The "let's put everyone in Texas" talking point would be fine if it was not for the fact that people need to eat. Sure, you can fit millions of people in New York City, but you cannot feed them. All their food is imported from either upstate New York, somewhere else in America, or from some other country.
As for the the food production itself, you need an area that has a suitable climate and geographic features. Since 75% of the Earth's surface is water we can fish... but those resources are limited and becoming depleted[1].
About 33% of the world's land mass is desert once you add in tundra and dry cold regions to go along with the typical sand covered desert[2]. Those areas are useless when it comes to farming but the problem is that if we over farm the areas that are suitable then they too become deserts... and they are growing at an alarming rate.
There is also the problem of deforestation because you can't farm in an area covered in trees. The problem with this is that you can only cut down some many trees before the lack of oxygen starts to take effect and diversity of life becomes a mess.
1. http://www.un.org/events/tenstories/06/
You want to slow down the game even more? It's already bad enough that there is instant replay that takes ten minutes on a home run that clearly had enough distance. Since base running has way more close calls then home runs we would be watching nothing but replays all day.
The problem is not with the idea of down voting, but rather how cowards down vote without responding.
By downvoting an argument what you are basically doing is saying that the person's argument is a load of shit. By not responding you are saying that the person's argument is a load of shit but you're too much of an idiot to say why.
No, the federal government has no authority to tell private citizens what to do with their waste. If the states wish to act nanny-like then that is their businesses, but I'd prefer if neither state or federal government forced people to recycle.
I'm rather indifferent. Checking the immigration status of someone who just got arrested sounds like a pretty good idea... arresting people just so you can check their immigration status not so much. I'd prefer more open boarders and the elimination of the minimum wage to combat illegal immigration.
As for Arizona, they gave Congress the opportunity to fix the immigration laws and the feds the opportunity to increase border security. Neither happened so they stepped in and put forth their own law.
Those on the left don't like it? Too fucking bad, you failed and the consequence is the new law is something that you don't like. After hearing the bitching and whining from the left about how Bush did nothing about health care and therefore it is okay for Obama to ignore conservatives when it comes to reform I have no sympathy for those are pissed about this law. They can whine all they want, but Arizona supports this law just like the rest of this country, so it doesn't look like it will being going away.
At schools, I have noticed the "non-social-goth-metalheads-bad ass" population is going extinct, and they are becoming an somewhat of an endangered species.
I wouldn't say they are going extinct, they are just becoming pussified. They have gone from listening from actual metal bands, to listening to rock that pretends to be metal, to rock that has rap in it, to whiny emo shit.
What ever happened to the guys and gals who listened to My Chemical Romance, Black Sabbath, and all those other bands in the back of the playground?
They must have realized that My Chemical Romance is for pussies.
They are the coolest! I remember being in the back of the playground listening to Disturbed while all the other kids just ran around doing their thing.
I remember Disturbed being listened to by the fat, smelly kids who thought they were bad ass but never did anything.
The bad asses were the ones who would do anything if you paid them a buck, remember?
The bad asses were the ones who did whatever the fuck they wanted and did not care what the consequences were. You did not have to pay them or even tell them to do for that matter because they were already doing it regardless of whether you approved or not. The ones who took payment to do something stupid were just attention whores.
They also were all anti-maintstream. Twilight, Kanye West, Miley Cirus, they loathed all of them.
I wouldn't say that they were anti-mainstream, they just happened to hate most things that were mainstream. They hated something because they did not like it, whether it was mainstream or not had no effect on their liking. The difference is that today there are kids who hate everything mainstream just because it is popular because they think that the whole "counter culture" apparel is cool(it's not).
Usually, it is quite obvious. If anybody writes a conservative or a religious argument (even on a conservative or a religious debate), they will be down-voted by those who disagree.
That's not true for religious debates. I'm an Agnostic and my arguments go up and down during religious debates. I've had one argument that has been up voted 8 times and down voted 4 times. So Conservatives do down vote.
For economic and foreign policy topics it is rather clear that the lefties are the ones doing the down voting.
In an ironic twist, the conservatives and the religious folks rarely bother to down-vote opposing viewpoints.
Joe and Jake used to be famous for downvoting arguments and they were the main conservatives a year ago.
But there does seem to be a coalition of lefties who are constantly up voting their friends' arguments and down voting the ones they disagree.
The "you need to stop spamming " talk. I remember having this discussion when I caught you giving one sentence responses to debates that had not seen activity in 100+ days. You have also received criticism for clogging up the the topics page with debates... would you like a list?
I have not down voted an argument in about 200 days, it seems rather pointless and makes you look like a prick.
As for the arguments I have down voted, a lot of them were against people who down vote my arguments without responding. So it was basically a reaction down vote. A few were because I thought the argument had more up votes then it deserved and I was too lazy to respond. The rest were against people who I hated with a passion and always traded down votes just for the hell of it.
As for whether down voting without responding is justified it depends on what the argument is. If the argument has no intellectual value or the person is just going out of their way to troll then I see no problem in down voting the argument. I remember last year when some prick wrote that Hitler was not as evil as Truman I down voted him because such stupid comments do not deserve responses.
If it is a well thought out argument then it should not be down voted at all even if you do reply. Just people a person has a different view then you do does not mean that their view is any less correct.
1. People need to learn how put all their thoughts and talking points into a simple post... quit making multiple one sentence posts in the same debate, it's getting obvious who the point whores are.
2. People need to stop up voting every argument that they agree with. Some of the posts here look like they were written by someone in second grade and should never even get one up vote much less three.
3. People need to stop making topics about Terminator, it's getting creepy.
4. Terminator, settle down with the debate creations. We have had this topic come up multiple times and the spam is still annoying.
To call them "Ultra Left Wing Propaganda" is taking it a bit too far. Overall they favor the left, but at least they don't worship them.
Fox worships Conservatives, ABC basically runs whatever the White House tells them to run, and MSNBC sucks Obama's cock. So, when it comes to being balanced CNN wins... pretty much by default seeing as they are the only station that at least tries to be nonpartisan, they rest are unapologetically biased.
Jules(Samuel Jackson) from Pulp Fiction: There's a passage I got memorized. Ezekiel 25:17. The path of the righteous man is beset on all sides by the inequities of the selfish and the tyranny of evil men. Blessed is he who, in the name of charity and good will, shepherds the weak through the valley of the darkness. For he is truly his brother's keeper and the finder of lost children. And I will strike down upon thee with great vengeance and furious anger those who attempt to poison and destroy my brothers. And you will know I am the Lord when I lay my vengeance upon you. I been sayin' that shit for years. And if you ever heard it, that meant your ass. I never game much thought to what it meant. I just thought it was a cold-blooded thing to say to a motherfucker before I popped a cap in his ass. But I saw some shit this mornin' made me think twice. See, now I'm thinkin': maybe it means you're the evil man. And I'm the righteous man. And Mr. 9mm here, he's the shepherd protecting my righteous ass in the valley of darkness. Or it could mean you're the righteous man and I'm the shepherd and it's the world that's evil and selfish. And I'd like that. But that shit ain't the truth. The truth is you're the weak. And I'm the tyranny of evil men. But I'm tryin', Ringo. I'm tryin' real hard to be the shepherd.
With respect to a free market, we create an environment where fitness is measured by a business's ability to make a profit. This can be called the primary selection pressure. Because concepts like fair working conditions, workers' rights, human rights violations, government entanglement, and the environment are all auxiliary it must therefore come to pass that the most fit businesses will be those that can turn a profit most efficiently
The problem I have with this natural selection analogy is that it assumes that the top predator in the food chain is untouchable. The Constitution grants the freedom of speech and assembly that allow for unions that represent the workers to have a say in what goes on. So, companies can abuse their workers to get a few extra dollars but they will end up losing money overall because a destructive union will cost money for lack of productivity and loss of PR.
This is why a free market must always lead to exploitation of workers, consumer abuses, and government entanglements. It can all happen, and it leads to a more efficient business.
The free market has the ability to correct consumer abuses. Take Toyota for example, the government regulations failed when it came to keeping them in check but once the brake issue occurred people turned their backs on Toyota. Sales dropped and that forced Toyota to fix their problem because they knew that as long as they produced faulty vehicles nobody would buy them and the invisible hand would end them.
As for government entanglements assisting favored businesses, that's corporatism. In a society run by Libertarians the government would not be assisting companies or pass preferential treatment.
The point is about rent seeking and government entanglement with wealthy businessmen who effectively buy laws with extensive lobbying and public opinion making efforts, reverting our democracy into a state that resembles the days of old when the wealthy made the laws and the little man had no say (which democracy was supposed to counteract).
That's corporatism.
I'm for Abortion and the Death Penalty, which they tend to generally be against
Abortion is an issue that they are divided on, but from what I've read they tend to be pro-abortion.
In general, the political party that I correspond with the most would be the Libertarian party.
I'd agree with that.
Seeing as I'm one of the site's Libertarians I suppose I ought to five my two cents.
The term 'free market' is really a euphemism. What the far right actually means by this term is 'lawless market.' In a lawless market, entrepreneurs can get away with privatizing the benefits of the market (profits), while socializing its costs (like pollution).
There is a huge difference between anarchy and libertarianism. Libertarians get annoyed when the government tries to come in and tell people what to do with their business, but ultimately realize that some regulations are required. I don't mind the government making rules that require people to not be allowed to dump garbage wherever they want. However, some of these regulations are just over the top and those are the ones that we oppose.
There is no such thing as a free economy just like there is no such thing as a completely socialized economy. It's more of a line and Libertarians just happen to be closer to the free side then Democrats and Republicans do.
Uncomfortable with the concept of a lawless market? The far right will try to reassure you with claims that the market can produce its own laws, either as a commodity bought and sold on the market, or through natural market mechanisms like the "invisible hand" or the Coase theorem.
Comments like these make we wonder if those on the left have even bothered to read a book on economics. Businesses if left alone will devour each other because each of them is led by a greedy ass hole who will stop at nothing to be number one. Competition will lead to a decrease in prices and the invisible hand will have no problem removing companies that fail to produce in an efficient manner. Anyone who is unable to understand these basic principles of economics is a dumb ass.
But it is interesting to note that even if the entrepreneurs don't take the more likely shortcut of creating their own state, this type of law removes the creation of law from democratic legislatures and gives it to authoritarian business owners and landlords.
You mean to tell me that in a free market system the owners of businesses and landlords will be deciding what they do with their businesses instead of having the government run everything? It amuses me how socialists bitch and moan about there being no democracy in businesses and yet fail to realize that elected officials can only do so much before they pass on their responsibilities to some bureaucracy that is neither elected or held accountable for its failures.
And since you get what you pay for, "purchased law" will primarily benefit its purchasers. Society might as well return to aristocracy directly.
Steve Kangas
Capitalism has brought more people out of poverty then any other economic system and is a lot less likely to cause a country to become a dictatorship... and yet this dumb ass is for some reason a socialist, which has been known to not only led to totalitarian regimes but ultimately it's not even a good system for generating wealth for the individual despite its intentions.
I think this is a good discussion topic because in American politics the libertarian party and its candidates have often been fringe despite sharing values with many Americans.
The party itself is full of people who are rather reasonable, it's the media that gives them a bad name. The problem this country has is that the national media does not report news but instead promotes party propaganda. We are in a perpetual battle between Democrats and Republicans and even though the American people hate both they don't have another option to vote for. By allowing a third parties such as the Green, Constitution, Libertarian, etc. involved in the law making process this opens the door for competition that would cause the two major parties to actually get their shit together if they want to remain in power. The owners of both parties don't want that because then they would have to spend all the extra resources buying off other parties and because of that they just use their "media" to make them seem psychotic in order to discredit them.
If the party ever could gain full momentum, it could really change the political landscape since they tend to oppose government regulation so much, and America has so much of it right now.
With the rise of the internet I can see them becoming more popular. Ron Paul is mostly a Libertarian and he got more support from the internet then any other candidate. There also seems to be a higher percentage of Libertarians on the internet then the 2% that votes for the Libertarian candidate in the presidential elections.
