you are sounding more and more like an anarchist.
you didnt click the link i shared did you?
it explained in basic form the type of anarchy i subscribe to.

which leads us further into the rabbit hole of governments role.
which by your response it appears i need to describe a tad further.

so lets change the question from:
"what is governments role?"
to
"what,if at all,is the FEDERAL governments role"?

which of course we can refer to the federalist papers or the articles of confederacy.
one is a great argument in regards to what federal powers should be the other was an absolute failure and needed to be discarded.(too much anarchy lol)

that argument is still going on today.
well,between people like you and i,not from the political class.

i agree with your position.
i may word mine differently but our views are in alignment for the most part.

what i do find interesting is how a person with a more right leaning ideology will point to the government and say "there..thats the problem"
while someone from a more left leaning will point to corporations as the main culprit.

you need to understand i point to both.
hence my "plutocracy" argument.
so while you are correct that a corporation cannot throw you in jail,they can and DO influence our legislation (in the form of alec,lobbyists,campaign funding) to enact laws which may make anything their competitors do "illegal" or keep them out of the market completely.or make anything they do "legal".both governments and corporations do this for their own survival and self-interest.

the war on drugs and the private prison system come to mind.since weed is becoming more and more acceptable "illegal" immigrants will become the new fodder for the prison.

in my humble opinion most people all want the same things in regards to a civilized society.
fairness,justice and truth.

now how we get there is the REAL discussion (like you and i are having right now).

i agree the federal government should have limited powers but i recognize government DOES play a role.i believe in the inherent moral goodness of people.that if pressed,most people will do the right thing.

this is why i think that governments should be more localized.we could use the "states rights" argument but i would take it further into townships,local communities and municipalities.

for this to even have a chance this country would have to shake off its induced apathetic coma and participate and become informed.

no easy task.
in fact,what both you and i are suggesting is no easy task.
but worthy..so very very worthy.

active citizenship basically.

when we consider the utter failures of:
our political class.
the outright betrayal of our intellectual class who have decided to serve privilege and power at the neglect of justice and truth for their own personal advancement,
and the venal corporate class.

which all have served,wittingly or unwittingly, to create the corporate totalatarian surveillance state we now find ourselves living in.
there can be ONLY one recourse:

we,as citizens,have to demand a better way.
not through a political system that is dysfunctional and broken and only serves the corporate state while giving meaningless and vapid rhetoric to the people.

nor can this be achieved by violent uprising,which would only serve to give the state the reason to perpetrate even greater violence.

we cannot rely on our academic class which has sold itself for the betterment of its own hubris and self-aggrandizing.

even the fourth estate,which has been hamstrung so completely due to its desire for access to power,it has been enslaved by the very power it was meant to watchdog.

the institutions that existed 50 years ago to put pressure on the levers of power are gone,destroyed and crushed or outright abandoned.

when we look at american history.the ACTUAL history we find that never,not ONCE,did the american government EVER give something to the people.those rights and privileges were hard fought for by social movements.
in fact,america had the longest and bloodiest of labor movements on the planet.
the woman sufferagists.
the liberty party in its stance against slavery.
the civil rights movement.

it is the social movements which put pressure,by way of fear,on the political class.

we have seen the tea party rise and get consumed by the republican political class.

we saw occupy rise up to be crushed in a coordinated effort by the state.this was obama that did this yet little was ever spoken about it.

power is petrified of peoples movements.

there will be another movement.
i do not know when or how it will manifest.
i just hope it will not be violent.

because that is the only way to combat the power structures we are being subjected to today.
civil disobedience.
and i aim to misbehave.

this starts exactly how you and i are talking.
it is the conversation which sparks the idea which ignites a passion which turns into a burning flame.

i am a radical.
a dissident.
but radical times call for radical thinking.

you and i both want fairness,justice and truth.
everybody does.
some of our philosophy overlaps,other parts do not.
we discuss the parts that do not overlap to better understand each other.
this forms a bond of empathy and understanding.
which makes it far more harder to demonize each other in terms of the political class and propaganda corporate tv.

the power elite do not want me to understand you,nor you to empathize with me.
that does not serve their interests.
fear and division serve their interests.
hyper-nationalistic xenophobia serves their interests.

i aim to disappoint them.

now go watch that video i posted for ya.
when ya got time of course lol.

maybe it will help if i share the people i admire.
chomsky,zinn,hedges,watts,harvey,roy,
just some of the people who have influenced me greatly.

anyways.
loving this conversation.
i am in 3 other debates with highly educated people.
nowhere near as polite and awesome as you.
then again..i am kicking the crap out of them.
arrogance really annoys me,makes me vulgar and beligerent.
peace brother man.

"He said when he got his driver's license; he signed up to donate an organ: his brain. He said he loved the idea of a complete stranger waking up from a coma speaking Chinese. ~ Neil W. McCabe, The Somerville News

Funny guy AND he can make explosives on any kitchen stove top....Get him, girls!!

This is fucking ridiculously dangerous.

Spoke to a lad in the gym yesterday who told me that he was in a coma for 6 weeks because he drifted around a corner and hit a parked car.
a) Thank god no one was in the other car
b) His defence was "that's what young lads do."

Well i didn't, and this is a fucking great way to get someone killed. From someone who recently climbed out of a flipped/rolled car due to oil on the road, even when you THINK you know everything, and even if you adhere to the rules of the road, you can still end up upside down in a ditch and lucky not to have died.

"Peter Coma" and "Luke Warmer"
...sounds made up to me.

I don't think they are falling asleep, I think they are slipping into insulin comas based on what they are eating.

... and the sugar coma that follows....

My guy has a parachute, an oxygen mask guess yours forgot to strap his on after he took off his spacesuit.

He also used the friction of the air to warm up nice and toasty.

>> ^chingalera:

>> ^Gutspiller:
A real man would do this without a spacesuit.

That real man would hit the ground limp with rock-solid, defrosting balls and quite the story to tell after his coma!

>> ^Gutspiller:

A real man would do this without a spacesuit.


That real man would hit the ground limp with rock-solid, defrosting balls and quite the story to tell after his coma!

What, did you and smiley just wake up from a coma? 2006 - yeah, it's a good time to start stirring things up.

>> ^Boise_Lib:

>> ^PCGuy123:
Hmm, this video first appeared in 2006.

Hmm...So?

@rbar sorry I didn't see your last post. I think this UDHR is pretty noble but unknowingly evil, because it states that people have all sorts of rights, but what happens to the costs and demands those rights impose? To enforce them would imply a huge amount of force that would deny people of even more basic rights the declaration supposedly claims to protect. Take for example, "Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work". Does that mean the price of labor should be controlled?? By whom? To see that policy enforced, would be an egregious assault on economic freedom.

My ideal is a society where most if not all of these problems that socialists and liberals are also concerned about, like people's material needs being met, living happy productive lives, etc. are handled in an environment where the right incentives and freedoms allows creative solutions and resources to be best allocated voluntarily, rather than by mandates that are noble and well intended, and seem to handle the problem in the short run, but cause a lot more trouble than they are worth because they destroy this very environment in which society thrives.

Your video of Noam Chomsky commenting on Ron Paul's answer in a republican debate, "what if some guy is on a coma and he's going to die" to which he supposedly replied, "it's a tribute to our liberty", is a gross misrepresentation, that was never the answer Ron Paul gave. I'll bet Noam Chomsky wouldn't like to be paraphrased into saying the opposite of what he meant, he just understood what he wanted based on his own preconceptions.

Watch the actual footage here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gMHY21VA8WE
(And please don't confuse a few members of the audience yelling "Yes!" with the position of the Tea Party (not that I care what they think) or Ron Paul's)

Before you talk about capitalism and democracy balancing each other out, you must first question what really happens when people are given economic freedom. A contrived scenario is playing out in your mind.

It's like if someone told you that if people had freedom of expression, people would just start spewing lies on top of lies and society would bury every shred of truth and dignity until it became unrecognizable. All I'm saying is that freedom of expression is beautiful, it's far from perfect, a lot of people will say terrible things, but it's a much better environment than censorship, and that it's not naive to expect freedom of expression to improve society with time, making truth more and more available and affordable to everyone, not only making our society more civilized but effectively raising our standards of living.

Only I'm not arguing about freedom of expression, but economic freedom.

This came out on the 12th, it's been days.

http://articles.boston.com/2012-07-12/politics/32633322_1_bain-capital-mitt-romney-financial-disclosure

"But public Securities and Exchange Commission documents filed later by Bain Capital state he remained the firm’s 'sole stockholder, chairman of the board, chief executive officer, and president.'

"Also, a Massachusetts financial disclosure form Romney filed in 2003 states that he still owned 100 percent of Bain Capital in 2002. And Romney’s state financial disclosure forms indicate he earned at least $100,000 as a Bain “executive” in 2001 and 2002, separate from investment earnings."

And the source of this info, from the same article.

"Government documents filed by Mitt Romney and Bain Capital say Romney remained chief executive and chairman of the firm three years beyond the date he said he ceded control, even creating five new investment partnerships during that time."

I don't know about you, but sole stockholder, chairman of the board, president and CEO with 100% ownership and control sounds to me like he might have had something to do with it. Even if he was in a coma he had legal ownership and responsibility for it. The "I wasn't there" argument is a bit thin, and if he gave different info at different times between FEC and SEC filings he may have committed a crime.

Whoever can do this to anything that is clearly going to suffer and for the sole purpose of it suffering, they need to be put down as they are a very cruel individual.

As for the life aspect:

I think the argument for when is someone alive is very to similar for when is it time to consider pulling the plug on someone.

If someone can't survive on their own without extreme external measures, it really isn't a self sustaining life.

One day they might be able to cut off your head and keep you aware.....most people wouldn't consider that a life unless you could react or communicate. Much like a coma patient is not kept indefinitely once it becomes unlikely they will ever be able to function on their own.

A fetus up to a certain point is unable to survive outside the womb, it's more akin to a parasite at that stage....even though that sounds like a horrible comparison and isn't quite exact. But it's closer to a parasite than a carried to term baby if it can't survive outside of the mother's body. At that point it's a part of the mother's body and not it's own functional entity. Not that babies are particularly adept at feeding themselves or anything, but they won't die at any moment if left unattended for a bit.

>> ^rottenseed:

Being so intense all the time must be tiring.


He masturbates himself into a coma sometimes.

bigbangregistry.com

"The Coma Supercluster brought to you by Coca-Cola."

They did a similar thing to operate on a brain tumour close to some guys speech centre I think. Had him talking and asked him to correctly identify shapes etc throughout so that they knew what they had to cut and what had to stay. If I remember correctly he went into a coma after the op but made a full recovery. Pretty amazing.

Also fuck flying cars, we have cyborgs right now.