http://lmgtfy.com/?q=suicide+rates+teens+medication

Lots of stuff out there. As with most statistics, you can make the numbers say whatever you want.

FYP.

Also, they use those old-ass chips because the cost to retrofit the shuttles outweighs the cost of replacing existing parts. When you're talking about a machine that can explode if there is a half centimeter gash on the surface in the wrong place, you don't want to mess with anything that already works. Cost benefit analysis goes a little deeper than wanting the latest greatest chips.

Also, I am aware that private American companies will be shuttling astronauts within 2 years. When government outsources work to people who have to make every penny count, it pays less and gets better quality. Simple economics ensures that. These private companies don't have guaranteed jobs if they screw up. Government employees, however, don't go away until they're pensioned or dead. Not much incentive for quality control, since gung-ho patriotism is out of vogue. Gimme free enterprise any day.

Thanks President Obama! You did us proud!

Definitely not. Boromir has issues (like being a professional politician.)

Not sure that that is true anymore. For example, I haven't seen any truly successful disruptions of the US supply chain, even though Al Qaeda is perfectly willing to blow themselves up to take out trucks. Modular and standardized supply chains guarded by well trained troops with highly specific regulations (+ sniper towers) create a pretty damn secure situation.

It'd be more accurate to say that armies today travel on their diesel. Disrupting diesel shipments has happened occasionally, even for political reasons. I can't ever recall hearing of troops going hungry or thirsty.


Yeah, just look up how much they spend in Iraq and Afghanistan on A/C alone. That by itself exceeds the GDP of a helluva lot of countries, let alone our entire budget.

The one where you get paid more. When you let some other guy do all the work and then steal the fruits of his labor, you can afford to pay your mercs better. Piracy is profitable without some sort of overwhelmingly present and powerful force to dissuade it. Somalians wouldn't do it if it didn't work sometimes, and they've got everyone on their ass - if the US, now, can't functionally stop their piracy, what stops people from piracy in AnCapistan, when there's no monolithic centralized army? I'm assuming anonymity is going to be trivial in this scenario - blackface and skimasks, burned off fingerprints, blank eye contacts, padding, second skin (latex paint to prevent skin flakes) and complete waxing ( no loose hairs.) Could even do funky things like mixed blood transfusions to prevent single-sourcing DNA origins.

The risk/reward factor has to be accounted for, too. The cost of bullets will always be cheaper than the cost of honest labor.

bitcoin2cash, what really happens (and I base this assessment off of experience with wargames, realmVrealm in online games, history, and common sense) is that unless those 500 small armies band together and become a single big army, they get chewed up and systematically assimilated or destroyed outright. It happens so often that I am shocked when the little guys manage to pull off even short term victories. It comes down to simple logistics.

Economies of scale occur in warfare just as in commerce. It's easier to provide a monolithic vertically integrated supply chain than it is to provide equivalent support to hundreds of smaller units. There's also the psychological impact of facing superior numbers. Any sort of operation, whether it's rapid-fire skirmishes or long-term sieges can be better performed by the army with bigger numbers, assuming commanders of equal knowledge and skill.

Microsoft and Cisco could afford pretty damn big armies.

Yeah, because any worldview outside of our own, *especially* those that admit to anything that even smells like faith, can't possibly have any validity or worth, and should therefore be feared.

Or you could choose to accept that people come to different conclusions all the time, interpret identical data in different ways, and believe different things, and that those facts are nothing to be scared of. The only thing you should find... "scary" is your unwitting lack of tolerance for alternative viewpoints. You aren't the arbiter of reason, nor the enforcer of rationality, and it's nunnayafuckinbidnez what, how, why, and where people believe. The only thing you should give a damn about is how they act when it affects you.

Seriously, "scary?" Give me a fucking break.

I agree.
I see something between AnCap and some sort of large federated states in the next couple hundred years.

After the first publicly successful AnCapistan (either in a seastead or a takeover of a failed state) people will sit up and take notice. With Wikipedia, Khan Academy, filesharing sites, the various darknets and freenet and i2p and tor, some sort of service industry, self-sufficient planning, and some good treaties/political work with some larger power, a seastead is likely going to be the first example of an AnCapistan in action. Almost everything needed to boostrap a micronation is available to anyone with a few weeks and the internet (except for viable large scale seastead technology, which is in development.)

Assuming enough funding, you can even launch private satellites and work out connectivity with major networks, so you don't have to be dependent. Imagine a seastead tribe devoted to cleaning the great garbage patch, turning the plastic into fuel or seastead modules or other products. Using portable ocean based solar energy collectors, storing massive amounts of energy in flywheels, and delivering it to cities. Creating massive networks of sensors for climate, weather, shipping, and transportation data. The possibilities are tremendous, and AnCap, or something approximating it, will be the natural form of government (limited only by the need for protection via treaties with Western powers.)

I do mind breaking the law, except as a last resort, when no options are left. As things are right now, I really think people need to wake up to the fact that America as an idealized free nation is disintegrating rapidly, and that lots of things need to be fixed. I don't think we're past the point of no return yet, so I'll be a good (if vocal) sheep for the time being.

The whole world is still in upheaval over the internet. It's still in the process of changing everything. That's why I think America as an ideal can still be fixed - won't be long before we finally get the real-time reports and audits, some sort of government based social network with logs and the like. Eventually we'll see real-time voting. Traditional politics and demagoguery starts to break down when everything is out in the open for people to see.

No, I just see the endless circular argument you're trying to drag this down into. If you don't account for the way things are, then all the what-if speculation in the world is pointless.

What if aliens drop by and nuke the Whitehouse? What if London turns into a black hole? What if Russia had a national reform and they all became Buddhists?

Unless there's somehow a total societal breakdown in America, you're never going to apply all of the principles you endorse. I think some of them are good, and represent ideals, but like communism, they only work on paper. When you insert them into the real world, and real people become responsible for implementing them, then, like any other human endeavor, you get mistakes, corruption, downright evil bastards, and some inspiring heroes.

If you want a serious discussion about AnCap, hypothetical ideals aren't exactly useful. I can get all of that from Wikipedia. How about look to where the current system is broken and where AnCap provides a solution.

I see perfectly well how AnCapistan works, in a vacuum. Because of existing institutions, pure AnCap ain't gonna work. They have their own momentum and resources.

That's all I'm saying. I actually think a lot of the AnCap principles look pretty good. A culture of personal responsibility and Free Market based government are pretty damn good ideals. There are cities and counties in America who are privatizing their public services and by doing so, are drastically reducing taxes and improving quality of life. They're able to do that because of the existing system - people see results and vote accordingly.

The way I see it, you can implement aspects of AnCap, in place.

Start from reality. Define a scope. Otherwise, you're just playing at fairy tales, and I got over those right around 8 years old.


God forbid anyone ever say anything snarky, your holiness. I didn't realize who you were. I won't ever be sarcastic with you again, promise.

I see we're having trouble with understanding the scope of existing institutions.

Something people seem to be forgetting is that any change to AnCapistan is going to have to happen in the real world. You can't just invent this society as if it exists in a vacuum. Microsoft and Cisco do exist.

Remove the legal system, good luck trying to switch to other networking infrastructures or finding compatible software, when instead of IP laws they simply send their mercenaries to your house for violating their contract agreements and take your shit away.


In MountainMan's land in AnCapistan, if you don't pay for what you use, I'm going to take it from you, either in the form of forced labor or seizure of assets. You're free to not be here, but if you show up somehow, I'm not giving you a free lunch. Now instead of MountainMan's land, imagine a coalition of property owners defining a common border (as people are wont to do) and establishing a usage fee. Something to cover the cost of using roads, cleaning up after  travellers, etc. Oh... look, we have a tax.


That's exactly my point. In a centralized system, you have a mechanism of mitigating, stopping, or fixing abuses by the evil and greedy. Sure, it's hard, but it's easier than rebuilding a nation from the ground up. I think it would be better to revolutionize the system from within - establish accountability and instant communication, instant public auditing of any and all government expenditures, real-time voting, abolishment and reformulation of the entire tax code, outsourcing public works and maintenance to private companies, hiring private law enforcement, and so on. You see that happening in America, slowly. Why not focus your efforts and speed things up. Show people that it can be done, and why it should be done. Educational reform is happening because of Khan academy. BitCoin has the potential to demonstrate how modern commerce can work.

Why not take the best features of both instead of insisting on a 'pure' idealistic pipedream? AnCapistan has a great thing going for it. The 'capitalist' part. Market based solutions are great. Make government earn its money. Introduce competition, make politics and legislation fundamentally economic, instead of the feel-good my team vs your team bullcrap we see today.

In AnCapistan, there's no means of stopping the bastards. Might is Right. He who has the most resources wins. I just don't see that as a particularly dignified or righteous ethos.

So in AnCapistan, instead of a Public Works Department, you have customer service? Microsoft and Cisco would own the world, and you want their customer support to take the place of government?

What's the difference between a monolithic state and a megacorporation? I'm failing to see any functional difference between the American Democratic Republic and AnCapistan (both at their theoretical best.) It's what happens when they're not at their best that I have a beef with. In America, the system is correctable, and even massive abuses have ways of being mitigated, reversed, or fixed.

I think a core set of laws is necessary for regulating commerce, and unifying military, national, and international infrastructure. Corruption isn't going to go away. If anything, it will get worse, because whistleblowing suddenly become a matter of corporate security.

You have a silly little game of socioeconomic brinksmanship with private armies involved. That can't possibly end well. That essentially means whoever can snap up the most resources the fastest wins. It has nothing to do with human rights and dignity as a human being. It encourages cheating and stealing and lying, looking out for number one, imposing your will on others by any means necessary.

In AnCapistan, I guarantee I'm going to destroy you before you have a chance to hurt me. I'm not going to wait for you to make the first move, because maximizing my long term well being means establishing and enforcing whatever set of rules I deem optimal. (I being myself and whoever goes along with me.) I'm going to seize all available resources, and you will have no recourse except to get out of Dodge, because I'm not going to acknowledge your attempts to bring to me to court at some McJudge outlet. I'm going to treat with like minded individuals, those who are able to capitalize on the sudden lack of a central legal system, and we're going to be benevolent dictators. We're going to get away with it because our mercenaries are paid, trained, equipped, and indoctrinated better than your freedom fighters.

An empire will arise out of the ashes of AnCapistan, because humans are stupid, greedy, evil bastards.

Why not impose a central state designed to mitigate the greedy, evil tendencies and maximize freedoms? A Democractic Republic seems like a pretty good system to me.

I didn't write that last post very well. I meant it in terms of using it strictly as a currency, instead of using it as an investment opportunity. I fully understand the mechanics of monetary exchanges. The difficult part doesn't come up when you view it as an investment or an exercise speculation.

The difficult part comes when you see the opportunity to use it as a currency. A majority of real world commerce ignores exchange rates. If the dollar went down against the yen yesterday, you don't see prices change at WalMart today. Long term financial trends impact prices, especially in international commerce, but most people aren't ever aware of it except as soundbites from their favorite finance show.

Hypothetically: I charge 50 BitCoins as a flat rate to develop a forum sig. I'm an awesome artist, and well worth the price (I said hypothetically, ok? ) I get some 400 people buying sigs, and thus the market has determined that Mountain Man sigs are worth 50 BTC.

How do you get to the point where people think of the value as being 50 BTC, natively, instead of... "50 BTC is currently $700, therefore the sig is worth $700!"

From what I've learned over the last few days, the only way that people start using BTC as a reference is if the BTC "native" economy gets big. Use it often enough for enough different things and the perception stabilizes.

The way things are now, people use bitcoin as a proxy for their favorite currency, using the exchange rates to measure value. That will change and people will be able to make (and lose) money when/while that happens.

Don't underestimate how lazy and how nasty people can be, either. I've experienced enough spontaneously developing cultures in online games to know that mega-collaborations with shared "laws" are an almost inevitable result of anarchy.

The difference is, nasty, lazy people in real life get other people killed, hurt, or imprisoned. There's a huge difference between various interpretations of "human rights" and the size of battery you put in your latest dongle. The benefit of founding principles and a centralized system is consistency and reliability. Unless AnCap or p2pgov can meet or exceed that benefit, it will never work.

I think it'd be difficult to balance using profits for massive infrastructure versus mandatory taxation. And I don't think the whole "pay to play" concept is all that bad when it comes to things like roads, public transportation, and so on. I do believe we're moving into an age of self-sufficiency, where things like vertical farming and sustainable energy production will start offsetting the traditional sources of food and power, shifting the majority of economic focus to more abstract things.

Also, I like the idea that across a giant geographical region, I can be assured of consistent laws and rights. With AnCap, if North Dakota wanted to implement capital punishment for misdemeanor trespassing, and South Dakota didn't even have it on the books, then a lot of South Dakotans are going to get offed because of inconsistency. OK, that was an extreme and ridiculous, but imagine how a slew of subtle differences in laws could create difficulties between unsuspecting citizens? A semi-decentralized state might be better.

Sure they're opt out. Renounce your citizenship and move to Somalia. Just because it's not practical doesn't mean it's not possible.

Decentralizing government would make that much more practical, I would think. By no means am I advocating the status quo. I would like to see something different, but my opinions lean towards a more structured system than Anarcho-Capitalism.

Why wouldn't that be true in a p2p government? Some collective grabs guns and bombs and decides they want stable borders, so anyone inside a radius of 5 miles is assimilated?

Again, the State simply did what powerful agents/individuals/groups do in these scenarios, to maximize benefit and minimize risks.