Flogging the old "European socialism is the best" dead horse again, I see.
Comparing radically different countries always yields good results, right? It's important to also note the French are bankrupt and have massive internal problems.
It's great they shifted all of their effort into health care. It will make a nice epitaph.
> "Capitalism" is not a system. Capitalism is life itself.
Of course it is a system. Just as feudalism is a system. It's a way in which to organize distribution of abstracted wealth. You might claim that it's a consequence of industrialization (and still be wrong, but at least make sense).
Would you characterize the organization of the native North Americans as a capitalist society, before the arrival of Europeans?
Capitalism is just private property and voluntary contracts. It's impossible to untie life from that.
Feudalism is a system, but it was built into capitalism. Feudal lords had land as their property, they made voluntary contracts of their vassals: I'll protect you and give you some land, you'll give some of your production to me. There was also trade, merchants et cetera.
This applies to everything. The Native North Americans had private property and various kinds of contracts -- which probably involved some communal property and other stuff.
When there's some entity exercising coercion (non-voluntary contracts), that entity is the State and there is socialism.
Agreed. In particular, ownership of the means of production, land and natural resources (and now extended to ownership of ideas, information and data [eg: gene sequences that have been "discovered"]).
> and voluntary contracts.
I don't think we agree on what "voluntary" means.
> It's impossible to untie life from that.
"Life"? Are you trying to say that property isn't a social construct? How is the concept of property relevant outside of a society?
> The Native North Americans had private property
"What is this you call property? It cannot be the earth, for the land is our mother, nourishing all her children, beasts, birds, fish and all men. The woods, the streams, everything on it belongs to everybody and is for the use of all. How can one man say it belongs only to him?" -Massasoit
"We do not own the freshness of the air or the sparkle of the water. How can you buy them from us?" -Sealth
Trolling is about provoking your enemy into revealing himself. It's not just walking up to someone and saying something rude or stupid. But that's about the most the majority of people can handle.
> IANAL but I'm reasonably confident that a restraining order he received as a minor would not be admissible as evidence in this case, and thus should be irrelevant to the prosecution.
And yet it might be relevant to the reason he was arrested, if the quotation in the message above yours (which is unsourced) is true.
Kid gets arrested for Facebook talk: "INJUSTICE!"
...but he had a previous restraining order for similar threats: "They might have a point."
What's ridiculous about this case is that they kept at it.
The problem is, in most states its stupidly easy to get a TRO - you dont need proof, just fill out a form, indicate you feel threatened by someone, pay the fee, boom, TRO.
Europe is declining even faster than the USA. The worst part is that Europe is emulating the USA. Although I did find the recent Swiss immigration decision to be interesting.
That recent immigration vote has been a major point of discussion with every Swiss person I've spoken to since the weekend. It's not business as usual, it's very concerning, and people in the more populated parts of Switzerland are very much opposed to it.
I strongly suspect that something will happen in the three years that it will take to implement this nonsense that will invalidate it.
> The whole idea that bicyclists somehow are above the law in terms of traffic signals needs to end. We need to start stopping at red lights and stop signs if we're ever to be taken seriously.
I would like this too. I've seen multiple accidents caused by selfish and arrogant bike riders, motorcyclists and pedestrians.
This is in addition to the single persons -- it's always just one in the vehicle -- who drive gigantic SUVs and assume that it's my job to stay out of their way, even when I have the right of way and am trying to do something like drive from point A to point B down the street. Silly me, I should be second-class to them because I didn't buy a giant SUV.
Comparing radically different countries always yields good results, right? It's important to also note the French are bankrupt and have massive internal problems.
It's great they shifted all of their effort into health care. It will make a nice epitaph.