Again, genocide and religious/political persecution are not comparable to the system I describe. Nobody in my system would be arrested or executed because of their ethnicity, political alignment or religious beliefs. They would only be arrested and executed if they broke rational and fair laws, such as requiring aspiring parents to be healthy, responsible, educated and financially secure.

And yes, there is a huge disparity in crime rates around the world. What is consistent is that areas with the most surveillance and law enforcement (which are generally the more prosperous and advanced areas) have the lowest crime rates. Washington D.C. currently has the highest violent crime and murder rates in the country. There are shootings on a daily basis (despite the stringent gun laws) in the poorer areas of the city. If the police decided to focus their efforts in these areas and lethally enforced a zero tolerance policy, crime would be significantly reduced. However, they don't because politicians don't care about the ghettos and slums. Instead of trying to either improve them or purge them, they simply let them sit and fester as lousy and irresponsible parents continue to breed future criminals.

When was torture last sanctioned by the state? The dark ages? Of course violent crime was higher in the dark ages. It was pretty difficult to enforce the law back then due to the lack of cars, satellites, computers, security cameras, guns, etc, not to mention that laws varied greatly depending on which part of the land you lived in and what lords you served under. Does Pinker's book have any contemporary examples that support your position?

In any case, regardless of whether you favor punishment or rehabilitation, the real solution is to address the root of the problem: lousy upbringings. Anyone can have children, no matter how qualified they are. They can have a criminal record, a history of mental illness and be unemploymed and still have as many kids as they want. It's ridiculous and the reason why so many children grow up to be criminals. We need to have strictly enforced regulation of reproduction. Parents should have to go through a thorough testing process and meet certain requirements (like having enough money to actually support a family) before being allowed to have kids. If a woman walks into a hospital with an unlicensed pregnancy, both she and the father should be arrested and executed without trial. Legal births would be recorded in an international database, which employers and government workers would reference during any hiring, licensing or authorization process. Essentially, illegal children would have no chance of ever becoming a part of regular society, forcing them to the outskirts and slums. This would make it easier to focus raids and clear out the most prominent concentrations of criminals.

This may sound dystopian but it's really the only way to fix the root of the problem. You will never be able to make people better if you let them be raised under lousy conditions. Morality is learned, not innate. If we want everyone to follow the same rules, they need to be taught to respect them. If the parents don't, why would the children?

"You know things are bad when someone on the terror watch list...." Please Xiaelao, spare us the insulting terminology, no such fucking thing as terror.

No, you know things are bad when you have such a completely bullshit phraseology as "Terror Watch List", "terror alert level (insert color here), "no fly list", etc. The term "gun control" is being replaced in the U.S. media with the psycho-cyberdine phraseology, "gun safety", because these cunts are helpless to conceal their own fuck-ups.

...a few more that have become entrenched in the lexicon of acceptable terminology for verbal camouflage, friendly fire, collateral damage, and other euphemistic language designed to conceal reality....
It killed Carlin to watch it-"Poor people used to live in slums, now the economically disadvantaged occupy sub-standard housing in the inner cities."

Wool + Eyes = Pull

@chilaxe OK now I follow you.

When you evaluate something like the "average level" of muslims in denmark and compare with those in the US, you have to account for the selection process that happens before they even decide to come here or there. It's much easier to get into Denmark, even considering the somewhat draconic immigration policies, than it is to get into the US. The US, at least used to, import people of high academic standing and somewhat accomplished people, which heightens that average level. And in general, since you are not close to muslim countries, it's simply more costly for any given family to get over there in the first place, which already, naturally if you will, selects higher level people to move over there.


The weapons issue does depend on numbers, but you must be careful not to look too shortsighted at them.

If people have ready access to concealed carry weapons, it would be easier for "bad guys" to get these weapons as well - just because there would be more guns in circulation. Guns can be stolen too, sold, lost etc.

If everyone has a gun on them, to take it to an extreme, some people would be made quite nervous by it, and they might even accidentally shoot someone if they thought they needed to defend themselves - everywhere would become like a slum, where you have to be super careful about going about your business.

If you carry a weapon, proper training is pretty important. The video above has the situation quite biased against the amateurs, but still they do show how little they can handle their weapons and the situation. It's not just a point and click interface as the games would have you believe.

Bar fights would/could end poorly.

Road rage incidents would/could end poorly.

Random people, say in protest rallies, would have an opportunity to shoot at people they disagreed with (imagine anti-nazi protests, people fucking hate those guys).

Bad incidents with cops might leave you with a cop down or you down, since the cops have to be even more careful since they're on the fringe of "dangerous territory" already - if everyone has guns, being a cop just got waay more dangerous.

My point is that you can't simply look at how many concealed weapons are used in robberies, violent crimes etc now, because there are indirect sources as well.


I don't want to remove weapons alltogether, I just want them better regulated, better controller and limited where they are not needed. In a civilized society, they are not needed.

*isdupe=http://videosift.com/video/Human-Spirit-Violins-Cellos-in-slums-and-landfills

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

*dupeof=http://videosift.com/video/Human-Spirit-Violins-Cellos-in-slums-and-landfills

This video has been nominated as a duplicate of this video by kulpims. If this nomination is seconded with *isdupe, the video will be killed and its votes transferred to the original.

Back in 1993, I remember this guy with a bad leg, living in a slum in Freetown (Sierra Leone's capital), in a tiny room plastered with Bollywood and Hong Kong B-movie posters, and whose door was made of pieces of cardboard glued together. He didn't have much.
He was called "Prof" Abubakar and made a living creating and selling steel wire sculptures from stuff he was scavenging off the streets. You're probably thinking of African steel wire toys, but his were crazy, there was nothing like it. They were incredibly complex, animated, spring-loaded, or with some sparkling devices.

Some years later, someone I knew came across him. He was exposing at the Pompidou centre in Paris.

Two decades later, it's like Kelvin Doe is his Internet-era spiritual son. I hope he does as well.

[EDIT]
Correct name: Abu Bakarr Mansaray (bio | one of his contraptions). He now lives in the Netherlands.

Vetoing the 2012 NDAA would have held up the military budget and would not have stopped the detention clause. It was a lose/lose game of political chicken and Obama chose pragmatism over idealism.

Obama has greatly helped the country by creating a healthcare program, by passing stimulus, by using quantitative easing to keep the recession from going depression, by ramping down military operations in the middle east, by favoring diplomacy over sabre rattling in Iran.

As far as promises go, he has kept (or at least attempted to keep to the best of his ability) most of his big promises, like ending combat in Iraq, creating a health care system, ending the use of torture, putting needed financial regulations into place, restricting warrantless wiretaps, ending denial of health coverage for those with pre-existing conditions and signing an executive order to shut down Gitmo. Congress blocked his order to shut down Gitmo, which means the timetable is dependent on getting Republicans out of congress this November. Contrary to popular belief the executive branch is not all powerful. I know you don't like Obama, but can you at least admit these are positive changes for the better that would not have happened under a McCain or Romney administration? What were the broken promises you were talking about?

I love intellectuals like Chomsky and Chris Hedges and respect their criticisms of Obama. I think it would be much more productive to be informed by intellectuals, rather than slumming it in the right libertarian gutter. This video is just as frivolous as the Jackson video, if not morso.

I wish Obama was could be more progressive too, but that isn't going to happen in a conservative country where big business and the military industrial complex wield as much power as they do. We need both idealism and pragmatism if we are going to make progress. The country is far from how I'd like it to be, but I am happy that Obama is moving us in the right direction.

>> ^RFlagg:

This. I would love to move from the Canton/Massillon, Ohio area, but being poor makes it very hard. The place I live now costs $460 a month. That is for a nice 2 bedroom town house with a generous communal back yard in a nice child friendly neighborhood with some of the best schools in the state. How many places in the country (heck the state) can you find housing in such a nice area so cheap? Even in areas that pay more it usually doesn't overcome the higher housing costs when you are stuck in minimum to a couple bucks above minimum pay range... ($12k to $18k locally a year)
None of the places I would like to relocate to can get in those price ranges and still be out of the slums... heck most of the places I've considered can't even get into slums for those prices (Austin, Silicon Valley area, Arcata, Portland, Seattle, Fort Collins, Denver are the main US ones). And moving out of the country to New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Netherlands and even Canada, is impossible since an overly expensive Associates degree means you don't have the skills any of those places would give you immigration.
Add to the housing expense the high price of actually moving...
>> ^Lann:
There are sometimes situations that makes fucking moving impossible.



Move somewhere else in Ohio. Cleveland, Cincinnati, or Columbus are going to be vastly better than Canton, and while they will be a little more expensive it won't be anything like going to California. There will be far more job opportunities, too. Then you can make another step up to something better.

$460 a week wouldn't guarantee you to get out of the slums in most of the overseas locations you mentioned (don't know about Canada). Pay rates are higher to compensate, but it does sound like you've got a reasonably good set-up!
In reply to this comment by RFlagg:
This. I would love to move from the Canton/Massillon, Ohio area, but being poor makes it very hard. The place I live now costs $460 a month. That is for a nice 2 bedroom town house with a generous communal back yard in a nice child friendly neighborhood with some of the best schools in the state. How many places in the country (heck the state) can you find housing in such a nice area so cheap? Even in areas that pay more it usually doesn't overcome the higher housing costs when you are stuck in minimum to a couple bucks above minimum pay range... ($12k to $18k locally a year)
None of the places I would like to relocate to can get in those price ranges and still be out of the slums... heck most of the places I've considered can't even get into slums for those prices (Austin, Silicon Valley area, Arcata, Portland, Seattle, Fort Collins, Denver are the main US ones). And moving out of the country to New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Netherlands and even Canada, is impossible since an overly expensive Associates degree means you don't have the skills any of those places would give you immigration.
Add to the housing expense the high price of actually moving...

>> ^Lann:
There are sometimes situations that makes fucking moving impossible.

This. I would love to move from the Canton/Massillon, Ohio area, but being poor makes it very hard. The place I live now costs $460 a month. That is for a nice 2 bedroom town house with a generous communal back yard in a nice child friendly neighborhood with some of the best schools in the state. How many places in the country (heck the state) can you find housing in such a nice area so cheap? Even in areas that pay more it usually doesn't overcome the higher housing costs when you are stuck in minimum to a couple bucks above minimum pay range... ($12k to $18k locally a year)
None of the places I would like to relocate to can get in those price ranges and still be out of the slums... heck most of the places I've considered can't even get into slums for those prices (Austin, Silicon Valley area, Arcata, Portland, Seattle, Fort Collins, Denver are the main US ones). And moving out of the country to New Zealand, Iceland, the UK, Netherlands and even Canada, is impossible since an overly expensive Associates degree means you don't have the skills any of those places would give you immigration.
Add to the housing expense the high price of actually moving...

>> ^Lann:
There are sometimes situations that makes fucking moving impossible.

I like how stupid Quebec separatists are. As if they don't understand what the United States does. If you secede from Canada, your country will belong to the US. We'll completely control you, and you won't have shit to say about it.

So good luck leaving Canada, enjoy your few weeks of freedom, before GM has a plant in your new country and suddenly there's these things called "slums."

I would so "totally" play with you but I'm still slumming it with Diablo 2 until I can afford a new computer.
On the upside, I just made it to nightmare level with my first ever Hardcore character.

User Names:
Sagemind (non Ladder)
Sagemind2 (non Ladder)
Sagemind3 (non Ladder)
Sagemind4 (non Ladder)
Sagemind5 (current Ladder)