>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

>> ^EMPIRE:
How goes it again? American, land of the what? free?
right...

It is @NetRunner 's utilitarian calculus in full action. You only get rights to something if you can prove it is good.


Who said this was the greatest good for the greatest number? Not me, nor the people in her neighborhood. Not even the city council guy. Even gross consequentialist reasoning shows that a lot of people enjoy her garden, and seem disturbed at by the very idea that the city could force her to get rid of it. That's weighed against one cranky old lady saying "I don't like it, it's unnatural".

On the other hand, people who insist that everything be categorical wind up making nonsensical Calvinball arguments. What right is being violated?

It's not a violation of property rights, if that's what you think. Buying real estate gets you a fee simple title. Buying a house does not entitle you to sovereign territory that is beyond the jurisdiction of the US legal system.

Incidentally, city council guy was making a categorical argument -- the law says suitable, suitable means normal, normal means exactly like everyone else, and she's the only person with a front-yard vegetable garden, therefore it must be illegal. If he were a utilitarian, he'd say "I don't see the harm" and let her be.

>> ^blankfist:
Democracy becomes a police state.


Democracy is always a police state. Rules by the mass...

From the article linked above^^

From a joint statement issued by Mayor Tom Richards, City Council President Lovely Warren and Rochester Police Chief James Sheppard: "We believe that the incident that led to Ms. Good's arrest and the subsequent ticketing for parking violations of vehicles belonging to members of an organization associated with Ms. Good raise issues with respect to the conduct of Rochester Police Officers that require an internal review. A review into both matters has been initiated."

From the article linked above^^

From a joint statement issued by Mayor Tom Richards, City Council President Lovely Warren and Rochester Police Chief James Sheppard: "We believe that the incident that led to Ms. Good's arrest and the subsequent ticketing for parking violations of vehicles belonging to members of an organization associated with Ms. Good raise issues with respect to the conduct of Rochester Police Officers that require an internal review. A review into both matters has been initiated."

Yeah, I figured it'd be a key sitting outside someone's house rather than a massive collection. But if they're this quick to dismiss the people's concerns with the FD, it's only a matter of time before they claim they're acting for the "citizen's safety" and give it to the PD.



<edit> I have no idea why this stuff is bolded</edit> >> ^NetRunner:

>> ^MarineGunrock:
@NetRunner - I think your idea of the fire chief or senior on duty having them would work if we weren't talking about hundreds of keys. First it's the FD, then city council says PD should have it, too. Then oh, what if you call because you're having a heart attack or stroke, so the EMTs need it too. Now we're REALLY starting to dilute the pool (lol, almost wrote 'poop') of people that have access to your key.

Well, it's not hundreds of keys. It's a key to a box outside with the keys in it. So one key. Granted, something of a master key, so you'd really want to keep good tabs on it.
FD/EMT are one and the same for this township, from what they said in the meetings. I'd join the protest of what city council is doing if they granted access to it to the PD.

>> ^MarineGunrock:

@NetRunner - I think your idea of the fire chief or senior on duty having them would work if we weren't talking about hundreds of keys. First it's the FD, then city council says PD should have it, too. Then oh, what if you call because you're having a heart attack or stroke, so the EMTs need it too. Now we're REALLY starting to dilute the pool (lol, almost wrote 'poop') of people that have access to your key.


Well, it's not hundreds of keys. It's a key to a box outside with the keys in it. So one key. Granted, something of a master key, so you'd really want to keep good tabs on it.

FD/EMT are one and the same for this township, from what they said in the meetings. I'd join the protest of what city council is doing if they granted access to it to the PD.

@NetRunner - I think your idea of the fire chief or senior on duty having them would work if we weren't talking about hundreds of keys. First it's the FD, then city council says PD should have it, too. Then oh, what if you call because you're having a heart attack or stroke, so the EMTs need it too. Now we're REALLY starting to dilute the pool (lol, almost wrote 'poop') of people that have access to your key.

>> ^NetRunner:

But there is a point, and a benefit. One I've pointed out to you several times. Just because you deny the benefit exists, or simply fail to appreciate it, doesn't mean there isn't one.

The subtext was "to me", as in there's no benefit "to me". If you want to argue semantically how services I don't want are a benefit, that's fine, because Mussolini built roads so I guess you could argue also in favor of fascism that same way.

I don't "need" a license no matter how many services the government wants to manufacture for my benefit. LA City Council recently okayed a multibillion dollar contract to build a hotel. Yes, a hotel. And I don't want to pay for that either, but surely you could reach deep into your sophist repertoire and tell me how that too is a benefit to me.

Again. I don't see any benefit (to me!) for having to pay to register my dog yearly. It's just another tax.

>> ^NetRunner:

Who's they? I'd bring my dog to work, but my work won't let me. I'd bring my dog to restaurants, but restaurants won't let me. I'd take my dog shopping with me, but the shops won't let me. I'd take my dog to the arboretum, nature preserve, or conservatory, but none of those privately owned parks would let me.
Oh, you're not really talking about your movement (with dog, anyway) being restricted, you're just grousing about how "they" probably can pretty easily enforce the license law. Indeed they can.


Not sure why you're bringing up shopping malls and restaurants. It's irrelevant to anything we've discussed. The dog parks and beaches are common areas paid for already by my taxes. I have a right to access them, but then sometimes the police lock the people into the parks and block the beach exits to check the licenses.

I seriously have no idea why you're bringing up restaurants and nature preserves. You seemed to have a separate narrative running in your head at all times.

@blankfist I have to say, this is just getting sad. A City Council deciding on a building fire code regulation? Aren't there real injustices still happening in the world?

IMO, the people objecting raised mostly reasonable questions about it. The video doesn't show the answer to the reasonable questions, just to the boneheaded ones (e.g. you mean you're going ahead even though we whined at you in person?). If people don't like what the council does, they have plenty of recourse to take.

The council are all elected officials, and the people objecting are unable to make their case to the people of the city about why this should move their vote in the next election. They can file suit against the law if they think it violates some sort of Constitutional statute. Or worst comes to worst, sue the city if something does indeed go wrong and they incur damages because of the lockbox.

As to the conversation @GeeSussFreeK and @Skeeve are having about "the merit of an idea does not depend on the number of people who hold that idea", while I agree that statement is true, it also is almost a non sequitur. Gallileo was prosecuted by the Catholic church for saying things that later turned out to be true. George Bush wasn't tried for war crimes, even though he's directly confessed to ordering crimes against humanity (waterboarding).

If you want to see your meritorious ideas gain the force of law, you need to win popular support for those meritorious ideas. Saying "free speech is in the Constitution" isn't at all a guarantee you're going to be legally allowed to speak your mind. Free speech (or any other right you think you're entitled to), will only persist as long as a significant portion of the population feel strongly that you should have it.

So back to the actual lockbox case. Suppose the government accepted all liability for damages that may result from lockbox abuse. Does that set your minds at ease? If not, what "right" is it you think is being violated?

>> ^NetRunner:

...and yet if I read your comments correctly, I don't think you were exactly pleased with the process he went through before banning you.

I do have a problem with how dag chose to handle the bans. He handled them poorly, IMO. But the alternative would be worse. And this is a website, not city council. The decisions dag make don't affect me in the slightest outside of this website.

People voting to take away the privileges of others is doomed to be abused. Not by the trolls, but by the status quo. That means the majority of people who have similar perspectives on what is and what is not acceptable behavior will determine who is and who is not banned.

>> ^NetRunner:

I think it's all about the kind of atmosphere we want in the community. I think there's been a slide towards greater and greater hostility and incivility. That seems to be the gist of dag's original post, all the way at the top of the page, no?
I don't really want to see some reign of terror where we purge the roles of the sift, but I would like to see people getting time outs for lashing out at people.
As for democratic process, I'm just asking for a code of laws. It seems to me that you can't have "due process" until you write down what the laws are. Without that, it's always going to boil down to the king settling disputes directly.


I don't think people are being so incivil we need to come up with some new busybody central planning tools to handle it. We've got hobbling for the members to use in case someone is being awfully incivil. And I think that'll always be up for determining case-by-case.

Writing it down as law makes it so everyone has to follow the same rule. You call me a pig fucker sometimes, and that's more than cool because we have a relationship that's suited for that kind of banter. But if I called BB2 that same name, she'd probably want dag to do something about it. In fact, I'm sure she would.

I think it really needs to not be a law what can be and cannot be said. We should give people the benefit of the doubt until they lose their privilege to do so by "careful" consideration by one of the admin. That way people who call each other douchebags or pig fuckers can continue to do so, and people will feel comfortable that their speech isn't being policed by a bunch of hall monitors.

>> ^NetRunner:

Sounds good, but what constitutes an attack?
If I say I've fucking had it with you calling me a Nazi all the time, and hobble you for it, how exactly do we settle whether I've got a legitimate case or not? Make dag threaten to cut the baby in half?


It works how things work in every day situations. In sexual harassment training they tell you to tell the offender that what he or she is saying offends you. After that, if they persist, then you have a grievance. Same thing would apply here, no?

Hypothetically, I call you a Nazi, you should then tell me you think that's harassment. If I persist, then you could bring your grievance to an admin, showing that you warned me. I mean, this isn't complicated stuff. It's just basic communication.

I just don't want to see this place become so fucking tedious. It's a better site when it works more like a squabbling family than a clockwork draconian utopia.

Holy crap man! Have you seen Fox News? (I'll bet you have.)

Again, I don't understand the need to deflect this to Obama as you guys are doing. I could give a SH!T about Obama. The issue is that this woman, no matter who she is or where she comes from, is an idiot! It wouldn't matter if she was running for the presidency or for a local city council.

The sad thing is that if she would either do a little research or broaden her talking points a little she could potentially ride her charisma and popularity to great heights (god help us all) but instead she talks and talks saying things that she thinks people want to hear with her mouth in drive and her brain in neutral. This makes me think her to be egotistical and lazy; "I don't need to prepare, the people love me and everything I say." No wonder the McCain campaign staff turned on her.

>> ^bobknight33:

All Quaumtum was doing
is pointing out the blatant Bias the media has. He correctly points out that time after time after time after time after time the current fool called the president gets a pass every times he fucks up.
But the media will dog Palin on every opportunity they can.
When will you get your self absorbed heads out your asses and see the truth? You heads have been up you asses so long you all think you shit doesn't stink.

>> ^ponceleon:
Really quantum?
Defending her just makes you a troll. Please. I like you more than Shiny right now, just take it back and we can still be friends.

>> ^shinyblurry:

Do you have an actual argument, or what? Creation could ultimately only come from a single source; it makes logical sense there is only one God. A true God is a being whom was not created by anyone else, for which whom no one is a God to Him. Humanity has worshipped many Gods, but it doesn't mean there isn't one God. Humanity has worshipped, the sun, the earth, clay, stone, wood, themselves, money, power, sex..there are a million different things that are a god to people. Still has no bearing on the argument there is only one God. And if there is, then you will answer to Him one day.


The argument is that you have no more evidence for your "one true God" than anyone else has or had for their gods. The fact that you can't see that confounds me.

We both agree that the Universe exists. We both agree that the current state of the Universe had to start at some point. But there is currently no real evidence for what caused the Universe to begin, or what was going on before that.

You take that shared human ignorance and act like it is evidence for the truth of your Bible. That's nonsense. There is no more validity to your claim than anyone else's myths. The age of a book does not make it any more true. The points at which it matches history do not add merit to the points at which it diverges from history. We know for a fact that there are things created in the world today that are made by groups of people working as a team, so there's no reason to believe that the universe itself wasn't created by a combination of many forces. There is absolutely nothing tying the existence of the universe to the Bible. Except for the single solitary fact that there are people like you who want to pretend there is.

So let me clarify my earlier post. If there were Woden worshipers who came around your neighborhood knocking on doors, preaching about the rewards of Valhalla, would that annoy you? If they were trying like crazy to get their Woden worship into school lessons, would that bother you? If they led chants praising their warrior ancestors before city council meetings, do you think that might make you question their ability to run a city? Or a state? Or the federal government?

And if you started talking about how stupid they are, they would say "You hate Woden and just want to live your life of luxury without taking up the sword to fight like a warrior! You are lazy!"

And you would say, "That's not true, I just don't believe Woden exists!"

I don't think I could make it any clearer. Atheists don't hate God. We just don't believe your God is any more real than any other god that humans have made up. If we were living in Iran then we would be saying we don't believe in Allah, and we would be pointing out the dumb stuff in the Quran. Would you accuse us of hating Allah? If we lived in India we might be pointing out the stupid beliefs of Hinduism. Would you accuse us of hating those gods? But we happen to live in an area that is predominantly Christian. And when we point out the dumb things in the bible, you feel perfectly justified in calling us Satanists. What is wrong with you? We're not "fighting for the other side", we don't believe the fight is happening at all!

And one of the biggest reasons why I don't believe in an omniscient, omnipotent, omni-loving God like yours is because you still think that this being could possibly be fighting something! What??? Do you even know what those words mean?

Anyway, I know that I'm just yelling into an abyss and that you won't really respond to what I'm saying. You are entirely consumed by the mind disease that is "magical thinking", and nothing I say will ever make a dent in that. Even when it's advice on how to argue your own side better, like "Don't call atheists Satanists, because you will just reveal yourself as a nutjob."

3 more comments have been lost in the ether at this killed duplicate.

This video has been seconded as a duplicate; transferring votes to the original video and killing this dupe - dupeof seconded with isdupe by chicchorea.

*isdupe>> ^EndAll:

dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/City-Council-Fart