To all people pointing out how careless that old man is, congratulations! You've succeeded in standing out as even more of a pussy compared to that old man.

Have a nice day.

Isn't Steam an always online DRM too? I mean, I can only play most games on Steam if I'm online, even though there's an offline mode, I'm not sure it lets you be offline forever though, I think it requires checking with Steam servers once in a while (I'm guessing, haven't tried playing offline).

Steam has had many terrible problems in the first few years, but nowadays, the online requirement doesn't bother me at all.

What about Starcraft 2, you're required to be online, even to play the single player campaign. Does that qualify as always online DRM too? Seriously, I want to know.

I think ppl are complaining about the online DRM, but maybe they're just mad about SimCity's EA servers being short on capacity. Which is a huge problem if they're enforcing always online DRM, but it's not the DRM's fault. Does that make sense?

I feel so sorry for Lucy Liu.

Thank you, and thanks for the changes on * isdupe

*kill

*sigh* when will I ever have any privileges worth having...

*isdupe

@enoch I'm not hostile towards those who disagree with me, but towards those who intentionally misrepresent me. I'm guessing you once met some fundamentalist hard-headed fox news republican whatever, and you think I'm that guy. I'm not. So, please stop misrepresenting me, it's really annoying.

You suggest letting government/society burn? Sure, maybe that's what we're headed to anyways. I don't treat politics as discussing "what should we do", that's irrelevant if you and I can't agree on what's actually wrong. To me, it's more about understanding the problem.

@dag The problem I see in how you're using examples outside of America is that what you suggest as a solution in another country can just as much be an example of another country's success despite what you're pointing out as the solution.

"we tax the rich a lot in Australia and everything is better over here". Ok. What if Australia would be better off if you didn't tax the rich so much? Then you'd be just proposing we do what's not helping Australia to help America, all the while overlooking whatever is actually working in Australia.

It does seem somewhat obvious that taxing the rich would forcefully reduce wealth inequality, but then we wouldn't be looking at what's causing the inequality, just trying to punch it out of existence with taxes, and possibly establishing more social injustice in the process. To me, it seems quite unfair to tax someone more just for being richer, a moral hazard even (punishing productivity?), but moral concerns are passé and don't seem to bother anyone these days.

@shatterdrose I treat a smaller government solution as something like a paradigm shift. You see government doing things right in country X, Y or Z, and I see them as, most likely, taking credit for what they're not fucking up. I mean, seriously, don't you know governments do that all the time?

There are plenty of people who unfairly benefit from government, but government is mostly not a net benefit to society, and those people will lie through their goddamned teeth about how much good they do, usually taking credit for anything working in society. There sure are plenty of suckers who believe them.

Wanting less government is not snap judgement, it's not dogma, it's quite often what no one ever considers.

Wanting more government is the convenient way out, governments are the agents of every social planner's wet dreams. In their minds, governments always have "unlimited" resources, they're always above any law, they're never morally wrong, and they're always run by honest uncorruptible people.

I love your "get involved" answer to criticizing government. What you don't seem to realize is that I'm criticizing how much government IS involved. That can hardly be changed from the inside. People who run for government always want a bigger piece of the pie, they're not likely to win on a "we want less pie" platform.

@cosmovitelli he can't have understood Marx if he can't tell the difference between Communism and Socialism, and he shouldn't bother either since Marx rarely makes any goddamned sense. He's better off learning socialism from anybody else.

You make statements loudly, but you don't make a point. Yes, we need governments, but like you said, they're not agents of the people, they're corrupt and selfish power hungry institutions. I agree with you. If that's the case, doesn't it logically follow that having LESS government is the way to reduce the amount of damage the "powerful" can do to us?

@aaronfr I won't argue whether you were pandering, just that the points you made were awfully cheap, had nothing to do with libertarianism, but with the obvious and laziest misinterpretation one can make of it. Starting your reply with "Libertarian nonsense" is the easiest way to get upvotes from the videosift scum of mindless socialists that can't be bothered to read a full post worth of innacurate statements.

@dag it makes me even sadder that you seem to believe government has your best interests at heart. The government is the agent of that very wealth inequality that makes you so angry. I see limiting government as the way to limit that blatant social injustice, the very institution that tricks suckers into thinking it is "redistributing wealth", when in fact it's been acting as an inverse Robin Hood all this time, taking from everybody, and wasting or giving to the disgustingly rich 1%. Don't dehumanize me, don't dismiss me as some shill for the wealthy, as a brainwashed second-handed thinker. Can't you seriously consider the possibility that government is not part of the solution, but part of the problem? Is that too unbelievable for you?

His wife must be awful in bed.

@shatterdrose the 1% pushed government "aside"... what does that even mean? Are you fantasizing that the economy has been largely unregulated all this time, and that's why the 1% get their way?

Wouldn't it make more sense for you to make the connection that our government is FREAKISHLY HUGE and indebted, and that the terrible injustices in our economy result from massive government intervention in almost every aspect of it, bogging it down, wasting precious resources, destroying the value of our money, promoting wealth inequality... and not the other way around?

People don't hate the 1% just because they're rich, but because they're getting rich unfairly, with the help of government. *Government* is a big part of that equation.

You are so mistaken about the concepts you're trying to explain to me, it's hilarious!

Communism is not about means of production being owned by the state, the utopian concept itself is about a stateless society that is somehow reached through Socialism (Communism doesn't exist outside of theory, so don't worry your pretty little head about it). In Socialism, the State owns the means of production, it owns almost everything, mostly because the State doesn't recognize private property. You can say it "belongs to the people" all you want, but without private property, it belongs to whoever has a say into what should happen with it, i.e., the State. Democracy hasn't the faintest connection with any of this, because voting doesn't make you part of government.

@aaronfr and what if I said, "the State and the Church should be separate", would that imply I want priests getting away with murder?

My problem is not my original comment, it's you interpreting "get government out of the economy" in the worst possible light to make a quip about libertarianism and get cheap upvotes.

Government is in bed with the economy, with the monetary system, crooked financial institutions, bailing out banks that are too big to fail... is it OK for me, Mr. @aaronfr, to want the State to separate itself from all that shit, much like society agreed centuries ago that the State + Church = trouble? Or is that too much libertarian nonsense?

It makes me sad that you think socialism has anything to do with cooperation, because there's no room for cooperation when there's no private ownership or capital. Socialism's relationship with the economy is that of central planning, logically, and historically.

@aaronfr Socialist nonsense. What crooked notion of free market do you have where government doesn't enforce property rights, contracts, and punishes fraud? Not understanding that is like implying free speech doesn't require protection from libel and slander.

I'm sick and tired of free markets being misrepresented by socialists, and dared to provide historical examples of something they claim never existed, but have no qualms blaming for every conceivable problem in the world economy.

"removing the government from the economy means removing the people from the economy"... If government = entire society to you, congratulations, you're a socialist. I'm not. Government, to me, is just the part of society that collects taxes as an excuse to provides services, most of which are dispensable and done poorly.

Your projections of what would happen in a free market is the typical delusion of your misconceptions. I can't argue with them, because I can't possibly fathom the disturbed scenarios playing out in your head.

They should add the government to this chart, I wonder how much it takes from everybody and pretends to give back to society, but just hands most of it to the 1%.

Get government out of the economy, and that chart will improve.

Ok... but why did he just stop all of a sudden?