tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post4141702280710948853..comments2024-03-29T00:39:31.629-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: Sousveillance, Surveillance and AccountabilityDavid Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger61125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-29048999189568787632016-04-23T17:13:50.618-07:002016-04-23T17:13:50.618-07:00onward
onwardonward<br /><br /><br />onwardDavid Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-7817674376917020392016-04-23T10:58:54.337-07:002016-04-23T10:58:54.337-07:00Oh no you don't! You complained that sousveil...Oh no you don't! You complained that sousveillance of cops was causing a surge in ER violence and you know damn well you were referring to cops having to back off from gestapo tactics based on race.<br /><br />Go back to those 5 bald facts, son. Till I see you actually acknowledge that there's much, much LESS tyrannical oppression in this liberal society than in any of the Mono Labe ones before it, you'll know how little credibility you have, here.David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-38442116536727994252016-04-23T10:04:14.187-07:002016-04-23T10:04:14.187-07:00David is correct: I have failed to communicate tha...<br />David is correct: I have failed to communicate that which I have intended and, in failure, I have resorted to figurative language, analogy, colorful metaphor & bombast. <br /><br />With your indulgence, I will backtrack to reference what Jefferson knew, Alfred suspects & David rejects: What is reasonable is not necessarily logical.<br /><br />For the record, let me state that 'Molon Labe' defiance is unreasonable by definition because the reasonable individual compromises, appeases, avoids conflict, plays it safe, performs cost/benefit analysis, accepts consensus, takes the good with the bad, bows to greater power & authority, knows that part of loaf is better than no loaf at all, prefers submission to death & values civil collectivism over autonomy. <br /><br />However, Molon Labe is logical in the sense that it is a valid conclusion drawn from a formal set of premises without reference to meaning or context, especially if those initial premises preclude failure or surrender, emphasize classical masculine virtue, value strength & persistence over weakness, postulate freedom as an absolute good and reject submission as a moral evil, giving birth to a Spartan sentiment that Zapata paraphrased as "I'd rather die on my feet than live on my knees".<br /><br />The revolutionary Molon Labe mindset (which is by definition 'unreasonable') has led to great & improbable human accomplishment -- including an Enlightened West, Space Travel & what David likes to term 'the rejection of failure mode' -- the problem being that this unreasonable magnificence is incompatible with a Transparent Society that seeks to 'play it safe' by identifying & pacifying its statistical outliers.<br /><br />It all comes back to initial premise: <br /><br />Transparency advocates Reason, its purpose being to identify 'cheating' (whatever that means), expose antisocial behaviour, eliminate autonomy, minimise risk, advocate collectivism & promote consensus at any cost, even if it means legislated mediocrity, appeasement, compromise, submission & an eternity spent on one's knees as a veritable slave.<br /><br />You'd expect a Contrarian to know this.<br /><br /><br />Best<br />____<br /><br />I assure you that those activities that tend to lead to the ER -- irresponsibility, drug abuse & gang culture -- are Equal Opportunity Destroyers. I find it fascinating, though, how quick the PC are to see the tinge of race in every criticism of undesirable behaviour, even when the issue of race is never addressed, which suggests that it is the PC individuals who self-identify as racists by seeing race everywhere. locumranchnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-27337377693991937082016-04-23T09:45:33.370-07:002016-04-23T09:45:33.370-07:00Drunk uncle Donald: https://youtu.be/0pex6o6f3YEDrunk uncle Donald: <a href="https://youtu.be/0pex6o6f3YE" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/0pex6o6f3YE</a>Paul451https://www.blogger.com/profile/12119086761190994938noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-65484573341980817312016-04-22T23:26:31.363-07:002016-04-22T23:26:31.363-07:00Side political note: For the first time ever the D...Side political note: For the first time ever the Democrats showed up at my door to see if they could get me to re-register as one of them (I used to be is what I told them) or if they could sway my vote. In California, they have things pretty well sealed up so they don't really need my vote, but they DID drop by to ask. I think that bodes well for them regarding down ticket races in my area. <br /><br />They weren't pitching Sanders or Clinton. They were concerned with finding Trump supporters. Neat to see it happening. 8)Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-44041725161694218032016-04-22T23:22:25.364-07:002016-04-22T23:22:25.364-07:00@donzelion: As I understand it, the argument for l...@donzelion: As I understand it, the argument for lots of transparency protecting a few secrets goes like this. If we both know what the other is up to most of the time, we'll notice when the other goes for one of our caches. If you agree not to go for mine, I'll reciprocate IF I can verify your compliance. You might do the same. If you cheat me, of course I'll cheat you and we get that part of the prisoner's dilemma game. If you don't, we get the other part, right? Not quite. This is actually the repeating version of it because each day is a new game. The Repeating Prisoner's Dilemma resolves pretty quickly because cheaters get ejected from the game. Non-cheaters won't play with them.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-79950981434290857362016-04-22T23:14:44.558-07:002016-04-22T23:14:44.558-07:00Good sized squirrel indeed. It's as if we are ...Good sized squirrel indeed. It's as if we are supposed to respond emotionally to the ER story and conclude all the people he DIDN'T see and stitch up had to be just as bad. Obviously the whole of civilization is in that hand basket being delivered to a nether world.<br /><br />Heh. That bit about how the next generation of Brins has been trained is a good squirrel too. I suppose it is intended to provoke a fatherly, emotional response. Weakly delivered.<br /><br />The thing I remember most about squirrels is they are pretty easy to shoot. One scout master fed us one once. Bang. Easy. He didn't want us playing with the gun, though. Wonder why.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-25489678328695736192016-04-22T23:08:32.406-07:002016-04-22T23:08:32.406-07:00@Locum: "I agree that guilt by association is...@Locum: <i>"I agree that guilt by association is a ridiculous legal argument (IE. The Kochs & their Nazi nanny). Care to comment on the constitutionality of 'The Vanishing Trial' in US Jurisprudence?"</i><br /><br />The stats in question reference a drop from the 1960s to the 2000s in the number of federal trials. The explanation is simple: Republican Presidents. The growth of federal litigation in the 1940s - 60s owes much to resolving the implications of the New Deal, the Civil Rights movement, the Vietnam War - at each stage, courts played a major role in the change. Republicans hated that sort of 'activism' (and embraced their own activism - which is why Ted Cruz is still running for President - they never really bought their own putative doctrine).donzelionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05991849781932619746noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-32132749788143287542016-04-22T23:00:11.694-07:002016-04-22T23:00:11.694-07:00@Dr. Brin - "My current party registration is...@Dr. Brin - <i>"My current party registration is a product of laziness, since CA adopted the best election laws in the nation, and party registration stopped mattering."</i><br />When I realized that what was intended as a playful nudge might be taken as a screech of judgment, I considered retracting the remark. That said, well, Bloomberg proves there's at least two smart Republicans left in the world (I'll give credit to Powell too, even though I still think he had his heart a little broken by a party that abused an honorable man).<br /><br />But as for the complete misreading, I was responding to a piece of what you'd written here - <br /><br /><i>"In the long run, what all this proves is that we will never be able to base our safety and freedom on some illusion that others do not know something. Concealment may have practical aspects, here and now, but its sanctuary is temporary, at best and ultimately delusional."</i><br /><br />Most of the time, the way to defend a secret cache is to zealously guard pieces underlying the methodology of opening it. We invent new ways of hiding, and new ways of discovering the hidden, and new ways of hiding in the face of the inventions - a perpetual arms race. Encryption/deencryption is but one aspect of a race that goes back as long as chemical camouflage enabled certain bacteria to fight off certain viruses. It does not seem likely that transparency about 99% will facilitate opacity for 1% of the data - rather, it would paint a target on whatever is sealed for whoever wished to test their ingenuity against whoever locked it away. Bloody tomb raiders and whatnot.<br /><br />The more transparent the world becomes, the more secrecy will be "valued" (literally, or better still, monetized). The right algorithm monitoring the right data can transfer billions of dollars in fractions of a second to exploit meaning once a truth is disclosed (the precise reason Bloomberg is a billionaire). But before disclosure, others can set the stage, and arbitrage many billions themselves. The illusion that others do not know something is critical to some of the largest values - and equally critical to smaller matters in many cases.donzelionhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05991849781932619746noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-63031094623824305672016-04-22T21:36:13.804-07:002016-04-22T21:36:13.804-07:00Har! I predicted "squirrel!" And lo, n...Har! I predicted "squirrel!" And lo, not a single one of the five is addressed. Instead...racism-tinged anecdotes that amount to... "SQUIRREL!"David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-42748579707518621292016-04-22T19:55:30.473-07:002016-04-22T19:55:30.473-07:00Returning to the Official Narrative:
It's cle...<br /><br />Returning to the Official Narrative:<br /><br />It's clear that a culturally-insensitive Larry_H owes a collaterally traumatised Rob_H an apology for denying the validity of Rob_H's emotional reaction to collateral "horrors that don't happen and acting as if (he's) been proven correct" in response to imaginary social breakdown & random attacks against soft (unarmed; defenseless) targets, including women & children, which may or may not have occurred at locales like Rwanda, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Britain's Rotherham, Norway's Utøya, Connecticut's Sandy Hook, Kenya's Stephjoy Boarding School & Chicago USA, all of which may be dismissed as Non-Western except for possibly the Chicago Midwest.<br /><br />I can also attest to Rob_H's assertions about collateral damage, at least as far as Chicago is concerned:<br /><br />Once upon a time, I staffed Chicago ERs & sewed up countless assaults, stabbings & gunshots and discovered -- to my absolute horror -- that all of these frequently armed, aggressive, verbally abusive, be-tatted, drug dealing, needle-marked, gang sign flashing males with injuries were Innocent Victims/Collateral Damage (or so they claimed) who were just "Minding Their Own Business' when they were set upon by Random Scallywags & Prejudiced Police without any provocation whatsoever.<br /><br />Of course, the 2015 release of Sousveillance Video has proven the Widespread Innocence of those victimised by Prejudiced Police and forced the Chicago PD to disengage & mend its Racist Ways, leading to the a 76% to 88% INCREASE in 2016 Chicagoland Murder, Shootings, Mayhem & Unavoidable Collateral Damage Rates in just a 3 month period: <br /><br />http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/2016/04/01/murders-shootings-soar-chicago-through-first-three-months-2016/82507210/<br /><br />Mmmmm !! That's some Good Sarcasm there.<br /><br />But, in all seriousness, an often contrary, defiant & libertarian David -- who remembers his history of purges, pogroms & diasporas and trains his offspring to defend themselves against potential assault -- has already self-identified as the 'Molon Labe' type, although he is loathe to admit it (now) when Molon Labe has been so successfully stereotyped as Waco Wackiness. <br /><br /><br />Bestlocumranchnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-50913982356056089982016-04-22T19:13:25.114-07:002016-04-22T19:13:25.114-07:00Beyond incapability to contemplate positive sum ou...Beyond incapability to contemplate positive sum outcomes - which comprise the sufficient and entirely necessary justification for otherwise indefensible capitalism, the other blind spots include...<br /><br />1) 6000 years. The despised liberal society is the ONLY one that escaped the feudal-oppression trap-state. Hence a burden of proof falls on those who claim that it is the road to tyranny. Especially ungrateful dope wretches who rail that assertion while munching snacks while using tech marvels, ranting in utter confidence that they are safe and can say whatever they like.<br /><br />(Including the hilarious assertion that THEY would be top dogs, if only that coddling liberal society vanished. Hoot!)<br /><br />2) Talent waste - the entirely pragmatic justification for liberal extensions of inclusion, tolerance and opportunity. Entirely necessary and entirely sufficient and entirely free of the taint of being called "naively goody-goody." Prejudice wastes talent. Period. It is also the first refuge of cowards who don't want to compete on a level playing field. Duh.<br /><br />3) The utter failure of their side of culture war, at prescribing and teaching methods to live well. The stunningly perfect list of almost every single metric of moral or healthy living outcomes that are not just worse, but vastly worse, almost across the board. And hence, utter rejection of "facts" and so-called "science." <br /><br />4) The clearest rebuke... the exodus of nearly all the smart kids, every June, hurrying off to join urban-blue America as fast as their free and open-eyed and well-informed like souls and brains and feet can manage.<br /><br />5) Decade after decade of being proved utterly wrong... about commies everywhere and flouridation in the 1950s. Cars don't cause smog. Tobacco is harmless. Industries can dump into streams! Women and minorities can't think! What Ozone Hole? Saddam is our pal. What climate change? Give all our money to the aristocracy and deficits will magically vanish! Weapons of Mass Destruction! Scientists and all the smartypants professions that know stuff are all, automatically fools!<br /><br />I'll quit at 5... but you know I can go on. The thing about these five is that all of them aren't just valid points... they are so blatantly true that confeds won't even dispute them! They'll point offstage and yell "squirrel!" <br /><br />This is NOT about conservatism, per se. There are plenty of versions of conservatism and libertarianism that are not suborned into confederate culture war madness. But the sane-modernist conservatives and libertarians need to wake up and realize that sucking up to plantation lords has never worked.<br /><br /><br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-48014107103619183212016-04-22T18:24:01.505-07:002016-04-22T18:24:01.505-07:00@locumranch: Heh. Let me help you out a bit here....@locumranch: Heh. Let me help you out a bit here. The Declaration is a document intended to justify a revolution. It is not a useful document for determining how to govern the new nation that emerges. Recall that we tried ‘something different’ between the end of the revolution and the writing of our Constitution. It didn’t work. Documents that guide governance tend to be less revolutionary because they have to focus more on the positive and less on the negative. It is also useful to remember that Jefferson was more involved in the Declaration and less so in the Constitution. Jefferson was in France at the time of the convention.<br /><br />Jefferson DID use some dark language that works well as revolutionary inspiration. I can understand its appeal to you. There are times I mutter about watering the tree of liberty by my own hand too. Fortunately, I haven’t gone fully whacko yet. My neighbors are in no danger of being axed by a mad man. I DO have the axe, but I like to think it is for family defense. 8)<br /><br />The problem with ‘Molon Labe’ and the current ravings of ‘Red State wackos’ as you call them is they don’t have a revolutionary consensus today. There ARE people who are upset, but they aren’t ready to burn down cities. Check back in a decade and maybe they will be, but they are too early right now, thus they get interpreted as rabid dogs that have to be put down. Mmm… rabid squirrels might be a better match for some of them. Dogs can be scary. Can Kibble be rabid? 8)<br /><br />I don’t mind individual beliefs some have regarding the dangers they see, but some of us think this civilization is the best thing since sliced bread. I’m willing to look at the dangers you point out, but I might not see them the way you do. I might agree on some stuff, but I might point to some of the people near you and argue they are filling your head with nonsense in order to use you like cannon fodder. Do you want to water the tree of liberty? Point to particular people doing particular immoral things and then we can have a discussion. Point to nebulous figments of our collective imagination and someone like me will avoid you because anger with no potential outlet damages the person experiencing it.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-88834180350702982152016-04-22T15:19:15.520-07:002016-04-22T15:19:15.520-07:00Guys leave him alone. He is full, capering-jibber...Guys leave him alone. He is full, capering-jibbering scream-opposites-to-true-until-I can-convince-myself mode.<br /><br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-53898763183482439112016-04-22T14:18:54.307-07:002016-04-22T14:18:54.307-07:00Collateral damage. Fancy words for "children ...Collateral damage. Fancy words for "children lying dead in the streets." Fancy words for "wide-scale disruption of society." You want to see an example of collateral damage? Somalia and Syria are collateral damage that happens when society breaks down - to the point that Syria's government is only now viable thanks to Russia intervening. And the majority of Somalia is a prime example of "collateral damage" that happens when government breaks down.<br /><br />You want to know what collateral damage is? Collateral damage is your wife (if you have one) and children (if you have them) not coming home one night because someone shot up their car when they were driving home, or someone blowing up your house because they want to get rid of you and use your property as a weapon.<br /><br />Collateral damage. It means nothing until it is the people YOU know and people YOU care for. And all at once it stops being "collateral damage" and becomes people instead of statistics. <br /><br />Rob H.Acacia H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07678539067303911329noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-78089223976736738932016-04-22T14:09:49.315-07:002016-04-22T14:09:49.315-07:00locumranch:
Disarmed West already suffers from co...locumranch:<br /><i> Disarmed West already suffers from collateral damage because the western public can't defend itself;<br /></i><br /><br />What disarmed west? You're not including the United States in there, are you?<br /><br />True, the delegates to the Republican National Convention in Cleveland are forbidden to defend themselves with firearms. But no other Americans are. Not even terrorists or illegal aliens.LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-63042791047776142642016-04-22T14:07:09.876-07:002016-04-22T14:07:09.876-07:00locumranch:
@David:
When they (whoever 'they...locumranch:<br /><i><br />@David:<br /><br />When they (whoever 'they' are) come & take whatever it is you value by force, maybe you can shame them afterwards (sousveillance) or file some sort of punitive writ in court (sueveillance?). That'll show 'em.<br /></i><br /><br />Locumranch, you keep predicting horrors that don't happen and acting as if you've been proven correct.<br /><br />You can't wait for civilization to collapse so you can be proven right that we're all living in a state of war with each other in which only the strongest and most ruthless will prevail. But it keeps not happening.LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-48447593253082451102016-04-22T13:15:28.527-07:002016-04-22T13:15:28.527-07:00@Alfred:
Good points all, Molon Labe (translated...<br /><br />@Alfred: <br /><br />Good points all, Molon Labe (translated as 'Come & Take Them', 'them' most commonly identified as defensive weapons, but generalizable to 'Might Makes Right') is perhaps more Jeffersonian, but Constitutional insomuch as Jefferson contributed much content to the US Constitution.<br /><br />As documented in the US Declaration of Independence, Jefferson understood & knew that (1) Reason, Sufferance & Appeasement were the insidiously progressive precursors to Enslavement, (2) Revolution was not something to be taken lightly by the Reasonable, and (3) Repeated injuries & usurpations led directly to the establishment of Absolute Tyranny.<br /><br />Most interestingly, the revolutionary justifications listed by Jefferson (then attributed to British Rule by King George) are near identical to those attributed to modern US Federalism by the Red State Libertarian wackos that you know so well, especially in regard to State Rights, Militarization & Immigration.<br /><br />Check it out:<br /><br />http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html<br /><br />_____<br /><br />@donzelion: <br /><br />I agree that guilt by association is a ridiculous legal argument (IE. The Kochs & their Nazi nanny). Care to comment on the constitutionality of 'The Vanishing Trial' in US Jurisprudence?<br /><br />http://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publishing/litigation_journal/04winter_openingstatement.authcheckdam.pdf<br /><br />____<br /><br />@Rob_H: <br /><br />Yes, of course, an Armed Society would have to expect collateral damage. Big Whoop. <br /><br />(1) A Disarmed West already suffers from collateral damage because the western public can't defend itself; (2) We cannot expect Mercy from those who would hold our women & children hostage to compel our obedience; and, (3) You've already condemned countless women & children to certain death by choosing the 'Do Nothing' Nightmare Option.<br /><br />Have you no conscience?<br /><br />_____<br /><br />@David: <br /><br />When they (whoever 'they' are) come & take whatever it is you value by force, maybe you can shame them afterwards (sousveillance) or file some sort of punitive writ in court (sueveillance?). That'll show 'em.<br /><br />_____<br /><br />Best<br />locumranchnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-65748073599112955222016-04-22T13:10:53.745-07:002016-04-22T13:10:53.745-07:00Alfred Differ:
Rand’s approach is easily torpedoe...Alfred Differ:<br /><i><br />Rand’s approach is easily torpedoed if one examines it as a moral system. <br /></i><br /><br />First of all, in case it's not clear, I'm not holding Ayn Rand up as any kind of ideal to follow. I use her an example to shoot down, not to hold up.<br /><br /><i><br />The problem she has few who support her. There is no consensus big enough to bring her system into our social (emergent) orders. <br /></i><br /><br />Hmmmm....., she may have few who support her, but some were/are well-placed enough to do damage. Alan Greenspan and Paul Ryan come immediately to mind.<br /><br /><i><br />I’m a big fan of markets, but I’ll baulk at anyone owing Reardon anything beyond a <br />simple trade. If I am made $1000 happier by some trade, that simply limits what I’ll offer in that trade to $1000.<br /></i><br /><br />This is why I cited her as an example of someone not believing in a positive sum game. Maybe it would have been more accurate to say "not believing in a win-win scenario". In her view, if Rearden Metal improved your well-being in excess of what you paid for it, then you have "stolen" something from its inventor. The positiveness of the sum <b>all</b> belongs to him.<br /><br />To cite an example mentioned here a few weeks ago, if I pay $10 to have a pizza delivered, it's not enough that the pizza is worth exactly the same to me as the $10 bill is. Otherwise, why would I bother to go through the work of engaging in the trade--I might as well just keep the money instead. No, I buy a pizza for $10 because I'm <b>better off</b> with the pizza than I am with the money. And the pizzeria sells me the pizza for $10 because <b>they're</b> better off with the money than with the pizza. It's a true positive-sum game and win-win scenario. It's not that one party is outwitting the other--both parties have different values which work in synergy.<br /><br />Rand seems to think people live their lives for 80 years or so going through the motions of breaking even, except for a few intellectual giants who actually produce value, and therefore earn value. She doesn't question why billions of people would do such a thing over and over again.LarryHartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-58957864697239240562016-04-22T12:56:21.346-07:002016-04-22T12:56:21.346-07:00donzel you completely misread what I wrote. There...donzel you completely misread what I wrote. There are all sorts of justified uses for temporary secrecy and tactical secrets, as I tell Protector Caste members all the time. Think. The only way you can reliably defend such “caches” (as I called them in EARTH) is if the surrounding milieu is mostly NOT secret, so that any relentless or systematic penetration of caches stand a good chance of getting caught.<br /><br />Watch how the Mono Labe folks will whine if the commonality stops defending their right to be snarling ingrate whiners. They imagine they would be top dogs. But I have met many. Bitches is the best they can hope for if the benign, liberal commons stops protecting them. More likely kibble.<br /><br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-24228479407810014912016-04-22T12:54:48.204-07:002016-04-22T12:54:48.204-07:00I threw the question about CureCoins over to Derek...I threw the question about CureCoins over to Derek Lowe, who writes a blog called In The Pipeline about pharmacological research (one of his segments is a very funny look at very hazardous compounds, appropriately called 'Things I Won't Work With'). He has much more knowledge than I about what organic chemists might find useful, and I hope he will come up with more info than my casual search did.<br /><br />TheMadLibrarianTheMadLibrariannoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-80598442101546921392016-04-22T12:53:10.784-07:002016-04-22T12:53:10.784-07:00
Robert points out that heavily armed societies li...<br />Robert points out that heavily armed societies like El Salvador do not have lower gun violence.<br /><br />“a neutered ineffective sousveilled Protector Caste”… I know these people. Do you, sir? You do not. Know. Any. And I know scads and consult with them. They are skilled and mighty and mostly friendly to negotiating sousveilled supervision… though they fear any kind that would devolve into witch hunts, and hence want to negotiate trust building measures very carefully.<br /><br />You, sir, are a flaming fool. As when you speak of a “disarmed population.” Who is seeking that? Liberals have been arming themselves since early in the Cheney regime. They just want reasonable restrictions on felons, maniacs and… oh… I see…<br /><br />My current party registration is a product of laziness, since CA adopted the best election laws in the nation, and party registration stopped mattering.<br />David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-63811141282315280022016-04-22T12:41:32.351-07:002016-04-22T12:41:32.351-07:00@Rob H: Heh. If one has to educate people to achie...@Rob H: Heh. If one has to educate people to achieve the utopia anarchists believe can happen, we can safely assume the members of the society they describe aren't really human. We are already the most educated civilization ever, so what they actually describe is indoctrination. People seem to have natural resistances to that, so I just move on to the next group of would-be social engineers.<br /><br />Regarding texting and driving, I've seen way too many accidents and deaths just in the neighborhood where I live to want to tolerate it. I used to argue for leaving people to make their own mistakes, but the so-called nanny protectors have convinced me they are correct. Inaction on my part would be immoral because innocents are getting killed, thus I support the laws.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-64020601237482032612016-04-22T12:16:57.706-07:002016-04-22T12:16:57.706-07:00And once more locu proves he doesn't know what...And once more locu proves he doesn't know what he's talking about.<br /><br />The entire argument for the well-armed society is that criminal elements will not DARE use their guns because they will be met in force by other people. His argument would be valid if the targets were unarmed. They are not. <br /><br />Their inadvertent collateral damage are unarmed, yes, but often those are children or people unaffiliated with the gang.<br /><br />The whole point of a drive-by shooting is to shoot several people in a rival gang and then escape before the other side can pull their guns out and retaliate effectively. The assumption is that they WILL be facing armed opposition... so the most effective method of taking out your enemy is a Surprise First Strike. If the sides involved are both armed, then obviously the guns do not detract from the gun violence.<br /><br />Now let's take this a step further. Let us say you have an armed neighborhood. A drive-by shooting happens, several gang members are shot, and several others pull out their guns and start firing at the retreating car. Their bullets miss and instead start hitting a non-gang neighboring house... and those neighbors pull out their guns and start firing back at the gang who just fired unprovoked upon them. (They aren't going to shoot at the retreating car, that car didn't fire on them and if they went after that car then they are allying themselves with the street gang and become "valid" targets.)<br /><br />Other neighbors look out their window, see a firefight between the gang and a non-gang house, pull out their guns and start firing at the gang members because the gang members have obviously gone off their rocker and are targeting innocent people. They may very well be the next target if the gang members have started targeting non-gang neighbors.<br /><br />The only protection the gang has against this sort of situation is to force the entire neighborhood to be "protected" by the gang and use their access to force to either disarm their neighbors on fear of death, or force them to ally with the gang and become a valid target by opposing gangs.<br /><br />At no point do you have a polite society. You DO however have a fearful society.<br /><br />Rob H.Acacia H.https://www.blogger.com/profile/07678539067303911329noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-49922160850956728802016-04-22T12:13:38.463-07:002016-04-22T12:13:38.463-07:00@Paul451: Your description of a 50/40/10 split is ...@Paul451: Your description of a 50/40/10 split is a decent example of a surrender opportunity for me. If 40% don’t care enough to support either side, they obviously don’t consider a particular behavior immoral while the 10% would. I might hold onto my belief, but I’d probably surrender the political fight until we got to 50/30/20. For an example of this, consider abortion. Depending on how you ask the question you can get a variety of splits. The version that focuses upon terminations late in the term has a split that is moving against the people who want to keep it legal. The soft middle that contains people who aren’t sure which way to think is slowly resolving itself in the US. If that keeps up, I’ll have to abandon the political fight on that question.<br /><br />I’m not arguing that my moral beliefs are Moral in the absolutist sense. I’m a bit of a Relativist when it comes to that stuff. What you think is immoral need not overlap with mine (though we probably DO overlap a lot) and I see no immediate danger in that. The danger occurs when one of us tries to use the coercive authority of government to push the other one around. I prefer the government stay out of our disagreement until one of us can demonstrate an overwhelming case.<br /><br />What really matters to me in all of this is the Rule of Law. When a minority group of even a few percent gets really, really upset at what the majority is doing, they can break the law and shield each other in ways we can’t effectively stop short of becoming a Police State. We aren’t willing to do that most of the time, so we tolerate the minority. If the laws that make their behavior remain on the book, they get enforced in an arbitrary way and that makes a mockery of the Rule of Law. It is that mockery I wish to avoid.<br /><br />Your attitudes regarding natural trends in the market suggests YOU are the True Believer here. I’m inclined to limit my actions to punish only the cheaters because that is like catching and punishing criminals. I prefer not to categorize a whole class of people AS criminals.Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.com