The main reason is that people don't understand science, but they will still appeal to it as if it were the law of the universe. It's an appeal to authority: Much like people used to say "X is true because God said it", it is now "X is true because Science proved it". Science is a continual work in progress towards an objective understanding of the universe. But it's so easy to see a news story saying: "A new study shows that global warming will melt the ice caps before 2012! More at 11". People have been lied to before and don't trust these studies, because they may have faulty conclusions. We need to look at the data and make our own conclusions, because we may all have different perspectives on what caused a result.
This is why I feel so uncertain about almost everything. How can one go through life confident about anything if they must not only research everything for themselves, but also overcome their own biases? What makes somebody qualified to evaluate or research anyway?
I feel like after over two decades of living, I don't know a damn thing, and I don't mean that in a "I'm so young and naive" sense either.
I disagree that it is simply an appeal to authority. I think this is more accurate: "X is likely true not just because the current scientific consensus says it is, but because we as humanity literally can not know better".
Like the majority of people, I oppose gay marriage. But what the British government did with chemical castration to Alan Turing and others is absolutely reprehensible - and they should pardon all of them. Let's not conflate these issues please.
No, let's. If homosexuals should be allowed to experience their sexuality than why not permit them to fulfill their emotional, romantic, and other needs? It's such an artificial line to draw and we certainly can discuss both gay marriage and the legality of homosexuality in the same discussion.
The problem arises that the legality of marriage was designed around traditional families. There's nothing that stops homosexuals from fulfilling their emotional, romantic, and other needs. But when you involved tax deductions because children are such an expensive commitment, it gets hairy. I do support civil unions (but not gay adoption), and I am tolerant of gays (I discuss these issues with friends who are gay), but to change the very definition of marriage goes too far - and ends up confusing everyone.
In your previous comment, you took the view that your sentiments reflected a global representation, and you short-changed the person who replied to you for being so silly as to think you were talking about the USA when in fact you were talking about the entire planet. Now, in this thread, you hearken to "traditional families". You speak of a country that has "tax deductions". May I ask you to hone your platform and let us know from what level of generality you wish us to perceive your commentary?
> The problem arises that the legality of marriage was designed around traditional families.
This premise is debatable, but assuming it is true it's still not a particularly strong argument. The law was designed to be flexible and evolve with society's needs and desires.
Allowing gay marriage is a minor adjustment of what we in the US currently understand marriage to be - not a "changing of the very definition". If we were talking about polygamy that would be a much stronger case.
Society encourages and allows marriages for a variety of reasons - involving tradition, encouraging general stability, families, etc. It also has a certain understanding of marriage - a partnership between two people. Homosexual marriage vis a vis heterosexual marriage is the same in all these respects in practical terms.
To be clear, there are difference in say how gay couples reproduce (in general)...but there are differences in how heterosexual marriages reproduce too. The supposed fundamental "differences" in gay couples are already tolerated (or entirely unproblematic) in the hetero population so banning gay marriages as a means to discourage them is not a valid argument. It's an artificial distinction.
Let's be honest - opposition to gay marriage is based on religion, ignorance, or personal aesthetics. Hey, that's fine - we're all entitled to our beliefs ...but let's be explicit and honest about it instead of kidding ourselves and each other.
If you really do want to stick to this farce, then at least be consistent and start demanding people must pass fertility and mental health exams before they can be married - to prove that they can produce children and raise them in a healthy environment.
You arguments are good but not airtight. I'll pick out the ones I disagree with.
> To be clear, there are difference in say how gay couples reproduce
Straight couples can reproduce with their spouse - gays cannot. That's not just a difference, but a complete opposite.
>Let's be honest - opposition to gay marriage is based on religion, ignorance, or personal aesthetics.
I agree that most people oppose gay marriage because of religion, but religion may have underlying logical reasoning for it. I don't think ignorance/personal aesthetics is a reason, because if someone is intuitively disgusted by two males sodomizing, there may be a biological reason for it. Ignorance is better than false beliefs.
The reason I'm against gay marriage is that I don't want the definition to change, and I don't want my children having gay propaganda pushed on them. That's it. These are good reasons in my opinion.
> Straight couples can reproduce with their spouse - gays cannot. That's not just a difference, but a complete opposite.
Not really one relevant to much of the legality around marriage. About the only thing it even remotely connects to is the presumption of paternity (the default assignment of legal parental responsibility to the spouse of the biological mother of any child born during the marriage.) And, even then, its not really a problem. There are two different forms of the presumption, and which is adopted varies by jursidiction.
Rebuttable: In this model, the concept of rights and responsibility of biological parents as preeminent is maintained, but the spouse is presumptively assigned parental rights and responsibility, but this can be reversed if there is evidence that the spouse is not the parent. Obviously, in the case of same sex marriage, this is resolved simply, as the evidence is readily available to rebut the presumption in all cases.
Conclusive: This model is based on the priority of the marital relationship over biological parenthood for raising children, and in jurisdictions adopting this this model the spouse of the biological mother is conclusively assigned parental rights and responsibility with regard to any children born during the marriage. Obviously, there works just fine in same-sex marriage.
So, the same-sex-couples cannot reproduce with their spouse thing is a difference, but not one which seems especially problematic with regard to the legalities around marraige.
> The reason I'm against gay marriage is that I don't want the definition to change
That's not much of a reason.
Why do you think the current definition of marriage, the result of continuous change over an extended period of time, is so perfect that it should not continue to change?
> and I don't want my children having gay propaganda pushed on them.
What does that have to do with equal marriage one way or the other? You think that continuing to deny equal marriage is going to make gay rights advocates less vocal and omnipresent?
> Straight couples can reproduce with their spouse - gays cannot. That's not just a difference, but a complete opposite.
You're just stating explicitly the implicit argument I was refuting, but ok:
The difference is immaterial for our purposes. The fact that one or both parents in a family do not have a biological link to their children is irrelevant. It's a curiosity of genetics that has little-to-nothing to do with how a family functions on a social level, which is the level marriage laws operate on.
Are we banning adoptions and step-children now? Society has no reason to outlaw couples that can't reproduce together. Homosexuals can adopt, they can use surrogates, they can have children from previous marriages (ended in divorce, or death, etc). As long as we're think-of-the-children-ing it would be better all around to let those children grow up in families if possible.
More importantly, that's not a difference between heterosexual and homosexual couples - it's a difference between couples. Many straight people can not or will not reproduce with their spouse either - are we going to ban marriages between infertile people? Force people to have children?
The point is this: if you pick at random a married gay couple...and then pick at random a married straight couple....the difference between them will be no greater than the difference that we already tolerate between heterosexual couples. Therefore, you cannot argue that we must ban gay marriage on the basis of preventing some problematic aspect of gay marriage - any "problem" gay marriage is one heterosexual marriage also has. It's a largely artificial distinction. If not being able to have children together is SUCH a big deal, then argue against that and let gay couples be banned under that banner.
If you're going to ban it on the basis that a gay couple is statistically much more likely to have quality X, then quality X must be a VERY serious thing. Infertility is not serious enough to qualify.
Note too this situation may change. The science of reproduction is ever evolving and changing.
> These are good reasons in my opinion.
> is that I don't want the definition to change
This is either silly and arbitrary, or begging the question.
You don't want it to change why? Because you believe laws should never change? You're afraid of all the paper we'll waste printing out new forms? You don't want to have to memorize new legislation?
No, let's be honest - you don't want it to change because you don't agree with the proposed change. That's fine...but just state that instead of coming up with some silly dodge like "I don't want the definition to change".
> I don't want my children having gay propaganda pushed on them
Here I suspect is your most honest; you are against it because you don't like homosexuality. Fine, that's your right to feel that way. However you should just be honest with yourself and others and admit that, instead of providing silly and flimsy rationalizations which fall apart under any scrutiny.
Your stated reason for opposing gay marriage is that it involves tax deductions because children are an expensive commitment. Then, in the very next sentence, you say you don't support gay adoption. So you oppose gay marriage because they can't have the kids you want to keep from them?
Let me guess: You don't support gay adoption because gay parents can't afford it, what with not having marriage-related tax breaks?
> Child-based tax deductions should be based on what children a couple have, not on what gender the couple are.
Should... and are. You can receive child-based tax deductions even if you are not married at all. Whenever I hear the "deductions are for the children" thing brought up I take it as a clear sign that the person saying it has very limited life experience.
If the definition of marriage had never changed from biblical times, polygamy would still be legal.
If the definition of marriage had never changed from the 19th century, married women owning separate property wouldn't be legal.
If the definition of marriage hadn't changed from what is one in any particular time and place in the past leading up to modern marriage laws, either much broader or much narrower restrictions on consanguinity would exist.
Marriage laws change all the time, and understanding of the relationships underlying marriage on which those laws are based also change all the time. Sure, same-sex marriage is a change -- but lots of other things that we consider fairly firmly entrenched in our idea of marriages were themselves changes, some fairly recent, to pre-existing models of marriage. The whole idea that there is some single "traditional" model of marriage that has been static for an extended period of time and which is now threatened by same-sex marriage is ludicrous.
To be fair, that's a rather US-centric viewpoint. Interracial marriage was not ever (as far as I am aware; I may be wrong) forbidden in the UK, for example.
> The problem arises that the legality of marriage was designed around traditional families.
The current legalities around marriage are mostly based directly on the idea that a marriage is a special bilateral promise of mutual support, and not much on other features of "traditional" families.
They've also changed a lot over the two centuries to remove most of the vestigious of the older model of the wife being legally subordinate to the husband. Marriage legalities, and the underlying model of the relationship in marriage on which they are based, aren't the product of some long-static "traditional" model that had been undisturbed for an extended period of time before the same-sex marriage debate.
> There's nothing that stops homosexuals from fulfilling their emotional, romantic, and other needs.
Actually, not having access to the legal rights involved in marriage does prevent that.
> But when you involved tax deductions because children are such an expensive commitment, it gets hairy.
The tax deductions on that premise require you to have children that you are responsible, they aren't an automatic consequence of marriage. So I don't see how they are relevant. The situation in which marriage has tax benefits is if, as part of a couple's arrangement of mutual support, one focuses more on work outside of the house (which is taxable) supported by the other taking on a heavier load of the domestic duties, since married couples pay lower taxes than two individuals when there is a significant disparity of income.
So I'm not sure how your statement above has anything to do with marriage. It seems to have something to do with not wanting people to get tax deductions or credits that come with raising children without actually raising children, which is sensible but completely irrelevant.
> I do support civil unions
Given your statement above about the "legality of marriage" and that "civil unions" as opposed to "domestic partnership" is usually the term given for providing the legalities of marriage under a different name, why?
> (but not gay adoption)
Why? Is it that you prefer children to have less chance of having permanent families and spend more time in foster homes? Or just because you dislike homosexuals?
> and I am tolerant of gays (I discuss these issues with friends who are gay)
And I'm sure they appreciate your magnanimity in deigning to discuss with them the reasons why you think they should receive unequal treatment under the law.
> but to change the very definition of marriage goes too far - and ends up confusing everyone.
"The very definition of marriage" has been pretty much continuously changing throughout all of history. Its not all that confusing, and, to the extent it is, your desire to avoid dealing with the confusion of changing social institutions isn't a reason other people ought to suffer discrimination.
Depends on how you define population. If I were to gamble on it, I would expect a (rather high) margin in opposition, with support rates highly correlated to education levels.
Yeah, I understood that's what you were talking about, from other comments - I was wondering which rmc was speaking of.
As to world population, I'm not sure you're correct (but also not at all sure you're incorrect). Yes, Russia and much of Africa and certainly the Middle East can be assumed to be majority opposed, but I'm not sure about Asian countries and that's a lot of people. Much of the west is obviously trending against you.
It is people like you who I make it my mission to fight against every single day.
It is people like you who feel so insecure that you have to force your ill-conceived morality on everyone.
It is people like you who completely misunderstand psychology, sociology and biology and insist upon strict gender binary. Which you then think justifies your one man one women bullshit.
It is people like you who would prevent me from marrying my beautiful girlfriend - thankfully I like in a more developed, forward thinking country.
It is people like you who would prevent me and my girlfriend from adopting children, despite the fact our household income is 4 times the national average and both of use would be loving stable parents with plenty of time off to take care of our children. Thankfully we like in a more developed country.
It is people like you that are the reason that I and several other people refuse to accept promotions or jobs that would require relocation to backwater countries like the USA.
It is people like you who one day history will see as pathetic and backwards.
Let me be absolutely clear on this. I hate you. I will never forgive you for what you have said and done. And I will do everything in my power to ensure you and people like you can never force your bullshit beliefs on me or anybody else. There have been too many murders, assaults, suicides and lost childhoods because of people like you.
The human race doesn't want you or need you. Have a nice day.
I said majority of people, not Americans. My statement stands correct. Look at what other countries have done to recently stem gay culture: Russia recently passed a unanimous (436-0) vote which banned gay propaganda[1]. Homosexuals acceptance is pushed hard in the western media, but don't let that skew your worldview. Reactionary responses are not uncommon.
You keep arguing with logical fallacies, but I'll respond anyway. Russia is doing quite well and just became the 5th largest economy[1]. They also have a news station (Russia Today) which reports on real issues - unlike western "mainstream" media. You act as if Russia is some backwater slump and not a growing modern nation. Meanwhile the western world is teetering into bankruptcy. You won't know which side of history is right until it actually becomes history.
America grew very well economically while - and partly due to - using African slaves. The European empires dominated the planet economically while believing they had a divine mandate to exploit the savages. Wealth generation has nothing to do with the goodness of a behaviour or attitude.
Do you think stance on gay rights is the cause of economic problems or Russia's current situation?
It's possible that some day the entire world will despise homosexuality, or that the entire world will be fine with it. Both of those scenarios could happen regardless of whether countries currently on one side or the other end up as the world powers.
Personally I believe that gay rights will keep on improving, not get worse, and therefore you are on the wrong side of history. But I could be wrong about that, so it's fine if you disagree with my prediction. Just, disagree with it using relevant logic, not unrelated situations.
If you remember to control for oil wealth when graphing "acceptance of homosexuality" against per capita GDP you'll probably be surprised by how well correlated they are...
These are the kinds of attacks that people who stand for traditional marriage have to face. A bigoted army of people who can't muster a better argument than vulgar name calling. The irony is that they claim to stand against intolerance...
By using euphemisms like "stand for traditional marriage" you automatically lose the argument. You do not have to defend straight marriage. No one is against it. There's nothing to stand for. In fact you are against the other things. Your position is one of sanction and oppression, not support.
It's changing the definition of the word, so yes there is something to stand for. If you don't believe marriage needs defending, look at the rates of marriage. Now the meaning of marriage has been diluted so much, no one wants to get married anymore - there's no point except to possibly get benefits from the state.
I could have just as easily said people who use the term "homophobic" automatically lose the argument, as there's no fear involved. This is a battle of semantics - and if we want a quality debate then we need to keep definitions consistent.
How do you know I'm not right? Do you provide any evidence? Also what is your obsession with calling me a bigot, when I'm open to dialogue. You are the one who is glad that I'm a "dying breed", so I would say you're the bigot. Also, if you want to talk about literally being a dying breed, I would think homosexuals who do not have children fit that definition better. Also, I'm 19 years old. Much how there was a reactionary swing to the left in the 1960/70's, there could very well be a reactionary swing back to the right that is emerging. (I'm using the archaic "left/right" metaphors just for sake of argument)
I am not calling for your execution in the streets, I am merely expressing glee at the fact that the American Taliban are dying of old age and heart disease faster than you can replenish your ranks.
If you think that makes me a bigot, then consider Karl Popper:
" Unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend unlimited tolerance even to those who are intolerant, if we are not prepared to defend a tolerant society against the onslaught of the intolerant, then the tolerant will be destroyed, and tolerance with them. [...] We should therefore claim, in the name of tolerance, the right not to tolerate the intolerant."
You should crack a book or two. You're only 19, your brain isn't fully formed yet. There is still hope that the damage is not irreversible.
On second thought...
> "Also, if you want to talk about literally being a dying breed, I would think homosexuals who do not have children fit that definition better."
Words cannot express how shocked I am by this comment. I thought people as stupid as you were hyperbolic strawmen... Christ.
>You are the one who is glad that I'm a "dying breed", so I would say you're the bigot.
Ah, the old "tolerance means accepting intolerance" card. Nope, totally haven't heard that tired old fallacy from the far right ever before.
>Also, if you want to talk about literally being a dying breed, I would think homosexuals who do not have children fit that definition better.
Irrelevant. If your grounds for opposing marriage equality are on purely biological grounds, you must also oppose all forms of birth control and support compulsory reproduction for married couples.
I had a more conciliatory message here a moment ago. I'm just now noticing that you're not even bothering to respond to the messages that completely disprove your points (i.e. "traditional marriage" is a nebulous term that means whatever its speaker is advocating for), so it is my full belief that you are just a troll.
That is not at all what I said. He suggested that he supports me going away and dying out, and I think shouting out your opposition is intolerant.
>Irrelevant. If your grounds for opposing marriage equality are on purely biological grounds, you must also oppose all forms of birth control and support compulsory reproduction for married couples.
I agree it's not relevant. I was responding to an equally irrelevant comment.
>I'm justice noticing that you're not even bothering to respond to the messages that completely disprove your points
I'm responding very frequently.
>"traditional marriage" is a nebulous term
Somewhat. But I have a webster's dictionary from the 60's and the definition of marriage quite clearly reads between a man and woman. Marriage having that meaning dates back centuries (millenia even?), back to its original conception. So it's pretty obvious that the "traditional" meaning is the original and longest standing one.
> But I have a webster's dictionary from the 60's and the definition of marriage quite clearly reads between a man and woman. Marriage having that meaning dates back centuries (millenia even?), back to its original conception.
Marriages that are not between a man and a woman (judging both by biological sex), varying in both the number of partners of either sex and whether, among the partners, are not even remotely unprecedented before the modern debate over the current restrictions of marriage to opposite-sex partners.
Its notable that in many cases these were well-established traditional practices that were pushed aside by the advance of Christianity in the effected regions, so that the Christian model of marriage was the one that was redefining marriage away from the its existing "traditional" form.
>I think shouting out your opposition is intolerant.
That is not what intolerance means. Saying that I find the fact, that you want to deny same sex couples rights, to be downright reprehensible is not oppressive to you or anybody else. The same cannot be said of your views..
>But I have a webster's dictionary from the 60's and the definition of marriage quite clearly reads between a man and woman.
Really. I'd appreciate it if you were to quote that definition verbatim, because quite honestly I do not believe you.
I also feel I must point out that "appeal to tradition" is a straight up logical fallacy.
You know, there's something I've been thinking about in relation to people like you. As part of my job, from time to time I'm asked to look at resumes of people fresh out of college (for software engineering jobs), and sometimes they'll list extra-cirricular activities like band or whatever, and I've lately seen resumes where the candidate explicitly and proudly lists gay-and-lesbian related advocacy groups.
I've never seen a resume where the candidate listed anti-gay or anti-gay marriage advocacy groups.
So I wonder, if you were involved in such a group, say, the Prop 8 group in California, would you advertise that fact?
When "in" members of the Phelps family attend universities, by all accounts I have heard they present themselves as regular people. Sure they don't party, but for the most part they pretend to be regular well adjusted people.
Bigots hide what they are when it is advantageous.
>I've never seen a resume where the candidate listed anti-gay or anti-gay marriage advocacy groups.
This very fact should concern people. You rarely see people advertising their support for traditional marriage (especially in california/new york. There is a common misconception that supporting gay marriage is somehow a proud rebellious cause against the status quo. But the reality couldn't be further from the truth - virtually the entire media and up to the president support gay marriage. Organizations supporting traditional marriage will immediately be called "intolerant, bigoted, hate groups" and shouted out of the debate. There is something seriously wrong with that.
So no, I would not put any political organizations on my resume for a software engineering job. I rarely discuss politics/religion at work. I hope you wouldn't hire such people who jump on the bandwagon issue de jour.
>Organizations supporting traditional marriage will immediately be called "intolerant, bigoted, hate groups" and shouted out of the debate.
Stop couching your views in pseudo-PC language and call it what it is. You do not "support traditional marriage" because that is a meaningless phrase. Nobody is campaigning for traditional marriage to go away - you can go have one right now!
You are not supporting a thing, you are supporting keeping that thing from someone else.
What you ACTUALLY support is that people who happen to love someone of the same sex should not be able to marry. That they should not receive the same spousal and tax benefits as couples who love someone of the opposite sex.
>You are not supporting a thing, you are supporting keeping that thing from someone else.
Here lies the crux of the debate. You think straight people are keeping something away from gays. But I think its gays trying to take something from straight people.
Let's say I lived in a country that banned marriage entirely. I would still get married and it would be enough for me and my family to recognize that we are married. Gays can do the same thing - they're not restricted at all in what they can do these days. But they want something more - they want everyone to be forced to recognize their marriage. They get infuriated when straight people don't want to recognize them. So they are taking something - our freedom to interpret our own reality. This is a kind of rabbit hole type revelation that spans many other issues and underpins my fundamental opposition to statism/slavery.
> You think straight people are keeping something away from gays.
I don't think anyone thinks straight people are keeping something away from gays. After all, the proportion of the population that supports marriage equality is much greater than the proportion that is gay.
> But I think its gays trying to take something from straight people.
As someone in a stable, opposite-sex marriage, I'd like to know what it is that gays are trying to take away from me. What that I had before equal marriage came to my state have I lost? Because I don't see it.
> they want everyone to be forced to recognize their marriage.
What they want is for their committed life partnerships to be treated the same way under the law as those of people who happen to prefer a life partner of the opposite gender.
> So they are taking something - our freedom to interpret our own reality.
You are free to "interpret your own reality", and I doubt any equal marriage supporter will argue against your right to do so. Your freedom to do so, however, does not give you the right to deny others equal protection under the law. The concepts aren't even related.
> This is a kind of rabbit hole type revelation that spans many other issues and underpins my fundamental opposition to statism/slavery.
And that is the kind of sentence that doesn't even begin to make sense in context. WTF are you talking about, seriously?
>But I think its gays trying to take something from straight people.
A gay couple getting married does not in any way, shape, or form impact another striaght person's marriage, and I challenge you to prove otherwise.
You arguments are taken nearly VERBATIM from the anti-miscegenation movements of a few decades ago. Blacks marrying whites impacts the sanctity of traditional marriage and will harm children" and on and on and on.
There is almost no argument that marriage equality opponents use that wasn't also used against that back then. That alone should cause you to seriously think twice about the rhetoric you're using, here.
A few decades ago it was race mixing, now it's homosexuals. Same players, same arguments, same justifications.
This isn't really relevant to the point on any logical level beyond trivia, but still, think on it.
>They get infuriated when straight people don't want to recognize them.
The fact that you think this is very telling. It's completely wrong. It's that simple. This has nothing to do with what people think, it has nothing to do with feelings or emotions. It's about actions and causes and effects. Concrete, observable things.
I couldn't give two shits what you think of my relationships - that is your concern. Where I do care is when I am unconstitutionally denied rights for no good reason.
You are telling me that getting the same tax breaks a married couple does, the ability to see my partner in the hospital, that kind of thing, somehow, is SO deleterious to you in some fashion, so negative, that I should be denied those rights.
Fair enough. We're all adults here. Objectively define that negative impact and then we'll talk.
>So they are taking something - our freedom to interpret our own reality.
You can interpret your own reality however you wish.
You can not, however, violate the equal protection clause of the constitution to deny certain people rights just because you feel that it's icky (and I must point out that you haven't brought forward any argument yet that doesn't stem from your personal feelings).
I'm a bigot? Please, look up the definition of bigot and then look in the mirror. I even explicitly said I was tolerant of gays. You are the one intolerant of others' opinions.
A straight person has the same rights as a homosexual person. They can both get married. That's equal protection under the law. What you want to do is change the definition of marriage, which I think is like missing a soccer goal but arguing to move the goal posts to make you win. Make a new word for gay marriage if you want - but leave the definition of marriage alone as changing it would break a lot of legacy code.
> A straight person has the same rights as a homosexual person. They can both get married.
...to a person of the opposite sex.
> That's equal protection under the law.
This is pretty much the exact argument which was made, and ultimately rejected -- see, e.g., Loving v. Virginia, 388 U.S. 1 (1967) -- regarding anti-miscegenation laws, where it was argued that, under those laws, blacks and whites had the same rights, because they could each get married...to a person of the same race.
(Although in the restriction to opposite-sex marriage, the inequality is even more clear: anti-miscegenation laws could at least be argued to deny both blacks and whites the freedom to marry the person of their choice, and so to restrict the freedom of both races in the same way; you can't even make the parallel argument with the opposite-sex restriction.)
> What you want to do is change the definition of marriage
The definition of marriage changes all the time.
> Make a new word for gay marriage if you want
We didn't make a new word for mixed-race marriages when we threw out anti-miscegenation laws. We didn't make a new word for marriages where the woman could own property independent of the man when we threw out the rules prohibiting that. We didn't create new words for marriage each time the prohibited degree of kinship changed.
There's no need to change it when we throw out the restriction on the allowed combinations of genders, either.
> but leave the definition of marriage alone as changing it would break a lot of legacy code.
To the extent there are laws that need updated in the face of same sex marriage, they need updated to accommodate it equally if it a separate marriage-like institution with a different name is adopted.
The deindustrialization and depopulation really hurt Detroit. But what also strikes me is the rapid change in racial demographics. In 1940, Detroit had a 90% white population and was the highest standard of living city in America. During the course of WWII, 350,000 blacks moved into Detroit. In 1943, the Detroit Race Riot caused by tensions between whites and blacks resulted in 43 dead, 433 wounded. In 1967 it happened again, this time 43 dead, 1189 injured, over 7,200 arrests, and more than 2,000 buildings destroyed. President Lyndon B. Johnson sent in the Army to quell it. In 2010, the demographics are 10% white and 82% black, and Detroit is a bankrupt wasteland.
Deindustrialization happened in other cities such as Pittsburgh - but they've recovered by transitioning into technology/medicine industries and the like. Pittsburgh has not seen a demographic shift like Detroit.
There's a 43 year gap between those stats. You've got the beginnings of a hypothesis, but I think you need a lot more data if you want to support it at all.
Or it could be that an 82% black population indicates $SOMETHING, rather than "black people killed Detroit". When Gary, IN started to fall apart with the steel mills closing, my theory was that the only people left were the ones too poor to get out. Could be the same with Detroit. Or not, I don't know. But the demographics remain, and a drive down Woodward Avenue will confirm the numbers.
What does it mean though? Your hypothesis should be something more than there sure are a lot of black people there and then let people's imaginations fill in what that means based on biases and broad generalizations. An observation is not a hypothesis.
Deliberate misinformation has a pretty long history. Here's a good report about the CIA manipulating the US media from Carl Bernstein (yes, that Bernstein) circa 1977:
I agree this is causing a great deal of damage to democracy around the world, I'm just pointing out that it has been going on for a very long time.
Thanks to the Google News archive, you can see lots of examples of those CIA "journalists" advancing the interests of the CIA throughout the '50s and '60s. It is fascinating to compare that known manipulated media content to what is now contained in the historical record about those same events. You'll also see many striking similarities to the way every modern story is reported and commented on in the modern media.
Are you kidding me? At the very least, wearable computing as a form factor is going to be huge. And Google has the resources and flagship product to pull a big win. It's a convenient, hands free device with display. I suspect this is one of the main reasons their stock has been doing so well lately.
Wearable computing is absolutely going to be huge.
But there is no way to escape the fact that most people consider glasses and watches to be fashion accessories. And to make the next mass market device you will need to live and breathe fashion. Which effectively means doing what Apple is doing and bringing in experienced people like Paul Deneve from (Yves) Saint Laurent.
If anyone can do it, it might be Google. It's going to take a ton of internal development to further Google Glass from their last prototypes. With smartphones setting the expectation, the general public and even techies are going to want something slim, streamlined, and performant. The TI GPU processor that Google Glass comes with isn't exactly performant enough to do the crazy VR stuff we want.
Why not use bitcoin instead of dollars? The point of using dollars in Argentina is to avoid inflation by a central entity, but doesn't bitcoin solve that problem better? It has the added benefit of not being explicitly illegal and having to use a black market.
If you are a developer bitcoins are not the best option. How many customers will prefer to pay you in bitcoins than in the local currency? very few and it can be an extra headache for them. Also bitcoins' fluctuations can play against you because you can't change your price all the time according its hourly value.
Good customers might not mind or find it much of hassle.
Compared to sending hard currency to a an Argentinian, it might be far less hassle, especially for the developer.
And you can quite easily change your BTC price all the time: negotiate the rate in USD, but always settle in BTC, using the exchange rate at the moment of payment.
It's less about the fluctuation and more about other services not accepting Bitcoin at the moment. If your utility providers accept Bitcoin that could grease the wheels a bit toward general acceptance.
I don't even consider Bitcoin's privacy as a selling point; more than that, it's that real forgery is impossible like going back to the days of trading with gold*
*Of course there were crafty forgers mixing in lead and the like to make fake coins and bullion, but crypto makes that harder.
Bitcoin offers pretty poor privacy. Bitcoin is basically like using a credit card that posts every purchase you make on the Internet. Now, unlike a credit card your name isn't necessarily tied to the a bitcoin wallet, but realistically you're unlikely to have more than a few bitcoin wallets, and even if you have multiple ones, any transfers you make between them will also be publicly broadcast, so someone with a bit of computing power can likely compute with very high probability what you're doing with your money if they can locate a single transaction they know you have made.
Of course, Bitcoin-paying customers are currently rare. But it solves some cross-border problems, and I've met a number of software developers who prefer Bitcoin-paying work, and know of a number of projects that pay in Bitcoin.
Thanks for the explanation of the 'cave' lingo. Is it called 'cave' because it's illegal/underground?
Does the Fortune 500 typically hire remote solo developers across borders, and using 'caves' for payment delivery? I don't think so: they have internal teams or use agencies, and avoid informal/underground mechanisms... at least in the US, in my experience.
My problem was with the categorical statement, "If you are a developer bitcoins are not the best option". It depends; for some developers and some projects that I've spoken to, they prefer to send or receive it.
If I were a startup in San Francisco and wanted to pay an Argentine developer several thousand USD each month for services, how would a 'cave' help me get USD to them, and what would be my costs?
With Bitcoin, I could send the BTC from my laptop, at a cost of less than 10¢ per payment (if I already have the Bitcoin) or about 1% of the total (if I have to purchase Bitcoin). If the developer then wants USD or ARS, perhaps then they can go to their favorite 'cave'; they'll know more about spelunking than me.
It doesn't destroy jobs, it obviates the ones it replaces (and sometimes creates new ones). Which is a good thing, right? It makes it so that no one has to do those jobs to receive the same productivity. Thus freeing up our time for either leisure or something else productive.
Also it should be noted that technology is a double edged sword and can also make things worse. An example: a big farming corporation decides to improve profits by using new chemicals to preserve their food longer. Of course this may seem like a productive decision on paper, but it could actually be unproductive to society as a whole if the chemical has subtle but negative side effects that take a bigger toll.
Unfortunately a lack of jobs that people are being paid for also creates a wealth disparity. You can't buy food if you don't have a job
We need a stronger social safety net because there's just not going to be enough wealth-producing activity for humans to do that we will all be able to live on that alone.
If you're right we are headed towards a society where we are collectively resting on the backs of the robots who are there to do our most mundane chores. If the robots produce enough economic output then, assuming our society restructures itself to distribute that economic output proportionally, we should be able to arrange it so that we lift everyone out of poverty.
Or maybe the robots will decide they no longer need us and that will be that. It could go either way, really.
The problem you are talking about arises from the result of competition in the markets. If someone has a cheaper production because of better technology, then the market as a whole will use their business (as the buyer has the freedom to choose who they buy from). This is fair, consensual, and it makes sense to help society gain more value as a whole. Limiting this in any way (as many regulations unfortunately do) is a restriction of people's free choice and thus an aggressive and unethical act. But of course the negative part comes in when the person who used to work in that market has now lost their job and thus their income. Well that is like crying about the slow gazelle who got eaten by the cheetah. It's nature and unfortunately you can't artificially make everybody win, or nature would push back.
Some solutions include higher taxes to make an assured living wage. This is possible today but not if everyone keeps raising the standard of what a "living" wage is. If we could produce a guaranteed living wage, we could get rid of minimum wage and thus give people a ladder to compete in markets they otherwise wouldn't be able to get experience/train in. This would be because you could literally work for free, so the company could only see a benefit to hiring you (rather than being stymied by minimum wage).
The wealth disparity is normal, look at any statistical data like humans and you will see outliers. Thus you will see people with ideas that are a million times more productive than others. Don't worry, if someone else gains wealth and you didn't lose, it does indirectly benefit you. Don't be jealous bro.
Not being jealous just wondering how people who don't own or make robots will be able to make a living wage off of their labor in the coming decades. There's just not going to be enough work for them to do once we have unlimited, skilled, cheap robots.
the only solution i see without massive inequality is one where we can distribute wealth. it's not jealousy. it will be a technological utopia if executed correctly - nobody will have to work, we all get to do whatever we want all day.
there will always be inequality, but if we live in a just society it will be one where the least well off person is still reasonably well off. a guaranteed living wage might do that - and that's exactly what i'm talking about, actually. but there might be enough breathing room in the future to give more than a living wage.
obviously it's a little pie in the sky at this point, but in 10 years it won't seem so much.
This is a poor way to promote free market economics. Most people don't want to see a tooth and claw society where low income families are torn apart by hungry capitalists.
It is certainly true that wealth disparities may be the price paid for the benefits of a free market economy but that does not make them unimportant. I think most would agree that an extreme case where a single individual owns 100% of the wealth and nobody else has anything would be a poor society, so the question becomes where does one start to worry?
If somebody can be one million times more productive, and you are one of the million people put out of work and unable to find further employment then you absolutely do lose.
I respectfully disagree. When you really think about it, the jobs which tend to become automated away are typically blue-collar, lower level jobs. Additionally, the jobs which tend to displace those older jobs are higher level, technical jobs. I personally believe that tech tends to widen income disparity as a result of this.
Doesn't help that many of those lower level jobs are being automated away in no small part thanks to altruistic legislation demanding they be paid more than their work is worth, raising the cost of labor to the point that the cost of automation is cheaper and more compatible with the value of the work. Pressures to innovate prompt innovation - go figure.
There's plenty I'd like to hire people to do, but can't afford to dole out "minimum wage" (much less a "living wage") and prolific benefits for - not because I'm cheap, but because I've only got limited funds to spend. Result is the unemployed have fewer options, and the self-altruistic compel others to support them.
The issue is that automation will only get cheaper as time goes on. Therefor in order to compete with automation the lower skilled will have to reduce their wage further over time in order to compete.
This begins to lead to an unsustainable situation in which the workers wage is no longer enough to sustain their own life in the economy.
Then you end up with three basic options.
1) Simply let people starve or rely on begging/charity/crime.
2) Support people via welfare or minimum income guarantee schemes, leading to a more socialist economy where there is no expectation to work. This increases power of government significantly because people are now dependant on these handouts for their livelihood.
3) Reduce expectations of quality of life. Stop building suburban homes and start building large "workers dorm" type accommodation. Feed people more effectively from shared canteens rather than individuals cooking for themselves etc. Hope that income from the spending of the wealthy and exports can keep the economy up when general consumer spending starts to drop.
The issue is that automation will only get cheaper as time goes on. Therefor in order to compete with automation the lower skilled will have to reduce their wage further over time in order to compete.
A classic narrow view meme, overlooking many other balancing factors. Thanks to increased automation: prices drop (making basics & luxuries more affordable to all), new markets are created, new mundane jobs are created before they can be automated. The cycle repeats; disparities happen, but they get worked out and equilibrium is restored.
I'm concluding the biggest barrier to self-sustinence is socialistic government has made functional low-income living practically illegal. You can't live in settings considered normal not long ago, you can't start businesses without traversing a bureaucratic nightmare, you can't own land without near-prohibitive taxes amounting to rent.
We've been here before many times. It will work out, suffering thru the same unlearned-from mistakes.
Housing and food costs don't seem to be getting any more affordable. There is only so much land to build or plant on.
There is also nothing to guarantee that new labour intensive industries will appear enabled by new technology. Startups are a classic example of this, they often employ extremely few people compared with their valuations and share of the economy.
You could eliminate minimum wage laws to make automation or outsourcing less attractive but with that you have to accept a regression in living standards for a great many people.
Couldn't agree more. The Syrian rebels are a loosely associated group with several elements who are radical Islamist and Al Qaeda. This could have easily been titled "DIY Terrorism".
But is it really terrorism at this point? It's a civil war. Just because some groups that use terrorism to further their goals are participating doesn't make it any less of a war.
If the residents of New York City rebelled, and managed to take control of 2/3rds of the city, that would be a civil war (or at least I would classify it as such), even if Al Qaeda showed up to participate.
> But is it really terrorism at this point? It's a civil war.
Civil war distinguishes context of conflict independent of methods, terrorism distinguishes methods of conflict indepedent of context; they aren't mutually exclusive categories.
Equally inaccurately, though. Both "freedom fighters" and "terrorists" are marketing terms. "Rebel" is accurate since they're fighting the government; that's definitely a rebellion.
