Saturday, December 31, 2011

Good article

http://www.salon.com/2011/12/31/progressives_and_the_ron_paul_fallacies/singleton/


The author does a great job describing the political system, the hot topics of political debate, and Ron Paul's candidacy. Highly recommended.

Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Tuesday, December 13, 2011

Easy solution

If you look at nuclear vs coal, it's easy, right? Let the industry pay for all its expenses - healthcare, compensation to victims, safety, etc.etc. Then let free market decide what works best. Ideally, one doesn't even need to sit down with a calculator to decide which technology is best - free market includes that feature. :) Gov't does need to make sure that the industries play by the rules (see above). Other than that, it's nobody's business. Same with gas vs electric cars, etc.

Slogans vs discussion

Most problems can be solved by raising the level of discussion.

"Nuclear energy is bad" = slogan.
"How many people got injured/died in the history of normal (meaning, excluding Chernobyl) nuclear vs coal power generation industries?" = real question.
(Actually, nuclear is safer and cleaner and these days, even cheaper in some markets, than coal.)

"Tax the rich" = slogan.
"What's the effect of high taxes on the economy, especially given the mixed taxation code with blurred lines between corp. taxes and small businesses filing 'personal' taxes?" = real question.

And so on....

Monday, December 12, 2011

People are stupid

Fact is, people are stupid through out the system: everything is either fucked up or on the decline - healthcare, military (the iran drone - I read that at some point, they used to send data back and forth to satellites and UAC without encryption, wondering if Iran used that or was it one of other many security holes?), immigration, crime, fiscal/monetary/taxation policies, regulation, "lobby-ism", media, etc. etc. Even Obama and his buddies, the so-called "intellectual elite", have no fucking clue.


Things are not wrong because the very few people like me think that most people are stupid - rather because everyone is stupid.