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On 2/3/2011 11:17 PM, Darren New wrote:
>> At what point do you stop? Or, more to the point, at what point do you
>> bloody stop and think, "Heh, you know.. it might just be a good idea
>> of this *never* hits the market for the average person." Somehow,
>> these things never get thought of until *after* something happens.
>
> OK. Consider Mexico. It's not like their aren't criminal gangs running
> around with tanks and planes of their own.
>
> I'm not saying everyone needs nuclear railguns. We already have a bunch
> of things that never hit the market for the average person. Hand guns,
> however, are not them. Indeed, it's that whole "never hit the market for
> the average person" that a few posts ago you were arguing were the
> reason that guns would be useless in a revolution to start with.
>
Not sure that Mexico is exactly a good example to use. Half the
"government officials" are either bribed, owned, or working for, the
criminal gangs that run around with tanks and planes of their own. And
yeah, I am sure, right now, with badly ineffective power systems, a
railgun would be "so" helpful, at least until it occurred to the
oppressors to simply shut off the power grid before showing up... Not to
mention, one bomb, precision or otherwise, and you don't have to worry
about the railgun the guy built in his basement any more.
If "successful defense" relies on, "It will be successful in 50-100
years, when we are finally on equal footing!", its not very successful.
Right now, they wouldn't be, in the past, they could be, since the
disparity was never as much as it is now. In places like Mexico, you
can't tell apart the supposed "legit" and "non-legit" agencies, so its
fairly meaningless to talk about citizen resistance. They won't be the
ones resisting, it will be which ever gang happens to be in the area.
And, invariably, if the disparity grows smaller, its still going to be
government, or corporations, or someone else with money to burn, who
will have the armies, private or otherwise.
What makes a successful revolution isn't what you are armed with, its
that a large enough number refuse to acquiesce to the demands of the
lunatics, even if they don't even have one weapon, and the would be
dictator finds themselves in a position where a) they lose more than
they gain, or b) more people will side with the defenders, if they act
to end them, meaning they lose even more in the process of suppressing
the revolt. An idiot tries to control people with guns. The smart ones
try to do it with words. The really stupid ones try to do with with
lies, then with guns, and find a hornets nest.
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Not sure that Mexico is exactly a good example to use. Half the
> "government officials" are either bribed, owned, or working for, the
> criminal gangs that run around with tanks and planes of their own.
That's sort of my point.
> In places like Mexico, you
> can't tell apart the supposed "legit" and "non-legit" agencies, so its
> fairly meaningless to talk about citizen resistance.
Again, that's my point.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"How did he die?" "He got shot in the hand."
"That was fatal?"
"He was holding a live grenade at the time."
Post a reply to this message
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On 2/4/2011 10:37 AM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Not sure that Mexico is exactly a good example to use. Half the
>> "government officials" are either bribed, owned, or working for, the
>> criminal gangs that run around with tanks and planes of their own.
>
> That's sort of my point.
>
>> In places like Mexico, you can't tell apart the supposed "legit" and
>> "non-legit" agencies, so its fairly meaningless to talk about citizen
>> resistance.
>
> Again, that's my point.
>
Then I must be missing it, because its not much different than big city
gang wars. Some people want to stay out of it, and that means *not*
resisting, and the rest spend all their time resisting "each other", and
occasionally getting those that are trying to stay out of it shot
instead. turning the local town into its own armed gang, to resist all
the other gangs, doesn't solve the problem. You don't need a gun to
refuse to help a thug, and it doesn't necessarily help to have one
either. They might decide to leave you intact and shoot someone else you
know as a show of force, or any number of other things. Mind, they might
do that anyway, but... its not the same thing as happening to be armed
with some random person tries to rob you on the street, and even that is
imho, a bit of a toss up.
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Then I must be missing it,
You're conflating two problems. One concerns whether the kinds of firearms
people own here today would be useful to resist the government. The other is
whether the type of firearms people own today would be useful in other
endeavors.
For the latter, the answer, statistically, is yes - target shooting is safe,
hunting is popular, and having a gun reduces your individual likelihood of
being harmed in a violent crime. If you want to argue against that, you'll
need to say more than "it's obvious".
For the former, we have numerous examples throughout history where
individual ownership of firearms has protected against violence by
governments. While obviously there are also cases where the government has
won, there are also cases where those being invaded have won, or at least
put off for a long time their own demise. So it's not obvious that any
government can squash any civilian resistance out of hand. If it were, we
wouldn't really be still hunting terrorists, would we?
After that, it's just policy, and an estimation of how likely various
"violence by governments" of various forms are: invasion, coup, organized
crime taking over the government, etc. And how likely it is that firearms
would help in any of those particular situations.
We have a process for estimating that latter bit. It's called "amending the
constitution if enough people are convinced the situation has changed." :-)
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"How did he die?" "He got shot in the hand."
"That was fatal?"
"He was holding a live grenade at the time."
Post a reply to this message
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On 2/5/2011 12:07 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Then I must be missing it,
>
> You're conflating two problems. One concerns whether the kinds of
> firearms people own here today would be useful to resist the government.
> The other is whether the type of firearms people own today would be
> useful in other endeavors.
>
> For the latter, the answer, statistically, is yes - target shooting is
> safe, hunting is popular, and having a gun reduces your individual
> likelihood of being harmed in a violent crime. If you want to argue
> against that, you'll need to say more than "it's obvious".
>
> For the former, we have numerous examples throughout history where
> individual ownership of firearms has protected against violence by
> governments. While obviously there are also cases where the government
> has won, there are also cases where those being invaded have won, or at
> least put off for a long time their own demise. So it's not obvious that
> any government can squash any civilian resistance out of hand. If it
> were, we wouldn't really be still hunting terrorists, would we?
>
Ok, not going to really argue the former one, though I do think the jury
is out on whether personal protection is useful (since the statistics
show cooperation as about equal to resistance, there is a small margin
of *maybe* useful, based on your own statistics, but it would be a lot
clearer *if* the, "I gave him my wallet and got away alive", category
had a major failure rate).
As for history... Sure, the problem is that you run into a version of
the, "Atheists killed more people", argument. The argument, when used,
goes like this: X wacko was one, and they killed a bigger percentage of
people that Y non-atheist in the past, therefor religious wars where
never as bad as what an atheist could do. The key problem with the
argument has ***always*** been the same. It ignores the fact that a few
hundred nuts on horseback couldn't kill tens of thousands of people in
24 hours, as could bombs, or even machine guns.
The **exact same** problem exists when arguing, "Historically, there are
a lot of examples of people resisting governments." Yes, there are, but
most of them haven't been governments with access to nearly limitless
high technology. Even the ones with high tech often tended to be several
generations of tech "behind", bought from someone else, and limited in
supply, so once you blew up the 10 planes they had, they didn't have any
left to use against you. But, there is an added problem with this, which
I pointed out before, after a fashion. Its fairly rare for *enlightened*
people to be doing the resisting. What you get, in nearly all cases, is
people attempting to impose their own status quo, or change it, or
replace something they don't like, and most of the people that want to
do so tend not to be someone who wants to create/defend a democracy.
They tend to be people who want to undermine such things, replace them
with theocracies, or monarchies, of one sort or another, or still
believe in some sort of Maoist/Stalinist faux-communism, which is
basically little more than an Oligarchy, with pretenses at universal
distribution of goods and services. They don't have everyone's well
being at heart, and in a lot of cases, the result is worse than the
replacement. So much for resisting the predations of a bad government,
if all you replace it with is a worse one.
Like I said, its not how well armed, or how well you resist, that
changes things, its the inevitability that oppression doesn't work in
the long run, and can't do so, except in a complete vacuum. Armed
resistance may be useful, at the start, but only information will *win*
the battle, create a sound foundation, and result in an improved
government. And, what do we see as the first line of conflict with the
nuts in the US - misinformation, attempts to deny/hide the real
information, and denouncements of anyone that exposes it. The guns come
later, when you already have people convinced you are right, and to win
you have to get rid of the stubborn people, who still won't believe your
bullshit.
The changes that are happening around the world right now are all,
almost entirely, the same thing. Some armed conflict/resistance, but
governments are winning or losing, based on control of information, and
the spread of propaganda *not* how many people they arm, and resistance
is happening in a thousand different ways, due to the spread of
information, but guns and dead people are so much more interesting to
talk about, unless the guy with the gun is also running an internet
cafe. But, in the end, *winning* isn't about if you resisted with a gun,
its if you changed the flow of the information, and the result made
things better, instead of worse. Guns just make it easier, for both
sides, to screw up this process imho.
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
Post a reply to this message
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> The **exact same** problem exists when arguing, "Historically, there are
> a lot of examples of people resisting governments." Yes, there are, but
> most of them haven't been governments with access to nearly limitless
> high technology.
So, you mean the fact that the USA hasn't actually accomplished very many of
our military goals doesn't count? Viet Nam wasn't up against nearly
limitless high technology? Bin Laden isn't up against nearly limitless high
technology?
> its fairly rare for *enlightened* people to be doing the resisting.
Ignoring, you mean, China and Egypt, say?
It always amazes me when you make these arguments ignoring what's in the
headlines world-wide even as you type them. It makes it hard to have any
sort of reasonable discussion with you, when you start saying things like
"you'll never see a spontaneous revolution against a dictatorship clamoring
for democracy" while an entire country is, even as we speak, doing exactly that.
(You did the same thing with an argument about a national fiat currency
never collapsing even as Iceland was starving because their fiat currency
had just collapsed.)
> do so tend not to be someone who wants to create/defend a democracy.
> basically little more than an Oligarchy, with pretenses at universal
> distribution of goods and services.
You really should ask some chinese people what they think of Mao.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"How did he die?" "He got shot in the hand."
"That was fatal?"
"He was holding a live grenade at the time."
Post a reply to this message
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On 2/6/2011 4:48 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> The **exact same** problem exists when arguing, "Historically, there
>> are a lot of examples of people resisting governments." Yes, there
>> are, but most of them haven't been governments with access to nearly
>> limitless high technology.
>
> So, you mean the fact that the USA hasn't actually accomplished very
> many of our military goals doesn't count? Viet Nam wasn't up against
> nearly limitless high technology? Bin Laden isn't up against nearly
> limitless high technology?
>
The limitation is in the willingness to destroy the state you are trying
to save. We are losing there because a) we didn't go in with a clear
goal of doing one thing, b) didn't supply enough to make that happen,
and c) drew back what was needed, and changed mission. Nam.. Its often
been said that had we been truly serious about stopping the north, we
had the means to level the whole population, but opted instead to treat
it as a "police" situation. The mission wasn't to end it, it was to help
someone else end it, and those people where not in a position to do so.
The result was lots of people dead on all sides, a complete stalemate,
which broke the country in half, and an eventual decision that the cost
of trying to win without flat out crushing the north, and risking a war
with China in the process, was too high to continue.
You got me as to why the F%$@ we didn't do what was needed in
Afghanistan from the start, instead of letting the ass move into some
place we couldn't, again, effectively deal with, get into without
pissing off neighboring countries, or effectively bomb hard enough to be
sure we got the guy. Even then, we have had dozens of times we might
have gotten him, or someone close, and decided not to, purely for
political reasons, or uncertainty, and, until the recent semi-secret
drone attacks, almost *0* results. Interestingly, it seemed to be an
unwillingness to step on certain toes, do certain things, or take
certain steps. Now.. 90% of our options are gone, because of the stupid
choices made right from the start.
Had different choices been made then, we wouldn't be talking about a
hand full of people with a few RPGs, hiding in caves, resisting the US
military. Short of nuking the whole mountain range between countries,
and invading the next country, to root out Bin Laden, its not going to
happen, given the current conditions.
>> its fairly rare for *enlightened* people to be doing the resisting.
>
> Ignoring, you mean, China and Egypt, say?
>
> It always amazes me when you make these arguments ignoring what's in the
> headlines world-wide even as you type them. It makes it hard to have any
> sort of reasonable discussion with you, when you start saying things
> like "you'll never see a spontaneous revolution against a dictatorship
> clamoring for democracy" while an entire country is, even as we speak,
> doing exactly that.
>
Most of the people in Egypt are not putting up armed resistance, just
resistance. And, with some limited exception, the army hasn't opted to
institute total suppression either. As for China.. Seriously? Most of
the stuff going on there is cyber war, spreading information, and stuff
like they did at Tienanmen, which, in case you forgot, wasn't armed
citizens resisting tanks, it was **unarmed** people doing so, and the
army refusing to shoot them. What armed resistance is taking place is in
outlying lands, which didn't consider themselves part of China in the
first place, but where the West has opted to not step in and help. Guess
what... they are losing, for the most part.
> (You did the same thing with an argument about a national fiat currency
> never collapsing even as Iceland was starving because their fiat
> currency had just collapsed.)
>
Not sure which comments you are referring to there.. That said, they can
fail, if the banks take complete control over them. But, basing it on
commodities, of any sort, isn't going to help either, since you can't
guarantee that the commodity will always stay at, or rise, in price
either. (Not to mention someone managing to spill of lot of it into the
pool, undermining the price.) If I said never, then I would be wrong.
What I may have said is that basing it on something with no set price is
nearly, if not more, stupid.
>> do so tend not to be someone who wants to create/defend a democracy.
>
>> basically little more than an Oligarchy, with pretenses at universal
>> distribution of goods and services.
>
> You really should ask some chinese people what they think of Mao.
>
Which ones, the ones toeing the party line, or the ones neck deep in
smog that is worse than anything in LA, something that happened
***after*** China started shifting from a communist economy, rather than
just government, to a capitalist one, but failed to comprehend that you
can't do that, since it leaves decisions, like environmental issues, in
the hands to people the least effected, least interested in addressing
them, and least competent to have a solution (or interested in ordering
people to find one)? Mao failed. They may pretend otherwise, but China
today is not the one Mao attempted, and given 50-100 years more, even
their government is likely to more resemble ours than Mao's. Heck, a lot
of China is changing and, as I said, not via armed people, but the
spread of information. Its why the #1 thing China is worried about,
outside of outlying recent "acquisitions", like Taiwan, and even to a
great extent *in* those places, is, "Don't let anyone hear, see, read,
or think anything we don't want them to."
Mind.. Given the sort of borderline misogynistic, party serving, greedy,
anti-environmental, freaks we have in certain parties right now in the
US... it wouldn't take a whole hell of a lot to get there. You know that
Minnesota has a Republican law up for possible passage, which, in the
process of trying to mess with a bunch of social services, as usual,
also tries to repeal the law requiring that employees **pay** women the
same as men, in the same job position? Supposedly its a "small
government" thing, since all that bureaucratic keeping track of who is
trying to cheat the law costs money. Much better to just go libertarian
(that's the small 'l', conservative version) and just let the system fix
it itself, like it used to back when certain people where only 3/5s a
citizen, and more than 50% of the rest couldn't even *have* a job...
Or, as one person put it, "The modern republican party, boldly leading
us forward into the 18th century."
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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On 2/7/2011 8:13 PM, Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Not sure which comments you are referring to there.. That said, they can
> fail, if the banks take complete control over them. But, basing it on
> commodities, of any sort, isn't going to help either, since you can't
> guarantee that the commodity will always stay at, or rise, in price
> either. (Not to mention someone managing to spill of lot of it into the
> pool, undermining the price.) If I said never, then I would be wrong.
> What I may have said is that basing it on something with no set price is
> nearly, if not more, stupid.
>
Mind, here is my reasoning in this.
Commodity based economy:
You - own a $10 note that says it is worth 10oz of the commodity.
Someone else - owns 10oz of the actual commodity.
The price goes up 10x. You now own the right to 1oz of the commodity,
which is now worth $10. They own $100 worth, i.e., the same 10oz.
Economic collapse happens - You - now have a $10 note that isn't worth
0.0001oz of the commodity. They still own 10oz, what ever that may be
worth to someone else, whose money is still worth something.
Fiat based economy - Everyone owns a $10 note, some just have a lot more
of them, which claims to be worth what ever that will buy. I.e., if
things go wrong, everyone gets screwed.
Thus, the only real difference, unless you go around carrying coins that
actually can be spent, made of the commodity, and can thus be melted and
sold to someone that will take them, is that you and me get screwed
***no matter** if the money is backed by gold/silver/tin or dog shit.
For us, its just as valuable to have the $10 note if the economy fails.
But, for the 5% of the people that where either paranoid enough to
change it all into the commodity, or had a lot of it in a vault some
place... those people *might* find themselves falling from high
privilege to middle class in a single stroke, instead of from middle
class to complete poverty. For the other 95% of society, its irrelevant
whether or not its a fiat system or not, they are still *all* screwed.
In principle, this means everyone has something to lose, and some care
may be taken to keep things controlled. In practice, some idiots have to
screw the system up badly enough to result in laws being passed to do
that. In a non-fiat system, however, the incentive for the ones that are
left with anything at all to fix the problem, regardless of how broken
it ends up being, is much lower. After all, they got through it, so they
will the next one too, right?
In the end, unless you are running around with bags of gold dust, or
diamonds, *every* system, even the ones that used coins made from
metals, where, at least locally, fiat systems. That is just the reality
of how such systems end up, once you say, "this stands for some value of
that, unless the rarity of that changes significantly, and then your
coin, no matter what the damn things is made of, isn't what it says it is."
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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Patrick Elliott wrote:
> Mind, here is my reasoning in this.
I'll simply note that I disagree with your reasoning as oversimplified and
just leave it at that. You're not taking account of the relative ease with
which some people (i.e., the treasury) can manipulate the amount of fiat
currency floating around, nor are you taking account of the fact that there
are multiple fiat currencies so manipulable.
--
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
"How did he die?" "He got shot in the hand."
"That was fatal?"
"He was holding a live grenade at the time."
Post a reply to this message
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On 2/8/2011 10:01 PM, Darren New wrote:
> Patrick Elliott wrote:
>> Mind, here is my reasoning in this.
>
> I'll simply note that I disagree with your reasoning as oversimplified
> and just leave it at that. You're not taking account of the relative
> ease with which some people (i.e., the treasury) can manipulate the
> amount of fiat currency floating around, nor are you taking account of
> the fact that there are multiple fiat currencies so manipulable.
>
This is true, but that is merely one of the things that alters the
valuation, perhaps more drastically than otherwise. However, going back
a few centuries, you find people using promissory notes, and the like,
which may not have always been valued as, "X amount of Y", though this
is perhaps more common, but could have been written as, "the value of X
amount of Y", or some such.
Of course its simplified. But the point isn't wrong. As long as you are
using some form of currency to *stand in* for the value of something
else, there is no certainty that your gold coin from Upper Vib isn't
going to be worth less in Lower Vob, nor than a sudden influx of gold
into Vib won't suddenly law waste to the presumed value of the same coin
in Vib as well.
Case in point, if you want to talk inflation. I have been reading one of
Samuel Clemens books, in which he is describing the silver rush in
Comstock mines, at Virginia City. You could probably, at the time, buy a
newspaper for two pennies in some place like NY, but if you wanted a
copy of the paper in and around the silver mines, you had to pay,
according to him, something like $50. Everyone had stocks, or coins, in
pocket, in amounts staggering to normal people, any place else, and they
handed about bits of stock between them like tissue paper, but
everything cost stupid amounts of money too, and it didn't much matter
if you had $500 cash, or $500 stock, both where near worthless in the
city. The only difference was that it was US dollars, so, once you got
out of the city, that $500 meant something. But, no one was eating
silver, or otherwise using it for much, other than coin, so had,
somehow, the rest of the country suffered something that had devalued
the dollar to the point of being worth less than 0.04 cents (the value
difference between a $50 paper and a 2 cent one), what would the value
of all those silver coins been? By my math, roughly 20 cents. (Well,
unless you sold them to some place where it was still worth something to
someone.)
Everything is, as I said, fait. If you can't eat it, wear it, ride it,
build with it, or take shelter in it, its a fiat currency. And the value
is entirely dependent on what someone is willing to trade for it,
whether its some fool spending a $50 'metal value' silver coin, for a $1
candy bar, or the fed inflating the amount of coins on the market until
the cost of making a penny is 20% higher (or what ever the ratio is)
than what you can buy with it. And, in the end, if things really go bad,
you might be better off with a 10 gallon jug of nickle based pennies,
for the metal value, than you would with the equivalent paper money, but
the nickle from them will *still* come no where close to repaying the
loss of having your $200, or what ever the fiat value of those coins
was, dropping to the purchasing power of $2.50, due to a complete
collapse of the currency.
I suppose.. You might be able to sew the paper money together and make
clothes though, so.. maybe it could be "worn", in the above definition
of non-fait. lol
--
void main () {
If Schrödingers_cat is alive or version > 98 {
if version = "Vista" {
call slow_by_half();
call DRM_everything();
}
call functional_code();
}
else
call crash_windows();
}
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3D Content, and 3D Software at DAZ3D!</A>
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