Worlok

It's true that if Calvinism was true that any debate or discussion is irrelevant. Not only are you already fated to have the discussion, it will have the same outcome, you will die the same way at the same time and you can never change anything you do or say because it was pre-determined. I would have to ask a particle physicist, but insofar as free will and dominoes go, all of the physical universe consists of space, energy, matter, and fields. If given the an exact set of variables ( position in space/time in relation to all other mass/energy/fields being exactly the same) which cannot be changed or added to that either a type of field/energy/matter has more than one option of occurrence, then it is bullshit. However, if given an exact set of variables that cannot be changed added to or taken from that no matter/space/energy/field can take any route other than 1 specified by the set variables, then fate is a fact and there is nothing that you can do about it. To dumb it down, if you are playing billiards, if you hit a ball at the same angle and speed at the exact same place at the exact same time (exactly the same) and you turn back time to replicate it perfectly, the balls will always function exactly the same unless there is some natural force at work that allows a molecules or the strong force or anything else to change it on its own. As far as I am aware, the commonly known, Uncertainty principle is indeed a natural law that disproves Calvinism quite soundly. So if there is fate, then god is an asshole. Your first link is an utter logical failure. "We must be able to conceive of an idea, need, want, etc., before it can be desired, chosen and accomplished." I can want specifically anything that I cannot conceive of. I simply have to be made aware of something that I cannot conceive by somebody else. Like if they tell me they have something that I cannot conceive. Considering that there is anything that I actually cannot conceive, if another person has conceived it and I decide I want this unknown thing, I have met all the requirements except for conceiving or being able to conceive what is in question. This disproves the entire rest of that page. The second page is also a joke. Total depravity is nonsense. It is a point of view assuming meanings of scriptures in a very specific way, when every quote can be understood quite differently. Unconditional election and limited atonement require each other to refer to each other for this point of view. They also take quotes out of context and suggest them in a very specific manner that is not directly referred to. Irresistible grace and perseverance of the saints seem to go hand in hand in explaining how awesome god is and that once you are saved, you are saved. These last two really seem to be added to support the "elect" argument that was poorly made in the first two sections. The entire thing is based on the idea that if you take a specific agenda and form definitions for words and meanings around it. I read the scriptures used in the article and I got a very different picture from it. I'm agnostic, thus neutral, so maybe I just looked at it a bit too honestly.

Because a shotgun to the kneecaps works better. Violates NAP Violates their property (self) Causes legitimate unwanted physical pain - refer to #2-3 Nancy Kerrigan - refer to #2-3 and c The reason NAP is cited so much is because it can be found as a base principle of most immoral things.

Repercussions. You will measure things in an economic manner and what you get from committing the murder will be compared with what you lose, or what the repercussions for your actions are. You will then determine the odds of getting away with it if it is a crime and at that point you will decide if the action is worth it or not. You won't murder me if the repercussions outweigh the benefits of the action. Unless you are an idiot, then you reap what you sow. As Louis C.K. put it, if murder was legal and you never murdered anybody before, people would think, "what the hell is wrong with this guy? What a creep." and they wouldn't trust you. However, most people are not cool with murder and would not trust murderers. Hence you face no less of a repercussion than everybody not trusting you. Angry mobs have been known to hunt down and kill criminals when there wasn't a greater force of law at work.

Double post Steph just had a video this week or last where that capitalist swede or whatever said the people around him had never even conceived of the classically liberal economics. To the OP, From my reflection, technically no, and it will never happen. If it does happen, it will be on accident. That is to say, given enough time/energy/mass/fields/space everything that can happen, will happen. For such a society to be sustained, it would require a big brother state to sit in its defense as the likelihood of another state either wanting to invade you with a 10:1 mass or just nuke you off the face of the map in one fell swoop are extremely high. Supposing everybody in Mexico go aids and died off in 10 years, If America wanted to let libertarians make a stateless society on its awesome beaches, the entire world wouldn't let you get nukes for your own deterrence, so If Iran decided to kill all of you hippies off, You would require America so save you, assuming you aren't blitzed out of existence. I actually have a legitimate plan. Collect a few guns and lots of ammo. Maybe even body armor. Get dry food and water enough for a year. Learn to hunt and survive harsh climates outside of your home. Make sure that you have faraday cages around your important electronics like the car in your garage. Once either a nuke or a solar flare wipes out the electrical grid, only top government locations will maintain electrical systems... And you. The US government estimates that such an event would cause 99% of Americans to die off in the first year. The rest of us would have very limited functionality of our vehicles, likely no more than 6 months as the gasoline goes bad, at which point you are effed in the A. Survive for a year and then congregate at any place that the limited remaining government has not collected to and BAM! Freedom. This does require either a nuclear war or a extremely likely* massive solar flare aimed directly at us. Extremely likely based on a cosmic timescale.

The stats seem to add up with what seems to be the average IQ of races and how those races vote. If you are a moron, you probably vote democrat. If you are smart, you might vote democrat, but you probably don't. The paper brings up separate statistics of who voted which way and who self-describes in which way, which are very different. The majority of Americans identify as neither R or D and a large of amount of Americans don't even vote. There are separate graphs. The paper uses the word, "liberal" in the classical sense and not in the contemporary sense when it describes economic policies. For this reason, replace all usage of the word, "liberal" with "libertarian" for an easier read. However D and R or are replaced with progressive or conservative. Conservative referring to social conservatism, generally religious in nature. As was stated in the OP, libertarians or classical liberals "socially liberal, economically conservative" have higher verbal IQ. Republicans and Democrats each being roughly half of those two are seemingly about equal.

Some companies give raises over time periods, like 6 months or 12 months. These raises represent the increased value of your skill and experience that you've gained over you time working. These types of businesses also have wage caps because the wage cap would be the maximum anybody could be worth in said position. They can, of course, fire you or lower your wages at any time if you aren't worth it. Some companies will offer wage increases if you are going to quit or if there is obvious competition that they don't want to lose you to. Some companies with incompetent bosses only give you a raise if you threaten to quit or just say that you are quitting. Over all, the better you are at your job, the more money you can make for the company. If you make twice as much money for the company as somebody else, you are worth up to twice as much as the next guy. Depending on wages, you might be worth more. If person A earns 50k and makes the company 200k, but person B earns 50k and makes the company 400k, he's technically worth his original 50k plus the 200k extra that he makes for the company over Person A. Basically, if the person B quits because the company won't pay him 100k, the company is losing a quarter mil a year just because they won't give Person B a tiny raise in comparison. They obviously want to keep that guy. Certain services or items are worth certain amounts of money based on either how well you can offer a service or how many items you can produce. Wages are set based on subtracting your wage from what you produce and the sum has to be a significant net positive for the business to pay you anything at all.

This exactly. To be a little more precise, the FCC controls broadband, or any internet services. I used to work for ATT and I would have received a 30% discount on their internet service. The FCC would not allow ATT to offer that service in my area because it would be unfair to Comcast to have competition. Thus my only internet options are DSL, Comcast, or satellite. These are completely different types of services that don't have to compete. You get satellite if you bundle with satellite tv service. You get DSL if you don't get super expensive tv service and Comcast isn't available to your house/apartment. Basically everybody gets Comcast. There isn't any real competition. Due to the economic state of Utah, Google has fiber in three or four major cities and it is priced really well for the best service available. This is the only actual competition in my state. Phone services were heavily regulated because of Bell/ATT owning practically everything and wanting to push competition out of the market. After cellular services starting gaining traction, land lines were mostly deregulated and enough damage was done that one or two companies couldn't get the FCC to shut down the competition. Basically, if there is too much competition, the FCC regulates and prices and services turn to crap. If a company is too powerful, the FCC regulates and breaks it up, then competition occurs and they regulate and companies become to powerful. Just read up on ATT/Bell.

I find the question a little queer in that it seems you are asking a question to which the answer is not necessarily an answer. Austrian school is to economics as the uncertainty principle is to quantum mechanics.

You just sneak the drugs in/out. There is no such thing as a "drug" free zone. That said, the tower had a contract allowing drugs. The owner of the tower can offer new contracts, but if they disallow owning and taking the drugs before new contracts are accepted, then they are in breech and can/will be sued. You face an economic dilemma, on the shoulders of the tower owner. Will you go to court and possibly pay out huge sums to people that you have contracts with in your tower or use some other form of transformation? Troubador brought up drones. You could fly drugs in. Suppose as an extra step, those bastards start shooting down your drug drones in what they perceive as "their" air space. That can lead to violence, which again comes to negotiating contracts. You could also make your own drugs. Meth? Really? Get a room, state of the art lab and safety equipment, all the meth you want. Grow your own coca leaves or marijuana. Then you sell drugs to everybody in the nearby town that wants to visit the tower. The tower would be a super rich drug den and the surrounding town would be filled with crack heads and would lose all negotiating power.

A microwave emits electromagnetic radiation. Microwaves are just a certain amount of energy in the EM waves. Lower energy waves are called radio waves and higher energy waves are infrared, visible light, ultra-violet, x-ray, gamma. You take energy from the microwave and transfer it to the food. The increased energy causes particles to move very quickly, creating friction. It push your hands together and rub them together very fast. That's what a microwave does. you need 2x energy for 2x the mass. That said if the item in the microwave has parts that are thicker than others, the thicker parts will take longer to heat. twice the thickness, twice as long. That's why the edges melt fast on your quesadilla, while the thicker, inner area of cheese is still solid...

From both this thread and everything that I have read about harmful radiation and nuclear power, including nuclear meltdowns, I don't actually see any of this as a significant threat. This compounded with the fact that we are still running almost exclusively Gen II reactors while already developing Gen IV reactors, I'm not at all worried. If Stef decided to pick this up, I imagine he would collect a good deal of information from both perspectives.

MMA doesn't match women against men. Rhonda very likely gets paid far more than women she is against because she is superior in many ways. There are also fewer viewers of women's fights than men's fights. If Women's fights and Men's fights sold the same amount of tickets and were watched by equally as many people, Rhonda would most likely be one of the best paid fighters. To get a fair comparison, you would have to look at how many people buy tickets or watch each type of fight against how much the athletes are paid. For example, If 1/10 as many people watch women's fights as men's fights and Rhonda makes 1/5 as much as the best paid male athlete, she is actually being paid twice as much as her male counterpart for the same work. Anybody have published statistics on that?

Yeah, It's called professional sports. Highly physically capable, skilled people are paid lots of money for being superior specimens. But that's just the real elite. Superior people that do superior things in the context of their work are paid more. Some people simply are superior while others must strive to be.

The GOP has been letting Obama do whatever whenever. I'm of the impression that Obama will pick a moderate and congress will be forced to go with it lest they want public backlash. The public already hates congress.

I find morality to be entirely subjective and that UPB is in no way "universal." If leaving a person to or letting a person die does not indirectly make you partially responsible for it occurring, then pointing a gun at a person and pulling the trigger does not make you responsible for murder. You don't kill that person. You pulled a trigger. The gun doesn't kill, it fires a bullet. The bullet, unless hit to the brain or high enough on the spine does not kill, it causes organ damage. Organ damage doesn't kill, it simply is the effect of which bleeding occurs. Bleeding doesn't kill, it simply causes the organs to stop function. Organs no longer functioning kills you. If you knowingly allow something to occur that you could stop, you are partially responsible. If you don't move out of the way of traffic and nobody can stop in time, it's pretty much all your fault that you get hit and die. Doing nothing is an action. What's important is not whether you are responsible for something or not, what's important is how much of that responsibility is yours. Yeah, I've read his argument. He kind of iterated it V Here V \ / \ / When put into a set of steps all force requires initiation of actions resulting in force occurring. When one performs actions that result in force, force is used. However, the "initial" use of force in a conflict is what one would be referring to, not the initiation of all actions resulting in force being used (the use of force). All actions are initiated, however a defining moment would be the beginning of a conflict. Was your point that "initiation of the use of force" as a term has a special definition outside of plain English that I pointed out? I'm not "in the loop" when it comes to specialized terminology. I speak and read in plain English and am aware that I miss a lot of that stuff. Again, are you attempting to say that "the use of force" is a specialized term that is intended to mean something different than initiating actions that result in your using force?

It defines "cheating" as doing it with intention of harming the person. I don't know where they got that from or why they included it. that one point appears to be the basis of the article by itself. The article seems to me to be either dishonest or short sighted. Evidence and logic may suggest that you are correct, but more evidence may prove it wrong. I think their logic and evidence proved their point, so I'm not sure if they had something to prove or are just incredibly ignorant. There was a contract in the relationship. That contract was broken. We can all understand a breach of contract. There was also time and emotion that you invested into each other. You not only trust each other to maintain the contract, but also not to throw out all the time, emotion, and effort. You cheat, and you betray all of that. Out of the nine circles of hell in The Divine Comedy, the 9th, deepest circle is for the betrayers.

People seem to be in a push-pull with ideology and reality. You vote/ speak for politicians or laws based on your belief. Then once those laws or politicians fail, people rail against them. Either that or you get fairly right wing, prosperous politics and laws that eventually lead people to becoming complacent with the status-quo and want to inject their ideology. Welfare until you spend all the money, then hard work and personally accountability until everybody is well off. Then you degenerate back into welfare. Problem is the government passing laws instead of free trade regulating things properly. From what i have read, it seems that on a political scale, people tend to be fairly centrist and vote on that reality/ ideology basis. The ideology that everybody has to say nice things, that anybody can be whatever they want, and that we need to steal from the rich and give to the lazy is clearly failing like it always does. People are railing against it. Governments are growing in power until the power structure collapses like always occurs. The U.S. seems on the brink of structure collapse as well as said push-pull. I'm not well aware of everything in Europe as I am in the U.S., but EU seems to be dealing with mainly the change in how they see the world and how it actually is. America did a real good job of destabilizing the middle east. EU just needed a few refugees to mess up their frail misconception of the world.

You have to initiate force to put somebody to death. Or is that not obvious? I don't think there is an argument to be made on attempting to keep a person alive even if they committed a crime. It it simply a moral position. However, if you allow a person to die that you can keep from dying with a fairly minimum amount of effort, but decide to let them die, you are partially responsible for their death. You have to decide personally, from a moral standpoint if purposefully letting people die is a positive/neutral/negative thing. You must initiate force to imprison a person. On virtually all scenarios, you must continue to initiate force to keep a person imprisoned. Imprisoning people for a reason other than an immediately required defensive measure (handcuffs) or rehabilitation is a continued use of force for what I can only determine is an entirely arbitrary period of time. That leads me to two conclusions. Either arbitrary prison times are potential of any crime, or you require a contract for imprisonment with the prisoner. Suppose a thief is caught and refuses all forms of restitution. Rehabilitation can potentially be forced upon them. A contract for time served with the prisoner can sometimes be acceptable, but it has to be entirely voluntary. What courts so now with plea deals makes it not voluntary. Lemme know if I missed any angles

I'm a pacifist and I carry a gun. Shaolin monks are pacifists and they developed kung-fu to defend themselves from bandits, thieves, and murderers. All life is sacred, but if that is true then using force or even taking life to defend life is permissible. If you shoot somebody after they have been stopped, captured, and tied up is not protecting or defending anything. No threat is present or may immediately become present. Even if you harm a person with a potentially lethal wound and they then become no longer a threat, it is your duty to keep them alive if you can. Death as a punishment is not okay. I'd say that the real question is in what ways and at what point does imprisonment become immoral? I would answer that with punishment or imprisonment based on rehabilitation. If you are imprisoned for a crime, you should be released when rehabilitated. Otherwise imprisonment is also wrong as a use of force.

A political candidate can't work only towards removing any and all laws preventing freedom? Anyway, as somebody already put forth, Trump is authoritarian to a degree. Anti-immigration is, in certain situations, an opposed position. Personally, I don't find anything particularly wrong with Trump. He's playing the game and his positions are generally ones that fix some significant problems without necessarily replacing them with other problems. He's also hilarious. Watch Stef's video "The Untruth About Donald Trump" on YouTube. Better yet, also have your friends watch it and then have a discussion.

I'll create a situation for you that I put forth in another thread. Completely libertarian, no government society. You live on a plot of land that you own. Your land is completely surrounded (as almost invariably it would be) by property owned and lived on by others. The next town is 100 miles across a desert with no life. For the benefit of an individual and certainly to those around you, an object is and needs to be built (let's say for scientific purposes) on your land. If you sell your land or allow it to be built on, you will be compensated extremely well and said said object to be constructed will save thousands of lives (just bear with the made up scientific purposes) and benefit the community as a whole. If you sell the land or sell rights to build on your property, all is well. Instead you decide that everybody can go to tell. In response, everybody decides that, no, you can go to hell. Nobody will let you onto their property, so you can't get to town to buy food. Even if they would, nobody in town will sell you food or do any business with you at all. You don't have the capability to get to the next town on your own. Nobody will have anything to do with you or allow you use of their property for travel or any other purpose unless you allow this object to be built on your property or sell the property. You are left with two options. 1. Allow construction and use (you absolutely refuse this option) 2. You starve to death or die in some other manner. In this situation, you have to come to some agreement or steal to survive. Nobody owes you anything. In fact, you are a dick and everybody should hate you. The only moral decision that anybody has to make is your own decision on the construction. Here is a separate situation that does't leave you with the incredibly obvious only situation. You live in the same society as the previous example. Except you didn't do anything wrong. You just have an incredibly unpleasant personality that nobody can stand and because they all hate you for this, nobody will do business with you. You are not allowed travel on anybody else's property. You just suck and so everybody is going to ignore you and you are going to starve and die. You still have a lot of options. Sexual favors, changing your behavior, inflicting self harm for the amusement of others, etc. In a third and final situation, you live in the same society. Now, because everybody else are just jerks and hate you for no reason and refuse to do business with you because they think that it would be hilarious if your starve to death or kill yourself. Not only that, but if you come onto their property (let's say they all have uber security, guard dogs, and sniper towers) they will shoot you. Your only option becomes not only theft, but use of force, even murder, metal gear style. You gotta kill somebody to get to the other side of property or get to food to steal in the first place. You and the other properties are both on a kill or be killed situation. You can stay on your property and die or initiate force. In fact, you would have to kill several guards to get to the food. All three scenarios are degenerative. They each get consecutively worse. You can come to two types of conclusions. 1. your life is more important than the lives of ten others or it isn't. 2. you have a right to other people's property or you don't. Separately, how realistic is it that the entire society will hate you for no reason and you can't appease them or offer some kind of service?

Is and ought are generally subjective. The "law" is like saying "because purple unicorns." Hume's law isn't a law, but a logical inconsistency. Unless I'm missing the point here...

Roads and public bins would be privately owned. You already pay for these things with taxes. You probably pay way too much also. Immigration has two parts. If you have open borders and a welfare state, you are essentially paying foreigners stolen tax dollars to not work. Obama administration now allows for illegals to count towards population in voting which pushes votes toward the welfare system. The welfare state usually only steals tax dollars to pay locals not to work and illegal immigrants should not be considered in any manner for a vote of office. The second part is that if you have open borders and no welfare state and politicians don't get a vote bonus for illegals, they are only going to immigrate for better opportunity and will get jobs. Immigration isn't bad. Immigration, welfare state, and counting illegals as population in votes together are bad. I'm not sure what your confusion on intellectual property rights is.

I didn't require more information on the topics, but that the answers were not black and white as the test puts forward. However, I find it safe to assume that that was one of the points of the test.

I have to say that your post in completely wrong for 1 reason. Inflation is the increase in the supply of money. You have to print more Dillard's for there to be more dollars. Deflation is the effect of money increasing value by lots of supply. Social welfare surrendering by the government is about half of all government surrendering. That's money that the government just gives away to people. Something like 1.5 trillion dollars. If the government prints $1.5T every year, it is essentially being paid directly to people. It places a $1.5T debt on the tax payers to pay the tax payers. That inflation also lowers the value of itself. If you print money, the value of the debt, interest, and all savings drops. If you use that printed money to pay off debt instead of paying people their own money, the debt does not grow numerically. It is an invisible debt that lowers the value of your savings. This impacts the economy, so you don't see the debt and may not even know it is debt, but the debt will be there and you will feel it. Stop spending fake money and it will eventually devalue itself. What I am saying is, if we just cut the hell out of spending and continue to slowly print money (by the billions and billions) every year, you will create constant debt to the tax payers that the market will even out, but will also pay off the debt while also devaluing and losing the effect of said debts.