EPTthe lawyers I know are overwhelmingly either pro-Hillary or Republican, so yeah, I know.
US Politics Mega-thread - Page 3306
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farvacola
United States18870 Posts
the lawyers I know are overwhelmingly either pro-Hillary or Republican, so yeah, I know. | ||
KwarK
United States44402 Posts
On March 12 2016 10:26 ticklishmusic wrote: i'm all for the first amendment and freedom expression, i'm gonna disagree with disrespecting the flag but more importantly doing so in this is just looking for a fight. also this livestream is weirdly apocalyptic I have never understood the weird flag fetishism that exists in the United States. On one side you have people going "you better not step on that flag, that's the worst thing a person can do" so the other side buys into it and goes "yeah, I'm totally going to step on that flag, that'll show people". It's all absurd. The people stepping on the flag are doing absolutely nothing offensive and the only reason they're doing it is because they're trying to make a point to the first group who promptly go nuts. To an outsider both sides are fucking retarded. There is no controversy. Respecting flags is a made up dumb taboo which appears only to exist in order to enable people to then break that taboo, thus accepting the initial premise that it is a taboo. If by some unlikely series of events I was all out of toilet paper and had access to the American flag I wouldn't think twice before using it to wipe but I wouldn't then film it and put it on youtube to show the world how I'm tough on fabric. Y'all fucking weird. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
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corumjhaelen
France6884 Posts
Too bad we in fact don't need more people studying economics but economists studying other non-dismal social science and open a history book or two for a change. Economics study don't increase one's knowledge of the world, they make one less moral, teach him pretty bad model and horrendous epistemology. | ||
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ticklishmusic
United States15977 Posts
On March 14 2016 23:27 DickMcFanny wrote: Which of Bernie's policies would be a complete disaster, I wonder? I have yet to hear a convincing argument that justifies the extreme wealth inequality across the States and the world that goes further than "trickle-down Reagonomics". Well let's say he hypothetically gets elected and hypothetically passes Medicare for all... There is a long and acrimonious fight to nationalize the insurance companies. Yes, you would essentially have to do this, because it would be absolutely ridiculous to just screw over a $800 billion industry. If you follow the money, a huge chunk of it is going to actually be owned by people saving for retirement because retirement account -> funds -> stock in insurance company, and letting the insurance companies die would not play well with a lot of people who suddenly realize that they have skin in the game. Activist investors (and asshole investors looking to make a buck) who oppose the idea will take stakes and attempt to block the move or drive up the price, and we end up with a really nasty use of eminent domain to get the insurance companies (the bulk of them at any rate, private supplemental insurance will likely survive in some form) under government ownership and control. The pricetag is about a trillion, give or take a couple hundred billion. The government then consolidates the companies (business-speak for firing a bunch of people), comes out with uniform billing, etc. The providers hate it. Like, really, really, hate it. No one likes dealing with Medicare patients because the documentation sucks and the payout sucks (about 80 cents for every dollar a private insurer would pay). The millions (I'm guessing) of contracts that the insurance companies have with every single provider of medical care and pharma/device vendors has to be renegotiated at a lower price since that's the entire point of single payer. This is a massive pain in the ass for all involved parties and makes trench warfare look like a walk in the park. Eventually the government comes out with a extremely long and complex price register that sets reimbursement levels for every medical procedure... but it's full of holes and weird pricing and has so many problems that a pseudo-insurance industry (made of ex-insurance employees) springs up to help providers get paid proper amounts. After realizing that physician pay kind of sucks balls, our physician workforce gets decimated. Maybe 2x decimated if we use the literal definition of losing a tenth. Some providers retire early. Others move to some other job, because a MD is a really good professional degree and they have financial obligations they can't meet on the new, lower physician compensation levels. Oh, and a ton of doctors to be are extremely turned off-- they want to practice, but 10+ years of school and half a mill in debt (student loan, especially for grad school is another issue) doesn't seem like a good decision given the decrease in earning power. Finally, a bunch of physicians say "screw you for trying to screw us" and go to cash payments or work concierge medicine for rich people or form their own care networks that don't accept Medicare for all. Our projected physician gap increased from 50K missing in 2020 to 100K, or something like that. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On March 14 2016 23:51 corumjhaelen wrote: Oneofthem has made pretty clear that if you don't agree with him, it's that you're not educated enough. Sounds perfectly reasonnable, and a great convincing plan. Too bad we in fact don't need more people studying economics but economists studying other non-dismal social science and open a history book or two for a change. Economics study don't increase one's knowledge of the world, they make one less moral, teach him pretty bad model and horrendous epistemology. I think you are taking some joking banter to seriously, tbh. This is an internet forum, not the place for high academic debate. | ||
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ticklishmusic
United States15977 Posts
On March 14 2016 23:41 KwarK wrote: I have never understood the weird flag fetishism that exists in the United States. On one side you have people going "you better not step on that flag, that's the worst thing a person can do" so the other side buys into it and goes "yeah, I'm totally going to step on that flag, that'll show people". It's all absurd. The people stepping on the flag are doing absolutely nothing offensive and the only reason they're doing it is because they're trying to make a point to the first group who promptly go nuts. To an outsider both sides are fucking retarded. There is no controversy. Respecting flags is a made up dumb taboo which appears only to exist in order to enable people to then break that taboo, thus accepting the initial premise that it is a taboo. If by some unlikely series of events I was all out of toilet paper and had access to the American flag I wouldn't think twice before using it to wipe but I wouldn't then film it and put it on youtube to show the world how I'm tough on fabric. Y'all fucking weird. Well... I'm gonna go with it's because you're from the UK originally. It''s a patriotism/ nationalism thing. Personally I'm not huge on it, but I would rather people show a bit of respect for it, kind of how you respect anything that is a tradition (though reverence for our flag runs a little deeper than mere tradition). | ||
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KwarK
United States44402 Posts
On March 13 2016 02:41 wei2coolman wrote: Problem would be it would require a lot more policing, and considering the police tensions with the black community, I'm pretty sure increased policing would legit start a race war. Like crime in detroit would be cut down significantly if the federal government was willing to step in and foot the bill and flooding the streets with UK-tier surveillance state with a police on every street corner. The problem with this falls close, if not near authoritarian military policing of own civilian, not to mention the likely leftist out cry of racism for highly patrolled high crime areas (which has a high correlation of minority population). The UK is not a surveillance state. We have no more surveillance in public areas than Americans do. What we do however have is a very different population density and urban planning history. We do not have strip malls, we have high streets, etc. I have lived in both and in neither country have I experienced public surveillance that I have found intrusive. Supermarkets have CCTV as do gas stations and banks etc but those are all private institutions attempting to protect their own assets. Town centres in the UK have some CCTV but I have yet to experience anything similar to a British town centre in the US (I'm in New Mexico, it's nothing but suburbs and strip malls) in the US. I guess it's closest to an open air mall and malls certainly have CCTV. The surveillance I find actually intrusive is the surveillance into the private sphere of the individual, not the privately owned cameras with nobody watching them at a public McDonalds. Both the UK and the US are guilty of listening to phone calls, reading texts/emails and so forth. Americans seem to really buy into this myth that the UK has become a literal 1984. It's inexplicable to me. I've lived in both places, CCTV seems about the same. If someone told you that cameras in Walmart were the last nail in the coffin of liberty you'd think they're an idiot. And yet that's the kind of bullshit Americans seem to believe when looking abroad. | ||
Liquid`Drone
Norway28917 Posts
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DickMcFanny
Ireland1076 Posts
Rather than 'show some respect', show some sense. I remember the case where an angry mob killed a Pakistani girl who allegedly profaned a Koran in some way, and I can't imagine the level of psychosis and indoctrination that leads to people justifying that. | ||
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ticklishmusic
United States15977 Posts
On March 15 2016 00:00 KwarK wrote: The UK is not a surveillance state. We have no more surveillance in public areas than Americans do. What we do however have is a very different population density and urban planning history. We do not have strip malls, we have high streets, etc. I have lived in both and in neither country have I experienced public surveillance that I have found intrusive. Supermarkets have CCTV as do gas stations and banks etc but those are all private institutions attempting to protect their own assets. Town centres in the UK have some CCTV but I have yet to experience anything similar to a British town centre in the US (I'm in New Mexico, it's nothing but suburbs and strip malls) in the US. I guess it's closest to an open air mall and malls certainly have CCTV. The surveillance I find actually intrusive is the surveillance into the private sphere of the individual, not the privately owned cameras with nobody watching them at a public McDonalds. Both the UK and the US are guilty of listening to phone calls, reading texts/emails and so forth. Americans seem to really buy into this myth that the UK has become a literal 1984. It's inexplicable to me. I've lived in both places, CCTV seems about the same. If someone told you that cameras in Walmart were the last nail in the coffin of liberty you'd think they're an idiot. And yet that's the kind of bullshit Americans seem to believe when looking abroad. We've always been at war with EastAsia. | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On March 15 2016 00:02 Liquid`Drone wrote: I think this thread has room for both - it certainly has people with the ability (and credentials) to participate in a high academic debate. Frankly, that's the ideal. However we also want people who are at lower levels of political education to be able to involve themselves. I agree in general. But the number of quick jabs, passive aggressive shots and whining about the liberal/conservative media does mean people are going to be snarky. It’s the nature of the beast, especially in the current political climate and people citing reddit posts to back up their claims. Part of academic debate is a clear set of rules and requirements to participate and be heard. Without that, posters need to pick and choose how they want to reply and the level of effort they are willing to put in. | ||
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DickMcFanny
Ireland1076 Posts
On March 15 2016 00:00 KwarK wrote: Americans seem to really buy into this myth that the UK has become a literal 1984. It's inexplicable to me. Yeah, sorry, but it's not a myth. The situation we have now is SO far beyond anything Orwell could have ever imagined. Not only are there several tele-screens in every home and pocket, public places are heavily surveilled, everything you say or do is recorded... All of this is of course self-inflicted, but to defend CCTV in every bus, park, store and public place in the country, that really takes the cake. And it's not like you have to look very far to see how this power is already being abused. If you don't find it invasive, ask people in Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan whose friends and family were killed based on metadata, with no due process, just because Obama decided to, if collection of data is a problem. | ||
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Liquid`Drone
Norway28917 Posts
On March 15 2016 00:09 Plansix wrote: I agree in general. But the number of quick jabs, passive aggressive shots and whining about the liberal/conservative media does mean people are going to be snarky. It’s the nature of the beast, especially in the current political climate and people citing reddit posts to back up their claims. Part of academic debate is a clear set of rules and requirements to participate and be heard. Without that, posters need to pick and choose how they want to reply and the level of effort they are willing to put in. I actually think differently about it. I think by now, posters have established themselves as the type of poster they want to be. It's less about picking and choosing how you want to reply and what effort you are willing to put in, and more about choosing who to reply to. For example, I will willingly give long, thoughtful replies to xDaunt, because even though our world views are entirely different, I feel confident that he actually will read and take into consideration my arguments and give an honest response where the effort he puts into his reply is comparable to the effort I put into my post. Comparably, there's ErectedZenith, whom I refused to engage with unless he was willing to put a sufficient amount of effort into it for it to seem worthwhile. I also don't see much citing of reddit posts to back up anything..? (Not that it doesn't happen, but this thread has 66k posts by now, I've read a large majority, and I think reddit being cited is like, barely in the double digits? ) But even for the ErectedZenith's out there (and they exist on both sides of the spectrum), I think it's really important that their voices are heard - because I think disenfranchisement is a large part of the fuel for the 'undemocratic' candidates (which makes sense - the feeling that your voice isn't heard or that your opinion is meaningless is likely to make anyone feel like democracy doesn't work). | ||
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Deleted User 137586
7859 Posts
![[image loading]](http://i.imgur.com/i2O2yvj.png) Source Basically, the only thing almost all candidates can agree on - trade protectionism - is based on a false premise. | ||
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{CC}StealthBlue
United States41117 Posts
“Invisibility cloaks” and other future advances in military camouflage techniques could violate the Geneva conventions, a top military lawyer has warned. Refinements of technologies that are already used on stealth bombers could breach compliance with international laws regulating armed conflict if equipment is disguised or soldiers’ weapons are hidden, according to Bill Boothby, a former air commodore and deputy director of RAF legal services. Scientists and military contractors are spending tens of millions of pounds researching methods for generating effective invisibility through more sophisticated “metamaterials” – substances designed to absorb or bend light and/or radar waves in order to conceal approaching aircraft or troops. The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) has been one of the major funders of metamaterial science, triggering excitable comparisons with Harry Potter’s fictional invisibility cloak. Last year the US army announced it was planning to test prototype metamaterial uniforms. Such chameleon-style technology is not entirely new. B2 stealth bombers first went into service with the US air force in the late 1980s and took part in air raids on Kosovo, Afghanistan and Iraq. Their narrow profile, radar-absorbing paint and deflectors are intended to make them virtually invisible to enemy radar. Source | ||
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Plansix
United States60190 Posts
On March 15 2016 00:15 DickMcFanny wrote: Yeah, sorry, but it's not a myth. The situation we have now is SO far beyond anything Orwell could have ever imagined. Not only are there several tele-screens in every home and pocket, public places are heavily surveilled, everything you say or do is recorded... All of this is of course self-inflicted, but to defend CCTV in every bus, park, store and public place in the country, that really takes the cake. And it's not like you have to look very far to see how this power is already being abused. If you don't find it invasive, ask people in Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan whose friends and family were killed based on metadata, with no due process, just because Obama decided to, if collection of data is a problem. I think it is more of a myth that people want to believe is real. We have this fear of government surveillance, but also this other arching impression that government is incompetent. The US is very weird where we will put motion sensors in our house for a private security firm to watch it, but if the government installs a camera on our street, we get all weird. And then we have independent companies attempt to argue for might rights of privacy from the government through their licenses and trademarked software. Claiming that they should be immune to court orders ands searches, so they can sell me the ability be safe from the government. Of course by doing this, it doesn’t prove I am safe from them, just that they enjoy special immunity from the government I never will. People to fear 1984 style governments. I fear Bladerunner and Neromancer level companies that are more powerful than the government, because I feel they are far more obtainable. | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
On March 14 2016 23:51 corumjhaelen wrote: Oneofthem has made pretty clear that if you don't agree with him, it's that you're not educated enough. Sounds perfectly reasonnable, and a great convincing plan. Too bad we in fact don't need more people studying economics but economists studying other non-dismal social science and open a history book or two for a change. Economics study don't increase one's knowledge of the world, they make one less moral, teach him pretty bad model and horrendous epistemology. there is a lot of space between bernie and the dogmatic stuff in economics. i've criticized that plenty of times in the past, but it is also possible to make mistakes in the other direction. it's pretty important for the government to avoid making terrible mistakes. to do so you need some basic situational awareness, the lay of the land in terms of what is the current situation, and where you want to go. there are some constraints imposed by either reality of human behavior or strategy, and being blind to these constraints as a policymaker would just completely derail your plans. further, if by one's internal logic, the policy advocated is contradictory to one's professed aims, then there is just ignorance at play. bernie and followers display this in spades such as on the tpp. as a general note yea it is important to distinguish between lolmodels and actual economics. you do need to probe shit economists say with more rigorous epistemology and expose the blindspots, but even so it's pretty clear that bernie isn't very viable. | ||
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KwarK
United States44402 Posts
On March 15 2016 00:15 DickMcFanny wrote: Yeah, sorry, but it's not a myth. The situation we have now is SO far beyond anything Orwell could have ever imagined. Not only are there several tele-screens in every home and pocket, public places are heavily surveilled, everything you say or do is recorded... All of this is of course self-inflicted, but to defend CCTV in every bus, park, store and public place in the country, that really takes the cake. And it's not like you have to look very far to see how this power is already being abused. If you don't find it invasive, ask people in Yemen, Pakistan and Afghanistan whose friends and family were killed based on metadata, with no due process, just because Obama decided to, if collection of data is a problem. Did you even read my post? Come on! Buses, stores etc are private institutions. That isn't the state spying on you, that is the store not wanting you to steal shit. My post explained that the vast, vast majority of CCTV is privately operated public spaces where other people can observe you anyway and that the surveillance you should actually be worried about is the state surveillance into the private sphere of your phone etc which is identical in the US and the UK, thus disproving the American myth that the UK is some kind of strange totalitarian nightmare to be avoided. You counter this by ignoring that CCTV is not state operated, agreeing with me about the phones and then missing the entire point of what I said by agreeing with me that it's the same in both countries. Learn to fucking read. I'll try and break this down really simply for you. Most video surveillance is in public spaces where you have no presumed privacy and is operated by private entities attempting to protect their own property. They have the right to do so, it is a thing you accept when you enter the store. It is not state operated or controlled, it is not part of the state surveillance apparatus. This is the case both in the UK and the US. State surveillance into the private sphere comes in the form of reading google searches, listening in on phone calls, reading texts/emails etc. These are presumed private activities and is therefore actual intrusion, unlike the CCTV cameras in McDonalds. Again, this is the case in both the UK and the US. Therefore the argument that the existence of CCTV in the UK makes the UK a totalitarian state fails for four reasons. Firstly, CCTV isn't exclusive to the UK, it exists in both. Secondly, CCTV isn't part of the state surveillance apparatus in either country, it is by and large privately owned and operated within private establishments. This is the same in both the UK and the US. Thirdly, CCTV aren't telescreens spying in your bedroom, they exist only in public spaces in which their is no assumption of privacy. Again, this is the same in both the UK and the US. Fourthly, the state surveillance that exists is the intrusion into personal devices which are part of the private sphere of the individual. This is the same in both the UK and the US. Therefore the argument "there are CCTV cameras in the UK and therefore it is a totalitarian nightmare, unlike the US" fails because it's a fucking retarded argument. You were responding to something completely other than what I wrote including bringing up Obama's drone strikes in Yemen as evidence of how CCTV in London makes the UK a totalitarian state completely unlike the US. | ||
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