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What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

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481–490 of 659 posts

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#481

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not that I disagree with the underlying ideas, but I'd argue we're not slaves. I'll concede that in practice we can definitely be thought something more akin to peasants, but what we live in today is not slavery. Now, is being a peasant, with all the concomitant limitations on one's livelihood any better than being a slave to the mental health of the bright and ambitious? Perhaps not, but it would be significantly mo…

If I am forced to give any percentage of my income to a government I do not want, I think that is slavery. You wouldn't think it ok if an individual forced you, or the mafia. The government is just big mafia. But that is not really the nub of it. Slavery is really a mental state - having been through the system we have been propagandised that the government is a good thing, it's the right way to manage ourselves - an…

There will always be someone more powerful than you. I prefer that I can elect the leaders of the most powerful group. This is why anarchy doesn't make any sense: The government is simply the most powerful violent group. As long as violence exists, any anarchic arrangement is inherently unstable.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stealing from your primary food supply isn’t really what I had in mind when I was referring to petty theft. If anything I meant stealing a small amount from a significant excess. > I'd have no problem holding a gun to someone's head in order to extract what compensation is due to me under a lawful agreement. So if a doctor enters into a contractual agreement with the state to provide healthcare, then it’s ok?

Contracts should have monetary penalties only - you can't sign yourself into slavery. If the doctor breaches a contract, and the contract has provisions for what he will pay in breach, then he must pay it or have it seized (with force). We've long banned debtors prisons for good reason. There's no holding a gun to anyone's head required unless they try to stop you from seizing property to which you have a lawful clai…

So as long as I write the laws and excite the laws I can do whatever I want. Taxation is lawful because the government duly passes laws asserting such claims. Taxation therefore cannot be theft.

Unless there is some definition of “lawful” that exists outside of writing and enforcing the laws. Which begs the question according to who? In this instance that someone seems to be you.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#483
post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I am not mistaken "The Great Reset" is written by Glenn Beck. I may be wrong, as there are several books with that name, but the Beck book is the one most likely to involve railing against Nazis and Communists. You can get a sense for Beck's work here: https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/?s=Glenn+beck

"The Great Reset" is the name of a book by Klaus Schwab, who is chairman of the WEF. It was also the name that the WEF gave to their 50th annual meeting, which took place in 2020. Conspiracy theories aside, I've read Schwab's book, and it's a moronic, badly-written pile of buzzwords and corporate jargon that says nothing of interest and reads like the work of a hungover undergraduate who's padding the wordcount the n…

Indeed. I was ignoring this stuff until the “build back better” was the campaign slogan all over everyone in the western world

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#484

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would have been perfectly Constitutional until the Supreme Court changed their interpretation of the 2nd Amendment in the Heller case. > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_of_Columbia_v._Heller

IANAL, but I think there was no interpretation until the Supreme Court made that ruling. The Second Amendment was in a quantum state before that, both an individual right and not. When it becomes necessary to clarify something, then SCOTUS collapses the wave function in that particular area of law.

John Paul Stevens was a lawyer and a judge on the Supreme Court. He disagrees and includes actual court decisions and opinions.

>the Miller Court unanimously concluded that the Second Amendment did not apply to the possession of a firearm that did not have “some relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” And in 1980, in a footnote to an opinion upholding a conviction for receipt of a firearm, the Court effectively affirmed Miller, writing: “[T]he Second Amendment guarantees no right to keep and bear a firearm that does not have ‘some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.’

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/05/john-paul-...

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#485
post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that: > I'm sure that technological advancement in 2022 will be amazing, but they will be nothing as amazing as the present day than it is over 100 years ago (i.e. 1822). I don't know about that statement.

I’m really unsure about this. In 1822 canning food was new technology. 1822 didn’t have electrical generators but 1922 had radios, and the TV was clearly on the horizon. 1922 has the Model-T and airplanes.

Let me ask this question: Is the 777 further from the airplanes of 1922 than the airplanes of 1922 are from the hot air balloon?

Airplanes existed in 1922. But nobody you knew flew on them. You didn't take them from the US to Europe on business trips; you took a ship. You didn't take them from New York to LA, either; you took a train. You sure didn't book flights online while sitting in your couch at home.

The same (in fundamentals) technology existed in 1922. But all the social change came after that.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#486
post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>There are a countless other ways a country A country? The federal reserve is run by private individuals. It is a private bank. Don't let the name fool you.

"The Federal Reserve is private" is a meme at this point that is largely divorced from our usual meaning of public/private. Calling the Federal Reserve Board "private citizens" is like calling the Supreme Court Justices "private citizens". They are both officials appointed by the president, who must be confirmed by the Senate, and who collect a public salary. Any profits from the Federal Reserve go right back into th…

While all supreme court justices are appointed, from my understanding only the chairman is appointed correct? Everyone that works for the fed is not necessarily appointed?

Maybe we say it is private but the government serves as the board :)

Seeing the tension over the years the Chairman, the President, and Congress implies to me that the government does not have absolute authority over the Fed.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#487

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If there wasn't a major adversary with similar weapons that might have happened. Low-yield tactical are probably more effective than things like the "MOP" bunker-busters. But the hard-line we've drawn on the application of nukes has prevented such a slippery slope in our proxy wars.

In my eyes, nuclear weapons are both much less and much more terrifying that they seem to be considered by most people. The smallest nuclear devices aren't anywhere close to as large as commonly believed. An M28 "Davy Crockett" with a yield of 20T - 0.02kT - isn't that much different from a conventional GBU-43/B MOAB, which has a yield of 11T. Tactical nuclear weapons are basically a faster and more effective version…

>Tactical nuclear weapons are basically a faster and more effective version of conventional strategic bombing. "Little Boy", the first weapon used in combat (in Nagasaki), had a yield of 15kT. That resulted in an estimated 66k deaths and 70k injuries. Compare that to the firebombing of Tokyo, which killed ~100k civilians and burned the homes of over a million more.

Two points:

The first bomb was on Hiroshima, and killed many more people. The reason why the Nagasaki bomb killed "so few" people is because they missed. They were supposed to do a visual confirmation of the target, but the weather was cloudy so they (probably) used radar targeting, which wasn't particularly accurate in 1945. A lot of the energy hit the side of a mountain.

Second, there's a huge difference between a conventional bomb and a nuke of the same size simply because of the fallout. It continues to kill well after it's dropped.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#488

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That reductionist approach to liberty is a mirage for teenage boys and hermits. If I can do whatever I want, you can’t. The United States would have been pushed into a deep depression, but for JP Morgan’s vacation plans being a little different. Early 20th century America was not a radical place, the fact that the Federal Reserve was created underlies how fubar the system was.

> was not a radical place By what metric? For who? Surely it was good for some and bad for others, much like any other place. How comfortable people are and how happy they are are fundamentally unrelated to how free they are. > how fubar the system was All we basically disagree about is how the general welfare clause is to be interpreted. It had a narrow interpretation for most of US history, and then a broad one sta…

"How comfortable people are and how happy they are are fundamentally unrelated to how free they are."

That would be false.

"The US was clearly a good place to live pre-1936, given that so many people immigrated there."

That would be false, too, unless you were very wealthy. Just because it was better than, say, starving in Ireland does not mean it was "good". Source: My father's father was a sharecropper.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#489

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the absolute end is that the state should enforce negative rights, not positive ones. Liberty is the freedom from interference by or obligation to other people. > Why can’t private individuals simply work things out on their own however they see fit? They can, so long as they do peacefully. What the state provides is simply due process for the resolution of disputes, and the expectation that this process will be…

“It is difficult for me to imagine what “personal liberty” is enjoyed by an unemployed hungry person. True freedom can only be where there is no exploitation and oppression of one person by another; where there is not unemployment, and where a person is not living in fear of losing his job, his home and his bread. Only in such a society personal and any other freedom can exist for real and not on paper.” - Ronald Rea…

>- Ronald Reagan

For those unaware, the quote is actually from Stalin.

Re: What the world will be like in a hundred years (1922)

#490
post #404
post #226

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Central banks and their role in tyranny is hardly “vague”. They can siphon off the wealth of an entire nation by printing money. It’s an irresistible temptation that I don’t trust any man to resist long term. That kind of power shouldn’t be in the hands of any one person or organization.

>They can siphon off the wealth of an entire nation by printing money. It’s an irresistible temptation A) Which makes it basically another form of tax. B) The raising of which always driven the wealthy into fits of rage no matter how necessary or beneficial.

No the wealthy love this because their debt becomes cheaper to service while their assets skyrockets. Inflation primarily hurts the non-asset owning poor.
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