shelter, go be a poor person in China and see what your government gives you. He goes on and on like this almost forever. Everything is a spectrum, you can't talk absolutes. There are three types of systems that for lack of better words could be described as "communism", "fascism", and "capitalism". Communism is where the government owns and runs something, such as the public schools in the U.S. or the post office. Fascism (not Nazism, it has nothing to do with jews or ovens) is the system where property and businesses are privately owned, but heavily taxed, regulated, licensed, and controlled by the central authority (i.e. government). Capitalism, is where the central authority (if it exists at all) allows free and open unregulated trade. Each country (or even each city in each country) could be given a percentage for each of the three categories that add up to 100%. For the U.S.: The communist aspects are public transportation( subways, city buses, Amtrak, commuter rail, etc), the US post office, welfare, food stamps, public housing, the national defense (and too often offense), the justice/tort system, policing, fire protection (in most places, some places still have private fire companies), public schooling, etc.... So maybe 10% The fascist aspects. Just about everything else. There is no completely unregulated, unlicensed, untaxed, free trade in the US except in the black & gray markets. So maybe close to 90%. Capitalist, this used to be much higher but I'd put it at almost 0% now. EDIT: Upon re-reading my scales aren't perfect, I am not taking into account the harshness of the regulations, the enthusiasm of the enforcement, nor the brutality of the punishments. Two countries both with 90% fascism on my scale, could be very different places. I guess in addition to the type of system scales you need a corruption scale and a police-state scale to get a full picture.

Is it really necessary to explain to people on an investing board how savings contributes to available capital in a capitalist economy? Unless you stuff it into your mattress, your $100 in savings can have a multiplier effect that benefits the world far more than the poor person's $100 spent on groceries. Like most socialists you suffer from shallow 1st order thinking.

I think if you were one of the millions in jail in the US today you would think that it is already pretty bad. If you were one of the thousands killed by police your loved ones would think it was already pretty bad. Just because it was much worse in other places and times doesn't mean that it isn't bad and getting worse here and now. We live in interesting times, the private sector is doing amazing and wonderful things that are making all of our lives better by the day, but at the same time the government is gearing up for an all out war (both overseas and at home). The police are killing thousands every year, hundreds every month, often getting away with murder even though the video is on youtube. Business is operating under the weight of crippling regulations & licensing schemes in an almost outright crony-capitalist system. Taxes, well this thread has gone over taxation already. Imagine what would be possible if those weights were removed. I never mentioned Hitler btw, I had more of the Mussolini/Italian system in mind when I said "fascist" not trying to imply the bigotry/antisemitism images that the words "Hitler" or "Nazi" seem to bring to mind. The US has the most sophisticated spying system the world has ever seen, dictators and fascists of previous generations could never even dream of having the capabilities of the current CIA/NSA/FBI/etc. The US military is the best equipped in the world. As are the US police forces (federal, state, and local). When it does get "really bad" it may happen quickly. IMHO the only thing holding the whole leviathan back is the knowledge that there are more than 88 privately owned firearms for every 100 people in the United States. When it does get "really bad", as you say, it will be really messy on all sides, which is the one reason it may never get to that point at all. It is more likely to get a little worse, but never cross the threshold where people rebel. It may never get "really bad", but that doesn't mean it is good.

http://www.louisaheinrich.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/03/inigo-montoya_that-word.jpg Yes clearly we are closer to being a fascist police state than a Venezuelan socialist paradise.

Any other stores that permanently stopped sales of guns and ammunition? I need a list of stores to support. American obsession with guns is horrifying. +1 I was going to say something to the same effect but I didn't want to start a gun debate. I'm sure that there were a lot of Americans that were happy that after a tragedy like 9/11 you didn't have a whole bunch of well armed people looking to set things right on their own. Can you imagine the possibilities of what could have happened?? I hate to break it to you, but the US is already filled with a bunch of well armed people.

Any other stores that permanently stopped sales of guns and ammunition? I need a list of stores to support. American obsession with guns is horrifying. +1 I was going to say something to the same effect but I didn't want to start a gun debate. Not that I know of. I guess the two of you will be doing a lot of K-Mart shopping.

K-Mart suspended sales of all guns and ammunition on September 11, 2001 a matter of hours after the country had been attacked. I couldn't help ask the question "Who's side are they on exactly?" Even though there was still a K-Mart in the town I lived in back then, neither I nor my wife have stepped foot in a K-Mart since and never will. I have a hard time even thinking about shopping at Sears, simply because they own K-Mart. Luckily there is no good reason to buy anything from Sears either.

Where they worked voluntarily. ... as it was their only alternative to starving to death in the streets in a cold, capitalist world where they lost the genetic lottery. (No idea if this is true or not. I just like "build the sentence" games.) Yes, when you are born into this world you need to find someway to survive, to find food, to protect yourself, to keep warm, to find shelter. All animals do (including human beings). This isn't some heavenly utopia where some God, Dear Father, Uncle Joe (or Sam) magically takes care of everyone by turning water into wine or calling forth to the great god of socialism a chicken in every pot, it is reality where nothing is created unless some human being does the work of creating it. We are all standing on the shoulders of those who came before us and built our civilization from the ground up. Many of our ancestors lived through hell for us to live in comfort, it isn't capitalism's fault that they went through hell, that is the default state of existence, it is capitalism's fault that we aren't in a living hell as well.

How many people try to be Mother Teresa? It is rare, because, as APG12 pointed out, it is impossible to be principledly altruistic, and I think most people sense this even if not consciously. I think anyone who does dedicate their entire lives to the downtrodden would turn out like Mother Teresa. The capitalists helps the economy, which helps the downtrodden, by helping himself. Thus I'd rather have a world full of greedy capitalists than a world full of Mother Teresa wannabees.

What a nice mischaracterization of someone trying to be Mother Theresa. No, it's not about "enjoying the fact that people are sick and starving so that you can feel virtuous taking care of them". It is actually about helping people who are sick and starving. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/03/04/mother-teresa-myth_n_2805697.html

I think that is an instance of the same phenomenon you see in a lot of different areas of life. Altruism and sacrifice are implicitly held as a moral ideal and self interest is regarded as distasteful at best. But since altruism is impossible to practice in a principled fashion, you get get a bifurcation between people's ideals and their actions. Most people think they should be Mother Teresa but they don't actually want to be washing feet in India anymore than they want to commit suicide. The last thing the world needs is everyone to actually want to be Mother Teresa (as opposed to just saying that and feeling guilty because they don't really want it). Nothing corrupts the soul more than enjoying the fact that people are sick and starving so that you can feel virtuous taking care of them. I'll take a world full of greedy capitalists anyday.

Hmm, I grew up in a small town with a lot of mom and pop type businesses. I don't know which ones were highly profitable and which ones weren't. There was a great ice cream shop that only opened in the summer that everyone went to. There was a chinese restaurant named "Ho Toy" (only a Chinese place could get away with that). I have a feeling no one will have a post as interesting as Jurgis though. The moral of his post is that you can ban the market, but in that case the black market becomes the market.

Our Cities Will Be Beautiful In The Driverless Future—But First We Have To Get There "There might be social pressure, too. In our hypothetical future, you’ll be accustomed to zipping from place to place with no traffic jams and few bad drivers. Then you see a human holdout, somebody insisting on driving their own car. It hurtles through the placid waves of robot-piloted transport, causing your own car to swerve. You look up from your newspaper, tutting and shaking your head. "Go back to 2015, you moron," you think as loud as you can, before returning to your sudoku. Now imagine you are at dinner with friends, and somebody confesses that they’re driving themselves home. The reaction may be the same as a smoker or drink-driver might get today. Social pressure may be the biggest propellant of change in the world today. Sydney, Australia-based radio content director Charlie Fox says "I think if you drive your own car, you'll be perceived [as] lower class. It will become a status thing.""

:) http://mediad.publicbroadcasting.net/p/nhpr/files/201505/new-hampshire-welcome-sign.jpg This was the article which kicked off the idea of the Free State Project in July of 2001: Announcement:The Free State Project

The reason I moved to New Hampshire 4 years ago: https://freestateproject.org/

As Lysander Spooner said "But whether the Constitution really be one thing, or another, this much is certain - that it has either authorized such a government as we have had, or has been powerless to prevent it. In either case it is unfit to exist.”