I find some major flaws with your straw man argument.

How's that "vote them out" thing working out for you? Can I vote out Obama now for droning sovereign nations without a declaration of war? Or droning American citizens without due process? Nope. Have to wait four years. And when elections finally come around, how many candidates do I have to choose between? Two. Exactly two with a couple of third party guys that have the election laws stacked against them. Wow. What a democratic utopia.

Now, how many private companies are there? Approx. 30 million according to U.S. consensus. And I can always voluntarily not purchase that company's goods or not use their services, no matter who the CEO is.

The difference here is between "punishment" and "treatment".

Punishment demands that one have an absolute and objective moral imperative . Such absolute imperatives quite demonstrably do not exist (save perhaps that the strongest tend survive and prosper which is of little use to us here)

Simply put, unless you want to invoke some absolute ethical standard such as the commandment of God, "punishment" can only ever be equivalent to forcing ones own prejudices and desires onto others. (and if you reject the existence of absolute authorities like God then doubly so)

This would be fine if we had any objective prejudices with which to inflict people, but we don't. We have only mob consensus and this is how human legal systems have worked for most of our history. The Crowd doesn't like something you did so they lynch/burn/flog/exile you for it. (pure democracy at its finest)

While naturally many dangerous and delinquent individuals are effectively dealt with in this way there is an unacceptable price. It enshrines personal prejudice in law and a great many otherwise perfectly innocent or relatively harmless individuals inevitably fall foul of this.
(much) Moreover it also demands that one accept the premise that some people are just born "bad", or rather that "criminals" are a breed apart from the rest of us. This assumption is essential if one is to justify "punishing" some and not others because you are asserting that they are inherently bad and will continue to be so. One is not concerned with improving them as a person or correcting the problem, one is instead concerned with justifying and demonstrating ones own moral superiority. "you are not like us and so we will subjugate you and inflict suffering to prove our way is the superior".

Due to the barbarism inherent in such systems many cultures have moved instead to systems based instead upon treatment of the "criminal" and protection of the victim in recognition of the fact that all humans share the same fundamental condition.
Many of the practicalities remain the same e.g. a need to segregate the perpetrator, set laws to prevent certain behaviours etc. (the need for this I think should be obvious), however there is a fundamental difference in how one deals with "delinquents".

Instead of an aberrant product of nature which must be defeated the unacceptable behaviour is instead seen as simply an undesirable/unacceptable but perfectly natural aspect of the human condition we all share.
All humans share an innate capacity for violence and subjugation, every single one of us has at some point felt the desire to hit someone etc. we only take issue with those that fail to control such impulses.
However rather than seeing this lack of control as anathema we simply see it as an underdeveloped or damaged aspect of the human condition we all share.

We must take steps to control it for the sake of potential future victims but the idea of actually "punishing" people for simply being human is to me patently absurd and backwards.
Further to that pretty much all of the modern psychology and neuroscience on the subject supports this position. There is no "criminal gene" or race, the only common factor that appears to exist is frontal brain damage (the bit that controls impulse and behaviour)

Treat them like humans and you might actually get a human out of the other side. Treat them like animals..............

Lets be clear though, I'm almost agreeing with you. The way you have used the word "punishment" is closer in some ways to my use of the word "treatment". But I've placed the emphasis that little bit more on "treatment" or rather against "punishment". As you've defined it "punishment" isn't the extreme example I have described with the term, but I did so in order to highlight the clear distinction between two positions.
Meaning is use and I don't want anyone to get too hung up on the semantics at the expense of the underlying concepts .

This has been up here before. IIRC the last consensus was it was the placental sack of a whale.

"Profit motive" is an extremely disingenuous term to use for this story, because that term refers specifically to the goal of businesses to make money.

Business vs. the State is an important distinction we should make here, because, well, doesn't a business only exist to make profit? That's the consensus on wikipedia anyhow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profit_motive

The State, on the other hand, exists obviously to represent the people. You're making an unfair argument associating the State and its budget with the profits of a business, in my opinion.

1) "The Democratic Party in Europe would be a far-right party".

I don't think it would be. A decade ago, yes. But not today.

Look at what Blair (Labour) and Schröder (SPD) did to the left-of-center parties in their respective countries: they moved to the right, significantly. And by doing so, the entire political sphere was pushed to the right. Tory and CDU, the former right-of-center parties are not that different from the Democratic Party, nowadays at least.

The French are still holding on to the alignment of their political system. However, the austerity enforced by conservative moralists, mainly the troika of IMF/ECB/EU Commision as well as the German establishment, is putting immense pressure on Hollande to "encourage" a political shift to the right.

2) Resistance from within the political system.

We have two of these parties in this country, parties that, to some degree, oppose the establishment in areas of significance. They manage to mitigate some of the damage the establishment tries to inflict upon society, but if we're honest about it, most of it is only postponed by a comparatively short period of time. One might even argue that it's just for show so that the illusion of choice is kept up...

In any case, they cannot create the level of fear neccessary to keep the other parties in check. For that to change, the ownership structure in traditional media would have to be changed, radically. As of now, the marginalisation of anti-establishment forces is working effectively and any attempts at meaningful change are demonised.

3) A recently published document by JP Morgan illustrates just how openly their efforts against democratic societies are being waged these days:

Political systems around the [European] periphery typically display several of the following features: weak executives; weak central states relative to regions; constitutional protection of labour rights; consensus building systems which foster political clientalism; and the right to protest if unwelcome changes are made to the political status quo.

The shortcomings of this political legacy have been revealed by the crisis.

JP Morgan: there's excess of democracy in Southern Europe that needs to be trimmed.

Political systems around the periphery typically display several of the following features: weak executives; weak central states relative to regions; constitutional protection of labour rights; consensus building systems which foster political clientalism; and the right to protest if unwelcome changes are made to the political status quo.

The shortcomings of this political legacy have been revealed by the crisis.

I believe the consensus is that it can be mentally addictive, if one is prone to addiction, but not physically. [don't quote me]

Anyone should be able to post anything VS. Just don't expect it to receive upvotes or positive commentary.

People can say whatever they like about me; and they do. I don't expect anything I say or any videos I share to get votes and I am pleasantly surprised when they do.

My opinion is, is that the Sift is geared more atheist by consensus. That is it is somewhat of a belief trend. For better or worse.

I am fully on another spectrum of thought. I could not say I am agnostic or atheist or even that I believe in a thought process in line with some sort of God. I don't even know. I know I believe in something I just do not know how to fit it into human words because it is beyond human comprehension.

Seems like you could boil it down to a couple of simple questions: was I deliberately created, and if so, by whom and for what reason?

I just do not like when people try and act like what they believe is THE TRUTH. That goes for both spectrums. None of you know. But that is my opinion. What makes us interesting is that many have differing opinions and as we know it is also nice to have similar beliefs for camaraderie sake.

Bear with me here..you're saying you don't know what the truth is, and that's perfectly legitimate. It's when you take it a step further and say that no one else knows what it is either that I have a question. The question is, how do you know that? If you don't know the truth, how do you know whether someone else knows it or not? How would you recognize it if they did, not knowing what it is yourself?

There are two ways to know truth..either you are omnipotent, or an omnipotent being reveals the truth to you. I make the second claim, and I base it on the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

Anyone should be able to post anything VS. Just don't expect it to receive upvotes or positive commentary.

My opinion is, is that the Sift is geared more atheist by consensus. That is it is somewhat of a belief trend. For better or worse.

I am fully on another spectrum of thought. I could not say I am agnostic or atheist or even that I believe in a thought process in line with some sort of God. I don't even know. I know I believe in something I just do not know how to fit it into human words because it is beyond human comprehension.

I just do not like when people try and act like what they believe is THE TRUTH. That goes for both spectrums. None of you know. But that is my opinion. What makes us interesting is that many have differing opinions and as we know it is also nice to have similar beliefs for camaraderie sake.

Jeepers, I finally understand why people don't like me!! Golly, I should do something to keep from being IGNORED.....willikers!!

Hey bareboards2.....Am I on "Ignore" anymore?

The ignore option was created through consensus of a minority of users who tend to avoid any confrontation at all costs, including self-expansion and awareness-While I may disagree with a particular user's methods or madness and become highly agitated with political spammage and human suffering for the sake of entertainment, or atheism-as-religion, I'd much rather engage than ignore....

Hey-All you Star Trek addicts??? How much more boring would your plot formulas play out if Picard's frequent entreats to "Engage" were replaced with the coward's war cry, "Ignore!"

Sorry choggie, "You Have "0" Friends."

Your Facebook account is now terminated. (Thank you , Lord!)

The reddit consensus is that it is one of the event organizers removing a wireless mic battery pack from Koresh's belt.

On a daily basis, politicians, like Obama, and pundits in the lamestream media mindlessly bump their gums about global warming, uh... "climate change" (the term employed when the earth stopped warming), without having the slightest idea what they are talking about. Most simply parrot the line about a "so-called "consensus of scientists," without the slightest knowledge of the science or data, or point to extreme weather events as “proof.” Al Gore and Henry Waxman have become masters at this. Noam Chomsky should stick to linguistics. Once he ventures outside of his specialty, he’s just a run-of-the-mill leftist loon.

Science does not operate on the basis of consensus, but provable fact and hard DATA that is replicable. No one can prove that C02 causes warming, apart from the other forces that are chiefly determinative of climate--solar output, cosmic rays (and their effect on cloud cover), the earth's elliptical orbit, its axial tilt, etc. The earth's climate cycle has been in place for eons and is not being altered by any significant degree by anthropogenic CO2. In fact, 99% of the people who believe in the "global warming crisis" cannot even tell you what the current globally-averaged temperature is, nor how much it may have risen over the past century (or any other time frame for that matter). Nor do they know that the current globally averaged temperature is 1-2 degrees C below what it was during the Medieval Warm Period, when human activity could not have been a factor.

Neither temperatures nor sea level rise are accelerating. Temperatures haven't risen since 1997. And even the U.N. predicts just an 8.5" to 18.5" sea level rise by 2100 (2007 IPCC Report), far below the 20 feet predicted by Al Gore, or the 35 feet predicted by Joe Lieberman in 2002. In fact, sea levels have been rising at a rate of about 7" per century since the end of the last age 12,500 years ago, so the U.N.'s predicted range is likely to fall at the low end.

Weather stations around the world are notoriously unreliable, many placed in locations now near asphalt parking lots, etc., replicating the urban island heat effect. Calculating the globally averaged temperature in an enormously complex task. compounded when scientific frauds like Phil Jones and Michael Mann (of the infamous "hockey stick" graph) hide, and would not supply, their data because it does not support their predetermined conclusions of anthropogenic global warming. (Climategate). This is not surprising, however, since thousands of scientists stand to collectively lose billions in federal research grants if the hoax is exposed (more than $80 billion has already been spent on such research, nearly 500 times what oil companies have spent to fund so-called “skeptics”), a fact totally lost, or grossly misrepresented, by global warming religionists.

The fact is: even if the earth's temperature is rising marginally, from natural forces, it will be far better for mankind than falling temperatures. It will result in higher crop yields and less death around the world. More than twice as many people die of extreme cold than extreme heat.

Contrary to morons such as Al Gore (who will never agree to debate the topic, so fearful is he of getting his clock cleaned), scientific evidence clearly shows that we have had no increase in extreme weather events. Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado, summed up the latest science on weather extremes when he wrote that “There is no evidence that disasters are getting worse because of climate change....There's really no evidence that we're in the midst of an extreme weather era - whether man has influenced climate or not,”
Pielke also explained that the data does not support linking Hurricane Sandy to man-made global warming. “Sandy was terrible, but we're currently in a relative hurricane 'drought'.” But that doesn’t stop politicians from trying to make political hay from them.

Much of the gum bumping about "global warming" may be attributed to the political aspirations of Al Gore who hoped to ride an environmental white horse into the White House. It all comes down to a politically-motivated overreaction to a 0.35 degree C increase in globally-averaged temperatures in the period from 1978-1997. Since 1998, temperatures have flat-lined. They are now at 14.5 degrees Celsius which is exactly where they were in 1997. What this amounted to was a hyperbolic response to a temporary and cyclical climate phenomenon, which has been replicated a myriad of times in human history.

The climate history of the 20th century, by itself, contradicts the CO2 equals warming hypothesis. From 1913-1945, CO2 was not a factor and temperatures rose slightly. And from 1945-1977, temperatures fell in the face of rising CO2. It was only in the period from 1978-1997 that temperatures and CO2 rose simultaneously. But since CO2 is likely to continue to rise for the foreseeable future, we will have periods of both rising and falling temperatures in the face of rising CO2.

The scientific travesty is that many politicians are trying to transform CO2 into a “pollutant” requiring draconian federal regulations whose only effect will be to stifle economic growth. CO2 is a harmless trace element constituting just 0.039 per cent of the earth's atmosphere (390 parts per million by volume). It's what humans and animals exhale and its presence helps plant production. 500 million years ago, CO was 20 times more prevalent in our atmosphere. The aim is to convince the uninformed that carbon dioxide is the equivalent of carbon monoxide, a highly toxic gas.

With time and historical perspective, the global warming crisis will turn out to be the greatest scientific fraud in history. But that won’t politicians from exploiting it in the short term.

On a daily basis, politicians, like Obama, and pundits mindlessly bump their gums about global warming, uh... "climate change" (the term employed when the earth stopped warming), without having the slightest idea what they are talking about. Malloy is just the latest in a long line of demagogic politicians trying to capitalize on the scare. Most simply parrot the line about a "so-called "consensus of scientists," without the slightest knowledge of the science or data, or point to extreme weather events as “proof.”

Science does not operate on the basis of consensus, but provable fact and hard DATA that is replicable. No one can prove that C02 causes warming, apart from the other forces that are chiefly determinative of climate--solar output, cosmic rays (and their effect on cloud cover), the earth's elliptical orbit, its axial tilt, etc. The earth's climate cycle has been in place for eons and is not being altered by any significant degree by anthropogenic CO2. In fact, 99% of the people who believe in the "global warming crisis" cannot even tell you what the current globally-averaged temperature is, nor how much it may have risen over the past century (or any other time frame for that matter). Nor do they know that the current globally averaged temperature is 1-2 degrees C below what it was during the Medieval Warm Period, when human activity could not have been a factor.

Neither temperatures nor sea level rise are accelerating. Temperatures haven't risen since 1997. And even the U.N. predicts just an 8.5" to 18.5" sea level rise by 2100 (2007 IPCC Report), far below the 20 feet predicted by Al Gore, or the 35 feet predicted by Joe Lieberman in 2002. In fact, sea levels have been rising at a rate of about 7" per century since the end of the last age 12,500 years ago, so the U.N.'s predicted range is likely to fall at the low end.

Weather stations around the world are notoriously unreliable, many placed in locations now near asphalt parking lots, etc., replicating the urban island heat effect. Calculating the globally averaged temperature in an enormously complex task. compounded when scientific frauds like Phil Jones and Michael Mann (of the infamous "hockey stick" graph) hide, and would not supply, their data because it does not support their predetermined conclusions of anthropogenic global warming. (Climategate). This is not surprising, however, since thousands of scientists stand to collectively lose billions in federal research grants if the hoax is exposed (more than $80 billion has already been spent on such research, nearly 500 times what oil companies have spent to fund so-called “skeptics”).

The fact is: even if the earth's temperature is rising marginally, from natural forces, it will be far better for mankind than falling temperatures. It will result in higher crop yields and less death around the world. More than twice as many people die of extreme cold than extreme heat. The scientific evidence clearly shows that we have had no increase in extreme weather events. Dr. Roger Pielke Jr., Professor of Environmental Studies at the University of Colorado, summed up the latest science on weather extremes when he wrote that “There is no evidence that disasters are getting worse because of climate change....There's really no evidence that we're in the midst of an extreme weather era - whether man has influenced climate or not,”
Pielke also explained that the data does not support linking Hurricane Sandy to man-made global warming. “Sandy was terrible, but we're currently in a relative hurricane 'drought'.” But that doesn’t stop politicians from trying to make political hay from them.

Much of the gum bumping about "global warming" may be attributed to the political aspirations of Al Gore who hoped to ride an environmental white horse into the White House. It all comes down to a politically-motivated overreaction to a 0.35 degree C increase in globally-averaged temperatures in the period from 1978-1997. Since 1998, as Mr. Hart correctly points out, temperatures have flat-lined or declined. What this amounted to was a hyperbolic response to a temporary and cyclical climate phenomenon, which has been replicated a myriad of times in human history.

The climate history of the 20th century, by itself, contradicts the CO2 equals warming hypothesis. From 1913-1945, CO2 was not a factor and temperatures rose slightly. And from 1945-1977, temperatures fell in the face of rising CO2. It was only in the period from 1978-1997 that temperatures and CO2 rose simultaneously. But since CO2 is likely to continue to rise for the foreseeable future, we will have periods of both rising and falling temperatures in the face of rising CO2.

The scientific travesty is that many politicians are trying to transform CO2 into a “pollutant” requiring draconian federal regulations whose only effect will be to stifle economic growth. CO2 is a harmless trace element constituting just 0.039 per cent of the earth's atmosphere (390 parts per million by volume). It's what humans and animals exhale and its presence helps plant production. 500 million years ago, CO was 20 times more prevalent in our atmosphere. The aim is to convince the uninformed that carbon dioxide is the equivalent of carbon monoxide, a highly toxic gas.

With time and historical perspective, the global warming crisis will turn out to be the greatest scientific fraud in history. But that won’t politicians from exploiting it in the short term. Obama has already wasted billions trying to fix a non-problem.
And now he’s even orchestrating the mindless followers of a new secular religion to march on the Mall to advance this silly agenda.

Nice reply. Thanks Gwiz.

At the moment I am doing honours in ethics looking at gender reassignment surgery. The science behind it all is extremely subjective and there seems to be a lot of cherry picking of factors and studies where a certain result is desired. There are a few scientific findings that have consensus and they mainly involve how little difference there is between men and women. Lots of the differences we see are at the extreme end of the scale, aka sports analogies. In every capacities men and women are capable of doing pretty much the same thing. Some extreme cases will involve things that only men can do due to the outright strength involved but other things we may think to be too physical women have done and are doing in other 3rd world nations all the time. Women can be conditioned to be very strong and very tough. We just don't value that or pursue that in the West.

The Elevatorgate and other examples should simply be ignored. They are immediately identifiable as being ridiculous and threaten to undermine to the entire project of a meritocracy that seems to be at the core of the liberal tradition (liberal in the post enlightenment sense, not the Fox news "All liberals are evil" sense).

You are right that society is probably not consciously trying to keep women down. THis is one of the major criticisms that feminism brings forth. It is that we do it tacitly and automatically. When we see an all women rock band we say "That's an all womens rock band" but when we see an all male rock band they are simply "A rock band". Simple and largely harmless example but it extends to every facet of society. Look at CEO's. When a women makes CEO of a huge multinational it is noteworthy. There are certain assumptions made that she's a ball breaker or a tough business woman. All things we associate with masculinity. Its as if there is no role for femininity in powerful roles either from women or men.

Ramble ramble too. Running out of stuff to add without writing a HUGE thesis.

What is the percentage of scientists that agree that global warming is caused by humans? 99%? 97% I know it's not lower than 90% so to me that constitutes a consensus. Also all scientists are not created equal, there's plenty of morons who don't show their work the ones that do agree global warming is an issue.

Also that doesn't include scientists who deviate from the consensus saying that it is much worse than most think, very experienced people. It's amazing to me that any intelligent person can look at this and argue "Well they don't agree". Frankly I don't think any intelligent person has.

I agree that submitters should have more control of their videos.

Maybe some of the SIlver abilities could be moved down to Bronze as an incentive to get to that level.

I think everyone should be able to call a dupe - this has to be confirmed after all by a Gold star or greater.

Being able to dead other videos is a bit too much power for a probie in my opinion.

I think the overall consensus is that it's something to aim for by helping sift good videos. With that incentive you'll earn those invocations. That said, some tweaks as mentioned above might improve the lot of probies/non-Golds in a way that makes sense.