Remiel

I think you are confusing the " Canada's not as bad " crowd with the " Canada is not as liable financially " crowd. The extent to which one is " bad " and the extent to which they are " liable " are different considerations.

You have lost me, August. I do not think you are even really replying to what I posted about on your previous comments.

So, in other words, drugs can only be used in one objective? Which means, since drugs can only be used in one, and uranium in both, they are relevantly different?

Did you miss my second post in this thread? Using drugs on yourself and using depleted uranium in weapons are not analagous.

I appreciate the gist of your argument, Bonam, but I am skeptical of the political implications of such a scheme. The only reason that we have any consensus on climate change at all right now is because we are essentially engaging in catastrophic risk management. That is, we are banking on the notion that more of the same could end up really, really bad for everyone. What you are proposing would dash whatever tenuous alliance has been formed. If such activities were to become widespread, it could effectively lead to the onset of geo/terra-war, which itself could be catastrophic. Natural change is not desirable because being natural is good, it is desirable because it is a " let the chips fall where they may " approach that is not so conflict laden as the alternative.

Forgive me, but I still do not quite understand in what way you think it is parallel to the " invisible hand " ... More precisely, I suppose, I am wondering what you think the " invisible hand " is, that it runs parallel to this other idea...

Well, drugs are used to harm yourself, and uranium to harm other people. That is a rather important difference, do you not think, ?

In the hands of people like you and many Conservatives, this has been turned into nothing more than a buzzword. The word is hardly ever used correctly, let alone aptly and truthfully.

To make a long story short, I do think that it should be banned, and if Canada plays a significant role in its poisoning people, then we should clean up our act too. If someone tried to sue us though, selling the stuff should not be incurring anywhere near the liability of actually using it.

That seems silly to me. We do not live in a police state, thus we are taking a risk that some people may be subject to crime. That does not mean that knifing someone in the back is acceptable because it was a forseeable occurence. What makes abortion problematic is that it is like killing. But killing is not the only consideration, which you did hint at.

I do not understand how, or why, you turned this article into being about futuristic uses of money. Did I miss something? It seems to be about future uses of technology to ensure open, transparent government.

I must say I am impressed. A seven year old thread with no replies is subjected to the mighty forces of thread necromancy and given its first gasp of air? I am not sure what to debate, however: a book written by an American government agent in 1958 was probably an exercise in propaganda, even if not entirely intentionally.

In principle, I agree. However, in reality, rarely are things simply enough for that to work out.

In many developing countries, pregnancy is the tool of by which sinister forces control women and girls. Something like 33-50% of girls under the age of 20 in developing countries are married and have children, which is helping to keep those countries buried in the cycle of poverty.

Dancer, Eddie suggested that we should " ensure that the best possible decisions are always made. " Let me say it again with emphasis, " that the best possible decisions are always made. " My philosophical point was that a system that actually produced this result would hardly be one of choice, at least in the very fallible world we live in right now. For any situation, it stands to reason that there is in theory a single " best possible " decision, and if it is " always " must be made, it is not a choice. Perhaps my use of the terms was more granular than was necessary to bring up in this discussion, but if you are not playing loose with meaning I believe my critique is in fact correct.

While I can see the relationship here, I am not sure I would think it appropriate to respond by switching back to MP run leadership. If I recall correctly, the influence of the average party member may be much less now than it ever was before, and without this last bastion of influence, they would be rendered pawns in a truly elite driven system. I do not think that is particularly desirable either. Do you think it is fine for different parties to have different leadership decisionmaking structures, or would it be better if they were all roughly the same? It occurs to me, if leadership was MP run in all parties, that would mean that any small party with only one or two MPs would effectively be beholden to those two people unless they went made yet another party, which would probably be suicidal. In any case, if there is a possible fix for this, I do not think it will lie in simplying undoing previous changes; a reordering should likely be much more comprehensive.

You are missing the entire point. You cannot say someone has a choice and say they only have one choice they can make, because only having one choice is not really a choice. I am not arguing your points. Your points are not an accurate interpretation of what I was critiquing in the original post by that Crazy fella.

Those examples are not the same. Compared to what he is saying, it would be more like freedom of speech only including the freedom to say " Love is a beautiful thing, " ; the freedom of association: the freedom to associate with Santa Claus. Likewise, what you are saying is that a woman has a right to choose up to a certain point, and after that she does not have a right to choose. What that guy was saying was essentially the conjuction of a premise and its negation. That you have the right to choose to have an abortion, but you cannot have an abortion.

That is a contradiction in terms. You cannot simultaneously ensure a right to choose and ensure that the most desirable outcome is always the case. There is only one of the latter, and the former requires " choices " numbering at least two.

I would be more inclined to believe they hardly ever act rationally. Heuristics make up too large a part of our mental processes for us to ever attain a real semblance of rationality. For instance, people are ill equipped to think in terms of percentages, and will often fail at probabalistic reasoning involving them. However, present the same data as ratios and the success rate goes up significantly. For anyone that is confident in our rationality, I think it should be problematic that we cannot process equivalent data in an equally rational way. Also, I did not quite mean the system of how we are born as what you used for justice, but the maitenance of the system that you call " fair " with regards to economic transactions among unequal people. It hardly makes sense to say that something is unfair yet that we must build a system that preserves that unfairness (for little good reason, in my opinion).

Part of being a succesful politician is getting the desired results. When Harper spoke of Canada being a " world player " , the very countries that he thought he was going to gain more pull with are the ones that see our influence as the least! I would hardly call that success. Maybe Harper has had some effect on the other countries, but I doubt that the goodwill there has as much to do with him as it has to do with years and years of Canadian foreign policy from previous Conservative and Liberal governments.

I was napping. Damn it.

I recall a comment by kimmy a year or two ago in which she described the Spanish captain in Pan's Labyrinth as one of the scariest movie villains she had ever seen, a characterization that has stuck with me. At one point, he smashes in a man's face with the bottom edge of a bottle of booze in front of the guy's father. It was bloody and very disturbing...

Oh, hahahaha... My bad.

Hardly. What I am trying to suggest is that the system which you think impartially determines winners and losers according to certain rules (which you call "just" to try and set in stone) is itself biased; its rules are not a priori.