Economies evolve thus: specialist labor/product economy > group/assembly product economy > service economy. Example is first we had farmers and blacksmiths, then we had collectives and factories, and now we have financial services, IT, hotels, restaurants, etc. (If you ask McDonald's what their business is, they would answer real estate and services. The burgers are just pre made products anyone else can make). This is pretty much a fact of life for all economies, in the world, whether third world countries evolving with the times, or online communities like SecondLife (where most of the money was first made by individuals comissioning their skills, then by groups of people coming together to tackle and sell large projects, and finally with people doing stuff like running casinos, developing land and houses to rent, or supoorting sales tracking systems).
Movies and music are products, just like those of the first two stages of a developing economy. I am pretty convinced that this sector of the economy will be following the same trend, where we used to have individual musicians and movie makers selling their stuff, then for the last many decades we had them group together to churn out stuff colaboratively (actors, musicians, special effects guys, all working under big umbrella production companies to churn out stuff almost conveyor-belt style), and now with Napster and Netflix, we are finally moving into the services economy. It is MUCH easier to pay someone $7 to $10 a month for the service of storing, organizing, delivering, and suggesting content like music and movies, then having to search for what you might like, find a place to download it from, buy storage to hold it, and organize it so you can find it later. Copyright will have zero to do with this.

No, I'm not. Whatever I put into it over the course of the Summer I'm still holding on to, and have no plans to get rid of (even if I overpaid)

It's not about a culture of right vs wrong, it's about a culture of fear and shame that has been perpetrated on women for the past many centuries. Heck, having babies out of wedlock was considered borderline exileable offence not too long ago (but only for the mother; no one cared about the father's mistake). So, as long as women are shamed about this stuff, they will do whatever it if that conceals that. If it's abortion, then it's only the moralist extremists to blame.


Too many conflicting studies on this, so best to leave this out.



Accidents happen, and please don't propose controlling people's sexuality. The church has been using that as their main method of holding control over people through shame for far too long. It only ever leads to bad things (proof? Compare abortion rates in much more securalist Europe where abortion is freely available to much more religious America).


Trial for murder would first have to mean that the fetus is considered on par with a human being. As mentioned by my definitions, it does not. If it did, people who take their comatose family members off life support would have to be tried for murder as well.
Regarding the father wanting to keep the baby, that's a tricky situation. My guess/train of thought: Even though the baby IS valued by someone, it is not actually the property of the father, since it is in possession of the mother and she is the one being required to take care of it (or using her body to take care of it). So, perhaps the father has no right to it, since his contribution to it was very minimal, and whatever contribution he did make (sperm) he technically willingly gave the possession of it to the mother. I know it's "not fair," but we have plenty of benefits women don't too, so it's not like we can complain.
Artificial woumbs have recently been shown to work for mice fetuses, so it's a short matter of time before they can work for human babies, too. At that point, I guess the father, if he insists on keeping the baby, can ask the mother to give him the fetus, and he would be responsible for providing the financing for the procedure, but it would still be up to the mother as to what to do with her "property."

What about just preserving whale DNA and growing one for anyone who needs one?

You are right about Goodwin's law. And I was joking.

I have quite a few grand that finally transferred into Dwolla a week or two ago. Usually I buy right away, but I'm now one of those waiting to be convinced it won't move before I help move it...
(The Dwolla lady that called me, wondering what the heck, and verifying my identity, sounded very nice. I just hope Dwolla doesn't get Goxed)

No,  sorry, it's over

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

Any time someone brings in Hitler, it means the debate has come to it's natural conclusion. There is now nothing more left to discuss. This thread is dead now, and it's all your fault.

God, I was SO trying not to mention Hitler when I mentioned those three mass murderers. Thanks for killing the thread. It's all over now  

Adoption is the most often quoted solution, but I suspect vast majority of anti-abortion protesters never take that route (I would be willing to bet no one on this threat arguing against abortion has adopted either). Those people going around looking to adopt are mostly looking for white or "exotic" babies. Non-white babies, young children, and children from troubled backgrounds are sorta screwed. I keep running into statistics saying that there are approximately 500,000 children out there waiting for adoption, many of whom end up doing all of their growing up in foster care, and I believe that is one of the biggest indicators of why abortion is so high and so needed.

Can we make serious decisions based on what might or might not be? What if the fetus that was spared from abortion grows up to be another Laugher, or Tim McVeigh, or Kazynsky?
This is usually where these debates tend to come to an impase, with one group wanting to take future possibility into account, and the other believing that possibilities are too infinite and general to consider, and thus should be irrelevant. I don't really know how to progress from that. It's why I asked about an AI that was built that would have all the mental abilities of a human, but that was never turned on, and if it would be wrong to destroy it... but that was kind of ignored with dismissive claims that I would kill babies.

But, like Mohammed, we shall never know his face (Unless South Park makes an episode about Bitcoin)

Actually, um, I'll be in London in December/January, so maybe Rarity and I can hang out and I can show him the pictures myself   Let me know if you need me to bring any pony swag from the states 

Self awareness is arbitrary? Understanding what death means and fearing it is arbitrary? Making choices is arbitrary?
Perhaps the issue is that you believe everything, including the definition of a human life, is arbitrary, thus we shouldn't even think about it, and thus the best option is just to do whatever the law or the bible says, without questioning it?

No wonder you can't even begin to think about where things like laws and rights come from 

I have a definition. You don't. Using my definition, you think we should allow babies to die a horrible death by thirst or starvation. I don't know how you could be so cruel to babies to leave them to that fate.
If you don't like my definition, feel free to suggest improvements. Somehow I doubt you can come up with anything that isn't arbitrary or just based on your feelings. Prove me wrong.

Again, thats just taking the easy, non-thinking route. On another thread, Hawker was vehemently denying Smallpox's right to life.

I gave you the definition I am working with: an intelligent conscious being capable of rational thought, self awareness, and understanding of the concept of life, death, and personal rights. My definition covers children, adults, and anything we may come across in the future, be it IA, intelligent animal hybrids, or alien species. It does not include random clumps of cells, beings incapable of higher brain functions, and those who are comatose or in a vegitative state.
I don't know what your definition is, but it sounds like either just "a human" without any differentiation between a skin sample and a firtilized egg, or you just simply don't have a definition, because that is something you don't even care to consider, instead choosing to parrot other's sentiments of things being wrong without caring why.

It's funny, but I get a strong suspicion that if we do get things like computers storing people's consciousness, or intelligent animal hybrids, the side fighting for the "sanctity of life" will be the one denying those beings the right to life on the basis that they are not "hunam," while the "pro-abortion" crowd will likely be the ones defending them...

The biggest secret, that probably only corporate finance types know, is that corporations generally don't get affected by taxes much. Thanks to interest on debt being 100% tax deductible, the biggest difference between a corporation in a 1% tax rate and one in a 35% tax rate is that the former will pay out stock dividends to stockholders, while the later will load up on debt to the point that, thanks to their huge interest payment deductions, they will still only have 1% in taxes left to pay, and those debt interest payments will go to corporate bond holders as coupon payments (like bond version of dividends). So, really, the choice between higher and lower taxes is a choice between stockholders or bondholders getting paid (likely same people, anyway).  Jobs have almost nothing to do with it.

Is a prosthetic limb or a wheelchair A or B? Just curious.

I would argue that rape, abortion, the millions who are dying of AIDS, the hundreds of thousands of orphans, and the looming threat of millions more dying from thirst and starvation due to overpopulation and possible wars, are WAY WAY WAY more harmful than a simple medical procedure followed by a few days of discomfort. Heck, we already circumcise. Why not just take it an inch further?
Or, if the idea of cutting of valuables is too much for you, why not ban all sexual activity? It wouldn't be as effective as castration, but regulating it will lead to similar beneficial results.

But we do this all the time to comatose people on life support  


The big difference is that you actualy know what life and death is, are aware you are alive, and don't want to die. A fetus never gained consciousness to begin with, so this is more like having two groups vehemently argue over whether people, who are born blind, should be wearing red or green dresses.