(I edited, and some stuff pertains to your reply)

Regarding well regulated, here's the sauce :
http://www.constitution.org/cons/wellregu.htm

Keep in mind that the 2nd amendment is 2 part.
1st the motivation for why the rule exists, 2nd the rule.

The rule exists, whether or not the motivation is provided (and it's nice of them to provide context - but not necessary).

Even if regulation was meant in the modern sense, it would not change the fact that the rule does not depend on the motivating factors.

But if you insist on motivational prerequisite, here's Hamilton regarding individual right to bear :

"The project of disciplining all the militia of the United States is as futile as it would be injurious, if it were capable of being carried into execution. A tolerable expertness in military movements is a business that requires time and practice. It is not a day, or even a week, that will suffice for the attainment of it. To oblige the great body of the yeomanry, and of the other classes of the citizens, to be under arms for the purpose of going through military exercises and evolutions, as often as might be necessary to acquire the degree of perfection which would entitle them to the character of a well-regulated militia, would be a real grievance to the people, and a serious public inconvenience and loss. It would form an annual deduction from the productive labor of the country, to an amount which, calculating upon the present numbers of the people, would not fall far short of the whole expense of the civil establishments of all the States. To attempt a thing which would abridge the mass of labor and industry to so considerable an extent, would be unwise: and the experiment, if made, could not succeed, because it would not long be endured. Little more can reasonably be aimed at, with respect to the people at large, than to have them properly armed and equipped; and in order to see that this be not neglected, it will be necessary to assemble them once or twice in the course of a year. "
[etc]

(That last sentence - there's your training requirement, tee hee. Not only that, but that they should assemble people 1-2 times a year to make sure that everyone is armed and equipped. That's more than an individual right to bear, that's an individual requirement to bear. Let's just be happy with it being a right.)


Laws are supposed to be updated by new laws via representative legislators (who may need to be coerced via protest facilitated by freedom of assembly).
Or challenged by juries (i.e. citizens, i.e. members of the state) via jury nullification (i.e. direct state democracy). That's why there are juries. You need direct state involvement so that the legal system can not run amok independent of state sanction. It's not just for some group consensus.
The system was architected to give the state influence, so that government can't run off and act in an independent non-democratic manner.

-scheherazade

Another entry in our series "Prison is For Plebs":

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-04-11/goldman-to-pay-5-1-billion-to-settle-u-s-mortgage-bond-probe

Edit: That's less than their net earnings in '06 alone, nobody gets his/her anus stretched on a daily basis, everyone gets to keep all the bonuses that were based around fraud, aaaaaand.... >50% of this penalty is tax deductible again. So yeah... a job well done by Schneiderman and his band of merry men.

I think it's just easier to simplify an argument when it's part of another society. Even George Saliba criticizes western civ by simplifying Copernicus, Galileo, and others into monopolizing crooks; something he warns his own, "morally just" Islamic society against.

Both Neil and George are railing against each other's society whIle acknowledging a truth.

Always good to hear both sides, and one from an actual historian, but honestly, none of this is news. Any time someone says "this" is why this happened, it's safe to call bullshit until you've seen a multitude of angles (deduction). It's like debating the multitude of reasons for the fall of Rome or the start of WWI. Nothing in history truly repeats itself because it's so convoluted there's rarely a single cause for rises and declines. It's just easy to find a historical pattern and then hold onto it as THE pattern of history and exclude things that are contrary.

Mongols have good bbq... Koreans have good bbq... Americans have good bbq... What does it all mean?!?!?!

Yep, that's right, but more importantly, it should not be duped because ban needed to be invoked instead (otherwise the down-vote it received for being spam/self-link could have gone on to deduct a vote on the existing, valid post).

Thanks! I hope all's good in your circle of the world!

I like this but I deduct points because the planetary helical gears aren't even meshing teeth with the inside of the large gears. They're just rolling along...

WE as is "That's not the country we have decided we want to live in" Who is WE??

I don't agree with the WE. So there is no WE.

Anyway:

After reading you response it appears that you premise is this:

People are too inferior to make reasonable and logical decisions to succeeded in life so we need a benevolent government to provide for its people.

----------------Such a defeatist position.-------------------------



I believe that it is a basic instinct to want to succeed. That one naturally raises to the occasion and overcomes adversity. I believe in ones ability to rise to the occasion. To get knocked down and get back up. I believe in the human spirit.



AS for "How about we just remove all corporate welfare" Yep I agree and also get rid of mortgage deductions and all other government cheese.

This is actually a simpler version of a much harder problem

http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_Puzzle

The logical deductions are similar but the maths leaps are way more difficult

I'm obviously making a big leap in my assumptions, but they're based on the limited hard evidence presented to the court. I am assuming Lardass was not just "driving poorly," but using intentionally dangerous aggressive maneuvers and smiling while he did so.

It is not likely that a father would go so ballistic and try to reprimand someone over their simply not driving very well. If Fatfuck was putting people in danger, I would not consider it unacceptable to approach and question his driving behavior.

I've been on the receiving end many times of douchecocks intentionally swerving into me, slamming on brakes in front of me, etc., and it is definitely something that warrants some kind of response.

If, however, the douchecunt really was simply driving poorly (e.g., failed to signal a lane change, took a couple of seconds to go when the light turned green, wasn't wearing his seatbelt, etc.), then yes, the father is completely at fault and out of his mind.

But based on my Sherlock Holmes-like skills of deduction, my guess is Comicbookstoreguyfromthesimpsons was a huge prick and intentional instigator. With a smile.

On costs, it's super simple too. In countries who have a single payer system, the government is a monopsony or (near) single buyer with huge market power to bring down price of drugs and treatment. This is primarily why the US health care industry is so deathly afraid of a single payer system and demonized it. The final AHA, to appease the industry, had provisions specifically stating the government would not attempt to push down prices.

Insurance companies and union groups in the US are nowhere near as powerful because of their relative size and can't dictate price. At an individual consumer level there is also no competition because for those with work provided cover, the cost is hidden as an income deduction. Whereas those without cover get hosed with chargemaster prices and as an individual have no ability to contest high prices anyhow.

Is English a second language, or are you just being disingenuous? Me thinks the latter. No...publicly owned roads are NOT toll roads because they are paid for with taxes. Taxes and tolls are different things, that's why they are spelled and pronounced differently. I live on a private road..so I'm certain they must exist.
It is absolutely NOT illegal to create a private toll road on private property with private funds. That's just asinine. It is nearly impossible to build one without using public services, such as the public roads and ports needed to deliver materials, but certainly not illegal.

It's leaching off me if you don't pay your fair share, and you have made it clear you don't think you should have to pay any, so I must assume you do all you can to minimize what you put into the pot...so yes, I would make an educated guess that you are leaching off me. I don't even itemize deductions, because I feel grateful to live in what I feel is a great country, and feel it's unpatriotic to try to shirk my duty to pay for my portion of government, even if I disagree with how they spend most of it. That's the cost of living in a 'representative democracy'.

As to mail, yes, you may not use mail boxes set up for/by the USPS for a private mail service...so you can't do 'first class mail'. You can, however, deliver letters for a fee to your OWN style of 'letter box', so your claim they have a 'monopoly' is ridiculous, they would be so happy to have it taken over, it's a big money loser and a huge pain in the ass to keep going. I'm personally grateful mail hasn't yet been privatized, as I know full well the service would suffer badly to make it profitable, for me especially since I live in the boonies and would never be profitable as a customer. To deliver my letters by FedEx would cost 10 times what USPS charges. (by the way, FedEx and UPS are proof that you already CAN deliver 'mail' privately, just not into a USPS 'mail box')
EDIT: What you said was akin to me saying 'Instead of just complaining about the quality of available burgers, you could open your own hamburger stand' and you answering 'I can't...it's illegal for me to sell "Big Mac's" because...government'.

AND, I would add, you have still never addressed my original point, that if business could/would 'self regulate', they would be doing so now. Self regulation is total fantasy, it simply doesn't happen. How exactly, I wonder, are 'the people' supposed to gain the knowledge about a companie's violations of public trust and health if there's no regulatory agency inspecting and reporting on what the company is actually doing, and they can do all their evil in secret?

Yes, that's better, put a label on him. Could it not simply be that it struck him as funny, and he couldn't regain composure? You're such a dick. (now, do I mean 'dick = penis' or 'dick = investigator employed in gaining / exposing information through reasoned deduction'... hmmmm)

Videosift is clearly not the forum on which to teach economics (let alone philosophy or epistemology), but suffice it to say that logic applies to economics, just as it applies to geometry, and the other natural sciences.

Economics follows axiomatic-deduction. Human behavior is too complex to treat empirically (thereby precluding experiments that would be similar to, say, chemistry, which replicates the same results over and over again). With economics, such experiments are impossible because there are too many variables for which there are no controls, so therefore, a deductive approach is used, like with geometry which, if you recall, experiments aren't conducted in geometry, but logical deductions are made based on self-evident axioms.

This is in contrast to what, say, econometricians do. They try to make economics into an empirical science, like physics or chemistry and so they focus on the "science" and ignore the "social" in "social science."

Hermeneuticians/rhetorician on the other hand, ignore the "science" and focus on the "social."
Economics cannot be properly studied as a natural empirical science, but it also cannot be properly studied as rhetoric.

Deductive rationalism is the best fit for economic study.

US tax redistribution is greatest by absolute volume from the middle class to the middle class, although the per person benefits the wealthier get through subsidies and deductions are higher.

The issue is, a lot of them are not explicitly specified and are not large programmes but form various subsidies already built into prices such as the Home Mortgage Interest Deduction.

Comparing to Australia, the actual tax take is 25% of GDP for both, yet the expenditure is roughly 40% for the US and 35% for AU, despite the fact we both have a generous welfare which doesn't expire and a public health care system.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_spending#As_a_percentage_of_GDP

The Submerged State is a good book on this from what I've heard, here's a summary:

http://www.minnpost.com/eric-black-ink/2012/04/our-%E2%80%98submerged-state%E2%80%99-invisible-government-policies-may-surprise-you

You have completely misunderstood the point and have mistaken the method for interpreting data with the data itself. Yes, of course context matters, but none of your examples presents an exception to rationalism (PDF) in any way. Using reason does not pre-determine the conclusion prior to the interpretation of the data. Just the opposite, rational deductive reasoning enables one to interpret the data from an unbiased position, in contrast to the hermeneutics which you seem to be employing. Without a consistent position based on unchanging principles, the data is either consciously or unconsciously filtered through your a prior "preference" or bias in arbitrary and/or indefensible (rationally-speaking) ways.

And IP is no exception (PDF).

LMFAHS

Good stuff. I've often imagined that's how it would go down if I tried to pull off a Holmesian deduction on someone.