Thinking in such absolutes has never led to anything good. It is a matter of degrees. The serial killer kills because that extreme of a thing is what it takes to feel anything. Without emotions you become passive. I am right about what I wrote. With some introspection on your end you will realize it too. Denying the dark side of yourself will force it to be expressed, which the tone of your comment clearly shows.

>> ^Stormsinger:

>> ^swedishfriend:
Yeah that is it exactly. He was telling himself and others that they really aren't bad guys because the workers want to be there. This shows that he does have empathy and does care. If he didn't care he wouldn't need to comfort himself like that. He is just really good at burying his empathetic feelings and making excuses to himself so that he will feel less bad about it. I am sure we can all relate to some degree. Everyone uses these tactics. We simply cannot help all the people in pain that we come across in our everyday lives. He has done it for so long, so much and regarding such serious situations that even desperately unfair conditions like these aren't enough to make him act properly. Not a good choice for a leader of anything.
>> ^enon:
>> ^shinyblurry:
I don't think there is any way to judge this comment unless we find out what Romney did with the factory after he bought it. I don't think he was bragging, and from what I've heard and read, his description of the fierce competition for jobs in China is accurate.

First off, you're previous comment, minus all the godly stuff, was quite beautiful and is how I strive to live my life - minus the godly stuff
In regards to Romney's comment -- from my vantage point it sounds more like he was expressing surprised relief that the slave labor factor he had just purchased was actually staffed by willing slave laborers rather than forced slave laborers and this somehow alleviates what ever remote feeling of guilt he might have had. It gave the appearance that either way he was going to work these poor women to the bone, it just made it easier on him now that he knew they were semi willing participants. Obviously this is all conjecture but I'm hard pressed to hear and sympathy or remorse in his voice, it was much more akin to "Did you know these mother fuckers actually WANT to work like this? So in reality we're doing good and turning a profit!" His voice has far more interest in that fact than disgust which is kinda the tipping point for me.
I try to remind myself that this can potentially happen to anyone. He was raised and has lived far away from what would be considered a working mans life and it is hard to feel empathy for someone if you are not able to relate to them or have never been taught it. I think it's pretty evident from his lifestyle that this holds true for him. He's not a bad person because he's evil, but because he's incredibly ignorant.


Seriously? You think his attempts to paint himself in a better light shows he has empathy?
No. It shows he realizes just how fucking sociopathic his behavior is, and he's trying to sell a "nicer, warmer" image of himself to his audience. He flat out does not care...he'd be just as willing to bleed those women dry, and profit from their blood. Because he's better than they are...they're just peons, and don't count for a thing, just like all of us. We're not him, so we don't count.

>> ^swedishfriend:

Yeah that is it exactly. He was telling himself and others that they really aren't bad guys because the workers want to be there. This shows that he does have empathy and does care. If he didn't care he wouldn't need to comfort himself like that. He is just really good at burying his empathetic feelings and making excuses to himself so that he will feel less bad about it. I am sure we can all relate to some degree. Everyone uses these tactics. We simply cannot help all the people in pain that we come across in our everyday lives. He has done it for so long, so much and regarding such serious situations that even desperately unfair conditions like these aren't enough to make him act properly. Not a good choice for a leader of anything.
>> ^enon:
>> ^shinyblurry:
I don't think there is any way to judge this comment unless we find out what Romney did with the factory after he bought it. I don't think he was bragging, and from what I've heard and read, his description of the fierce competition for jobs in China is accurate.

First off, you're previous comment, minus all the godly stuff, was quite beautiful and is how I strive to live my life - minus the godly stuff
In regards to Romney's comment -- from my vantage point it sounds more like he was expressing surprised relief that the slave labor factor he had just purchased was actually staffed by willing slave laborers rather than forced slave laborers and this somehow alleviates what ever remote feeling of guilt he might have had. It gave the appearance that either way he was going to work these poor women to the bone, it just made it easier on him now that he knew they were semi willing participants. Obviously this is all conjecture but I'm hard pressed to hear and sympathy or remorse in his voice, it was much more akin to "Did you know these mother fuckers actually WANT to work like this? So in reality we're doing good and turning a profit!" His voice has far more interest in that fact than disgust which is kinda the tipping point for me.
I try to remind myself that this can potentially happen to anyone. He was raised and has lived far away from what would be considered a working mans life and it is hard to feel empathy for someone if you are not able to relate to them or have never been taught it. I think it's pretty evident from his lifestyle that this holds true for him. He's not a bad person because he's evil, but because he's incredibly ignorant.



Seriously? You think his attempts to paint himself in a better light shows he has empathy?

No. It shows he realizes just how fucking sociopathic his behavior is, and he's trying to sell a "nicer, warmer" image of himself to his audience. He flat out does not care...he'd be just as willing to bleed those women dry, and profit from their blood. Because he's better than they are...they're just peons, and don't count for a thing, just like all of us. We're not him, so we don't count.

Yeah that is it exactly. He was telling himself and others that they really aren't bad guys because the workers want to be there. This shows that he does have empathy and does care. If he didn't care he wouldn't need to comfort himself like that. He is just really good at burying his empathetic feelings and making excuses to himself so that he will feel less bad about it. I am sure we can all relate to some degree. Everyone uses these tactics. We simply cannot help all the people in pain that we come across in our everyday lives. He has done it for so long, so much and regarding such serious situations that even desperately unfair conditions like these aren't enough to make him act properly. Not a good choice for a leader of anything.

>> ^enon:

>> ^shinyblurry:
I don't think there is any way to judge this comment unless we find out what Romney did with the factory after he bought it. I don't think he was bragging, and from what I've heard and read, his description of the fierce competition for jobs in China is accurate.

First off, you're previous comment, minus all the godly stuff, was quite beautiful and is how I strive to live my life - minus the godly stuff
In regards to Romney's comment -- from my vantage point it sounds more like he was expressing surprised relief that the slave labor factor he had just purchased was actually staffed by willing slave laborers rather than forced slave laborers and this somehow alleviates what ever remote feeling of guilt he might have had. It gave the appearance that either way he was going to work these poor women to the bone, it just made it easier on him now that he knew they were semi willing participants. Obviously this is all conjecture but I'm hard pressed to hear and sympathy or remorse in his voice, it was much more akin to "Did you know these mother fuckers actually WANT to work like this? So in reality we're doing good and turning a profit!" His voice has far more interest in that fact than disgust which is kinda the tipping point for me.
I try to remind myself that this can potentially happen to anyone. He was raised and has lived far away from what would be considered a working mans life and it is hard to feel empathy for someone if you are not able to relate to them or have never been taught it. I think it's pretty evident from his lifestyle that this holds true for him. He's not a bad person because he's evil, but because he's incredibly ignorant.

>> ^shinyblurry:

I don't think there is any way to judge this comment unless we find out what Romney did with the factory after he bought it. I don't think he was bragging, and from what I've heard and read, his description of the fierce competition for jobs in China is accurate.


First off, you're previous comment, minus all the godly stuff, was quite beautiful and is how I strive to live my life - minus the godly stuff

In regards to Romney's comment -- from my vantage point it sounds more like he was expressing surprised relief that the slave labor factor he had just purchased was actually staffed by willing slave laborers rather than forced slave laborers and this somehow alleviates what ever remote feeling of guilt he might have had. It gave the appearance that either way he was going to work these poor women to the bone, it just made it easier on him now that he knew they were semi willing participants. Obviously this is all conjecture but I'm hard pressed to hear and sympathy or remorse in his voice, it was much more akin to "Did you know these mother fuckers actually WANT to work like this? So in reality we're doing good and turning a profit!" His voice has far more interest in that fact than disgust which is kinda the tipping point for me.

I try to remind myself that this can potentially happen to anyone. He was raised and has lived far away from what would be considered a working mans life and it is hard to feel empathy for someone if you are not able to relate to them or have never been taught it. I think it's pretty evident from his lifestyle that this holds true for him. He's not a bad person because he's evil, but because he's incredibly ignorant.

waiting for the tipping point where corporations/governments can't deny it,
the point where they'll say, "well, its too late to do anything about it, and even stopping cold turkey won't do anything as its a self-reinforcing cycle"

"however, we've developed some real nice acid resistant outer wear and methods for bottling non-toxic air for consumption, and delivery systems that constantly need to be replaced; so we're happy"

Tipping point? Would be nice to stop having to listen to mainstream bigots all the time.

I look at this video as these companies being fearful of "XYZ" happening, so they made it happen on their own terms, creating the scenario they needed to get enough fervor to push through their agenda.

Many politicians in Washington want us to live in constant fear of "what ifs", because it justifies their budgets and pet projects in those budgets. It gets people to say yes a lot to them, because if you don't <bad guy/thing> will win!

So their tipping point happens with 911, which is why so many people still believe there's a conspiracy to it. After then, all this crazy shit got passed through because we didn't want <bad guy/thing> to win, or they'd murder/rape our women and children and kick our dogs. And they STILL put forward these crazy ideas of what people could do. Like the pilot might pack a bomb on so he needs to be scanned, like he couldn't nose dive the plane while he's steering it. Or liquids, when clearly many small bottles of liquid just as easily be used to create a chemical bomb.

They want people up in arms and outraged and they do that by constantly berating you with the things they want you outraged on. On some forums you can't even go a day without a piracy discussion and how people are scum and ABC developer has to put draconian DRM in just to make a small profit, and how you should buy it with crazy DRM despite not liking the game or the DRM otherwise you're a pirate and should be in jail.


They keep you so pissed at each other and afraid of what other people are doing to you directly or indirectly, that you don't bother to suspect something more to it.

Because your neighbor is probably a terrorist who is pirating software to take control of the nukes to cause global warming so he can get free healthcare and live like a king on welfare.

Not sure what other hot button topics I could throw in there to make it look anymore crazy, but Im sure there are more.


Additional point, they are saying Youtube, megaupload, etc are piracy/copyright infringement tools. If they didn't own the companies outright when they did it, they BOUGHT companies who promoted the very thing are now slapping everyone for. How does it make sense that they can absolve themselves of distributing the tools people use, and punish others for providing similar tools? And my answer to that is, they aren't making money off other people doing it.....so Profit.

And now, other people are doing exactly what they themselves or companies they owned did 10 years ago, but they are making money via ads. So they are taking their previous "customers" by providing better tools, and those customers are making them money via ad placement hits. So in essence, they are already attacking the competition, but want SOPA to make it easier. You will essentially have to kiss their ass and police your network to great cost to yourself to keep from being shutdown by one stray byte of copyrighted stuff.

I've seen a lot more people and media mocking the History Channel. I guess they finally reached the tipping point for the amount of non-history related bullshit they can air before the well deserved mockery can begin.

>> ^rougy:

@bcglorf,
The problem I have with your point of view mainly rests on the presumption that the people who were defrauded "got what they deserved." I just don't see it that way. It's sort of justifying the bankers actions.
When somebody who is in a position of power and respect, as are most bankers and investors I would say, you can't blame John & Jane Doe for trusting in their advice.
The bankers and investors should have known better, and the vast majority of them did, but that didn't stop them from spreading the lies and conning people into signing their lives away.
P.S. - I hope Greece defaults. Something is rotten in Denmark when entire countries must go bust in order to satisfy Wall Street.


The people I figure were defrauded were the ones investing in the companies that were carrying terrible bad mortgages but calling themselves grade A safe investments. Those investors were defrauded and have very serious cause for concern as they were outright lied to by people wanting to profit off them.

As for the people buying homes at inflated prices, I would say they hold some blame and some plain old bad luck. The ones that took on mortgages they could only afford if the home increased in price I do blame pretty readily. They took a big risk, and risk were they were informed. They knew that they were betting on housing prices increasing. They knew the terms they were betting under and what it would mean if they won or lost the bet. They lost and should take the loss. The banks encouraging and focusing on those bets lost as many times over as they had customers lured in. The difference is the banks were pocketing more profit and got tax payer assistance to cushion their loss while the customers were left to deal on their own. I'd prefer both were left to deal with the consequences.

As for Greece, I've only scratched beneath the surface still, but it is looking like their debt problems run much deeper than just social services spending. I'm very curious were the real turning/tipping point in this was. If anyone has any good advice aside from the lead Rougy already threw out that'd be great. My current trail is the 40% of the Greek economy that was purely public sector jobs. That makes for a house of cards that's very vulnerable to government cut backs. My province(Manitoba) is in that very same boat and it is federal transfer funds from the federal government alone that is keeping us afloat.

@ShakaUVM: "How? If all the poor suddenly earned $60k a year in constant dollars and could afford all the health care, food, and whatever else they wanted, do you think there's going to be "social consequences" because Warren Buffet and his friends made an extra billion that year? No, there wouldn't be."

Most people won't get mad if one person is richer than them and can have golden toilets and they have "whatever else they want" (which is ridiculous - we're imagining a place where people have all they want?). Though, to be fair, some will. Some people will be (and are) mad that someone is making a billion dollars, especially if they don't do much work.

More generally, imagine the opposite ridiculous analogy. Imagine a situation where nobody can afford food. Later, 40% of the population (say, ones with blue eyes) can afford food while everyone else gets only a modest increase in income. Do you think the green eyes are going to be happy because, oh well, they're making as much as they did before? Of course not. They're going to see themselves as getting poorer while the blue eyes are getting richer, and they're going to be mad and want to steal food.

There's factors involved in how this plays out - very important ones are:

1. How significant are the amenities one class gets that the other doesn't (obviously food, housing, electricity are going to make more of a pinch than "rich people drive nicer cars").
2. Does the division of wealth feel arbitrary and permanent? Do people feel like they might one day move into the richer class? Do they feel the rich have "earned" their position?
3. How does the population break down? Is there small percentages of outliers, or is there a clear division between haves and have-nots?

So yeah, it's not simple (and wouldn't happen in magic world where people have everything they want and where prices for goods didn't change relative to each other), but it's not a non-existent problem. I don't think the US is close to serious social problems, but with a little prodding it could be and "revolution" isn't the first step. There's also "tipping points" that may come up. For example, if poor people begin to generally feel like a "good education" (the kind that gets a job, which at times raises in price much faster than CPI) is only possible for rich people, that's going to be bad. Right now there's a sense that anyone can work hard and progress - if that feeling evaporates you're going to get more labor unrest and support for radical populist politicians.

Don't think that could happen? Look at history.

That so boned me up(in an artistic way). I am more than happy to be the tipping point of the sifted vote.

You can see the stack starting to go the right way, then the "hinge" part of the wall collapsed before it could get past the tipping point.

The situation was never as simple as D=Confederates and R=Union. Plenty of blacks voted for FDR. The tipping point I guess was when dems supported, passed, and signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and people like Strom Thurmond who filibustered it switched to the republican party. After 1964 all the wealthy white male bigots flocked to the Republican party, and their platform reflected that.

Nearly all the states that didn't ratify the Equal Rights Amendment are now Republican strongholds, because sexism is implicit part of the platform of the Republican party (and it mostly comes from bible-thumping).

>> ^Gabe_b:

>> ^raverman:
I'm curious what tipping point in cultural development made this taboo?
I'm gonna guess the invention of agriculture and settled community / cities. Kinda hard to eat your neighbors children when you can't move away from them.

The adoption of herding/ animal husbandry I'd guess. Pre-European Maori and moder Papua New Guineans both ate/eat people. And NZ and PNG are both areas where there a few or no large land animals. Once you've got your chickens and goats running around it becomes safer to get your protein from those sources rather than risk war with the next tribe over.
As for eating brains, doesn't that lead to prion caused neurodegeneration? Like CJD or Kuru? Doesn't seem like it would be a sustainable act in a society over a long period of time.


Yeah, eating brains is double-plus bad. Good way to make your own tasty brainmeats melt out of your ears.

>> ^raverman:
I'm curious what tipping point in cultural development made this taboo?
I'm gonna guess the invention of agriculture and settled community / cities. Kinda hard to eat your neighbors children when you can't move away from them.


The adoption of herding/ animal husbandry I'd guess. Pre-European Maori and moder Papua New Guineans both ate/eat people. And NZ and PNG are both areas where there a few or no large land animals. Once you've got your chickens and goats running around it becomes safer to get your protein from those sources rather than risk war with the next tribe over.

As for eating brains, doesn't that lead to prion caused neurodegeneration? Like CJD or Kuru? Doesn't seem like it would be a sustainable act in a society over a long period of time.