*promote the epic Wild West Show!

In my opinion, the people who mercilessly shoot dogs are simply Wild-West enthusiasts who go out on a daily basis desperate for the opportunity to use their deadly weapon. It's an us-vs-them attitude, and it makes their own job harder, which makes them act tougher, compounding the problem. The spirit of the frontier lives on in the minds of these bullies, and even if they are in the minority it means that there are armed and dangerous psychopaths walking around with the protection of the state. And if you even consider defending yourself, you're being killed or sent away for the long haul.

He totally screwed up the part were River gained or had her "powers" naturally (she was only naturally/gifted mentally, that is, she was a genius or prodigy). That came from the experimenting FROM the Alliance... Same with her fighting abilities, that was also an Alliance "gift" (to use her as a "psychic weapon"). But I think Joss already made the point IN the show that Mal was indeed a very shady person, if you didn't get that you are an idiot!

You were supposed to know that the Alliance brought a lot of great things with them, but they also stole your freedom...essentially (in exchange for a world with lots of rules).

But, what the Alliance was up to "behind the scenes" is what was really everyone's main concern--which they covered in Serenity a bit... In Serenity we found out that they had been up to a LOT more terrible things than just taking individuals like River--they were in the business of thinking they knew how to make all people "better" people...and one day they would try to institute it in force, en masse...

It seemed like the show was more a story about the civil war had the wrong side won--to some degree; I think you could make an argument for both. But it was obvious from watching that "Mal's side" was the "Confederacy", but they didn't stand for the same things, it was just that the history of things were playing out the same in many ways...and that was the point.

If The Union had been lying about a huge amount of things and started to institute policies that you went into action then they'd seem so very much like the Alliance in the show (BUT, some actions are exactly like what The Union did to Confederate "states" after the war; which DID leave them in states of welfare were citizens were left to fend for the most basic of necessities on their own--the Wild Wild West didn't just appear from comic books... Even the citizens had to fight off Indian attacks here and there and most of these attacks were born from the legacy of military campaigns and other actions via The Union (or before the States went to war--but, it's easy to see what the "Reavers" were based on, at least I assume that is what he had in mind).

Ironically, right now in our government it's doing the things that Mal was so concerned over that many that HAD lived in the Alliance regions hadn't been as worried about: slowly eroding our civil liberties, our regular freedoms are being taken away or one-by-one being hamstrung, and regulation is being destroyed allowing the corrupt to make this circle all that much worse (of course one day this cycle will just feedback on itself and create a revolution--as it always has). That is what The Alliance was doing, especially to the planets that didn't join immediately...so it does have a lot in common with our history. As The Union did do some pretty annoying and considering all of the people that needed help and were not getting anything, they actually directly killed a large amount of completely innocent people...just to punish some wealthy land owners and other people that had something to do with the Civil War. They should have taken the matter directly into their hands, but there is a lot on that as well (just like the show...why the Alliance never intervenes in the outer planets...).

God how I miss that show. I can only imagine what Joss could have accomplished in 7 or 8 seasons (maybe more). He could have made a show that could easily be written about in a college setting, about the civil war and the topics related to it. How grand the adventure could have been, except for one dickhead producer at Fox...

(*I take no responsibility for the parts of my comment I messed up on...* )


*nerd rant*

You remind me of David Mitchell on "Would I Lie to You?" when he pointed out that often people will think that something sounds so out-of-place and rehearsed that it inevitably has to be true.

Do you perhaps think that might be something you're doing? Would this shit really be satisfactory, based on your logic, to a grieving family? He wasn't a saint, neither are you, neither am i... but no one deserves to die for that, especially at such a young age... none of us know who we are by that age.. he had not made the decisions that would shape his life yet. Who does it benefit to have the rehearsed official police story relayed to us by the only man who could explain what really happened? It's more of a slap in the face to the family, is my point.

I tell you what i'd want if i was American - not to have to fear the American police. Because at this point it doesn't even matter if Darren was "rightfully killed" - because the arse-covering propaganda had already started; which is an admission to racism by way of feeling guilty.

And that SHOULD be enough for Americans to demand change - i.e. not every cop should be carrying a gun, because quite clearly not everyone is capable of knowing when to use it. But if it isn't enough, there's Trayvon Martin too. And another, and another, and another.

This isn't a one-off thing, so don't try to suggest that people should judge the video independently of the track history of American police which is to kill young black men, hurting the communities and individuals that they are designed to protect.

At the very least, the protection system is not working for the black community and needs fixing. At the most, there is a tendency towards racism and wild-west-justice in the American police, and that's not just a problem for black people.

P.S. American prison statistics for black people is a serious indictment of how black people are not treated equally in the eyes of the law. Who is really going to try and argue that black people are naturally, statistically more likely to be criminals to the tune of the prison imbalance? There is absolutely no way i am buying into that. The prison statistics remind me of this John Oliver video, perhaps police are being "fair" and stop/searching black people exactly as much as they do white people.. but that is an imbalance because they are not exactly 50% of the population.

(For the record: 60% of all prisoners are black but only 25% of total population. Incarceration at six times that of white people. 12% of the drug-using population are black, but account for 40% arrested for drugs and 60% in prison for drugs. Taken from the NAACP website, i've got to assume they're right. Don't get me started on antiquated drugs policies, or the history of slavery's affect on money/power in the modern world - meaning crimes committed in boardrooms and government go unpunished - let's not forget white leaders have led this world to the brink of complete collapse and we're not out of the woods - but let's stick to the issue.)

The american police seem like some kind of african militia imposing their will on a township. Or some bastardised wild-west town from a film, where the bad guys got the sheriff's badge. They effectively do whatever they like as long as there's plausible deniability to their actions, or no witnesses left over. If they happen to overstep the line, they get told they're very naughty.

I'm afraid the spirit of the wild west lives on in the minds of many US law enforcement.. it's a case of the stereotypical aviator glasses wearing, steel toe cap booted, pencil mustachio'd ex-jock strolling around a one horse town, trying to feel powerful any way he can, hating all those he used to bully all the more for having nice cars and better paid/more fulfilling jobs.

Why do they always have to be men? Are there statistically more men in the american police or what?

There are many parts of the U.S. that essentially are the wild west. Head out to Compton, Detroit, St. Louis, Oakland, Baltimore or any other number of cities with high poverty rates and you'd be crazy not to carry a gun with you.

As for New Zealand gun crime rates, sure, they are lower than U.S. gun crime rates. But then, New Zealand's overall crime rate is five times lower to begin with. The disparity isn't limited to just gun crimes.

Like I said before, there's no clear correlation between gun control and crime rates. For every area that has strict gun laws and low crime, there's another area that has stricter gun laws and more crime. Conversely, there are areas with lax gun laws and lower crime rates than areas with strict gun laws. The data simply doesn't show any consistent trends other than the fact that poor areas have higher crime rates than prosperous areas.

@mram wasn't arguing for border control in the states. (s)he was saying that gun control in a specific area is meaningless if you can trivially circumvent it by driving for half an hour.

To be honest, I really don't know what the solution is. I genuinely think the problem in the USA is not so much guns, but your attitude to them.

In the developed world, plenty of other countries have lots of guns, but only in the states does this cowboy attitude with guns prevail. I have plenty of friends with guns, but none of them have them for "home defense". The very idea that I'd need a gun to protect myself is alien to me. It's the 21st century, not the wild west.

Possibly the genie is out of the bottle in the US. The argument of "gun control just means that only criminals have guns" might well be true. But if that is the case, how is it that countries like Ireland or New Zealand where even the police force don't carry guns* have lower firearm homicide rates (~1/10th the rate of the US). Surely we should have been overrun by lawless gangs of armed criminals while the police stand helplessly by?

*NZ Police do have access to firearms, but they don't carry them as a rule.

But I see a couple of issues with this method:
1) It's cheaper to buy a plunger once that you can reuse vs these one-time use stickers.

2) at least in US there's are no standards for toilet bowl shape.
There are a couple of common types, but otherwise it's a wild west.

3) from physics point of view plunger is better. You are applying force to a smaller area. With this cover you are spreading it out over the whole bowl opening. Youtube has videos of ppl being unable to push down on that film..

I live in West Oakland. Before I moved here all my friends told me it was inevitable that I was going to get shot and my apartment broken into.

That has not been true AT ALL. Not only that but I walk around the really really terrible "Lower Bottoms" *gasp* everyday, I'd say a good one hour of foot traffic up and down Lower-Bottoms and I have not seen anyone doing anything in the least bit threatening to anyone's property or man-flesh.

Oakland is actually FUCKING awesome. Yeah, like any city there are portions that are not so great. What was showcased here was a portion of East Oakland a little past Fruitvale BART station.

Yes, there are spots that are dangerous there but Oakland is a sprawled out city, is Oakland the Wild West? I'd venture to say it is somewhat but it certainly is not even close to as bad as people make it out to seem - especially compared to most cities on the East Coast.

Yep Wild Wild West: Oakland, CA. Except that, until now, only cops and criminals were armed. In a real Wild Wild West scenario, law abiding and decent people are also armed. And that makes a huge difference. Like in that town in Mexico where the population organized into a citizen's army and drove out the cartels/gangs, in addition to keeping the cops at bay. Just another instance where I think private police agencies (like the Old West 'Pinkertons' and bounty hunters) would do what needed to be done where public "cops" don't really want to (or simply can't).

After the end of the "war on [some] drugs" and the welfare state, gangsters will have to do something -- maybe get jobs -- other than 'side-show' and standing around all night, shooting (expensive) bullets into the air.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'Alameda, five oh, wild west, guns' to 'Alameda, five oh, wild west, guns, Stanley Roberts, People Behaving Badly' - edited by eric3579

Unbelievable. Our world is being run by imbeciles and the corrupt.

There are people out there in the world that dedicate themselves to learning information, refining methods, trying to make things better for everyone. They should be running countries. But instead, we've got men with hardly any qualifications and hardly any life experience.

Instead of gathering in a room and listening to community representatives telling them exactly how we want our money spent, the top brass are actually sat in a cushty conference room with a buffet and champagne, copping backhanders and selling us down the river.

When did the general populace suddenly fall into this groove of 'civilisation' - this unspoken belief that The Government are all-seeing, all knowing, and always out for what's best in the long run. We, collectively, have just been taken for billions and billions of dollars or pounds or whatever you use by a collection of the world's richest people. They have not been held to account, and in fact they've somehow convinced us to pay them back what they've lost. Imagine if you lived in a wild west village and you'd paid the sheriff every week to protect a safe with everyone's money in it, and he'd been out at night gambling it away. You'd be fucking furious, an angry mob would be at his door. But for some reason we're all docile about the exact parallel of that situation happening in reality.

We really need a paradigm shift in public consciousness, because the metaphor has progressed, right now that wild west village is under martial law and being run through intimidation by a gang. We don't live in some fantasy world where some unseen force is ensuring fair-play. We are the people who have to strive to ensure fair play in everything otherwise we're just letting people rob us. Literally.

We can't progress like this. In charge of the UK's education system is a guy who has never had any experience teaching whatsoever, let alone teaching under the current system, let alone qualifications in teaching. There's a petition on to have him do a week of teaching so that he can understand just how badly he's ruining everything. This is a real person like you or me and he's in charge of running the education system. We're all standing by watching someone we know is incompetent do a complicated job. Half of us wouldn't even admit to being able to do that job if we were offered it, but this fucking bumbling posh moron takes the wheels with the manic grin of an idiot that feels no fear. Dashing the wheel left and right, we idly watch on as he plays around to see what will happen, crossings our fingers nothing bad happens.

Every system has coercion.
The specifics may change, but they're all based around gaming the rules to get ahead, and preventing others from catching up.

Even if there are no government rules, you end up with private rules, set by the private owners of things you depend on, or things you have to work around or work with.

Deregulated systems are great, but they have one major flaw. Over time, you will end up with a monopoly. It's 100% certain. One business will always grow at least a tad quicker than others, and given enough time, will displace the others.
Especially when larger size creates beneficial economy of scale, and makes for prices that no one else can beat, which only accelerates the growth, leading to the inevitable.
This was the case for the U.S. in the "Rockefeller/Morgan/Vanderbilt-esque" days, and it is becoming the case to day in China.

(China is an amusing example. They have essentially wild-west capitalism and no effective labor laws. It's a bubbling brew of mega rich and mega poor. Much like pre-ww1-ish USA.)

Most economic crises we've had were the result of a few influential agents acting in their own best self interest, while their self interest did not coincide with national interest.

Local optima vs Global optima, mathematically speaking.

For example, oil speculation leads to higher oil prices, which means you can then sell your oil options for a good profit. It's quite good for the speculator.
It just isn't good for the rest of the nation, as higher energy costs drive down everyone else's profits/revenue.

In a more cartoonish sense, you can for example: get land real cheap by purchasing all the land around it, land-locking the access, and not agreeing to a public easement.
Then the land owner of the center-plot is holding worthless land, it's useless to anyone else, and the only possible customer is you.
You get to set the price, because it's you or nobody.
*Also, this is a real example that happened in my neighborhood.

-scheherazade

Wild West Show?

"Listen STALKER, we can do this easy way.... or hard way, eh?"

EDIT: Assuming all of this went down as it was described, that was awesome. Kind of wish instead of beating them they would have only flipped the car over, but that no one died I can still hope they learned their lesson. Nice camaraderie and sense of street justice.

Russia is the urban wild-west come true.