Are you a domestic terrorist?

[--Pete]

Hi,

BTW my vessel contains equivalent volumes of air and liquid.

As a certified scientist and a practical engineer, I can unequivocally state that your glass is twice as big as it should optimally be. :w00t:

--Pete

[DeeBye]

Hi,
As a certified scientist and a practical engineer, I can unequivocally state that your glass is twice as big as it should optimally be. :w00t:

My glass seems to be losing liquid volume and gaining air volume at a fairly consistent rate. Is this a design flaw, or is it an intended feature?

[--Pete]

Hi,

My glass seems to be losing liquid volume and gaining air volume at a fairly consistent rate. Is this a design flaw, or is it an intended feature?

Depends. If it is a Micro$quish glass, it is a feature, otherwise, it's a flaw. BTW, is your elbow getting tired from one arm curls? :whistling:

--Pete

[Vandiablo]

Hi,
As a certified scientist and a practical engineer, I can unequivocally state that your glass is twice as big as it should optimally be.

As a trained operations researcher and an impractical drinker, I have examined the dual problem and note that the vessel's smallness is half of the optimal value.

-V

[DeeBye]

As a trained operations researcher and an impractical drinker, I have examined the dual problem and note that the vessel's smallness is half of the optimal value.

I have exhaustively researched this issue, and it seems that the solution is to wear a blindfold while you are drinking.

The only drawback is that your glass will be both full and empty at the same time, and your cat might die.

[Vandiablo]

I have exhaustively researched this issue, and it seems that the solution is to wear a blindfold while you are drinking.

The only drawback is that your glass will be both full and empty at the same time

Also note that using your lips to observe the level will change the level!

and your cat might die.

Only if it's in a box. And if the capacity of the box is two live cats, then your box may or may not be half full or may or may not be half empty.

Besides, the cat will die. It's only a matter of time.

(Especially if there are no holes in the box.)

[--Pete]

Hi,

Also note that using your lips to observe the level will change the level!

Ah! The famous Oktoberfest Uncertainty Principle. Sometimes stated as, "It is impossible to both enjoy Oktoberfest and to remember Oktoberfest." Or, more succinctly, "One cannot remember enjoying Oktoberfest."

Only if it's in a box. And if the capacity of the box is two live cats, then your box may or may not be half full or may or may not be half empty.

With two cats, the probability is 1/4 that there are 18 lives left and 1/4 that there are none. The probabilities for intermediate states cannot be calculated without resorting to Gödelian numbers and contain unnormalizable infinities. Indeed, the whole study of QCD (Quantum Cat Dynamics) is complex beyond understanding, but progress is being made on Fundamental Hairball Theory -- basically an indigestible multidimensional string theory.

--Pete

[kandrathe]

Not suddenly, gradually. Where and when would you rather have been born?

If I could choose... I would like to be my wife's cat.

You live at a comfortable time. Medical technology has never been better. People live long. Your chance of being murdered is far lower. The rule of law is universal and non-corrupt in a way that you could not possibly expect in most countries even today, and certainly not anywhere in the world two hundred years ago. Computing technology has revolutionized our lives, from education to gaming to this discussion we're having right now.

Yes, you describe the bars to a gilded cage. You are still telling me to enjoy my fluffy pillow.

Sure. They were fed enough to survive, fattened when they were needed at market, beaten when they were unruly, caged, forced to work, forbidden to leave the land, and their descendants belonged to their owners.

And, how is that different than how we are treated? For some part I get to choose my master, but still I end up serving one and earning crumbs from his table. For every year I have worked, my product has earned my masters millions of dollars, but I get a meager salary sufficient to get a house, buy food, and transport myself to my designated cubical. Should I earn too much, your touted progressive taxation system steps in to keep the uppity worker in their place. Look around you. How prevalent is the sex industry? As with other venues of entertainment, where we commoners are used for amusement. How do you think that happened?

And yet, you still have a vote. You can still accumulate wealth, and invest it more or less as you please. You can work in whatever job you choose for yourself, if you can earn it. The American dream is still alive and kicking, and still looks really good to people who didn't have the privelege to grow up thinking middling tax rates constituted serious oppression.

And, that vote is meaningless when your representative gives lip service to the electorate, and does the bidding of the one who paid to get them into the elected office. How rife is Washington with lobbyists and special interests?

What does a Bangladeshi child do, to deserve a life where American technology, citizenship, public goods, education, medical care, rule of law, and everything else your sons enjoy just for being in the good old US of A, are all out of the question? Children do nothing to deserve their fates.

Space and finger strength would prevent me from describing everything wrong with Bangladesh. My point is that just as the adults in Bangladesh have the choice of whether or not to bring that 5th or 6th child into their overpopulated nation, we have the choice of how burdened by taxation, polluted by our refuse, and caged in our systems we will leave our children.

They are simply born into them - this is possibly the single largest reason I am *not* a libertarian. Too much about us is a context we never chose, but were born into anyway.

Libertarianism is the combination of the freedom to live your life in any peaceful way you choose, with the prohibition against the use of force against others, except in defense, and honoring and respecting the peaceful choices of others. The only burden I inherited from my parents was to take personal responsibility for my own life and choices. I would only seek to remove the chains (laws) that restrict the people in the US from being free people.

[Jester]

Yes, you describe the bars to a gilded cage. You are still telling me to enjoy my fluffy pillow.

Yeah, that's definitely the head-bang-against-wall Objectivist bit. You don't seem to care that you *have* a "fluffy pillow" - and that very few have ever had that privilege. It doesn't even seem to matter to you that you live in a democracy, with remarkable freedoms, more than were enjoyed by almost anyone, anywhere else, ever. The historical context of your situation as being in one of the freest, richest, healthiest societies ever is rendered irrelevant - because you can find reasons it's not yet your utopia.

And, how is that different than how we are treated?

QED. If the difference isn't immediately, shockingly obvious to you, then I think we have an irreconcilable difference in our beliefs.

For every year I have worked, my product has earned my masters millions of dollars, but I get a meager salary sufficient to get a house, buy food, and transport myself to my designated cubical.

I don't know what's going on here, but if you're producing over *one million dollars per year* in output, and yet are being paid a "meager salary", you're either a terrible negotiator, or you're an altruist of Dickensian proportions. If every working American produced that much, your GDP would be 155 quadrillion dollars.

Should I earn too much, your touted progressive taxation system steps in to keep the uppity worker in their place.

:blink:

I can't wrap my head around this, try as I might. If your notion is that progressive taxation is a method of keeping the working poor from improving their position, that is exactly backwards. How would paying a *higher* share of taxes help poorer working people? Flat taxation, consumption taxation, poll taxation... it would all have the same effect - to shift the balance of taxes downwards towards the poorer end of the income spectrum.

Uppity... sheesh.

Look around you.

Excellent advice. I see the richest, healthiest, most free, most technologically advanced society in history. I can speak my mind without fear of imprisonment, I have clean, heated running water and electricity. I have plentiful food, a room in a perfectly adequate house, and a health care system that would take care of me in my illness. I can practice my religion (or lack thereof, in my case) in peace, without being strung up, burned, or stoned to death. I elect my government, which responds to the public will (whim?) to a degree that would have been unheard of a century ago.

What do you see? Oh, right. A "gilded cage". All I can say is that pretty much anyone anywhere anytime would gladly trade their situation for your "cage".

-Jester

[--Pete]

Hi,

If the difference isn't immediately, shockingly obvious to you, then I think we have an irreconcilable difference in our beliefs.

I'd say that that is clearly the case. It is a difference of *beliefs*. Putting Kant aside for a moment, I think we all see the same reality. It is how we react to that reality that differs.

You, Jester, see the reality of modern industrial nations as an indication of the progress that mankind has made in science, in technology, in government, in medicine, in standard of living, etc. I suspect that you also see flaws in the systems, things that should, indeed must, be improved. Because of the nature of the discussion, you have been forced to defend the positive aspects, the accomplishments, almost to the point of implying the non-existence of the negative. So, at this point, you have been forced into a Pollyanna corner.

kandrathe, on the other hand, probably sees the same realities. I doubt that he would deny the benefits of antibiotics, the superiority of democracy to monarchy, the value of heating and insulation, or the importance of an adequate food supply. However, he has focused on the continuing shortcomings of our modern societies. Shortcomings that, to some extent we all agree on (although we might, probably do, disagree on the solutions to these shortcomings). By defending the negative side, he has placed himself in an anti-Pollyanna corner.

I still think, contrary to your previous assertion, that we're all seeing the same glass. But we're each seeing that glass through our perspective. As for me, I see that glass as having enough to quench my thirst, though I do wish for more.

And to kandrathe, sorry for putting you in the third person, but I am responding to Jester.

--Pete

[Jester]

The objection is not most pertinently to his view of the present, which he is entitled to see as good, bad, mediocre, or whatever else. I may agree or disagree, but perspectives about what the present *is*, in and of itself, can and will differ. Is the sun setting on one part of the world, or rising in another? Is the glass half empty, or half full? Are we living our lives, or dying our deaths? But this is not the big problem.

The big problem is the historical comparison. I understand the idea that someone would see the modern person as chained in their own way to the problems of our time. To a large extent I agree - as I'm sure I've demonstrated over the years, I'm far from a polyanna about how things are going. But the notion that this justifies a bald-faced comparison with the slavery of the past, strikes me as demonstrably inaccurate, and more than a little insulting to the memory of those who suffered those injustices. Paying a chunk of your cash in taxes sucks, but it bears almost no relation to the historical experience of slavery. That doesn't seem to me to be as simple a perspective problem as you seem to be arguing.

-Jester

[kandrathe]

And to kandrathe, sorry for putting you in the third person, but I am responding to Jester.

I think you captured the gist of our positions succinctly. I seek the purest form of liberty, and whether the master is generous or cruel does not matter to me. There is a corporate/government ruling class that takes advantage of the majority and engineers the system to keep them down. We can't own property that is free from attachments or other coercions by the State. Our basic property, namely the sweat of our brow, is regulated more so than any other form.

We are not free. How do I know? The government can take over GM, and give bankers billions of dollars of our money. These were not democratic decisions, or were they even deliberated, debated or voted upon by the congress. However benevolent we believe the actions to be, they were fascist at worst, and oligarchical at best.

[kandrathe]

The big problem is the historical comparison.

The idea that wage slavery is equal to chattel slavery is not a new thought. Cicero, Marx, and even Chomsky make the same comparisons as I do. Charles Edwards Lester, confessed that "he would sooner subject his child to Southern slavery, than have him to be a free laborer of England."

Somewhere in the early 1900's in the battles between the uber capitalists, and the progressive socialists, the notion of individual liberty was lost. What was sold out for collective bargaining has now become collective subservience. Capital has crushed labor, and you would have me be grateful for the scraps I'm fed. No, I'm not starving, as long as I get up and go off to that job every day. They get to tell me which days I work, and which days I do not. They tell me when I can take my vacations. And, in these modern times we willingly wear a leash (cell phone, PDA or pager). So the bosses can expect you to be at their beck and call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. What is so wonderful about a life where you leave for work before your children awaken, and you get home in time to eat dinner with them and then send them to bed? Sometimes I have some free time on the weekends to spend with them. Hallelujah.

[Lissa]

Hi,
Ah! The famous Oktoberfest Uncertainty Principle. Sometimes stated as, "It is impossible to both enjoy Oktoberfest and to remember Oktoberfest." Or, more succinctly, "One cannot remember enjoying Oktoberfest."

--Pete

Sounds like the 60s... :whistling:

[Jester]

One moment that you're the champion of Hayek and preaching the gospel of individual responsibility, the next moment you're citing Marx and complaining about how your life is horrible 'cause the man keeps you down. One moment, you're talking about how tax cuts will save the economy, and the next that collective bargaining is a sham because capital has crushed labour.

I'm not sure how you keep these things straight in your head, but I'm not sure I could make it all work.

By the by, have you tried turning off your cell phone? Mine has an off button. It seems to work quite well.

-Jester

[kandrathe]

One moment that you're the champion of Hayek and preaching the gospel of individual responsibility, the next moment you're citing Marx and complaining about how your life is horrible 'cause the man keeps you down.

Don't forget my good friend Ayn Rand, and the objectivists. I find it bizarre at times too, that some of my more anarchist views jive with Chomsky.

One moment, you're talking about how tax cuts will save the economy, and the next that collective bargaining is a sham because capital has crushed labour.

Who is being taxed again? I've always stood with the productive class, and against the coercion of the State. In that regard, much of what I believe in is the dogma of the ancient democratic party. I neither want the people to be dominated by government or tycoons, or worse the marriage of both.

By the by, have you tried turning off your cell phone? Mine has an off button. It seems to work quite well.

Sure, but it will get you fired when a one hour response is mandated.

[Jester]

Don't forget my good friend Ayn Rand, and the objectivists. I find it bizarre at times too, that some of my more anarchist views jive with Chomsky.

It seems rather difficult to reconcile the idea that you have absolute self-ownership, and that free exchange between people is sacred and should be totally unfettered (including wage work- trading labour for money) with the idea that wages are slavery and represent a total negation of your freedom which should be eradicated as surely as chattel slavery.

If an employer does not have coercive power to make me work for them specifically, as would be the case in slavery, debt peonage, or Jim Crow-type "wage slavery", how is the wage relationship fundamentally unjust?

Who is being taxed again?

People earning income, in increasing proportion to that income? You said yourself that the poorest earners are paying little if any of their income, and the highest earners pay the lion's share of the taxes. That means the little guy isn't being taxed heavily until *after* their income has reached a high level - a point when they are comfortably above poverty and can save and invest to accumulate wealth. That's the whole idea.

I've always stood with the productive class, and against the coercion of the State. In that regard, much of what I believe in is the dogma of the ancient democratic party. I neither want the people to be dominated by government or tycoons, or worse the marriage of both.

I'm not sure I share the class-based view, or the narrow focus on the productive, but we are at least agreed that people being dominated by government or by tycoons (or both) is something to avoid.

Sure, but it will get you fired when a one hour response is mandated.

You aren't chained to it, and I can only imagine you signed the employment contract in full possession of your free will. Individual responsibility, right? You might not find it optimal to leave your job, but you could. You can self-employ, or find work elsewhere that leaves your free time open. I'm not saying that's a great plan, but nature's a bitch and we all have to eat and keep a roof over our heads - you have choices about how you do that. That certainly wasn't true of a slave - don't like your job? You have no recourse except to break the law, put yourself in enormous danger, and run. Freedom might look like slavery if you focus exclusively on specific aspects and ignore the rest, but there are still fundamental differences, ones that define the relationship.

-Jester

[kandrathe]

It seems rather difficult to reconcile the idea that you have absolute self-ownership, and that free exchange between people is sacred and should be totally unfettered (including wage work- trading labour for money) with the idea that wages are slavery and represent a total negation of your freedom which should be eradicated as surely as chattel slavery.

ESOP and profit sharing help to make things more equitable, but most places where I work consume their workers.

If an employer does not have coercive power to make me work for them specifically, as would be the case in slavery, debt peonage, or Jim Crow-type "wage slavery", how is the wage relationship fundamentally unjust?

For the bulk of people, employment is their only option. Their are huge barriers to entrepreneurship, and sustaining a family run business over generations. So, collectively, corporations know they are the only deal. When there is a "shortage" in any particular field, the government(in collusion with corporations) selectively opens up the immigration spigot with special employer sponsored VISA's. Thus, the employee is always kept in an insecure position.

People earning income, in increasing proportion to that income? You said yourself that the poorest earners are paying little if any of their income, and the highest earners pay the lion's share of the taxes. That means the little guy isn't being taxed heavily until *after* their income has reached a high level - a point when they are comfortably above poverty and can save and invest to accumulate wealth. That's the whole idea.

Except, it's not democratic, or in other words equal. It is no more fair that someone with tremendous wealth and small income pays zero. The fundamental unfairness is that the government has grown so large as to become a burden on all classes. We need to cut it back to a sustainable size.

I'm not sure I share the class-based view, or the narrow focus on the productive, but we are at least agreed that people being dominated by government or by tycoons (or both) is something to avoid.

Good. :D

You aren't chained to it, and I can only imagine you signed the employment contract in full possession of your free will. Individual responsibility, right? You might not find it optimal to leave your job, but you could. You can self-employ, or find work elsewhere that leaves your free time open. I'm not saying that's a great plan, but nature's a bitch and we all have to eat and keep a roof over our heads - you have choices about how you do that. That certainly wasn't true of a slave - don't like your job? You have no recourse except to break the law, put yourself in enormous danger, and run. Freedom might look like slavery if you focus exclusively on specific aspects and ignore the rest, but there are still fundamental differences, ones that define the relationship.

Yes, it the IT world, our freedom ebbs and flows with the economy. I have the choice to rebel and join the ranks of the unemployed, and they will easily replace me with someone who will gratefully obey.

[--Pete]

Hi,

Yes, it the IT world, our freedom ebbs and flows with the economy. I have the choice to rebel and join the ranks of the unemployed, and they will easily replace me with someone who will gratefully obey.

But the IT world isn't the whole world. And unemployment isn't the only alternative. There are nationwide shortages of teachers and nurses. There are other fields that need people. If you cannot afford to retrain, it is not the corporate world that put you in that position, it is the choices you made. If, to be free, you have to have no boss, no supervisor, no one that expects your effort for their money, then you can still move to undeveloped areas and live a pioneer lifestyle, grow and hunt your own food, etc.

If by 'freedom' you mean a total lack of responsibilities, the ability to do whatever you want or even nothing at all, then that condition has never existed and will, probably, never exist. Our earliest ancestors (if our closest relatives are any indication) formed bands with leaders and followers. The leaders were not free, they were constrained by the good of the band, both real and perceived. The followers were not free, they had to cooperate in the band's activities and submit to the will of the leader. "Lead, follow, or get out of the way." Those are the three possible states, the third being 'outcast' and possibly the least free of them all, for the outcast is a slave to nature and has no one to relive him of any part of that slavery.

As a person of principle, and as one that seems even to put principle above personal well being, your argument that working for someone is the equivalent of slavery seems incongruous. The fundamental difference *is* one of principle. Slavery reduces a human being to an object that can be owned. This was recognized as far back as Cicero ("instrumentum vocale"). The most benevolent treatment of a slave (short of manumission) does not negate this fundamental fact, that a slave is an object, not a person.

We have options, we have choices. We don't have unlimited license, but we do have a large chunk of freedom. Maybe we should have more, but that is something to work for. But if your idea of freedom is freedom from responsibility to the world, to the nation, to society, then I cannot agree with you. And if you think that those responsibilities will be shouldered by individuals without coercion, then I think you are mistaken. And, with the fragmentation and decline of religion, I cannot think of an organization other than the state who can supply that coercion.

--Pete

[Occhidiangela]

I'm an economic history student.

-Jester

That and a euro will get you a cup of coffee.;)