Politics

[Gordon Freeman]

Last time I defined fascism I understood it as "Intolerance of everything different", like Taliban and Anti-Bronies

[Bla]

Arian Planet has been making some social experiments, to see how people react in public about issues like discrimination of homosexuals, racism, violence, and homeless people.

This was pretty interesting. He asked some regular people for food but they wouldn't share any, however, he gave some food to two homeless people, and came back a bit later with a different appearance, and they shared their food with him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GGjEagUim0

[Gordon Freeman]

Homosexuals video please.

Also give de homeless a herpy meel of course

[blotz]

http://www.newnownext.com/michigan-house-passed-bill-allowing-emts-to-refuse-treatment-to-gay-people/12/2014/

[Bla]

So a bit of the report on CIA's interrogation methods after 9/11 has been released.

While the Office of Legal Counsel found otherwise between 2002 and 2007, it is my personal conclusion that, under any common meaning of the term, CIA detainees were tortured. I also believe that the conditions of confinement and the use of authorized and unauthorized interrogation and conditioning techniques were cruel, inhuman, and degrading. I believe the evidence of this is overwhelming and incontrovertible.

- Dianne Feinstein, Chairman, Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (page 4)

The Committee makes the following findings and conclusions:
#1: The CIA's use of its enhanced interrogation techniques was not an effective means of
acquiring intelligence or gaining cooperation from detainees.
#2: The CIA's justification for the use of its enhanced interrogation techniques rested on
inaccurate claims of their effectiveness.
#3: The interrogations of CIA detainees were brutal and far worse than the CIA
represented to policymakers and others.
#4: The conditions of confinement for CIA detainees were harsher than the CIA had
represented to policymakers and others.
#5: The CIA repeatedly provided inaccurate information to the Department of Justice,
impeding a proper legal analysis of the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program.
#6: The CIA has actively avoided or impeded congressional oversight of the program.
#7: The CIA impeded effective White House oversight and decision-making.
#9; The CIA impeded oversight by the CIA's Office of Inspector General
#10: The CIA coordinated the release of classified information to the media, including
inaccurate information concerning the effectiveness of the CIA's enhanced interrogation
techniques.
#11: The CIA was unprepared as it began operating its Detention and Interrogation
Program more than six months after being granted detention authorities.
#12: The CIA's management and operation of its Detention and Interrogation Program
was deeply flawed throughout the program's duration, particularly so in 2002 and early
2003.
#15: The CIA did not conduct a comprehensive or accurate accounting of the number of
individuals it detained, and held individuals who did not meet the legal standard for
detention. The CIA's claims about the number of detainees held and subjected to its
enhanced Interrogation techniques were inaccurate.
#17: The CIA rarely reprimanded or held personnel accountable for serious and
significant violations, inappropriate activities, and systemic and individual management
failures.

http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/study2014/sscistudy1.pdf

so did you accomplish your mission Bush.

[Bla]

Some good news for once. In 2013, 33.8% of Denmark's power supply came from wind power, which is the first time a country reaches above 1/3, and 57.4% of the power used in December came from wind power, which is also a world record. On December 21, the wind turbines produced more than 100% of the power used.

Source:
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Indland/2014/01/14/104657.htm
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Regionale/MidtVest/2014/01/13/173345.htm

Update from 2014: 39% of power supply came from wind turbines (due to more turbines as the wind was average) and in January 2014 61.7% of power came from wind turbines, which is also a new record.
Source: http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Indland/2015/01/06/004325.htm

[Bla]

News: The 80 richest people own more wealth than the poorest half of people on the planet (>3.5 billion).



Source:
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Penge/2015/01/16/154115.htm

[atomic7732]

yee capitalapitalismo

[Jorster]

I don't really see an issue in that?

[Bla]

I don't really see an issue in that?

The issue I see is that the 80 richest do not deserve to own as much wealth as 3,500,000,000 people. 80 is a microscopic number compared half the world's population.

In addition the wealth of the poorest half has been falling over the past few years. That is an issue in itself.

[atomic7732]

it doesn't mean they own half the wealth in the world. Half the world's population doesn't necessarily have half of the wealth of the world, unless you pick the right people or everyone has equal wealth. It's going to be less.

Granted, they still own as much wealth as HALF OF THE PEOPLE ON EARTH

[Darvince]

If those 80 people owned more than half of the wealth on earth, then the other 7.2 billion would own the other half, not the poorest 3.5 billion. It's still rather frightening though, because these three billion people have a wealth on average of, let's see, only $542 per person. Could you live off of $542 a year?

[tuto99]

The issue I see is that the 80 richest do not deserve to own as much wealth as 3,500,000,000 people.

I would strongly disagree.

[Bla]

The issue I see is that the 80 richest do not deserve to own as much wealth as 3,500,000,000 people.

I would strongly disagree.

So what makes them deserve that much?
You could make 3,500,000,000 twice as wealthy at the expense of 80 people (a lot of it I know isn't wealth in the sense of money they can spend on food or clothes they need, but still). There's no reason to think those 80 people would be capable of experiencing as much happiness as 3.5 billion, since they're all human they probably experience about the same and have roughly the same needs. Nor is there any reason to think those 80 people have performed as much work as those 3,500,000,000 people, ironically we often see how many of the poorest people on the planet are pressured to perform work 60-70 hours per week just for the few richest in the rest to take the majority of their added value to the planet for themselves. Hence, ending up with this distribution. That's ridiculous. From any ethical or incentive point of view it's ridiculous.

Even from the typical consumerist point of view this is ridiculous. Very unequal distributions mean all those poor people end up unable to buy the products they themselves helped produce, and a billion bikes or cars or beds are of little use to 80 people. The result is that such trends lead to them being unable to sell the products and unemployment increasing. Thus high inequality in itself hinders growth and leads us into crises.

So now I ask, how would anyone here argue that 80 people should in fact own all that wealth?


In other news kol, Paris wants to sue Fox News for erronously reporting about muslim-only zones in the city, I don't have time to translate but kol
http://www.dr.dk/Nyheder/Udland/2015/01/20/220241.htm

[FiahOwl]

This message is only viewable with Universe Sandbox Galaxy Edition. Access it and much more with promo-code '146219'.

[tuto99]

@Bla
My point is, if you worked your ass off your first 20 or so years to get where you are today, you deserve it.
If you work hard to earn 500k per year, you deserve it. If you worked hard to become an NBA player who earns
5 million dollars or more per year, you deserve it. And mind you, most of these NBA players donate their money to NBA Cares or to other charities, so it's not like they are greedy.

[atomic7732]

ok and if you work your ass off for your entire life and live in poverty your entire life i guess you deserve it too

[tuto99]

ok and if you work your ass off for your entire life and live in poverty your entire life i guess you deserve it too

Good point,  but I think that should not happen unless if you were born into it, or you didn't complete school and don't have the credentials for a high paying job.

[atomic7732]

maybe in theory, but in practice not everyone has the same opportunities or conditions under which to attempt to prosper

and if everyone had a high-paying job... you wouldn't have all the luxuries and conveniences you do now

unless of course, everyone was highly-paid no matter what type of work you do

[FiahOwl]

This message is only viewable with Universe Sandbox Galaxy Edition. Access it and much more with promo-code '146241'.

[atomic7732]

then they would be able to afford more than everything they need

[Darvince]

mfw the CEO of walmart works literally one billion times harder than a poor farmer african in uganda

[tuto99]

Yes, so building a prosperous conglomerate means that you don't deserve a penny that you make.
Of course, you can donate money to the poor. I have no problem with donating money, as long as I am not financially thin myself. I DO believe that poor people don't deserve the horrible lives that they live, but why bring everyone else down with them and make the problem worse? I think communism is practical and very humane in theory, but not effective in reality. Trying to be realistic.

[atomic7732]

No one said we were making the Walton family live on the streets

but don't you think it's kind of funny they (one family) have millions to spend on mansions and cars, when millions of people struggle to buy a house or car, and millions are in a worse condition than that.

question: how is communism not effective in reality?

capitalism, a system where matching minimum wage with the cost of living causes perpetual inflation (that's really silly, in case you didn't know), is "effective" in reality in the sense that everyone buys into it and it functions just enough to keep itself going^{[citation needed]}

[Darvince]

actually communism would give everyone the equivalent wealth that $14400 would buy^[Source], so you would get poorer, yes, but that's because you live in a first world country where everyone is (relatively) rich. can you imagine how thankful those three and a half billion people would be to suddenly get so much money and wealth?

[atomic7732]

and with everyone making the same amount of money, the entitled first world will have to come to terms with, you know, having everyone actually be able to live, and not squander and dehumanize them (including some of the first world) for personal gain

so don't let the small amount of money fool you it doesn't necessarily mean you won't be able to afford luxuries anymore

[tuto99]

Actually yes I thought of that. You have a point.

[Bla]

@Bla
My point is, if you worked your ass off your first 20 or so years to get where you are today, you deserve it.
If you work hard to earn 500k per year, you deserve it. If you worked hard to become an NBA player who earns
5 million dollars or more per year, you deserve it.

The problem is you ignore the process which determines those wages. The NBA player who earns 5 million USD/year does not perform anything near 3000 times as much work as the Bangladesh clothes factory worker who earns 1600 USD/year
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/06/08/bangladesh-factory-life_n_3407797.html
Therefore the NBA player etc. do not deserve 3000 times as high wages.

And mind you, most of these NBA players donate their money to NBA Cares or to other charities, so it's not like they are greedy.

Receiving unproportionally high amounts of money for what you do and then giving away symbolic amounts does not solve the problem you received more than you deserved. If the 88 richest gave away anything else than symbolic amounts I would've had nothing to point out, because there wouldn't be persons with 80 billion USD of wealth.
Donations are good but it's naive to think people will just donate the money they don't deserve to those who do.

ok and if you work your ass off for your entire life and live in poverty your entire life i guess you deserve it too

Good point,  but I think that should not happen unless if you were born into it, or you didn't complete school and don't have the credentials for a high paying job.

Should as in you think it should be prevented from happening, or you think it won't happen? The fact is that it does happen. Many people who are perfectly capable of working also can't get jobs because unemployment is a fundamental market mechanism in capitalism which acts to keep wages in 'balance'.

Yes, so building a prosperous conglomerate means that you don't deserve a penny that you make.

Again as I pointed out earlier, this is a naive view of money and value. Capitalists do not make the value they end up with in form of money. It is well explained here:

Imagine a worker who is hired for an hour and paid $10. Once in the capitalist's employ, the capitalist can have him operate a boot-making machine using which the worker produces $10 worth of work every fifteen minutes. Every hour, the capitalist receives $40 worth of work and only pays the worker $10, capturing the remaining $30 as gross revenue. Once the capitalist has deducted fixed and variable operating costs of (say) $20 (leather, depreciation of the machine, etc.), he is left with $10. Thus, for an outlay of capital of $30, the capitalist obtains a surplus value of $10; his capital has not only been replaced by the operation, but also has increased by $10.

The worker cannot capture this benefit directly because he has no claim to the means of production (e.g. the boot-making machine) or to its products, and his capacity to bargain over wages is restricted by laws and the supply/demand for wage labour. Hence the rise of trade unions which aim to create a more favourable bargaining position through collective action by workers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surplus_value

Of course, you can donate money to the poor. I have no problem with donating money, as long as I am not financially thin myself. I DO believe that poor people don't deserve the horrible lives that they live, but why bring everyone else down with them and make the problem worse? I think communism is practical and very humane in theory, but not effective in reality. Trying to be realistic.

You don't bring everyone else down to the poorest - you bring the rich down and the poor up - if considering those 88, 3,500,000,000 people would have twice as much wealth while 88 would be poorer. If you want to turn that into bringing everyone down to the level of the poorest you need to give some reasoning for that.
I often see the argument that 'communism/socialism is a nice theory but doesn't work in practice', but I also can't reply to it when there isn't given any reason for why that should be the case. I could merely say the same about capitalism.

[Bla]

"Our investigation showed that Ferguson police officers routinely violate the Fourth Amendment in stopping people without reasonable suspicion, arresting them without probable cause, and using unreasonable force against them."

The department found that Ferguson Municipal Court has a pattern or practice of:

- Focusing on revenue over public safety, leading to court practices that violate the 14th Amendment’s due process and equal protection requirements.

- Court practices exacerbating the harm of Ferguson’s unconstitutional police practices and imposing particular hardship upon Ferguson’s most vulnerable residents, especially upon those living in or near poverty.Minor offenses can generate crippling debts, result in jail time because of an inability to pay and result in the loss of a driver’s license, employment, or housing.

The department found a pattern or practice of racial bias in both the FPD and municipal court:

- The harms of Ferguson’s police and court practices are borne disproportionately by African Americans and that this disproportionate impact is avoidable.

- Ferguson’s harmful court and police practices are due, at least in part, to intentional discrimination, as demonstrated by direct evidence of racial bias and stereotyping about African Americans by certain Ferguson police and municipal court officials.

http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/justice-department-announces-findings-two-civil-rights-investigations-ferguson-missouri

That looks really messed up.

[Lord DC]

not really surprising to me, considering i live in the Police States of 'Murica