@kronosposeidon @dag

You can't realistically stop someone from creating a standard page about a user as @Shepppard has done. This is not unique; I could go right now and create http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kronosposeidon, http://www.dokuwiki.org/kronosposeidon, http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Kronosposeidon, http://conservapedia.com/Kronosposeidon, and so on. All we can realistically do about this is make a rule about it and enforce that rule when the problem arises.

User pages can be restricted and quite possibly should be. There's always the discussion page for public commentary.

Also, people have different concepts of what constitutes racism in the first place. To some, racism is conscious and deliberate, like that of a klansman, neo-nazi or minuteman. To others, it's subtle, internalized, hidden and/or subconscious. Problems arise when the unconscious racist is confronted with his/her own racism, thinking that they are being accused of being an overt hater.

@rougy, it's like going from having 50 million starving people to having only 18 million starving people.

It's not the end of what needs to be done, but it is a monumental step in the right direction.

Politically, it's the first time since Reagan we've had a major new government program. It sets the stage for people being constantly reminded that government action can and does have a huge and positive impact on their lives.

We're never going backwards from this point. This plan to campaign on repeal is going to go down in flames, assuming the GOP is stupid enough to really make that the centerpiece of their campaign strategy this fall.

As problems arise from the plan, people will want problems fixed, not a return to what came before, and we won't let them forget who it was that stood in lockstep opposition to it passing in the first place.

If the market reforms don't actually reign in costs, people won't be calling for the subsidies to disappear. They'll want government to take further action to bring prices in line, and directly negotiating prices will be on the table in a big way.

But I only care about that political shit as a means to an end. I think this will vastly improve a lot of people's lives, and that's more than worth a little celebrating.

^ The only thing that stops free market from existing are government regulations. Reduce them and you get closer to it. There are many examples of economies that are currently prospering a lot more than we used to because of the economic freedom they enjoy.

Just because government and businesses have long been involved with each other, doesn't mean it can't be stopped. If government had less stake in the economy, businesses would not bother leveraging it so much to their advantage.

For many centuries, the church and the state where in bed together in many countries and humanity suffered the consequences. The same kind of separation, but between the state and the economy, even if it goes against the interests of big players (big government and big businesses), is still a worthwhile goal. The many people who are suckered into supporting these big players, social liberals, also stand in the way.

The banking system doesn't work well because it's one of the most highly regulated and distorted markets in existence. Just the fact that we have central banks, for instance, is very anti-capitalistic and completely harmful and unnecessary. The "capitalists" you mentioned (whoever they are) are nothing but. Real capitalists would not support government meddling in the economy.

When you mention problems arising from sudden lack of regulations, that's like opposing abolishing slavery because black people would have problems adjusting. Even though that is true, it's hardly an argument to keep slavery going.

I believe any problems arising from sudden economic freedom are a lot easier to deal with then the problems you get otherwise. If it makes you feel better, make the transition gradual, or help people adjust, but economic freedom is the way to go.

The thing about this episode that annoyed me the most is that while they trash taxes (which was entertaining), the kept going back to the Tea Party players, and that old fart screaming "No taxation without representation!" It's always nice to see people reenacting history and not understanding the conditions that brought about the events they're portraying.

The colonists had no representation in Parliament, they got no say in any of the laws that Parliament decided for them. That's not the same in the US, we elect the people who end up on the committees that make the laws, so we have "taxation with representation". If you don't like it, convince enough other people to tell their representative to change the law, and if they don't change it don't re-elect them. That's how the system works.

I'm so sick of people pissing and moaning about how government is run, yet they constantly re-elect the same types of people as their representative. The problem arises that the politicians that we have on these committees are all corrupt, they've been in office long enough that they don't fear being losing their job, they listen to the lobbyists that line their pockets more than they do their constituency.

Politicians are like fish in the fridge, as soon as they start to stink they need to be thrown out.

Personally I think the words insurance and health care should not be allowed to be placed together.

The insurance market is based around making a profit, ultimately it means DENYING coverage in any way possible. Their motivation is not to help you. But to help their accounts to stay in the black. Their most important customers are those who are not in need of any health care but pay their insurance anyhow.

Am an advocate for the single payer health system.

However I understand that is akin to socialism for most Americans, even though most Americans probably don't remember exactly what that word means anymore.

The government now is trying to basically regulate the public insurance market into making it accessible to all Americans and not simply arbitrarily denying coverage. The government is already involved in the Medicare system for citizens over 65. By all accounts that system is working well. The only problem being the high cost of medication which is a drug pharmaceuticals issue not a medicare one.

In Kuwait there is universal health care for all residents and citizens. Everyone receives a medical card. If I have a tooth ache I can go to my local clinic and in the hour or so get treatment. I can go to an emergency clinic and get looked at right away if am in severe pain.

There is adequate health care provisioned for all. The problem arises in getting access to higher level services that are rationed or placed in a priority system for citizens first and expats second. Citizens are and can be taken abroad for treatment, the government pays for that. Sometimes the queue extends to a few months but this mostly only applies to non critical cases. Only knowing people within the medical community might get you moved forward. But this is a lack of investment issue, the hospitals and general infrastructure has not been invested in or expanded due to 4 different governments in the last 3 years, political infighting, the replacement of MOH heads and a general lack of leadership. These are symptoms that are now being dealt with through voter action.

At the same time Kuwait has a large private health care sector independent of the public one. With only government intervention to prevent malpractice. You can receive almost all treatments offered publicly in private practice bar really high end stuff. The cost is very high however but comes with a more personalized service and better facilities. The major problem in the private sector is a beauractic crunch to further development due to MOH restrictions. Most of the time these are motivated by private interests interfering.

Overall the health of this nation far exceeds most other places I lived in, the major problems now in Kuwait are life style based due to poor diet choices, smoking and such leading to diabetes and obesity being a large killer, followed by cancers, heart disease and so on.

(...)In many places, local government does provide subsidies for phone lines to the poor(...)I think we can both agree that the government's free cellphone plan hasn't made cellphone prices go up.

That's awful. I'm sure you can figure out why I think that's a waste of money, even though it's a considerably smaller amount when a program is local as opposed to state-wide or federal.

We might not agree that prices haven't gone up as a result of them, we can agree, at least, that nationalizing the whole industry would be a terrible idea.

Cell phones did once cost thousands of dollars and their supply used to be very limited not too long ago. It's interesting how, with technology, things became more accessible, same with computers or the Internet. Through the years, it was the combination of technology and market forces that basically made it possible for cell phones to be as cheap and accessible as they are today. That would've most likely never happened if production or distribution of cell phones were the mandate of some federal agency to begin with.

Even with the aid of technology, things tend to become less accessible and quality of service worsens when govt steps into a sector of the economy. Just look at healthcare, despite all the incredible medical advances and research, so many things in healthcare cost a lot more than they used to 20-50 years ago. Market forces that would've stimulated price and quality competition this whole time were and still are repressed by excessive regulation and a system mostly clogged down by bureaucrats with noble goals and their laws.

I don't see why providing taxpayer-funded food stamps to the poor would prevent market forces from making food as cheap and available as it can.

Funny how creative critics can be when conjuring all sorts of irreparable problems arising from the free market, yet are terribly incapable of foreseeing any of those that result from govt interference.

When you grant money to poor people for food, you're not subsidizing nourishment, you're subsidizing poverty.

People who are poor and not productive enough to buy food, they get free food paid by those people who are productive enough to buy their own food and pay taxes. The money that is being given to poor people for food, is being used less productively because a) it's money that was not earned and is therefore spent less responsibly (crap food, food you don't need), b) it's money spent to satisfy a need that would otherwise encourage the poor to be more productive, c) the money acts as incentive for the poor to stay unproductive for as long as it qualifies them for free food, and d) those who are productive have less of their earned money to spend.

Productivity is our answer to the everlasting problem of survival. In life, you have to be productive (or live off of someone who is) or die. So instead of helping people be productive or allowing an environment where productivity is rewarded, the govt wants productivity to be taxed to reward those who are unproductive.

That's bad for society.

>> ^KnivesOut:
<EM class=smiley src="http://static1.videosift.com/videosift/i/emoticon/smilecute.gif" <img>^dirkdeagler7
There doesn't have to have been a beginning. It's entirely possible that everything has always existed, forever, and will continue to exist, forever.
It's only our abbreviated, framed existence (frame by our own births and deaths) that drives man to assume that everything begins and ends.


I've given this some thought as well, as i said we're limited by our need for time in understanding the universe. However if you think about it the big bang is our biggest fore runner for explaining the universe. We know that time as we know it started at the big bang, and thus our big concern is what existed prior to it right?

I don't know quite how to wrap my mind around it all but to say that maybe the universe as an infinitely dense ball of mass existed forever and the big bang just changed it into our universe is to say that existence in general has always been. That is to say by definition the presense of that ball of mass requires that existence is a given. My problem arises when i consider the alternative to existence which I can not fathom. I feel like it's easy to take existence for granted because it has always been as far as our universe is concerned and its all we know, the entirety of our knowledge is based on it. But scientifically speaking, if you wanted to explain the universe completely and definitively, you have to account for how existence came into being dont you? Otherwise you havent explained how the universe came to be completely. Any book ive read regarding cosmology and the early universe necessarily ignores anything prior to the big bang.

This is the problem that science will face and why you will likely never be able to convince creationists they are wrong. At some point you'll have to come up with an alternative to God creating existence or being existence, whatever. TO do that you have to explain existence. If you just assume that existence has always been, isnt that a sort of "faith" in itself? You have faith that existence has always existed, but until you can prove or explain it, its just that, a belief. IF you come to this conclusion without explaination, then you're just at the point of debating whose belief is more believable/valid, and that unfortunately has no objective outcome.

danny

"Perhaps if i was able to have a conversation with someone who knew it back to front, then i would be able to give a better opinion on whether or not it would work."

Go ahead, ask any question you want. I will converse with you. I don't know everything about it, but I have agreed with and advocated it without regrets for 43 years.

But first be clear that you are only dealing in this particular issue with one portion of her philosophy, politics. And that politics is not a stand-alone set of principles. Its validity depends entirely on the more fundamental branches of Objectivism that define the nature of existence (metaphysics), the nature of our means of grasping and retaining our knowledge of existence (epistemology), and given the nature of those and of human beings (in principle), by what standards we should measure our choices of thought and action in our quest to survive and thrive in accordance with our nature as the beings that we are (ethics).

That is just a peek at the monumentality of the subject. But you do not have to be an Olympic swimmer before you can wade into the shallows. Also, it doesn't make any difference where you start. If you have an open, honest mind, it will take you where you need to go.

Since politics is at the top of your present interest list, start here:

Capitalism is not right because it works. Rather, it works because it is right. It is right because it is derived from and dependent on a proper definition of the nature of human beings. To wit: Life or death is the fundamental alternative for all living entities. Humans are the only living beings that cannot pursue either alternative by their automated bodily functions alone. Our unique means of survival is our capacity to know the nature of existence and to choose the actions we take to deal with it - i.e., we are rational, volitional beings.

If one chooses the alternative goal of death, no ethical or political system is needed. But if one chooses to live -- to survive and thrive -- then life itself becomes ipso facto the standard of measure for all of your choices of how to think and act and what values to pursue - your ethics. If you lived outside of any society, your ethic -- your moral rights and wrongs would be your only governor. You would succeed or fail in accordance to how correctly or incorrectly your ethic was defined and implemented in your daily life.

But when humans live together in a society and interact in long term relationships, a problem arises. The volition that enables us to choose, inherently enables us to err. The autonomy one would have over one's own life outside a society can be destroyed in a society by the sole enemy of freedom, physical force. Therefore, in order to extend a proper human ethics in the context of the life of an individual into the context of a society of men, coercion by physical force must be removed from human interactions and all exchanges of values among men must be voluntary.

Now re-read the defining principle of Rand's radical capitalism as I stated it in my comment above. That is a moral principle. If you can undermine the logic of the morality underpinning that principle, we can begin to talk about capitalism not working. But, if you can't, you should begin to look deeper into it than you have. For if autonomy is a moral prerequisite, then our present political system that condones the use of coercion by majorities to take what they want from minorities is the system that does not work. It does not work primarily because it is immoral. And the left and right are equally guilty. Only the kinds of tyranny they favor differ.

Note also, that it is a dangerous leap from being unable to imagine how a system you understand so little would function to the claim that it simply would not work at all. Your intolerance of bastards is a suitable example. What Rand achieves in her system is that bastards may continue to be bastards in spades, because they have in her system no access to power. The government in her system has but one job and no other: rid the nation of coercion. No one can acquire anything from anybody in such a society without enticing them to trade it to them voluntarily.

And keep in mind, that autonomy is the freedom to exercise your own volition, which is a freedom to be fallible yourself that you must grant others as well. To be a good capitalist, you must tolerate the absolute right of others to be as irrational as they want so long as they do not force it on you or anyone else.

I whole heartedly agree. I think it would be prudent if VS would examine other successful social media sites, such as Digg and Reddit, and see where they got it right.

Neither of those sites have anymore than one place for their upcoming/unsifted stories.

But we have three - Unsifted, Beggars Canyon, and PQ

And neither have anymore than one way to dispose of a story/video.

But we have two - Discard and Kill

And you can promote, but you can also doublepromote.

It's all too complicated, and it seems to me that whenever a problem arises, the recourse that is fallen back on is to try and make everyone happy which leads to implementing too many solutions.

And the worst part is - this sort of complication is absolutely menacing to new users.

First, I am not in the company of anyone who feels that books are dangerous - nor will I ever be, I refuse to be...!

Second. I don't believe anyone should directly copy another's work. In that, I mean, directly steal it and put their own name on it and thereby mislead people into believing it was their own original idea.

I do, however believe that taking something from another idea and using it to create another original idea is ok. I also believe that copying another's work for the sole purpose of learning is also ok. I further believe that sharing an idea or a 'something' is not infringing on the owner's 'ownership' and thereby not an infringement.

Sometimes the lines get blurred as in the concept of internet sharing sites that directly infringe on a persons intent to profit from the 'shared' article. Reproduction through a mechanical means, which this is, can be seen as an infringement. The problem arises when the article (video bite, song, software etc.) cannot be obtained through legal means, is not currently being marketed in an accessible way or is price inflated to more than it's actual worth. People are just going to roll forward and forge new ways of exploring the sharing concept.

I also believe that sharing articles, in a forum for public discussion, which VideoSift is, does not constitute infringement but in stead is exchanged for educational purposes.

I have more to say, but no one likes long rants...

The Palestinians would not accept living in Israel now, because this has gone for too and too much blood has been spilled. The only solution is a two state solution, but the momentum towards that is never there because many factions in Israel's government believe that all of Israel is theirs and thus have used policies designed to keep the peace process in formaldehyde.

The Muslims and Jews have occupied the lands in peace for ages, it is only when we factor in political interests that declare the land for one or the other religious denomination do the problems arise.

I fervently believe that civilians in both Palestine and Israel wish for nothing more but peace, and could live with each other in peace. Economic interdependence has seen Israel rely on Palestinian labour countless times and conflict between both as only seen both lose out on economic progress, Israel doing far better because of the massive injects of funds it receives mainly from the US.

However we have political movements like Likud and Zionism and extremist thought in Hamas and other entities that make this a virtual impossibility. The reason for the existence of both is varied, in Israel there is the Manifest Destiny belief, in Palestine there is the oppression and deaths of family members that fermented armed struggle that can only end in the destruction of Israel.

Obama came into the Presidency saying that one of the key factors is that Arab states must recognize Israel, how do you force other nations to suddenly normalized relations with a hostile nation? Its like the UK telling the US to normalize relations with Cuba.

I believe everyone is complicit in the events that we see played out, neither Hamas nor the Israeli leadership will suffer from the deaths in Gaza. But the Palestinians see Hamas as the only entity that is actively fighting IDFs aggression, the whole world condemned the attacks, did anyone do anything other then declarations and condemnations? No. Alot of Palestinian civilians got killed.

And no Israel is not a perfect state as you claim, read on HRW and its own news organizations, Israel's Knesset parties nearly threw out an Arab Israeli calling him a representative of terrorists and a immigrant.

Like all Arab democratic states (of which there are few but they claim to be democratic in spirit! LOLZ) it also abuses the democracy it declares to possess, the IDF and the government as a whole have always the security issue to clamp down on progressive movements and protests. Just like every other corrupt Arab state out there who declare the Israeli actions as horrible but beat the shit out of its own citizens for protesting the same.
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2009/01/21/gaza-crisis-regimes-react-routine-repression

Arabs in my region suspect Obama will change things but he won't, he is a Zionist representative as much as Bush. Bush left office by calling Israel. Obama entered office by calling Israel. The US is the key factor in changing all this however the entire nation in the US is under heavy influence via AIPAC, WINEP, MEMRI and numerous other organizations that paint a very one sided picture of the conflict.

The resolution of this conflict is a corner stone of ending terrorism and extremist action against the US from the Arab world.

The supernatural is of course a definition which in itself destroys God if he is deemed supernatural.

Not really. Philosophers have been discussing this issue for thousands of years. As far as I know, the only major philosophical movement which categorically rejects the idea of the supernatural is logical positivism, which is no longer considered by most philosophers to be a sound system of thought.


I knew I was a shaky ground when saying people did it, not religion. My point was and still is, that religion can be a tool (for the higher-ups) to control and direct the populace (it follows from this argument that those that use the tool could be atheists in reality, and I think they might be). It may point them in better directions (see your own examples, denominations of Christianity) but it is still a tool for the people with direct access to GOD (priests) to tell those without what must be done. When people wholeheartedly believe in what a preacher spouts I am not angry with them, I'm angry with the preacher and the underlying ideas.

I've known several pastors, a couple of them quite well. (I'm not Christian, but the rest of my family is.) The thing to keep in mind is that these people really are sincere. Only once have I run into the kind of sociopathic control freak who intentionally uses religion as a tool of control.

Except for a few cases, pastors and other religious leaders really do believe what they teach. Which is how religion works as a form of control. The problems arise when doctrinal or structural problems cause condemnation of certain sectors of the world's population.

I get tired of this style of humanoids. I've seen many works and while some work, there is always a subset like this which reveal themselves as badly looking humanoids because the artist sucks at making humanoids.

Also you can tell this was pretty much done by one or more cg artist, and no writers amongst them. It leads you with a text intro into a futuristic plot, at which point it follows one man. Every second the movie plays along, more and more questions get asked. At the end, the storyline was a fake.. and this guys just a wacked out old man in hospital called ark. This is where the big problem arises. The story at the very end is abruptly called false and the new storyline which last like 30 seconds, has 2 connections with the old story line, the name of the hospital and the shape of the hospital. Thats it... so why do we care? What do we walk away from this movie with? I'll tell you what... a ton of questions from the main storyline that never get answered and zero questions from the ending.

If I really liked tormenting myself like this I would make a habit of watching every tv show to the 18 minute mark and then quickly switch over to the home shopping network.

Though I'll disagree that the reasons for the Iraq war were intentionally dubious, I'll agree with just about everything else you said. This is a very nice essay, Farhad. Though the retaliation against Al Qaeda was unarguably unavoidable, I've said that the Iraq war was the "right war in the right place at the wrong time" and I still think it was. The intel community failed in ... intel ... and Bush and congress and the CIA and generals and the whole F-ing Government failed in judgment. And now, politicians are failing in comparing Russia's incursion into Georgia with the US incursion into Iraq so they can, as you said, avoid the comparison in general. It IS comparable in a number of ways, though I'm seeing the Russian move as one to actually CLAIM new territory... territory it BITTERLY lost, while America would love to get the F out of Iraq and let them rule themselves. Of course we want them to remain friends... a democratic foothold in the middle east... a chance to somewhat westernize a part of the middle east that is not Israel, Qatar, or UAE. I also think Russia and hard-line Putin in particular wants to send a message to the Ukraine (especially) and other nearby ex-USSR nations, that Russia is MOTHER Russia and they are just ex-Russian provinces allowed to exist by the Mother. A bit of psychological warfare in action.

You are damn right that interventionism has been on the hot seat lately and no one wants to touch it with a ten-foot pole and especially when it comes to messing with a superpower like Russia... a country with more thousand nukes than I have fingers.

(sidenote)
I AM in fact a nationalist, not because I was born here and think it is innately superior for that reason... that's just ridiculous, but because I LIKE it here and I respect it most of the time above what I see elsewhere. I don't have a problem with that attitude. If you like your country, its [at least foundational] ethics, and its freedoms, don't be afraid to cheer for it... say at the Olympics for example. ahem.

I do think you're right about China and the Chinese in general as well Farhad. China is oppressive, but increasing economic prosperity and popular control should blunt the blade of their government. Still, at the moment, their treatment of the "usual folks" and their treatment of those who believe in a particular faith other than is approved by the government is detestable. I have a very close friend who worries sickly for his missionary friends who risked going there to offer Christianity to those who wanted desperately to find out more about it.

The world government idea is problematic mostly due to issues like African warlords and Islamic theocracies... as well as Catholic theocracies for that matter. I don't see Vatican City teaming up with Iran in other words any time soon, but specialization sounds like a reasonable idea. The US specializes in technological development, science, and innovation. China specializes in production. Korea is in tech as well. The UK is in... jeez I don't know, surveillance camera tech? Canada could be in oil shale and land. Most of the desert countries in sun power? Problems arise with destitute countries, but those regions could be supported by us (correction, you) rich folk. There is hope yet, just distant. First we gotta stop killing each other.

What if the US donated its missile defense rockets and its laser-equipped missile-defeating jumbo jet tech to the UN to universalize it so-to-speak to keep the thought of at least nuclear war impossible? That might ease tension... a sort of universal deterrent to ANY ICBM launch. That or all these countries could just trade more and whine less. Team up against obvious terrorists (or if you want, mass murderers in general) maybe, but otherwise communicate FAR more. Get to know each other. Learn to speak a common language on common terms.

In my opinion, the LARGEST barrier to peace is that people simply have different RULES to live by in this world. Some are faith-based. Some are science-based. Some are philosophy-based. They are not often compatible and no one has the authority but a real GOD to say what rule systems are acceptable and what are not. And don't blame just religion for it. If you do, you need to study philosophy for a bit and you'll find that religion is by far not the only obstacle to agreement on "rules of life." That my friends is the problem on this planet.

Best thing that could happen is a freaking alien attack at this point lol. Team our shit up.

That or simply let economic development go as it is going... Have you seen the talks on the increasing GLOBAL prosperity?!! They are VERY hopeful! At the rate we are going, things may get better before they get worse. Charity is often a good way to have an effect btw.