Correction: centralization in the presence of any pressures, such as the need to survive in a competitive environment. Taxation is just one example of a cost. It's cherry-picking and unfair lynching because it's easily identifiable and therefore a soft target.

Other costs of doing productive work might be the time spent, or the "sweat" energy required. But there the feedback loop is much tighter: people quickly notice that as soon as they stop working, the resources stop flowing. It doesn't require a high IQ to see the connection. However, the bigger the organisation and the more layers of indirection and bureaucratic absorption, the harder it is to see who pays for your servants to clean for you.


The error An-Capers and Libertarians are making is failing to identify government as an unavoidable consequence of a long evolutionary series of private mergers and acquisitions, economies of scale, internal cooperation / mutual back-scratching, hostile takeovers, anti-competitive behaviour, maintaining hegemony, corruption-collapse-rebuilding, and all that other utopian freedom-loving goodness.


Resources pushing out from the centre? Care to elaborate? Sounds like sunlight, or some low-entropy state bathing everyone with excess energy, in which case the flow should be instantaneous unless there's friction. You seem to be complaining that the friction doesn't start at the skin of the organism, rather it starts somewhere outside, feeding a layer of bureaucratic fat. IMO a much bigger disruption than 3d printers and related individual knowledge creation tools, would be a breakthrough with domestic LENR/cold fusion/whatever ultra-safe and abundant energy that bypasses the oil and gas giants. Then you get your reversal.

So, Belarus' "competitiveness" (what products do they manufacture, anyway? Do you have any idea?) is completely reliant on Putin's generosity. And when Putin decides to cancel the subsidies, all hell will break loose in North Korea Belarus, and it will all be the EU's/NATO's fault, the same as Ukraine, and your White Russian "brothers" will be sworn enemies of Russia.

Thanks for the heads-up!

Wow! Send us postcards when you stop talking shit, and move there.

"President" of Belarus since 1994.

247crypto should move to that amazing country.

So, "homicide" = accidental murder? Not sure if I can handle such high-level mental gymnastics this close to xmas.

Quick question:
Does "latent prejudice" count as a form of premeditation? After all, the hatred/disgust/whatever was just sitting there in the perpetrator's mind the entire time, like a ticking time-bomb, just waiting for him to get drunk so he could violently overreact.

I don't see any point in the US habit of distinguishing between premeditation and non-premeditation. It just means that the smarter the killer, the more likely they are to get away with a light sentence or none at all.

I've noticed a lot of facebook and skype "irritants" lately. It's almost as if they're deliberately trying to piss people off so that they disconnect and isolate themselves for ideological reasons such as privacy or unfavourable terms and conditions.

It's fucking suspicious, so keep as many communication channels open as you can in the near future.

 

Come on guys... This took me like 5 minutes:

JAMES BOND
(Suavely, pressing his poker chips into the cashier's bosom.)
I'll be cashing out now.

CASHIER
$17 million dollars. Quite a hefty sum. Where would you like it sent?

JAMES BOND
(Flashing his Bitcoin Visa card)
Bitcom, and make it snappy.

CASHIER
Of course, Mr. Bond, but you realise that confirmations usually take 10 minutes?

JAMES BOND
(raises an eyebrow)
Maybe we'll get lucky?

**Camera pans to Bond's earpiece; cuts to Moneypenny in lycra, benchpressing while wearing a headset.**

MONEYPENNY
Liverpool is boosting their hashrate as we speak.

**camera cuts to some red-hot reactor rods getting hotter**

You've got 2 minutes, Commander Bond. Don't make me come and fetch you.

Was it "bloodless"?


You're being way too paranoid and small-minded about patriotic labels, and you are missing the bigger picture.

Apparently, the Brits have to call themselves "British" on their census forms, instead of English. Is England being "destroyed from within by the evil British Empire"? No, the idea is laughable. England basically IS Great Britain, and the different label is just political correctness to make the satellite states feel more comfortable. What is far more likely is that for example the Scottish and Welsh cultures are gradually being eroded and diluted due to the overwhelming dominance of the English language.

Do you think the imperialistic Russians could have just told the Estonians and Latvians "come, volunteer to join Russia! The name of your country will change to Russia, but that's just a minor technicality to save ink on maps. Everything else will be the same. You'll be able to keep your own little quirky culture, and trade will improve. We'll allow you to export more goods to Moscow."

Wow! Sounds like a great deal, right?

Of course nobody would ever buy that bullshit. As usual, it would be a long and expensive war. The Russians just needed a better story (to reduce military costs), and Soviet ideology was that story.

"Hey look! We're not Russia any more! Those guys are gone. We have grown beyond such primitive patriotic labels. We are now a friendly Union! Here's a leaflet explaining Marx' Dialectical Gobbledegook. We invite you to join us! By the way, pay no attention to our giant Russian Soviet army, they're just doing unrelated exercises next to your border for no reason. Oh and... if you do decide to join us peacefully, we would require you teach the Russian language in your schools. It's just a small technicality to promote friendly relations while Moscow steals all your stuff makes really good trade deals with you."



Of course it is. That was one of the most important parts of the "Soviet" expansion.

Your perfect hedging would require the destruction of mankind to prevent all future rapes.

You assume that a freak occurrence at time X, "the rape", would help you forecast future occurrences of other rapes. Are you an economist by any chance? There might be real-life trends, such as a disproportionately high number of serial rapists in the statistics, which suggest that there are additional factors involved, but you're only able to identify those trends by analysing what was. In the scenario you've given, there's no information to suggest that one rape changes the likelihood of the same person committing future rapes.

Analysis of multiple rape crimes might reveal some more trends. But it could also reveal that various other people who are statistically "at risk" never commit such crimes, or that some actual rapists would have been considered "low risk".

Although there often seems to be an element of prevention, and people may say "this person is very dangerous, so he should be locked up for a long time", pure prevention is not sufficient to describe the practical reality of justice. Due to the existence of those "other factors", the earlier assumption is unsound.

So that just leaves a few other options like rehabilitation and restorative justice.
Rehabilitation might include something like education to reduce those other factors. I think revenge is also a factor that fits here. For example, prison might be unpleasant and generally designed to make the prisoner feel some of the pain that their victim felt -- and that could be educational.

There is also an emotional element. The public at large is represented by the state, and they also want to feel safe, even if they're irrational or not very smart. And the rest of the public also wants to feel safe, hoping that they won't get caught in the cross-fire if the irrational group is disappointed.

Why do you bother asking if you are never interested in what other people have to say on this?

You're always complaining that Russia was just a victim of the USSR dictatorship, yet you seem to like that style of leadership.


Crimea river...

Have you considered that the USSR was just Russia's alter-ego? They just changed the label so that Russia would not get blamed after a future "coup" or "collapse". People sometimes do similar things with limited-liability companies. If it goes bankrupt, they just start a new company under a different name. Or, if they want to try something different, they won't want to risk damaging the label of the old brand, so they create a second company.

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

Revenge would be a desire to inflict pain on an oppressor or their descendants (for example: Soviet = oppressor; modern Russian = a trained descendant of a pair of sexually aroused Soviets), so that the recipient of the revenge is taught empathy.

How does it teach empathy? The revenge attack would be a blunt form of communication that informs the original oppressor of the quality of the victim's pain.

However, some oppressors are just slow learners, or they're too stupid to see the connection between their earlier actions (for example: Soviet war crimes) and the reaction (for example: the creation of NATO). And in the case of "individuals" (people), society usually tries to offer a wiser alternative called justice, so that they don't destroy themselves with endless tit-for-tat fighting. It also acknowledges the existence of a 'commons', but you'd already know all about that.


By the way:


In case you didn't notice, I got annoyed at you for that comment. You seem pretty arrogant. Why ask for assistance if you've already made up your mind that you know better, and that your readers are intellectually inferior?

Was I able to assist you with understanding revenge?

We've been through this before. You and your comrades need therapy.

You hijacked yourselves with a victim mentality. And when the Soviet Union collapsed, the other half of the country felt like poor victims, somehow oppressed by the invisible Americans.

Sweden: Russian RUST Bucket Nearly Collides With Passenger Plane

Oops! Wasn't Sweden until recently sympathetic to the Russian-choreographed aggression?

Didn't the pilot's mum ever tell him not to drink the wiper fluid?

 

You Russians are so brainwashed. You are trained to be ultra-sceptical of the "evil West", yet you swallow your own country's lies like naive babies.

Wait, which sanctions are you talking about?
As far as I am aware, it's Russian sanctions against the EU. The Russian policy is to prevent EU exporters from selling their meat and fruit products to Russia. Is the Russian media saying something different?

I remember that Russia imposed sanctions against EU pork products back in 2013, making up some story about some rare disease: African swine flu or something similar. That was planned aggression by Russia, even before any of that Maidan stuff happened.

You're not being very nice to your gas customers. Do you tell your valuable clients at McDonald's that they're unhealthy and fat? Probably not! That would be rude, and YOUR income depends on keeping those customers happy so they come back multiple times. Don't they teach you anything in Russia?

Hard at work on Saturday morning? You love your country far too much. It's not healthy, Nemo 

It's very much a cultural union. Anyone who says otherwise simply doesn't understand, or is disrespectful of, the cultural similarities between the member countries.

Take for instance, alcohol tax. It would not be possible if the various countries did not all have pretty similar policies, based on similar beliefs that drinking alcohol has some social costs, and that those costs should be accounted for. It's actually pretty sensible and I challenge Libertarians to describe a VIABLE free market alternative where things like property damage, violence, and health problems from alcohol are all paid privately. Let me guess, drunks will be put in private prisons, where they will work until they pay off their debt to someone's private police/insurer?

VAT is another common feature. Most taxes can be considered unfair when taken in isolation because they always target some specific group, while other groups don't have to pay anything. VAT is pretty broad-sweeping and discouraging excessive consumerism isn't such a bad idea. All that stuff about protecting the environment, raising health and education standards, has its roots in cultural values. Money is just the 'oil' for the machine.

Having a formal "union" is an acknowledgement that the various countries are better off cooperating together, rather than putting up artificial borders. The size and economy of scale gives the EU member countries much better negotiating power when trading with other large countries such as the US, Russia, or China.

People like the zerohedge crowd have been 'predicting' the EU's demise for years. And now the Russians are openly joining in. Feeling threatened much? Sounds bullish.

Nah. Fuck Poontang and his Gazprom Mafia, and their "unpaid" supporters. Their entire country relies on fuel exports, which they extract for free, to pay for their entire arrogant system. It's quite sad. Their elites will probably be OK, while millions of poor Russians starve again. They blame the EU and the US for everything anyway, so what difference does it make if OPEC twists the knife with a price war?

Bring on $40 oil. Or how about $20?

Unless Russian oil and gas somehow runs out, their culture has an Arabic future. Putin is a failure for being unable to maintain Russia's cultural roots outside of fighting stupid wars. Science? Technology? Music and the Arts? Forget it. Why bother doing anything yourself when you can just BUY IT WITH GAS?

How does this "extreme scrutiny" work compared to the "normal scrutiny" that scientists apply elsewhere? Is it some kind of emotion?

LENR is a fact, but the phenomenon is also an order of magnitude more difficult to study than mere radio-activity or fission.

www.lenr-canr.org/acrobat/StormsEanexplanat.pdf

This article criticises some of the bad science done in recent years, but it also takes a practical approach with a process of elimination and provides some testable ideas.