>> ^RedSky:
What does marriage, in it's current context as a figurative and binding resolution of love and commitment have to do with procreation though? If you want to promote population growth then by all means provide tax credits to responsible child bearing couples.


I agree with you, the exclusivity of the concept of marriage to hetero couples doesn't affect reproduction rates. It's the financial incentives associated with it that affect responsible couples' ability to have kids, and increase the chance of kids being raised responsibly in general.

Not to mention birth rates have far less to do with whether couples tie the knot or not (ahaha), as negatively in relation with affluence and living standards, and cultural influences among many others factors.

>> ^jwray:
A country's power relative to other countries may be correlated with population, but the quality of life of the individuals in that country tends to increase dramatically when the fertility rate drops.


As RedSky was saying, affluent people or people with high living standards tend to procreate less than those living in poor conditions. Which comes first, increase in quality of life or decline in birth rate? I think quality of life increase comes first, because the more affluent societies seem to be the ones that start seeing negative growth rates.

>> ^Lodurr:
I'm an open-minded guy, and non-religious, and I've been doubtful of my own position based on who else has the same position I do. I agree with Huckabee, but for none of the reasons he gave.
I look at the argument differently than both Stewart and Huckabee. We have to examine what the purpose of our government recognizing marriages and unions is in the first place. I think its purpose was to help couples procreate by giving them the money to support children. We still have positive population growth in the US, but all the countries that have or are moving towards negative population growth have a real need to grant incentives for couples to procreate.
With that in mind, why should the government grant the same financial incentives to same-sex couples?


What does marriage, in it's current context as a figurative and binding resolution of love and commitment have to do with procreation though? If you want to promote population growth then by all means provide tax credits to responsible child bearing couples. Not to mention birth rates have far less to do with whether couples tie the knot or not (ahaha), as negatively in relation with affluence and living standards, and cultural influences among many others factors.

>> ^jwray:
Any argument from biology here is moot since there is no shortage of reproduction.


That's not true, in Russia and Japan for example, the population growth is negative. It's a real problem that governments try to address, one region in Russia even made a national holiday for everyone to go home and procreate.

It's not just a matter of survival of the species. Governments want more citizens in order to be stronger societies, and grow their economies.

The linked video has a good point, but it doesn't address gay marriage because it's not just a matter of permission, it's a matter of government incentivizing and subsidizing gay marriage along with heterosexual marriage.

>> ^Lodurr:
I'm an open-minded guy, and non-religious, and I've been doubtful of my own position based on who else has the same position I do. I agree with Huckabee, but for none of the reasons he gave.
I look at the argument differently than both Stewart and Huckabee. We have to examine what the purpose of our government recognizing marriages and unions is in the first place. I think its purpose was to help couples procreate by giving them the money to support children. We still have positive population growth in the US, but all the countries that have or are moving towards negative population growth have a real need to grant incentives for couples to procreate.
With that in mind, why should the government grant the same financial incentives to same-sex couples?


Last I checked you
1) didn't have to be married (or smart, wealthy, black/white/whatever) to make babies
2) can be married and make babies with people other than your husband/wife.

The government still supports those babies, so how does marriage make making babies any more or less of a convenience for the government? As long as people have sex organs there will be people who make babies.

Oh, and there will be gay and lesbian couples out there who can adopt all those poor poor bastard children out there, if only we'd let them.

Quantum, what exactly ARE the benefits of marriage?

I'm an open-minded guy, and non-religious, and I've been doubtful of my own position based on who else has the same position I do. I agree with Huckabee, but for none of the reasons he gave.

I look at the argument differently than both Stewart and Huckabee. We have to examine what the purpose of our government recognizing marriages and unions is in the first place. I think its purpose was to help couples procreate by giving them the money to support children. We still have positive population growth in the US, but all the countries that have or are moving towards negative population growth have a real need to grant incentives for couples to procreate.

With that in mind, why should the government grant the same financial incentives to same-sex couples?

Oh really Evangelicals didn't support a current war against the Axis Of Evil? You never heard Jerry Fallow or Pat Robertson speaking out against striking against the Ayerabs? George Bush had God tell him to go to war, he was on a mission from Gawwwd.

Religious involvement in geopolitical events is all a matter of perspective.

With regards to religious extremism in Europe ha! That's less to do with religion then with anti-reactionary attitude against immigrants who are coming into the nation. Every anti western cleric has been deported from the UK. You know what else you got after 7/11 British Government encroachments on personal freedoms, go near any US airfield, you will be arrested, protest near parliament, you will be arrested. Don't worry about them they got a police state there, CCTV all over the cities that magically took only 3 photos of the 7/11 bombers. Muslims actually have cloaking technology.

You don't see the governments complaining, I wonder why it is? Oh surely they have been brainwashed by Wizards of Islam. The reason they don't interfere is because Europe is a declining population growth, they need labor to do the jobs Europeans don't want to do, just like in the States. Welcome to capitalism and labor mobility.

I love how you want to say that world events are somehow driven by people's wishes, beliefs and feelings. No, its all about money. Labor mobility is a big plus for old Europe. That's why you don't see these states implement massive immigration restrictions, which they would do overnight. Instead we are seeing the implementation of the European Blue Card.

You fail to see the complexity of world events and choose just a narrow view of clearly these people are out to kill everyone. Also don't you happen people are pissed? Western world has invaded Iraq and Afghanistan, both nations are still worse off. Both invasions has pushed massive refugees into other states. Palestinians are still getting killed as are civilians in both conflict zones. You know that US Forces up until the Battle of Haditha looked at civilian casualties as normal events in a time of war?

ElJardinero, wow, really Islams chop people hands off in all Islamic states? I should really tell people in Turkey, Indonesia, Kuwait, UAE, Bahrain, Yemen, Egypt. That's Saudi Arabia my friend, you know the nation that is supported by the Democratic states of UK and USA, the bestests of friends of the Western Worldz! You know they wanted to lash a woman for getting raped? Who kept mum on that? The US government whose own human rights charter KSA has been breaking year on year.

Religion as I say again is a apparatus of control in both Iran and Saudi Arabia, designed to keep an elite in power through religious terrorism. Islam has nothing to do with it, its simply a tool of power in the same way Catholicism, Protestant and many other faiths are used to justify killing human beings. The Ireland conflict and the war in Bosnia was based around religion, you people seem to forget that. Its just history repeating.

But go ahead. I live in Kuwait and we make alot of money feeding and supplying the US armed forces. I feel fucking sorry for the young men getting killed there fighting a war that has no aim.

Bartlett has a poor understanding of population dynamics, S-curves, carrying capacity, and a raft of other important models. His power laws are simply bad science.

That said, he's certainly right that people don't understand how population growth and economic growth multiply to create today's overwhelmingly large human footprint.

^ My main point was that in comparison to other countries, we're no welfare state. If you want to launch into an argument about how all government programs are wrong, that's fine, but America is as close to your libertarian ideal as I know of outside the middle east.

I generally think Libertarians (and Republicans) are Democrats who just haven't lost their job, or lost their medical insurance yet.

I'm not a Democrat for lack of having read studies from people saying "government programs don't work", that's for sure.

Social Security is a good topic to take up with me -- I largely agree that it's gotta go, or at least get overhauled. I think it's an example of a government plan that's done a lot of good over the years, but whose workings were based on assumptions about lifespan/population growth/standard of living that aren't true anymore, and needs to be updated. Or maybe not.

I don't think it's some sort of proof that all government aid plans are doomed to failure.

As for health care, the main thrust of the Obama (and Clinton) position on health care is to encourage the insurance companies to focus more on prevention, covering dietitians, maybe even gym membership, regular checkups, etc. People can waste their time all they like at the ER, they have triage controlling the flow of patients already, and I think it's better if people take the judgment of "better safe than sorry" with a trip to the hospital anyways. If it's trivial, they'll have a long wait, and a doc who'll be eager to show 'em the door.

It is a lot more complex than fire houses and roads, but you're making an assumption that the government can't deal with complexity. We trust them to regulate trade with other countries, our financial system, and the military already. All of those are arguably more complex than a government plan on health care would need to be.

Despite your statement to the contrary, not all national health plans are in a state of failure -- in fact, while most of them are running over budget, none of them would consume the same percentage of GDP to fully fund than our non-system system does (most nations' health care plans are holding steady around 6-10%, while ours is 16% and rising quickly). Their general statistics on health are generally better than ours too, with more choice, and shorter waits than I have with my employer-based HMO plan.

In any case, we're getting wildly OT. RP may not be a neocon, but he is still a Republican, and I'd say someone put some leverage on him to fall in line and talk bad about Obama. In the past, while he's not been overflowing with praise for Obama, he has said he prefers his foreign policy to that of McCain's. The comments in this vid differ from all of the other statements I've seen him make about Obama, in that this time he's using the Republican talking points (albeit some of the tamer ones).

Kinda sad, really. Makes you wonder who else might influence him.

*cou(CFR)gh*

Wow... How many more years of exponential population growth until every place is like that?

QM, WTF are you going on about this time? And WTF does the price of gas have to do with it?

Here's a few clues about what they are complaining about, not Dan himself but some of what I consider the more valid racial complaints based on what I've seen. You're more than welcome to try to "disprove" it but given that it comes from our own records that seems unlikely.

http://www.sentencingproject.org/Admin/Documents/publications/inc_comparative_intl.pdf

That's a bit out of date but is the record of our rate of prison growth from the mid 1920's to pretty recently. Prison population stayed fairly consistent in line with population growth for decades then explosive growth with the drug war which hasn't stopped yet.

And these are some of the results of that growth.

http://www.prisonsucks.com/

And in case you assume they really earned it, not really, or not as much as it seems. Some of the stats behind the stats then I'll try to explain how it happens.

http://www.idpi.us/resources/factsheets/mm_factsheet.htm

As that shows they are just 15% of the nations drug users which isn't far off from their portion of the population as a whole, about 14%, but they make up 37% of those arrested for drug violations, 59% of those convicted, and 74% of those sentenced to prison for a drug offense.

Ok, let's look at part of WHY that happens.

Take a neighborhood which didn't start off with people much different than in any other, but they lived in a crowded area. Pass safe school zones and such and the effect turned out to be that they can overlap in places... in the suburbs a kid spends little time in one so spends little time at risk unless they do something at school. In the city they might spend most of their life in one and not even know it much of the time. Where the kid in the suburbs has options such as treatment that mandatory took the options away in the city. The 100:1 disparity, yes 100:1, between the way we sentence crack and powder cocaine didn't help any either.

That type of thing starts us off, then come the politicians and such. Someone notices that we've got way too many felonies for a small area and orders a crackdown without considering what caused the spike in felonies so it's designated a high crime area. So now they are not only getting hit with the safe school zones but increased enforcement as well, everyone is a suspect and they start to get treated that way. Prison doesn't do good things for people so kids who went in with a bad habit come out criminals, often with gang ties since it's not easy to survive alone inside and not easy to leave them when you get out.

Now the neighborhood is being hit by two sides, the cops on one hand and the new prison gangs on the other, and eventually what used to be a decent area starts to look like too many of our streets do today.

If you want to get some details on it ask whatever you'd like, if you'd like to hear it from law enforcement themselves try LEAP and some other groups, they are well aware of the situation and trying to help fix it too.

One last thought here, this isn't specifically racial but goes to the conditions in our system in general due to overcrowding, under funding, and a number of other issues. It's a bit of reading but if you want an education that's a good start. http://www.prisoncommission.org/

Some prisons have become so overcrowded and so poor at care that we've had to have the feds take over aspects such as medical care, and NO it's not a partisan issue as some of the more simple minded would have us believe. Senator Tom Coburn, M.D. (R-OK), Chair of the U.S. Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Corrections and Rehabilitation, stated the following about this. “For the vast majority of inmates prison is a temporary, not a final, destination. The experiences inmates have in prison — whether violent or redemptive — do not stay within prison walls, but spill over into the rest of society. Federal, state, and local governments must address the problems faced by their respective institutions and develop tangible and attainable solutions.”

What we're doing doesn't work and intentionally or not, yes, it has had some sharp and specific racial impacts which I'd hope like hell weren't intended. These are some of the ones I'm aware of, others who are more familiar with other areas have valid complaints as well. Assuming they just happened because we weren't paying attention so some programs had some unexpected results, then yes, Dan Charnas has an excellent point in that it would really help if we listened for a change instead of insisting we didn't mean anything so everything just MUST be alright. It's not alright and many of the problems we're dealing with today we helped to create ourselves through flawed policy.

>> ^dag:
^ Abducted, you hit the nail on the head. Yes, these people are creepy weirdos to us. But snatching their kids away and putting them in foster care because we find their culture not in step with today's mores is not a good answer.



This may be the most controversial position I've ever taken, but it's worth it...

Let's take a somewhat unrealistic hypothetical scenario, and tell me how you would avoid it:


Scenario
1. There's a stupid cult called the froods that supports censorship.
2. Frood dogma commands that they indoctrinate their children so thoroughly that a child of a frood has a 75% chance of remaining a frood for the rest of his life.
3. Frood dogma commands froods to have at least 10 children.
4. Frood population grows until they take over the "democratic" government with sheer numbers of their brainwashed offspring, and then they repeal freedom of speech.

Possible Solutions:
1. universal 2-child policy prevents any one small cohort from taking over via multiplication, and helps apostasy overcome the rate of indoctrinating new children.
2. Try to deprogram their children to increase the apostacy rate beyond 80% so that the Froods stop growing in number and population growth slows before we all starve to death.


What is so deeply troubling about this scenario is that democracy is fundamentally meaningless if people are so closed-minded that they merely inherit the ideas of their parents or social cohort, and thus reproduction rates determine votes. Many people are too smart for that, as most ideologies have decent apostasy rates in the teens of percentage, but it is not enough apostasy to compensate for extremely high fertility rates.

I think it is time to recognize that having children is one of the deepest effects one can have on a society, and therefore reproduction should be somewhat regulated by law with the common good in mind. Human civilization and environment may be very adversely affected by a trillion unilateral decisions to have excessive numbers of children.
Of course it is troubling to restrict any freedom, but benefits far outweigh the costs. Having excessive numbers of children would not be a victimless crime; the victims would be the children themselves and the whole of society that has to deal with the environmental degradation and infrastructure burden of an unsustainably high world population.

Prices are rising because:

- Transportation and production costs of food items are higher.

At the Al-Mara farm in Midland, Va., Jeff and Patty Leonard run a large dairy operation where about 600 cows produce 19,000 pounds of milk each day. They plant about 1,000 acres of corn, so they don't face all of the rising feed costs like some farmers. But they sympathize with consumers because the costs of nitrogen fertilizers and diesel fuel have all gone up sharply, raising production costs by nearly 30 percent.

"It's partly because of corn prices, driven up by congressional mandates for ethanol production, which have reduced the amount of corn available for animal feed. It's also because of tougher immigration enforcement and a late spring freeze, which have made farm laborers scarcer and damaged fruit and vegetable crops, respectively. And it's because of higher diesel fuel costs to run tractors and attractive foreign markets that take U.S. production."

Globalization also explains higher milk prices. Australia, a leading milk exporter, is struggling through a drought, and European governments are pulling back dairy subsidies. So U.S. farmers, aided by a weak dollar, are stepping in to meet growing demand for milk products in China and India. That's pinched supply at home and abroad, driving up prices.

>> ^chilaxe:
>> ^jwray:
[...] 2. He insists that his interracial rags-to-riches story could not have happened in any other country. This is blatantly false. America is neither the least racist country nor the most socialy mobile country. Similar things could happen in most countries. [...]
People of African descent from countries like France come to the U.S. and say they see African Americans having an influence on the culture in a way that they don't see in their home countries.
The point is mainly just that the U.S. has had much more diversity (and ethnic tensions) for a longer time than most countries, so there is a stronger and wider trend of members of minority groups rising to influential positions.


Let's counter this claim with some specifics:

1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohammad_Al_Amoudi

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Lee-Chin


3. Norway seems to be much less racist than the USA:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/1161853.stm
The same thing happens more frequently, with less protest, in the USA.
Also, nearly 50% of Norway's parliament is female, and half of Norway's population growth is from immigration.

6. In Indonesia, three races coexist, each with at least 30% of the population. There isn't much racial strife there (though there is religious strife)

7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aliko_Dangote (Nigeria is extremely diverse. There is no majority ethnic group, only a plurality) See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Nigeria_Benin_Cameroon_languages.png http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Nigeria#Ethnic_groups

8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masayoshi_Son

Eklek, I agree there are interesting consequences to all this, especially the population growth/decline the implications on the economy, and the tendency for pensions to be funded by the next generation, and not be pure savings from the last.

Very interesting relevant stuff. not knew per say, but important.

BansheeX - so what you're saying is that you're against social security largely because it is being mis-used and is horrifically broken? The fact that congress "can and does raid it" goes against the best interests of the social security system - if the money was kept in it and it was invested intelligently, it should at *least* keep pace with inflation. I honestly don't know if the rules allow for the SSA to invest any portion of the held funds, but if not I would think a small modification to the rules to allow for a partial diversification of funds would be beneficial.

The argument that a sudden population increase will bankrupt the system is ridiculous, as the rate of funding the program could be adjusted *well* in advance of the bubble actually hitting retirement age. You'll primarily be punishing the people within the generation having all those bubble-causing kids, and that seems fair to me. Additionally, population growth of that type is typically the product of a secure and prospering economy / populace, so they should be able to afford to put some extra funding into the program.

I agree with you that poor people are more heavily impacted by this tax than others, which is why it is generally considered a regressive tax. Personally I'd love to see it made more progressive, so that more of the funding is provided by income earned over the current $90-something thousand limit. Millionaires benefit more than any of us mere plebes from the strength of this society, so they should be equally obligated to contribute to it's members well-being.

That's really the whole point of social security - it isn't to benefit the lazy and the worthless that are such a plague upon us upstanding citizens, but to preserve some degree of dignity and humanity amongst our fellow countrymen who have, totally or at least largely through no fault of their own (none of us are perfect), become unable to adequately maintain themselves.

You might not like having some portion of your hard-earned income diverted to people who haven't earned it (which is, admittedly, nearly impossible to avoid), but the portion that goes to those who really need it, and who did nothing wrong to deserve misery, really is money well spent. Don't assume you'll never need it, because no matter how careful you may have been in life to assure your future well-being it is *not* guaranteed. Shit, as they say, happens.

In terms of your suggested alternative to the social security system: I'd love to see that be practicable. Unfortunately it is almost certainly too utopian to have a real chance. Until all corruption, greed, and prejudice is eliminated from our society there will *always* be people who are unfairly screwed over in life. There just will be. If you're honestly arguing that anyone who couldn't, for whatever reason, manage to be successful in life should just suck it up and accept their fate then I commend you on your victory in completely eliminating any semblance of a moral code from your personality. Kudos!

If anyone can point me to a source where Ron Paul espouses beliefs on the social welfare system comparable to BansheeX's, I'd love to see it. I like the man and would not have any problem with him as president, but I don't really think he's as Objectivist as Banshee was implying. I assume he would want any program like Social Security managed at a state-run level if the state chooses to have one, but does he really advocate the elimination of any such program?