Charles Anthony

You can call it anarchy. I call it a free market. The profit motive will keep society intact and let you obtain the justice you can afford. No, not that I can recall from the OP. They were lobbying to have Canada amend the laws applicable.The distinction is morally slight.

Indirectly. I believe that no individual should be forced to pay for anybody else's law. Is that not what the Hollywood is trying to do to Canadians?

I was challenging you to imagine.

In principle, they are the same despite the fact that you can hire your own security company who can do a much better job than waiting for the cops to assist you in your right to self-defence. In practice, they are each enforced VERY differently and RARELY enforced equally.

What am I dodging?The onus is on YOU to prove that we will not be able to grow crops anywhere else.

Lame. If that was truly the only exit out of that place, I would suggest they send a helicopter to the rescue. Part of me wants to think that the Prime Minister has marginally better security at his disposal than do either you or I.

Yes. If you have a dispute over your "copyright" you will have tax-payer's money at your disposal to enforce it. Simple as that. That is beside the point. The injustice is that little old Joe who might not even know how to read (let alone care to entertain himself by staring at paper) is forced to pay taxes to defend your right to make money out of thin air. Of course. Why should anybody else? No, you did not defend your copyright yourself and no, you did not get all of the legal stuff out of the way. You forgot that not all of the cost is paid by you. At the very least, there is probably somebody paid by tax-payers to sit at a "Copyright Bureau" filing his nails with the hopes that an application for "copyright" from promising artists will land on his desk and require cataloguing. Do you see how ALL tax-payers are forced to subsidize the government-monopolized "copyright" market whether they like it or need it or want it or none of the above?

I have actually seen it on informal polling discussion forums where a non-Ron Paul supporting forum administrator will host a poll and periodically edit the results claiming "server errors" or repeat votes -- as if the technology to restrict one vote per IP did not exist already!

The protesters probably knew that would be the case. I admire this form of protest because it is a display of courage and risk of severe sacrifice on the part of the protester. Ultimately, whatever misfortune that might occur will be the worst for the protester. I do not know what the weather was like over there but my guess was that it was cold. I challenge you Betsy to imagine (let alone try) chaining yourself to a fence outside in the cold knowing full-well that you could not free yourself and that it would be difficult for others to do so on your behalf. Some people would have a hard enough time holding their bladder for more than an hour out in the cold. I also challenge you Betsy to figure out a more effective way of getting the attention of your Prime Minister. At the very least, the Prime Minister's children will probably grow up with a slightly more inquisitive mind and a sense of responsibility to their fellow tax-payers than did previous children that lived in 24 Sussex Drive -- that alone is a laudable goal whether it be successful or not.

It still seems to me like you are reluctant to say bluntly: an MP should be allowed to vote whatever he wants regardless of his election platform. There. I said it on your behalf. Of course it is allowed. An MP can quit his party and vote his conscience.

Nobody is responsible. The injustice lies in enforcing the "intellectual property" rights of Monsanto on the victim-farmer. As it stands, Monsanto uses the force of government -- paid with the victim-farmer's taxes -- to impose a ridiculous restriction on the farmer. There can not be a better example of exposing the evil of this patent enforcement. I would suggest the following business strategy for Monsanto: Fly over the entire world and spray your seeds over every single farm. Use the mob power of all defenders of "intellectual property" rights to bilk every victim-farmer. No. The artists still avoid the full cost of enforcing their "intellectual property" rights by making it a government/tax-payer responsibility.

I actually admire that protest strategy although I do not defend their motives in this particular case. Personally, I would hope not. I would hope that there was a secret passage-way in case of an emergency -- maybe even unknown to the Prime Minister himself. However, using a secret passage-way in a case other than an emergency would not be prudent.

Can you explain how the "intellectual property" owners enforce their "rights" at tax-payers' expense? No. A civilized economy will make the "intellectual property" owners bare the ENTIRE cost of enforcing their "rights" themselves instead of putting it on the tax-payer.

That is not intuitively a bad thing. You will have to produce a better argument than that. We live in a world where states commonly pay farmers to NOT produce crops. That is not the issue. The issue is whether global warming is bad. Who is to say that global warming will not make uninhabitable regions of the world habitable in the future or expose fruitfully fertile lands? People will move inland and along mountainsides.

I abstain from this vote.

So, what do you expect from your MP? 1) an MP should always follow his election platform no matter what happens during his term. 2) an MP should not be obligated to follow his election platform throughout his term. Which one is it? I do not think it matters because I do not expect MPs to act in the best interests of their constituents.

What exactly are you saying is criminal?

-- or carbon copy? Good call. Report noted.

In that case it probably does not matter. Trade them now or trade them later. The Canadian dollar vis-a-vis the Euro has stayed steady within 5% in the last 8 months. Past performance is the best predictor. One year ago, the Canadian dollar was worth more but only by about 10% so it is still within your stated margin of risk. EUR to CAD (Euro to Canadian Dollar) Exchange Rates: Charts and historical data As an aside, the charts to which you referred in your Opening Post quote and compare the C$/U$A exchange rates.

FigLeaf, that was the best I could do.

What exactly do you want to predict? It sounds like you want to know on what day you should convert all of your Canadian dollars into Euros with the hope that on that predicted day, the exchange rate will yield you the greatest amount of Euros -- corrected for the effect of interest and inflation leading up to that day. Is that correct? If that is correct, you are asking for an impossible prediction.

Thank you, Geof, for the comments and I particularly agree with the following: It would not be wise for me to have any authority beyond dealing with spam and advertizing or post formatting. On all other matters, I give Greg recommendations -- as a regular member, as you guys do -- on how to deal with objectionable material but he ultimately decides when the appropriate time is to act. My brief time as a facilitator has cemented my belief that it is best that way. That is truly the best advice. You guys have a lot more power than you realize. Try to imagine yourself in a pub carrying on these conversations with people you do not know. In most of these trolling situations you would politely say "Uh huh. Uh huh. Excuse me, I have to go to the washroom." while picking up your beer and discretely making an exit. You would let the babblers babble in their own corner. You can do the same here and you all know it.

Guys, the reports of plagiarism have been received. Please trust that they will be managed accordingly. Now, go feed the pigeons instead.

So it feels good, but can you make a fundamental argument that logically, rather than by reference to an underlying assumption, supports that feeling?Good call. I am generally what I like to call a religious anarchist -- I resort to passionate defenses of freedom -- but admittedly, it is rarely convincing within a debate. Here is the logic and it is quite simple: The inherent nature of man is that it can not survive by instinct alone -- unlike other animals. Man survives by freewill and he does so on an individual basis. Thus, men need the faculty to learn their environment and to cultivate the creative ability to adapt to the environment before being able to survive in it. Such abilities are not enough because they need to be fueled by freewill -- people can not be forced to learn. Since, a person can only learn as an individual it is logical that an individual's freewill is defended as a natural right for its existence. Couple that the need to cooperate (one person can rarely provide for oneself alone) to manage finite resources, trampling on freewill can conceivably (with a bit of modern imagination) lead to the destruction of the human species. Now, I can not resist spicing things up a bit. I genuinely believe that people who rationalize coercion (naturally, outside of self-defense) have chosen Satan/Evil as their religion as those who defend the non-aggression axiom have chosen God/Universe as theirs. [before anybody gets too riled up, I have just presented an inversion of a definition. You can only get riled up if you ultimately agree with my sentiment but just do not want to hear it.]

How much money are you talking about?