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61
General / Re: What to do about post-quake Haiti?
« on: January 18, 2010, 03:33:28 PM »
UNMANAGEABLE

Poppy-cock.  This is one of my shorter analyses, so I would suggest buckling up because like fatcat, they won't go away.  However, rather simply provide chastisement, I will provide you a method to make lengthy posts "MANAGEABLE:"

  • Take a smaller chunk of the post - look for the main point(s)
  • If it's worth discussing to you, qoute that section and respond.
  • If not, move to the next section
  • Repeat as necessary

I highly doubt you are physically incapable of doing the above - and would be interested in see what you would have to say. . . provided it's constructive.


easy guy.
i was jus fuckin about

No offense was taken, nor did I take your post as anything but "busting balls."  I've seen you respond to longer posts - hence the "Poppy cock." 

No harm, no foul.

62
General / Re: Capacity to enter into a contact: A philosophy challenge
« on: January 18, 2010, 01:20:48 PM »
This is definitely the closest to what I have been trying to get at... absolutely in the right direction.

Although I do feel that this is not necessarily there yet, because children cannot immediately be granted the 'ability to consent' or immediate wisdom granted by force enacted upon them by a parent trying to protect that child from harm.

Let me think on this - but I think in order to create an axiom that accounts for your aforementioned relationship - we will need to define what the archetype of the parent <-> child relationship is.

63
General / Re: What to do about post-quake Haiti?
« on: January 18, 2010, 12:13:07 PM »
UNMANAGEABLE

Poppy-cock.  This is one of my shorter analyses, so I would suggest buckling up because like fatcat, they won't go away.  However, rather simply provide chastisement, I will provide you a method to make lengthy posts "MANAGEABLE:"

  • Take a smaller chunk of the post - look for the main point(s)
  • If it's worth discussing to you, qoute that section and respond.
  • If not, move to the next section
  • Repeat as necessary

I highly doubt you are physically incapable of doing the above - and would be interested in see what you would have to say. . . provided it's constructive.

64
General / Re: Capacity to enter into a contact: A philosophy challenge
« on: January 18, 2010, 11:32:24 AM »
Ah.  Okay, let's try this then to get the ball rolling:


Coercive force may only be applied to an individual incapable of consent only when the direct resultant of the forcible action restores or grants the individual the capacity to consent.


  • Your paranoia example would pass this test - you use a minimum of force to give the individual medicine, and once they are back to the rational person prior to onset of the paranoid schizophrenia, they could then be in a position to determine whether or not to continue taking the medication, or rationally consent when of sound mind and judgment that for whatever reason, religious or otherwise, they would prefer to be a "crazy person"

  • Rape and Sexual Predation would fail - raping an individual does not make the victim whole because it is , nor does it grant the individual the capacity to engage in consensual acts of sex as a direct result of the rape.

  • Theft would also fail for obvious reasons


I would howver, be interested in seeing you can see some scenarios I presently do not that would strain this axiom.

65
General / Re: Capacity to enter into a contact: A philosophy challenge
« on: January 18, 2010, 03:03:16 AM »
I'll play. - and try to take a stab at this:



An individual is considered competent when they can demonstrate to those they are about to enter a contract/consensual transaction with that they understand the contract's breadth, scope and the likely permutations of consequences (both good and bad) as a resultant of entering such a contract/agreement.


I think this is about a simple as you could make it - there are no "outside agencies" in which competency must be determined.  There is no arbitrary "line" - rather this requires the judgment and wisdom of the two parties. This also accounts for individuals who may be adults, but due to mental incapacitation would not be fit to enter certain agreements, but may be perfectly competant to engage in others, like the purchasing of food, etc.

It may not be the most ideal, but this is a simple as I think I can make it without it being absurd.

Edit:  This is also could work in the hypothetical situation should someone make the claim a person was "taken advantage of,"  and someone acting as an agent on the "victim's" behalf to serve as a litmus test, an those outside parties could review the agreement and determine if this litmus test as applicable to both parties. 

66
General / Re: faces to go with the names...
« on: January 18, 2010, 02:51:48 AM »


Thank you for reminding me I'm not a clever as I ever hope to think I am.  (I don't get it)

67
General / Re: faces to go with the names...
« on: January 18, 2010, 02:22:08 AM »
You all are welcome to become my Flickr friends.  Fair warning, I post a lot of my makeup work there...

http://www.flickr.com/photos/llarrimore/

I'm so purty... :lol: :lol: :lol:

A good idea: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thecelestrian/

68
General / Re: Should we cry for Haiti??? your thoughts
« on: January 17, 2010, 05:22:41 PM »
But wasn't the Haitian revolt against the French a success?  Didn't they win their war for control of their part of the Island?

A very fair question.  The difference with the Haitian revolt is that the French basically declared the debt with their warships at the ready, so the answer to the "sucess" portion of your supposition is "kind of but not really."

It would be more apt to say the Haitians were given a "Sophie's choice" - their money (legalized as a "transaction" for their independence) or their lives.  For whatever reason, because we weren't there, it could be a possible postulation that the French saw an opportunity to simply gain the revenues they would have lost as having Haiti continually remain a French colony - and simultaneously not have deal with the "maintenance" of keeping the population under control.

Doesn't make it right - but the results are not that unpredictable: Individuals who wished power in Haiti readily accepted, and since at the time this was a property of France, recognition as an independent nation would first have to come from France prior to the bulk of the other worlds nations following suit.  Granted, you could hypothesize that Britain might have recognized Haiti, or even a couple of other countries as well, but that also carries the risk of Armed conflict as they would be seen by France as "Foreign Instigatiors" in a potential uprising.  Thus the veil of legitimacy was clasped from both ends of the situation.

Contrasted with the US revolution - Britain was not in a similar position.  France has already entered into an Aliance with the (then) Colonies, and because of Britains other skirmishes with France, simply did not have the logistical means to attempt the blackmail, for lack of a better or more appropriate term.

69
General / Re: Should we cry for Haiti??? your thoughts
« on: January 17, 2010, 05:02:15 PM »
People seem to ignore the fact that France imposed and huge debt on Hati for it's freedom to be a recognized sovereign country.  A debt which took them over a century to pay back and only managed to finish paying in 1947.  (Heard this factoid on CBS Sunday Morning) It makes me wonder why America wasn't forced to pay a debt to England when the colonies revolted against England.  

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/External_debt_of_Haiti

Well, couple reasons:

  • England lost a war - it's generally rare for a defeated power to make fiscal demands on their victors.

  • You could argue England did prior to the revolution with the various taxes and laws requiring the colonies to deal with certain British monopolies.  Rather than for independence, however, it was for the priviledge of "self-governance." 

    Oh yeah, and to pay for previous conflicts with the french and Native American populations.

70
General / Re: Should we cry for Haiti??? your thoughts
« on: January 17, 2010, 01:49:40 PM »
This is an incredibly interesting dialogue that seems to have surfaced in the last week; more so that this seems to be the second thread devoted to the same, if not similar topic.  There's a lot of nuance and tertiary points that are being touched upon or beat around, despite if some of thee conversation seems to be wrapped in the trappings of 'trolling'.  I would be very pleased if you would also indulge me as I provide my own thoughts and pontifications to the discourse.



Personal Responsibility and Maslovian Needs

As acknowledged in the other thread, yes, the Haiti gov. is and has been responsible for some of the trouble. The other portion lies with the people themselves. ..[trunacated].. Just as you disagree that social programs aren't always bad (I agree), I disagree that the gov. is always to blame.

This is an interesting juxtaposition that's I think is extremely relevant for this discussion.  It sounds perfectly reasonable: at some point at the end of the day, an individual must take responsibility for the portions of their lives that they can control and have influence over - regardless of their situation. The elegance of this axiom plays well to us with our liberty-oriented mindsets and worldview, and I can very easily understand why this point has played large in both threads.

The issue I think, however, can be summarized (perhaps unintentionally) this piece:
funny.
what's on the other side of the island?
dominican republic....
also funny,
they don't seem to be plagued by the shit the haitians can't get themselves out of.
if the govt,. is the problem, they could overthrow it....if they really wanted to.
these banana-republic shitholes have coups every other fucking year...it's not unheard of.
haiti has the potential to be a gold mine.
it's in the fucking carribean.

they were better off under the management of a colonial power....nigga's w/ an iq over 30

and

Once again:
see #4
all these shithole 3rd-worlders know how to do is FUCK
they start out uneducated & keep repopulating like flies
stupid is, as stupid does, mrs. gump...
the one's that got out, went to a better place & got an education?
bravo.
now go BACK to your birthplace & make IT better...
there's where the blame can rest.

So let me summarize / distill the points Luca is bringing to the table:

  • Haiti has problems the Dominican Republic does not have.
  • Haitians know how to overthrow the government of Haiti.
  • Haitians do not want to overthrow the government of Haiti.
  • Countries like haiti have Coups frequently.
  • Haiti has a lot of potential wealth.
  • Haitians don't know anything except how to have sex.
  • Haitians reproduce like flies: meaning their birth rates are extremely high
  • The majority of Hatians are stupid.
  • The few Haitians that left seeking a better life should be obligated to return to Haiti.
  • The returning Haitians should rebuild the Country
  • The Blame lies with those educated Haitians that did not return to Haiti.

The executive summary: The suppositions here are logically inconsistent, meaning they all cannot be true simultaneously.  It's more interesting, Luca, that your first points seems to be completely contradicted by your second. First the Haitians know how to organize and overthrow the government, a feat that does require some level of forethought, planning and co-ordination - particularly for a populace without the benefit of widespread possession of weapons.  However, your next point steps right over this, claiming the Haitians as ignorant "gumps" who only know how to breed.

However, your positions highlight what I think stabs to the heart of the matter in the realm of personal responsibility: It's hard to think of, much lesss practice ethics, morality and other "self-actualization" kinds of functions when the basic Maslovian needs are not met.  My counter-supposition would be as follows:

"No doubt Socrates himself would be no great philosopher had the Gods presented him nothing but twigs for shelter, starvation and constant thirst."

And here is where it get's difficult:  None of us really know the situation in Haiti both pre and post-quake.  Sure, there's the news, articles, wikipedia, etc, etc.  However despite the fact that we can see snippets of their lives with a fidelity never before possible, the odds are good that most, if not all of us, have never had to live in the kind of abject poverty for any significant length of time to begin to comprehend the amount of effort required just to try and fulfill those first three Maslovian needs.  If we did, I think ideas like "Liberty" would likely be the farthest things from our minds - our efforts and knowledge focused solely on obtaining our next meal or source of non-putrified water.

As such, it's not something I feel I can in good conscious lay at the feet of Haitians - I simply don't have the context.



One more point though - If one cannot even afford food or water - how are they going to buy condoms or other contraceptives?  What clinic could they go to in order to learn about the Rhythm Method to at least potentially reduce the number of children born?   What Internet Cafe would be around for them to look it up on Wikipedia?

A Drifter's Compassion

Brasky's post, as I'll agree with fatcat, is incredibly insightful.  I remember reading about 5-10 years ago a interesting statistic (no doubt factually incorrect now, but the I'm confident the jist holds true): If you are a person who actually has $1.00 to put in a bank account, that makes you among the top 1/8th of the World's richest people.  This serves as a secondary to my previous point - but addresses that fact that our poor, even our hungry and homeless are still incredibly wealthy when compared to the poor population of say - Haiti.  Our poor have shelters, soup kitchens, charity clinics, etc...  none of which exist at any substantial level (I'm guessing).

The reference to dust-bowl America is also appropriate - and I think both Drifter and fatcat covered this quite satisfactorily.

Siddhartha's Realization

What I do find interesting, which was touched on by Hellbilly in the other thread - and is being kind of skirted simply by the attention this topic seems to be garnering is this idea of "Celebrity Compassion." Let's summarize this term as compassion being driven by news headlines, and lasting only as long as those headlines remain in our collective media aggregates.

Quick test:  How many of us have been thinking about with the same level of interest/fervor -

  • Indonesia post Tsunami
  • Darfur
  • Georgia post Russio-Georgian conflict
  • Chernobyl and it's surrounding areas
  • The General Populace of North Korea
  • Myanmar
  • Tibet
  • Ethiopia
  • Bosnia and Cosovo - (I understand that violence hasn't ceased, and indeed as started to flow in the opposite direction)
  • The Ghettos of Calcutta
  • Central and South America

  • The Americans Starving and Homeless in our own country
  • New Orleans
  • The People of San Diego who lost their homes and possessions in the 2003 and 2007 wild fires

My guesses are a few, probably, but there's most likely at least a couple that we've all paid zero attention to once the headlines, news reports, celebrity charity drives and Time Magazine articles stopped.  This is not a condemnation against anyone posting in this thread - indeed I am just as guilty of this anyone else.  What I find interesting, however, is that we (the American public) have a propensity to get rather riled and self-righteous at times like this - but it seems we cannot maintain that same level of emotion and compassion on any one group of the unfortunate for any real length of time. 

I think again, this has a lot to do with our (by comparison) prosperity.  Much like Siddhartha Gautama in his formative years - we have been fortunate enough to live life in relative security and prosperity.  We've never had to experience Ethnic cleansing, the Purgess of the Intelligencia, widepsread epidemics (HIV rates of 30+%), irrevocably radioactive areas due to meltdown and a myriad of other issues.  The only potential event in my life that I could even *think* as a posibly comparison was the 2003 fired in San Diego (1 million evacuated), and to a lesser extent the San Diego fired of 2007.  I was in Japan at the time of the 2007 fires, but my family was still there, so many a panicked calls were made at odd hours when I found out my mother had to be evacuated from her home - which didn't burn down anyway.

That's it.  Nothing compared to some of the abject horror and strife experienced by many people on this planet on an ongoing basis.

So what's this got to do with Sidhartha?  Well, much like seeing the old person for the first time - I'm interested in seeing how we as the more fortunate, as a result of ever increasing communication methods and up-to-the minute reports from anywhere in the world, are going to deal with the realization that a lot of the world is suffering.  The difference today being that thanks to all those inventions implied in my previous sentence, headlines are no longer simply words on paper: there's a face, a sound - the look in the eyes of the downtrodden and hopeless that even our parents rarely got to experience with the level of immediacy and primacy that now criss-crosses the globe at the speed of light.

Again, it's interesting to see - at a micro level to see how this affects our discussion, and at the macro level how the potentially could lead either to development of greater individual responsibilities on the part of those who are able, or the further abdication of those responsibilities as we continue to slide towards greater Government controll and oversight.



I think I'll cap it here for now, lest my sophistry leads to the death of the thread altogether


71
General / Re: faces to go with the names...
« on: January 16, 2010, 08:29:25 AM »
Same. My avatar is my pic taken about 2 weeks ago.

72
General / Re: The Question Thread
« on: January 16, 2010, 12:07:01 AM »
Is it ever a good idea to discuss your IQ or that of others on the internet?



That was rhetorical.  There's no need to answer.

Oh hey, look at that.  Good to see another familiar face. . . and unchanged avatar picture.

73
General / Re: The Question Thread
« on: January 14, 2010, 07:18:22 PM »
I might have asked this before. If so, I must not have gotten an answer.

Is it bigoted to only accept medical services from people that can clearly speak English if you live in the U.S.?

My thinking is that my health is far to important to trust that the dude from India was able to to get through medical school with only a basic grasp of English with out some how gaming the system. Or maybe he was trained in some far inferior country.

Yes and no.

No - it is not bigoted to accept medical services only from people that speak your language.  That's common sense - what happens if you have questions?  What happens if the Interpretor says something you don't understand. 

In on regard having a translator/interpretor just adds one extra-step for dealing with issues.  When I lived in Japan, I had to research to ensure my doctors spoke English to a degree that I was comfortable with for this reason - it was also another reason that I had to bone up on my Japanese.  However, sceintific/medical Japanese is extremely difficult, and something I would still consider myself illiterate in to this day.

Yes - it is bigoted to accept medical services only from people that speak your language because of some of the reasons you're citing:

...my health is far to important to trust that the dude from India was able to to get through medical school with only a basic grasp of English with out some how gaming the system.

This is likely improbable since English is an official language in India, my guesses are an Indian that spent approx. 11 yrs in college in the US is unlikely to not being able to speak English fluently.

Even if he/she didn't speak English fluently, your conclusion that they "some how gamed the system" is ultimately unprovable and overgeneralized.  Sure some doctors might have, but probably not all.

Or maybe he was trained in some far inferior country.

I'm assuming you mean the Medical Schools in <India> are far inferior, correct?  This is possible, but at the same time an over generalization/categorization.  A similar statement might be as follows:

"All High School graduates who went to public school are inferior to those who were privately schooled."

Sure, it might be true for a good portion of individuals, but it is certainly not true of all.

74
General / Re: What to do about post-quake Haiti?
« on: January 14, 2010, 06:13:55 PM »
Manageable? Entirely.

Awesome.

That was for fatcat but you and he share that fondness for thoroughness ;)

Understandable.  I've noticed that too, hopefully we'll never had a endurance battle where fatcat and I start disagreeing with each others posts.  I can see the potential for great and terrible things there.

I agree with all items in your lists. My commentary is more from a social angle than a review of political misdeeds that Haiti may have suffered from. But I look forward to learning more from that path of discussion in this topic.

Fair.

How many people remember much about any past natural disaster? The tsunami a few years ago for example, that was a tearjerker for a month or so, made all the headlines, people were eager to assist. What happened to all the rebuilding projects, all the money?

Excellent question. Same Q's could also be made about New Orleans post-Katrina.  The city is still not in a state of full recovery, what happened to all the political outrage / money / assistance there?

I don't have an answer.

It seems to me to be insincere when people spontaneously become concerned with their fellow man, burdened with troubles long before whatever makes the headlines.

Conceded.

I think I understand the position/point you are trying to make a little better, or I am reading a different context that I find be very compelling; the regular application of the compassion that we as liberty-minded individuals are so quick to flout.   My father terms it, "actively caring."

To your point, I am also 100% guilty of this. Three days ago the last time I even thought about Haiti was when I heard Gregg Proops describe Mississippi as, "a little slice of haiti right on our own shores," in one of his stand-ups a friend of mine wanted me to listen to-and now here I am talking about "compassion is good."

It's an excuse for hand holding, and wringing, for Hollywood to perform a special gig for the plain folk who in the end will feel more complete as an individual for having their emotions played.

Understandable, and it's an interesting human dynamic - we often take symbolic victories/defeats as real ones.  In this case, that special gig where a fraction of the money actually gets in the hands of the individuals the drive/gig is supposed to benefit.  By all objective terms could be considered a "failure" based upon the gross earnings, but that axiom, "it's the thought that counts," seems play very large in a lot of individual's consciousness.

But shit.. I'm not saying to drop a load of shovels from a helicopter and tell them to dig themselves out. There's the bigger picture to consider and no one seems to notice.

I would be interested if you would be willing to more explicitly delineate that "bigger picture," as perhaps in my own ignorance I could either not be seeing it, or seeing a different picture than the one you intend to analyze.

75
General / Re: What to do about post-quake Haiti?
« on: January 14, 2010, 05:26:20 PM »
On to part two.. but please, can we keep the replies at a manageable length?

I'll do my best but make no promises.

I'll try to distill first, then we can talk about my points you wish elaboration/take issue with.

  • Compassion is good.  Even if someone did or did not 'have it coming,' I think at some level empathy helps.  Those who choose to donate to funds / organizations to provide relief, more power to you.  Those who don't - that's totally acceptable too: humanitarian aid isn't humanitarian when the action is not 100% voluntary.

  • Government diversion of resources as a result of previous guilt is bad.  The "US" may have fucked "Haiti" by the spike in ethanol prices, but it doesn't make it:

    • Morally acceptable to divert tax dollars to Haiti

    • Imply that any individual or group of individuals owes "haiti" recompense. (not saying anyone has claimed this, just pre-emptively calling it out)


Manageable?

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