We don't have a free market, we have anything but a free market. We have the united states government distorting every decision that we make. There are all sorts of rules, regulations, subsidies and taxes that inhibit the free market from functioning. This causes assets, labor and capital to be allocated the way that the government wants them.
In a free market, a monopoly eventually rises up, and then leverages its power to gain control over other sectors of the economy until it becomes a government.
This really is a free market; the main business is THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA corporation.
If we were to take away that corporation, and institute a free market, what would happen? A few corporations would do whatever it takes to succeed, then they'd merge, and claim a monopoly on violence, asserting de facto legitimacy as a government. This entity might have a different name than the present one has.
We need to go back to the kind of economy we had 100 years ago when we had freer markets, when resources were allocated based on competitive markets and profit motive not based on political whims.
The problem is simply that any entrepreneur who has capital sufficient to start a competitive business is already wealthy enough to be able to afford not to conform to the market signals of supply & demand.
The marginal harm caused by discriminating against a particular customer or two, if it is enough for that business to lose market share to a competitor, merely serves to show that the business could not have succeeded anyway.
We didn't have social security, medicaid, medicare and all these government programs that we think are so great and in the end bankrupting us...
I agree that the welfare state is a big problem, and so are the entitlements and everything payed for by China-- but these are social problems rather than merely economic problems. This society ought to regress to the way of thinking prior to the first Industrial Revolution and correct its course from there.
This coming from someone so deeply embedded in religious dogma, and unable to think critically.
Where is the religious dogma in my post?
Since when does critical thinking demand blind acceptance of an anti-religion stance?
Where has everybody learned to hate our Creator so much? Oh, yeah-- history class... and biology class... and sex ed.
Notice that there are no classes offered on the subjects of agriforestry, nutrition, self-defense, basic emergency care, construction, fire-making, or tool-making.
Much of what ends up being taught, is how to eliminate obviously-incorrect options in multiple choice questions, and how to feign essay content from a glance at Sparknotes (Copyright 2011 Sparknotes LLC).
Many high school graduates know basic calculus, understand English fairly well, and are familiar with rudimentary scientific vernacular; the equivalent of reading a pocket dictionary and a few pages of an encyclopedia-- which a twelve-year-old could accomplish in one week and move on.
Citizens pay millions of dollars in taxes each year for this. It has to end soon, whether the public ends it willfully, or the economy collapses due to the purposefully-beset moral incompetence of the youth.
God help the next few graduating classes, they are going to need it.
Most of the history taught in the public school I attended, was very incomplete. It was entirely rote memorization of flat assertion.
The mathematics was presented superficially, without any discussion of its basis. This was entirely rote memorization of flat assertion.
Language classes lacked etymology and grammatical history. These were entirely rote memorization.
The science classes had a lot of rote memorization with a few practical tips and interesting phenomena here & there. They could have been better connected to the real world, though; more than half of it was flat assertion of how things are theorized to work.
Gym was the most important class, in retrospect.
Music & art were moderately inspiring, but their practical application was perceptible only upon much reflection and investigation.
In summary, public school has so many areas in which it could not be any worse, that it is a drain of most communities' resources, and most schools ought to be closed and the children spared from the spurious and superfluous acculturation that passes for education therein.
The tax reduction parents would see from closing public schools, would allow them to work fewer hours and spend that time passing on their practical skills to their children.
Additionally, the emotional tension that comes from adults judging a child day in and day out for twelve years, does so much damage to the self-confidence of children, that, upon entrance to adulthood, they have trouble questioning claims of authority and thinking critically about accepted traditions and dogma.
Still amazes me how we are throwing away our future all over money.....
If the schools do suffer, then the public will return to the social institution that is actually important-- the church. Then, children will be inspired to prepare for real life, and this society can begin the long escape from the structural demoralization that has engendered the existence of a permanent consumerist underclass (through television & video games et cetera).
Clearly irrational thoughts exist. That's my entire complaint against your example. You are claiming rationality is being used there, when links between premise and conclusion are clearly irrational.
The entailment in the statement is clearly irrational to yourself and myself, as we view the conclusion as conditional, and we believe that the conclusion does not obtain.
To some, the entailment may seem to be rational (or even logical), as they would view the conclusion not as conditional, but as necessary (or tautological). Thus, they would not begin to judge whether the conclusion obtains, because, upon accepting the premise, the conclusion is necessary and must be accepted, too (or, to question a tautology, would be absurd).
This is the Prisoners' Dilemma; what we do not accept as rational premises, we cannot evaluate for rational conclusions (necessity being an implicit premise). Two guys might agree that a particular conclusion obtains, but, if each of them uses different premises to justify the obtainment of that conclusion and if they're both necessary, then each should reject that the conclusion is rational, even though they both agreed that it is rational.
Two robots sent into the reactor No. 1 building at the plant yesterday took readings as high as 1,120 millisierverts of radiation per hour, Junichi Matsumoto, a general manager at Tokyo Electric Power Co., said today.
EPA’s drinking water MCL for the radionuclide iodine-131 is 3 picocuries per liter. It is important to note that this drinking water MCL was calculated based on long-term chronic exposures over the course of a lifetime 70 years.
As of one week ago, Fukushima Dai-Ichi is emitting ten times this amount per hour.
According to this radiation chart-- http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/radiation-chart.html
--such a level of radiation is sufficient to induce light radiation poisoning, which brings a 10% risk of death after 30 days.
VDH is advising residents that the state’s drinking water supplies remain safe, but reminds Virginians out of an abundance of caution they should avoid using rainwater collected in cisterns as drinking water.
However, here is what the Food and Drug Administration says:
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has reported low levels of radionuclides in milk in the U.S. Is this a cause for concern?
At this time, there is no radiation safety risk related to milk produced in the U.S.
EPA monitors milk for radiation under its RADNET program, and has reported extremely low levels of I-131 and Cesium in some milk samples. These results are expected and are far below FDA’s Derived Intervention Levels. Even for a person who drinks a lot of milk, it would be virtually impossible to consume enough milk to approach the level of concern.
As federal and state agencies test milk samples, low levels of I-131 may be found in different samples, and the levels may vary slightly. However these low levels are not expected to cause adverse health effects, even for the developing fetus, babies, or children.
At this time, there is no public health threat in the U.S. related to radiation exposure. FDA, together with other agencies, is carefully monitoring any possibility for distribution of radiation to the United States. At this time, theoretical models do not indicate that significant amounts of radiation will reach the U.S.
Consider this report, conducted in late March & early April 2011, of radiation in Arizona milk, by the Arizona Radiation Regulatory Agency:
Please note that all findings at this point are far below the FDA
Derived Intervention Level of 4,600 pCi/L. Iodine-131 has a very short half-life of approximately eight days, and the level detected in milk and milk products is, therefore, expected to drop relatively quickly. State officials will continue to test and closely monitor for radiation levels.
Note the level detected on the date of 4/01/2011 was 44 picoCuries of radioactive Iodine per liter of milk.
This report claims that Iodine-131 has a half-life of 8 days-- which is correct, if the radiation is outside the body. Inside the body, the half-life of Iodine-131 increases to 100 days, as explained here:
Still, physicists talk convincingly about “permissible doses” of radiation. They consistently ignore internal emitters — radioactive elements from nuclear power plants or weapons tests that are ingested or inhaled into the body, giving very high doses to small volumes of cells. They focus instead on generally less harmful external radiation from sources outside the body, whether from isotopes emitted from nuclear power plants, medical X-rays, cosmic radiation or background radiation that is naturally present in our environment.
However, doctors know that there is no such thing as a safe dose of radiation, and that radiation is cumulative. The mutations caused in cells by this radiation are generally deleterious. We all carry several hundred genes for disease: cystic fibrosis, diabetes, phenylketonuria, muscular dystrophy. There are now more than 2,600 genetic diseases on record, any one of which may be caused by a radiation-induced mutation, and many of which we’re bound to see more of, because we are artificially increasing background levels of radiation.
A study conducted by the Nuclear Information and Resource Service confirms this sentiment:
Risks from low dose radiation are equal or greater than previously thought. The committee reviewed some additional ways that radiation causes damage to cells.
Among the reports conclusions are:
There is no safe level or threshold of ionizing radiation exposure.
Even exposure to background radiation causes some cancers. Additional exposures cause additional risks.
Radiation causes other health effects such as heart disease and stroke, and further study is needed to predict the doses that result in these non-cancer health effects.
It is possible that children born to parents that have been exposed to radiation could be affected by those exposures.
The "bystander effect" is an additional, newly recognized method by which radiation injures cells that were not directly hit but are in the vicinity of those that were. "Genomic instability" can be caused by exposure to low doses of radiation and according to the report "might contribute significantly to radiation cancer risk."
Since the Environmental Protection Agency began detecting radiation in rainwater and milk at levels above its maximum contaminant level, government officials have been downplaying the importance of EPA’s maximum contaminant level.
They would much prefer us to speak in terms of the Food and Drug Administration’s “Derived Intervention Level.”
The two levels could hardly be more different:
EPA does not allow drinking water to contain more than 3 picoCuries per liter of radioactive istotopes like iodine-131 and cesium-137.
FDA allows up to 4,700 picoCuries of iodine-131 in a liter of milk and up to 33,000 picoCuries of cesium-137.
Officials from both agencies—as well as many state governments—explain the difference in terms of time: EPA assumes long-term exposure over 70 years. FDA assumes you’re encountering the radiation all at once.
But time isn’t the only difference between these two standards:
FDA tolerates a higher mortality rate.
...
The EPA’s level is calculated so that in a population of one million people, the radiation will result in no more than one additional cancer fatality.
The FDA standard, on the other hand, accepts two extra cancer fatalities in a population of 10,000.
Ought the FDA's "emergency situation standard," be applied to an ongoing emission of radiation from the Fukushima reactors?
In our present circumstances, is the use of this standard misleading to the government, to health professionals, and to the public?
Lots of people can become extremely wealthy without being immoral.
There are moral avenues to wealth, but some folks still perceive greedy capitalists to have gained their respective fortunes through illicit means; from an erroneous premise follows an erroneous conclusion.
Rationality is claimed to refine truth from complex proposition. Yet, this refinement is limited to relative comparison against truth in other propositions, subjectively held by the same proposer.
Rationality cannot find the truth for me unless:
I already have the truth in one of my propositions, and
That truth is so clear that it will remain evident despite other propositional information taking it out of context.
Thus, the question arises: if I already have a truth which is so clearly evident, why would I need rationality? It would be entirely extraneous, if not misleading.
By taking things out of context, the use of rationality precipitates further obfuscation of truth in conception, which, in turn, creates the perception of greater irrationality in the world and the corresponding need for even stricter rationality in the mind. Rationality is just a vicious circle, isn't it?
Al-Qaida terrorists have threatened to unleash a "nuclear hellstorm" on the West if their leader and world's most wanted terrorist Osama bin Laden is nabbed.
A senior Al-Qaida commander has claimed that the terror group has stashed away a nuclear bomb in Europe which will be detonated if bin Laden is ever caught or assassinated, according to new top secret files made public by whistleblower website WikiLeaks.
What happened precisely 66 years ago on this May Day?
Rationality can only tell us how to achieve what we intrinsically value (in the process assigning instrumental values to subgoals along the way).
I think rationality does more. What about this, for example:
The only rational explanation for the wealth of the robber barons, is that morality has little practical value-- so, that must be the case.
I do not want that to be the case, but rationality does not allow an alternative to it.
Wouldn't this be an instance of rationality telling me how to perceive an intrinsic value, simply because a belief in rationality imposes a rational nature upon things in one's perception?
You have two acquaintances. One of them has always been mean to you. The other has always been loyal to you.
The one who is always mean to you, takes every opportunity to make your life miserable, by disrespecting you, inconveniencing you, spreading scandalous rumors about you, and so forth.
The one who is nice to you, does everything possible to make your life pleasant; running small errands for you, lending stuff to you to use, complementing your good deeds, and so on.
Then, one day, your loyal acquaintance says something spiteful to you over the telephone, and hangs up on you.
Do you feel more upset about the sudden betrayal by your loyal friend, than you feel about the constant abuse by your mean enemy that you have come to expect?
In the long term, it doesn't matter that you have become accustomed to somebody's meanness; the damage it does to you, still outweighs the damage done by your friend having a bad day.
Yet, even though it is irrational, you may still pay more attention to unexpected betrayal by a friend, than to repeated, predictable abuse by an enemy.
So, what do Tax Cuts/Raises for the rich do for the economy? How does it effect it? What are the short-term and long-term consequences of cutting taxes for the rich, or raising taxes for the rich? Does it "create jobs"? More specifically, private sector or public sector jobs? What are the benefits/consequences of raising/cutting taxes on the rich?
The real harm from taxation is social.
Not every young man or woman grows into an adult of good character. Some do, but others give into temptation as a matter of course.
It is in the interest of each individual in society that the adults of good character be given the most influence over the next generation of the society, so that the good character will be passed on as much as possible.
When the adults of good influence are taxed heavily, their time to influence the next generation is reduced proportionally.
The inspiration of the next generation is jeopardized when their elders are kept from them, by having to work extra time to pay for services through the government that the government finds more important than intimate one-on-one time between good adults and the youth.
The focus on jobs is somewhat superficial. Ingenious young men & women can figure out what work to do for society when they have adequate guidance from their elders of good character. Without that, even if the government & multinational corporations provide "jobs" (monitoring data, etc.) for the society, the individuals in the society will nonetheless be lost when it comes to creating and harnessing wealth.
So, taxation is bad, because it interferes with the character with which young adults are raised.
In a free market, a monopoly eventually rises up, and then leverages its power to gain control over other sectors of the economy until it becomes a government.
This really is a free market; the main business is THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA corporation.
If we were to take away that corporation, and institute a free market, what would happen? A few corporations would do whatever it takes to succeed, then they'd merge, and claim a monopoly on violence, asserting de facto legitimacy as a government. This entity might have a different name than the present one has.
The problem is simply that any entrepreneur who has capital sufficient to start a competitive business is already wealthy enough to be able to afford not to conform to the market signals of supply & demand.
The marginal harm caused by discriminating against a particular customer or two, if it is enough for that business to lose market share to a competitor, merely serves to show that the business could not have succeeded anyway.
I agree that the welfare state is a big problem, and so are the entitlements and everything payed for by China-- but these are social problems rather than merely economic problems. This society ought to regress to the way of thinking prior to the first Industrial Revolution and correct its course from there.
Where is the religious dogma in my post?
Since when does critical thinking demand blind acceptance of an anti-religion stance?
Where has everybody learned to hate our Creator so much? Oh, yeah-- history class... and biology class... and sex ed.
Notice that there are no classes offered on the subjects of agriforestry, nutrition, self-defense, basic emergency care, construction, fire-making, or tool-making.
Much of what ends up being taught, is how to eliminate obviously-incorrect options in multiple choice questions, and how to feign essay content from a glance at Sparknotes (Copyright 2011 Sparknotes LLC).
Many high school graduates know basic calculus, understand English fairly well, and are familiar with rudimentary scientific vernacular; the equivalent of reading a pocket dictionary and a few pages of an encyclopedia-- which a twelve-year-old could accomplish in one week and move on.
Citizens pay millions of dollars in taxes each year for this. It has to end soon, whether the public ends it willfully, or the economy collapses due to the purposefully-beset moral incompetence of the youth.
Terrorism is a tactic, rather than a cause. To claim victory in a fight against a tactic of battle, is logically impossible.
The domestic overreaction and the wars abroad can only be escalated now, as their reduction would constitute an admission of deceit.
The damage that these laws will do to the public education system will benefit our society.
College is a place where folks go into debt to learn how to earn a living.
Maybe the public recognizes the depth of the failure of the public education system to inspire children and to prepare them for real life?
Maybe taxpaying citizens tire of funding curricula based on rote memorization of mostly impractical information, with a few exceptions?
Most of the history taught in the public school I attended, was very incomplete. It was entirely rote memorization of flat assertion.
The mathematics was presented superficially, without any discussion of its basis. This was entirely rote memorization of flat assertion.
Language classes lacked etymology and grammatical history. These were entirely rote memorization.
The science classes had a lot of rote memorization with a few practical tips and interesting phenomena here & there. They could have been better connected to the real world, though; more than half of it was flat assertion of how things are theorized to work.
Gym was the most important class, in retrospect.
Music & art were moderately inspiring, but their practical application was perceptible only upon much reflection and investigation.
In summary, public school has so many areas in which it could not be any worse, that it is a drain of most communities' resources, and most schools ought to be closed and the children spared from the spurious and superfluous acculturation that passes for education therein.
The tax reduction parents would see from closing public schools, would allow them to work fewer hours and spend that time passing on their practical skills to their children.
Additionally, the emotional tension that comes from adults judging a child day in and day out for twelve years, does so much damage to the self-confidence of children, that, upon entrance to adulthood, they have trouble questioning claims of authority and thinking critically about accepted traditions and dogma.
If the schools do suffer, then the public will return to the social institution that is actually important-- the church. Then, children will be inspired to prepare for real life, and this society can begin the long escape from the structural demoralization that has engendered the existence of a permanent consumerist underclass (through television & video games et cetera).
The statement is an example of rationality, because, like all other accepted premises, it is perceived as rational by those who hold it.
Is everything that is clear to you and me, also clear to everybody else?
If so, why is there communication?
The entailment in the statement is clearly irrational to yourself and myself, as we view the conclusion as conditional, and we believe that the conclusion does not obtain.
To some, the entailment may seem to be rational (or even logical), as they would view the conclusion not as conditional, but as necessary (or tautological). Thus, they would not begin to judge whether the conclusion obtains, because, upon accepting the premise, the conclusion is necessary and must be accepted, too (or, to question a tautology, would be absurd).
This is the Prisoners' Dilemma; what we do not accept as rational premises, we cannot evaluate for rational conclusions (necessity being an implicit premise). Two guys might agree that a particular conclusion obtains, but, if each of them uses different premises to justify the obtainment of that conclusion and if they're both necessary, then each should reject that the conclusion is rational, even though they both agreed that it is rational.
Or does irrational thought exist, extending from limitations in our perception?
There is no "burial at sea" found in Islam.
Islam says to bury the deceased body in a white robe with the head facing Mecca.
http://www.uottawa.ca/services/ehss/ionizconversion.htm
--it appears that radiation is being emitted at a rate of ~30 picoCuries per hour.
As of one week ago, Fukushima Dai-Ichi is emitting ten times this amount per hour.
According to this radiation chart--
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/radiation-chart.html
--such a level of radiation is sufficient to induce light radiation poisoning, which brings a 10% risk of death after 30 days.
http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2011/04/23/japan-nuclear-radiation-rainwater-update-idaho-iodine-levels-14066-epa-limit-19907/
Even on the East Coast, the Virginia Department of Health is warning residents to avoid ingestion of rainwater due to its radioactivity:
However, here is what the Food and Drug Administration says:
(underscores added for spacing)Note the level detected on the date of 4/01/2011 was 44 picoCuries of radioactive Iodine per liter of milk.
This report claims that Iodine-131 has a half-life of 8 days-- which is correct, if the radiation is outside the body. Inside the body, the half-life of Iodine-131 increases to 100 days, as explained here:
http://www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ohre/roadmap/achre/intro_9_7.html
In our present circumstances, is the use of this standard misleading to the government, to health professionals, and to the public?
There are moral avenues to wealth, but some folks still perceive greedy capitalists to have gained their respective fortunes through illicit means; from an erroneous premise follows an erroneous conclusion.
Rationality is claimed to refine truth from complex proposition. Yet, this refinement is limited to relative comparison against truth in other propositions, subjectively held by the same proposer.
Rationality cannot find the truth for me unless:
- I already have the truth in one of my propositions, and
- That truth is so clear that it will remain evident despite other propositional information taking it out of context.
Thus, the question arises: if I already have a truth which is so clearly evident, why would I need rationality? It would be entirely extraneous, if not misleading.By taking things out of context, the use of rationality precipitates further obfuscation of truth in conception, which, in turn, creates the perception of greater irrationality in the world and the corresponding need for even stricter rationality in the mind. Rationality is just a vicious circle, isn't it?
Here is what it means:
What happened precisely 66 years ago on this May Day?
http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/may/1/newsid_3571000/3571497.stm
I think rationality does more. What about this, for example:
The only rational explanation for the wealth of the robber barons, is that morality has little practical value-- so, that must be the case.
I do not want that to be the case, but rationality does not allow an alternative to it.
Wouldn't this be an instance of rationality telling me how to perceive an intrinsic value, simply because a belief in rationality imposes a rational nature upon things in one's perception?
The one who is always mean to you, takes every opportunity to make your life miserable, by disrespecting you, inconveniencing you, spreading scandalous rumors about you, and so forth.
The one who is nice to you, does everything possible to make your life pleasant; running small errands for you, lending stuff to you to use, complementing your good deeds, and so on.
Then, one day, your loyal acquaintance says something spiteful to you over the telephone, and hangs up on you.
Do you feel more upset about the sudden betrayal by your loyal friend, than you feel about the constant abuse by your mean enemy that you have come to expect?
In the long term, it doesn't matter that you have become accustomed to somebody's meanness; the damage it does to you, still outweighs the damage done by your friend having a bad day.
Yet, even though it is irrational, you may still pay more attention to unexpected betrayal by a friend, than to repeated, predictable abuse by an enemy.
Can this way of thinking be escaped?
The real harm from taxation is social.
Not every young man or woman grows into an adult of good character. Some do, but others give into temptation as a matter of course.
It is in the interest of each individual in society that the adults of good character be given the most influence over the next generation of the society, so that the good character will be passed on as much as possible.
When the adults of good influence are taxed heavily, their time to influence the next generation is reduced proportionally.
The inspiration of the next generation is jeopardized when their elders are kept from them, by having to work extra time to pay for services through the government that the government finds more important than intimate one-on-one time between good adults and the youth.
The focus on jobs is somewhat superficial. Ingenious young men & women can figure out what work to do for society when they have adequate guidance from their elders of good character. Without that, even if the government & multinational corporations provide "jobs" (monitoring data, etc.) for the society, the individuals in the society will nonetheless be lost when it comes to creating and harnessing wealth.
So, taxation is bad, because it interferes with the character with which young adults are raised.