st_dux

A true democracy is nothing more than a tyranny of the majority. It is mob rule over the rule of law. It is a system where 51% of the population can vote to take everything away from the remaining 49%. A constitutional republic, where the rule of law takes precedence over the will of 51% of the populace, is an obviously superior system.

I would. A true democracy would be a disaster.

Please provide some evidence that supports this claim. I've found that people who really want guns will get them regardless of gun laws. Mexico and Brazil are great examples: Gun laws are very strict, yet gun crime is extraordinarily high. Lol' date=' you obviously missed HyperU2's point completely. Maybe this will make it more clear for you: [url']http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/20/funfact.jpg/[/url]

@Spokesperson: I'm really enjoying this conversation although I realize that we may be drifting off-topic at this point. I'll continue here for now but if you or the mods feel that it's derailing the thread we can take it to PM. So I suppose the opposite must also be true then, correct? That is to say, the more human labor involved the greater the value will be. In that case, wouldn't our best course of action be to abolish as much technology as possible? If we went back to the Stone Age -- or better yet, stopped using tools altogether -- we could make it so that things that are easy to produce today are almost impossible to produce tomorrow. That would mean that much more labor would be required, and thus, our net value would rise dramatically. Is that right?

Let's say it takes exactly the same amount of labor and time to create an unpopular toy as it does a popular one. Is their value not equal? And if it's equal, why does the price differ? Furthermore, what difference does the "real value" make if the use value defines the price? Saving your money for thirty years and buying a company with it isn't "taking value other people created." It's a smart use of money. Moreover, you don't need to buy a company to be rich. There are plenty of people who invest their money in things like housing and stocks that earn wealth without running a business themselves. Even a simple savings account can amount to a substantial sum over time if you make enough money in your job. Look at doctors, for example. They aren't business owners, but they have plenty of money. Of course investments create wealth. If a company invests in new machinery that allows them to create more products with less human labor, value is created. How is it not?

By themselves social programs don't equal bankruptcy, no, and I'm not saying that budgets can't be balanced in other ways. Certainly the NHS is a better investment than many other government programs.

@Spokesperson: For what it's worth I actually agree with you on IP law. However, you apparently missed the point regarding Tickle Me Elmo. When that toy was first made, it was so popular that people were paying upwards of $1,500 for it. It wasn't worth anywhere near that much from a labor theory of value point of view. Using the exact same amount of labor to produce a similar but not identical toy wouldn't have been worth a fraction of a Tickle Me Elmo, and this sort of thing happens all the time: Something gets popular with higher demand leading to higher prices. How can you reconcile this fact with a labor theory of value? As for your comment that Marx's labor theory of value has been "more or less scientifically proven," well, that's ridiculous. Value is subjective. You can no more scientifically prove value than you could scientifically prove morality. Do you not see that this is exactly what happens in a socialist system where the majority rules? The 49% have a gun put them and they are forced to give up their property and meet the demands of the 51%. It is empirically evident that this is blatantly false. Working people have the ability to invest any extra money that they don't use to live and turn that into various forms of wealth. They can even create their own business. It happens all the time. My own father started work in a low-level manufacturing job at a small machine shop. Roughly thirty years later, he bought it. It makes far more sense to me to allow capable individuals like my father the chance to succeed than it does to hold everyone back to the level of the lowest common denominator, the majority.

Proof that the labor theory of value is nonsense: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tickle_me_elmo I doubt even Marx would continue to a support a labor theory of value if he were around today. Look at the software industry: Selling additional copies of software literally has a marginal cost of zero and requires no labor at all. It's clearer today than it ever has been that value is derived from marginal utility, not labor. "Paying your workers less than the values their labor produces" assumes that you already have workers which assumes that you already have capital. In order to accumulate capital to begin with, you must either inherit it, save for it, borrow money for it or use some combination of the three. While it is of course true that some people are in a better position to accomplish this than others, no one is barred from trying, so the most capable tend to succeed. It's called entrepreneurship, and while the potential benefits for the entrepreneur may be huge in the long run, there is a considerable amount of risk associated with starting your own business that does not apply to simply taking a job. Profit motivates the entrepreneur to voluntarily take on that risk, which expands the economy and creates new jobs for people. Your conception of theft is seriously flawed. Putting the means of production under democratic rule means that 51% of the population is authorized to use force to take from the remaining 49%. That is theft. Investing your own money in a business venture and then offering a job to a willing worker for a mutually agreed-upon wage is not. Exploitation? Yes. But not theft.

Nope, mass shootings are extremely rare here as they are in most places. The vast majority of the murders that take place in the United States (> 90%) are between rival members of criminal gangs using illegally-obtained firearms. Gun crime committed by legal gun owners -- particularly those with a license to carry in public -- is practically non-existent. Moreover, legal gun availability has been statistically shown to be a very effective deterrent to violent crime in any given area. Gun control might make certain people feel safer, but the fact is that it never makes people safer overall and indeed has the opposite effect.

Well I mean technically any country that prints its own fiat currency will always be able to pay for everything. It's like that over here in the United States. We have a unimaginably large national debt and yet somehow all the bills are being paid. The problem isn't so much about the ability to pay -- that's been a mere accounting technicality since the gold standard was left behind -- but where the actual value is coming from. The answer, of course, is that the value primarily comes from inflation, i.e., lowering the value of all money in circulation (by essentially printing more) so that the government can pay its bills. This is tantamount to a regressive stealth tax on every citizen, and it's not a sustainable policy in the long term. Eventually the propensity for the interest rate to rise will be so great that Western governments will basically have to choose between severe austerity measures or hyperinflation. Both suck, but the latter is far worse.

If the price isn't an indication of value, what is? How else is value determined? The capitalists have the capital. They own the means of production, and they are motivated to make those means of production as efficient as possible for their own benefit. This, in turn, benefits society as a whole. That's how capitalism works. What you're suggesting is for the government to steal the capital away from capitalists and then arbitrarily divide it amongst the people in a way that you deem "fair." The problem with this is that "fair" is an abstract human concept that has never been the state of things in reality and never will be. This idealistic rebellion against reality leads only to gross inefficiency and stagnation. You like to think you would be spreading power equally to everyone, but actually all socialism does is concentrate it in one place, the state, the monopoly on violence.

Again the value is being determined by the market; you are just arbitrarily taking it out of the labor market and instead tying it to the market for chairs. But employers aren't bidding for chairs; they're bidding for employees. Why should someone who would work for less than the value of a chair not be allowed to do so? It is you who wish to restrict individual liberty, not the capitalist. Furthermore, in your system of tying wages to the value of the products produced, how would you determine how to pay people who work in support positions, i.e., who aren't involved directly with the creation of the product? What do you pay the janitor who cleans up the chair factory or the salesperson who sells the chairs? Neither of them made any chairs at all, so I suppose the value of their labor, by your reasoning, is zero. Explain to me how slavery arises in a world where there are no people. I don't doubt the impact that technology has on the creation of various systems, but to deny human nature as the root of human society is daft.

Lol. People already vote to take over other people's "hard-earned property." "Worth" is a product of the market. It has no meaning outside of the context in which two parties agree on a set price. By agreeing to take a job for a certain wage, you are, by definition, being paid for your labor exactly what it is worth. Any other conception of worth is purely arbitrary and therefore meaningless. The purchasing power of the average person is orders of magnitude higher today than it was 100 years ago, and that's what actually matters. Money itself is worthless; it's the stuff you can buy with it that gives money its value, and in that sense, real wages have been steadily increasing for decades. This may be changing soon, but not for the reasons you envision. Society itself is a product of human nature. People are naturally self-interested and "greedy." Animals and plants are, too. All life is because that's what life is. Call it greed, call it exploitation, call it the will to power. Whatever you choose to call it, you aren't going to stop it and you aren't going to change it.

This is a gross oversimplification, although the welfare state is part of the problem. The real crux of the issue is that Western governments haven't given two shits about sound money for decades. They just put it all on the credit card and then pay off that credit card with another one once the first one maxed out. Ultimately, the debt will have be inflated away to the detriment of everyone.

Absolute equality is an unnatural, unattainable goal. Exploitation is the essence of life: All life exists and thrives by exploiting other life.

@WeaponsFree: You're correct in saying that you don't need an armed citizenry to have a relatively peaceful society. There are plenty of examples throughout the world where gun control is high yet homicide rate is low (e.g., Japan). Then again, there are also examples where gun control is high and the homicide rate is also high (e.g, Mexico). There are many factors that determine how violent a society ultimately is, and there is no simple correlation that can be made on a global scale between gun availability/control and level of violence. That being said, stats are not useless in this debate. While the overall level of violence in a society is the result of a myriad of different factors, statistical evidence conclusively shows that an increase in gun availability in a given area will consistently result in a lower level of violent crime in that area. It's not a matter of opinion; every single study that has been done on this subject shows that legal gun availability deters far more crime than it creates. If data exists that contradicts this, I've yet to see any of it. In the end, the anti-gun movement boils down to irrational fear. It is an emotional position, not a reasonable one.

Facebook has over 500 million users. Do you really think they care about your "personal information"? Chances are really high that you're not important enough for anyone at Facebook to give a shit, so you've got nothing to worry about.

Minutemen, do you have a reputable source that says that the mass grave is fake? Some random blog doesn't count.

It's not even close to a 1:1 ratio. It is difficult to assess exactly how often the availability of guns to the general public has stopped crime because the gun isn't actually fired in the vast majority of incidents, but estimates are in the range of 2.5 million per year or an average of 6,850 (of which 1,100 are potential homicides) per day. This data comes straight from the American Bureau of Justice Statistics in a National Crime Victimization Survey that took place in 2000. Incidents in which a husband loses his mind and kills his wife in a blind rage are exceedingly rare by comparison. The great fear that an armed society will evolve into an ultra-violent society where any heated argument turns into a shootout at the O.K. Corral is simply illusory. It's never happened like that anywhere at any point in history. The fact is that guns really don't turn ordinary people into killers. The relative ease with which a gun can be mechanically operated belies the immense psychological difficulty that the vast majority of people have with taking another life. Ordinary people, even when they become very angry or agitated, will almost never want to take that last step and kill; they just don't have it in them, and the presence of a gun doesn't do anything to change that.

So far, but school shootings are exceedingly rare anyway. Countries with gun laws similar to those in the UK have experienced school shootings (e.g., Germany), so clearly the regulations don't work 100% of the time everywhere. If I were a citizen of the UK, I would be more concerned with the statistically significant increases in crime -- particularly violent crime -- that occurred following the handgun ban in 1997. In the decade since the ban was passed, firearm use in crimes has doubled (source). The evidence is quite clear: Tighter gun control increases violent crime levels. See the article linked above. I'm not sure about the UK off the top of my head, but most gun violence in America is definitely not domestic. Most of it is gang violence. True, but the real problem in any domestic violence case is the perpetrator, not the tool that he used. It takes a special kind of asshole to murder members of their own family; the average Joe is not suddenly going to become a murderer one day just because he was a little pissed off and had access to a gun. The vast majority of people just aren't like that. I will concede that there have probably been a few domestic violence cases that would not have escalated to murder had the perpetrator not had access to a gun; however, I believe you are grossly overestimating how often such a situation plays out. Banning firearms could very well cause a marginal decrease in deaths due to domestic disputes, but it would by no means eliminate domestic murders, and it would give violent criminals who don't follow gun laws carte blanche to assault, rob, rape, etc. law-abiding citizens that they now know aren't armed. As all of the crime data demonstrates, the result would be a net increase in violent crime. Moreover, it wouldn't do anything to fix the actual domestic violence problem. Someone who is on the verge of killing someone but refrains only because he lacks a convenient tool with which to do it is still a violent person and is still a threat to society. ---------- Post added at 01:19 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:12 PM ---------- The fact that guns are a popular means of committing murder does nothing to show that guns cause people to commit murder. All that it shows is that violent people favor guns as their tool of choice, which isn't really surprising. Your conclusion is based on the frankly ridiculous assumption that all of those gun murders simply wouldn't have happened in the absence of available firearms. People killed people before guns, you know. There is no evidence anywhere that supports your assertion that guns, in and of themselves, compel people to commit acts of violence. They don't. Switzerland has more lax gun control than most of the United States and almost every household has an assault rifle, yet their murder rate is quite low. Conversely, Mexico has very strict gun regulations, and their murder rate is sky-high. The fact of the matter is that there is no simple correlation that can be drawn between legal firearm availability and murder rate across the globe. It varies based on economics and culture. In smaller sample spaces, where cultural differences are less prevalent, all of the data points to a decrease in violent crime levels (murder included) as legal firearm availability goes up.

You are never going to be able to do this with total success. It's already illegal for kids to have guns, and yet the occasional school shooting has happened anyway. There is no way to effectively ban guns. It doesn't work. All you accomplish with a gun ban is granting violent offenders free reign over the general public. If safety is your primary concern, the best you can do is allow people to protect themselves. Exactly right, which is why people should be allowed to carry guns. This way the general public won't be so easily pushed around by any thug with a gun. You seem to want to take the gun away from the thug, but that's not possible. Making it illegal doesn't make it impossible, or even difficult for that matter. It just makes it so that the only people with guns are the thugs. Most gun violence with legally-obtained firearms is domestic in nature, but most gun violence overall definitely isn't. And domestic violence happens with or without guns; guns are just convenient. Someone crazy enough to kill their spouse/kids/whatever is going to do it with or without a firearm.

Nonsense. People don't spontaneously become violent by virtue of having a weapon at their disposal. Violent people are violent by nature; guns are merely tools that they use. You can't remove that capability. It doesn't matter how many laws you pass; people who want guns will get guns. Gun control never limits anyone with violent intentions. These people have already decided to break the law, and illegal gun ownership pales is comparison to assault, rape or murder. Like I said earlier in this thread, if there were some way to magically stop everyone from acquiring guns, I would be 100% in favor of it. But there's not. There never has been, and there never will be. The best thing we can do is allow everyone to protect themselves.

The example in question is something that is exceedingly rare, and you cannot say with any certainty that the boy would not have found a gun by some other means had his father not left his police service weapon lying about. The only statistically significant negative correlation you can draw with an increase in the availability of guns is an increase in gun-related accidents. But gun-related accidents are such a relatively rare occurrence anyway (you are more likely to die via accidental fall or lightning strike and orders of magnitude more likely to die in a car crash) that it's hardly worth considering as an argument for stricter gun laws. That's the theory, but it just isn't true. The fact of the matter is that even in societies where it's relatively easy to legally obtain a firearm, the vast majority (85%+) of gun-related crime is committed with firearms that were obtained illegally. In truth, gun control has very little direct affect on the people it targets. Prohibition doesn't work in any market, and the firearms market is no exception. The only people who follow gun control laws are the kind of people who generally wouldn't commit violent crimes anyway, so instead of reducing violent crime, gun control has the unintentional effect of indirectly promoting it: Violent crime is much safer to commit when the general public is unarmed. If there were a truly effective way to take guns out of the hands of known criminals, then I would be all for it. But there isn't; gun control just makes it impossible for people to legally defend themselves. The Virginia Tech Massacre could have been stopped a lot sooner -- and many lives could potentially have been saved -- if Virginia didn't have a law banning firearms from public school campuses. Likewise, the shooting on Utøya could have been stopped early had just a few of the people on that island been armed. In fact, Anders Breivik might not have even attempted such an audacious plot had he not been confident, given the draconian gun laws in Norway, that no one would be armed. In both of these cases, gun laws did nothing to stop the criminals from obtaining firearms but made it impossible for the victims to defend themselves. This isn't the exception to the rule; this is the rule, which is why strict gun control is a fundamentally flawed concept that has no place in any free society.

chopper reveal player Also, this should probably be in the editing forum.

Oh yeah actually that's right since you are passing mygroup before mygroup exists. You could get around that by passing "mygroup" (in quotes) and compiling it in the script, but it's moot at this point anyway. As far as your quick question: The waitUntil will hold the whole script if itrains is true. If itrains is false or undefined, the waitUntil will not be run at all, so the script will continue with hint "Nr 2".