hodwik2

>"Removing the minimum wage is so extreme it's barely even under consideration [...] And it always has been."

Then you disagree with Eleanor Roosevelt on history, who, speaking of the Republican party's desire to end the minimum wage in 1959 gave the congressional testimony: "The arguments raised against establishing any legal minimum wage were the same as those which have been used by employers over the past 50 years."

And liberal think-tank The National Employment Law Project, who writes: "The criticisms raised by minimum wage opponents display a remarkable consistency over the past 100 years" Source: "100 Years of Broken-Record Opposition to the Minimum Wage"

You can disagree with these positions, but at least have your facts right about basic points of history. Points of history that your party doesn't even disagree with.

>"So you list a number of hyper-extremist radical points [...] then you complain the country is leftist?"

No. I listed a bunch of things which were not extreme positions 50 years ago to show that politics is indeed becoming more leftist. The fact that you see these as very extreme positions is exactly my point -- the center has moved left, not right.

>"The individual mandate for purchase of private insurance + subsidy system adopted as "Obamacare" was first proposed by the Republicans and insurance industry lobbyists in opposition to healthcare reform efforts under the Clinton administration. [...] I don’t recognize this new brand of Republicanism that is afoot now, which I consider to be very reactionary, not conservative in many respects. "

That's exactly right.

The Republican party of today has found itself only reacting to liberal policies. We're basically forced to put forward alternative, smaller, liberal policies to stave off the big ones. Rather than arguing to draw down Medicare, we're sitting here talking about establishing alternative socialist policies.

>"The right's also unsuccessfully pushed vouchers and drastically cutting public school funding, but when your pushing for multiple and mutually-exclusive things, "

Vouchers are in many cases cheaper than public schools -- they are not mutually exclusive.

>" you got to abolish AFDC, one of the biggest social programs in the country, and replace it with the more-restrictive TANF."

Taking a $22b/yr (out of ~$240b in social welfare programs), and replacing it with a $17b/yr program doesn't seem the big win to me that you make it out to be.

>"Religious Freedom Restoration Act"

That law limited religious freedom. It says that if you can prove a compelling interest, and can prove a law is the least restrictive way to do something, you can do it even though it steps on a person's constitutional right to free exercise.

The pro-religious freedoms version of that law, which would have been supported by a liberal reading of the constitution, would have read "The government may not limit a person's free exercise of religion, unless that freedom kills or maims another human being, or severely damages their personal property."

That was yet another example of a statist law put in place with the hope that it would stop additional statist laws from coming down the pike (of course, to no avail).

>"NFIB v. Sebelius "

Medicaid and Obamacare are not legal programs to begin with in a strictly constitutional sense. Their constitutionality was predicated on a very strange, and wishy-washy reinterpretation of the Commerce clause. (Albeit a popular one, for obvious reasons.)

Commerce, as written, was clearly denoting treaties of trade between governmental bodies (read tariffs and trade restrictions), not saying that the Federal government has a right to establish any new laws they desire, so long as they relate to money -- even requiring someone to purchase something they don't want:

[Congress has the right...] "To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes." That's all.

That's good to know. A lot of what we hear about European opinions are by way of France.

Progressives move forever more to the left, and then accuse the right of "moving right" because we didn't move to your new definition of center fast enough. Excuse me, conservatives have not actually managed to get signed any major conservative initiative in the US in 50 years, because of that line.

Our government is bigger than it has ever been:

-we haven't privatized schools or gotten vouchers,

-we haven't abolished any major departments of governments,

-we haven't been able to abolish any major social program,

-we haven't been able to cut costs in the welfare state,

-we haven't abolished government marriage,

-we haven't opened immigration to wealthy foreigners,

-we have only lost ground on gun rights and religious rights,

-we have not been able to slow the judicial activism of the courts,

-we have only gotten passed minor deregulation efforts,

-we have not limited the unions,

-abolished the minimum wage, ended zoning laws, and so on.

To a conservative of the Goldwater years the Republican party of today would look like a bunch of socialist fascists. The closest Republicans get to doing anything conservative these days is to slow your guys roll.

Yes

Oh, I'm glad you know more than I do about this thing I lived through, so you could correct me on it.

The government was immensely paranoid about it, insisting it had to run on site, and be completely configurable by their tech staff, who were not themselves engineers.

A number of African nations are currently struggling with this -- attempting to bootstrap nationwide networking from zero, while having economies which are very much command economies (although in Africa, that's due to corruption, rather than being baked into the law).

In one small African nation the government was intensely interested in building a national system for finding lost cows. (This was a much-touted presidential initiative.) Basically, farmers would be able to text their cow's ID and the system would tell them if another farmer had found it.

In spite of the simplicity of such a system, it took them years of 'research and development', and enormous budgets spent, for a system which they discovered in the end, didn't work. It turned out, they couldn't figure out how to procure and install a server for it to run on.

> "My point is that with some larger solution space, the question doesn't matter anymore."

The question still matters ethically. If they're not aware, should we put their rights over the rights of humans? Probably not, no.

E.g., If AI is seemingly intelligent, but without consciousness, we wouldn't want to give them a right to self defense.

So if someone engineers trees to grow CDs you still wouldn't protect their intellectual property?

How amazing does an invention have to be before you guys will let a company protect it?

They can with a modified copy of Windows. Is that what makes or breaks it from being intellectual property theft?

I ask, because it would be pretty easy to add a jump in the Windows binary to skip the EULA -- Free Windows for life!

The problem is, for organizations like Greenpeace, they require that their supporters think the opponent is evil. When you can't engage your opponent on the facts, engage them on an emotional level, and accuse them of moral decrepitude -- then you'll never need to respond to their stances.

This is a common tactic on the far left and far right:

"You can't just ban all abortions, what about rape?" "Baby killer!"

"Clearly some abortions are unconstitutional, like once the baby is viable." "Misogynist!"

"You can't just have completely open borders, it would bankrupt the safety net." "Racist!"

"You can't just close the borders, lots of industries rely on immigrant labor." "Shill!"

Extend this logic to other intellectual properties, and explore the consequences.

PC-Company-A signs no license with Microsoft. An employee of theirs finds a copy of Microsoft Windows laying on the ground.

Having no agreement with MSFT, and having discovered Windows "on the wind", as it were, they start to install it on their PCs.

Is it Microsoft's business? PC-Company-A has no license with them, why should it matter?

Most of the world is already running that experiment, and the answer is clear. Research of this kind doesn't come from there.

Monsanto is absolutely using legal avenues.

International shipping companies are subject to international law. Monsanto is threatening them with international law. That is fully within their bounds.

Argentina is operating outside of the international laws and norms here, and should reap the consequences.

That was thoroughly disproved.

They sue people who have ~90%+ Monsanto crops on their fields who aren't paying royalties.

You can't get 90% of a different cultivar from pollen blowing multiple miles into your field. It doesn't work that way.

In fact, the company has offered to pay to remove accidentally contaminated crops for you, so that they can't be sued for having their IP on your farm.

I believe Rabies inspired vampires as well:

from wsj

"The roots of the vampire myth stretch back nearly as far. Tales of vampire-like creatures, formerly dead humans who return to suck the blood of the living, date to at least the Greeks, before rumors of their profusion in Eastern Europe drifted westward to capture the popular imagination during the 1700s.

In its original imagining, though, the premodern vampire differed from today's in one crucial respect: His condition wasn't contagious. Vampires were the dead, returned to life; they could kill and did so with abandon. But their nocturnal depredations seldom served to create more of themselves.

All that changed in mid-19th century England—at the very moment when contagion was first becoming understood and when public alarm about rabies was at its historical apex. Despite the fact that Britons were far more likely to die from murder (let alone cholera) than from rabies, tales of fatal cases filled the newspapers during the 1830s. This, too, was when the lurid sexual dimension of rabies infection came to the fore, as medical reports began to stress the hypersexual behavior of some end-stage rabies patients. Dubious veterinary thinkers spread a theory that dogs could acquire rabies spontaneously as a result of forced celibacy.

Thus did rabies embody the two dark themes—fatal disease and carnal abandon—that underlay the burgeoning tradition of English horror tales. Britain's first popular vampire story was published in 1819 by John Polidori, formerly Lord Byron's personal physician. The sensation it caused was due largely to the fact that its vampire, a self-involved, aristocratic Lothario, distinctly resembled the author's erstwhile employer."

"The Plague Behind the Zombies The undead didn't always breed by biting. For that, the mythmakers needed rabies." http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023033434045775189...

First hand, the atelier program can kill your joy. That said, knowing how to render is the only way to get any good at representational art.

It's a lack of control, which produces the happy accident. Accuracy is the problem to begin with. Either I'd learn to pretend to lack control, or I hope my left hand doesn't gain control.

That said, again, I no longer enjoy it so it's a moot point.

I'm someone who fervently studied classical drawing, painting, and sculpture, against the advice of my friends and professors (they told me to stop studying so hard and to start an art career). The problem with over-practice is that you can get caught in mindless habit. It ruined art for me.

It's become very difficult for me to draw pictures that are interesting (if wrong) because I've trained so hard to draw them accurately. It's all by rote.

I've tried to fix it, to rewind. Now when I draw it's with my weak hand, and that has gotten me drawing interesting (if wrong) pictures again.

Another technique I've tried is using cheap materials. I usually get more interesting results from my 3 year olds acrylics than using professional oil paints.

That said, the love of art never came back. That's why, to the extreme confusion of my friends and family, I'm in tech now.

There are, but they're harder to count.

In most studies the Chinese investors are counted by their foreign names. There is no public data on nationality of real estate owners.

The irony being that Vancouver real estate is only a great investment vehicle because they've had such strict building regulations, with the view corridors law.

Other cities are not such a sure investment, a spike in supply could destroy your capital overnight.

In London they currently have 230 buildings 20 stories or more being developed, or planned for development. It looks like the investment capital is doing wonders there.

That's the same thing in the US. "Libertarian" is just what Republicans call themselves when most of their friends are Democrats, and they're worried people will think they're racist.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiscal_conservatism

As the supply increases, and a greater proportion of demand is met, the cost will decrease. Remember this from Econ 101?

If 8 families want to live in a single family home, it must be an exceptionally desirable area, with very little housing.

It stands to reason there are probably many more people who want to move in to the area, but who aren't willing to be one of 8 families in a single family home.

So given the huge amount of pent-up demand, there must be some building laws in place keeping this specific city from growing upwards, and generating supply for this demand.

This is probably a building limits problem.

I can put cameras outside of my home, I can have cars towed away, I can find the ripped up bill in their trash bag that tells me the perpetrator is John Q. Badguy.

But that is neither here nor there. My desire for comfort is nullified when it's being weighted against someone's human rights.

Could you please explain why the foreign investment is a problem? Every time I've heard this discussed, it's mostly been people saying "The CHINESE are buying up houses" with a racist glint in their eyes.

I don't get the impression these people would be as worried if the foreign investors were of French or Irish parentage.

If I've misunderstood the issue, people correct me.

The students escaping the ghetto will still be getting a measurably better education on the strained suburban school than they will at the ghetto school they're currently stuck in.