Between the two, a strong constitution is the most direct form of democracy, since the democratic process here primarily takes place in the economy: the number of votes you get is directly equivalent to how much you contribute to that economy; nothing could be more fair.  Political democracy is the most unfair form of democracy, as it encourages those who will not work to take the labor of those who do, seeing as everyone's vote is made artificially equal.  I am not worth the same as another man, I do not expect to have as much weigh as him; this is simply an inescapable truth.

Problem with a constitution is that it doesn't actually do anything, it just represents an idea in people; it's just a flimsy piece of paper if anything.  It's like a precursor for an inevitable socialist take-over; when your people are used to having a public military and publicly funded roads, paid for against their will no less, they're essentially trained to bend over and receive the next pounding of socialist concepts like public social nets, public money, public enterprises like education and security and publicly-influenced private enterprises like corporations and regulation, so on and so forth.  I have never once observed a constitution prevent corruption from occurring; so long as there exists a state, it will only strive to get bigger and bigger.  So why use it?  Can we really find no better way to fund a military and build the roads?  Is it worth the pain and deaths which follow?

If the point of a constitution is to limit the state, then the ultimate constitution is the one which does not enable it to exist at all.  I think the notion that we have to control "ourselves" with the threat of violence is an artifact of the past, along with religion, that we won't be taking with us into the future.  Sure, there will always be people who want to bring harm to us, but the idea that we have to ensnare the good 99% to take care of the bad 1% (which wiggle their way into the highest spots of the state anyway making the notion pointless) is slowly, but surely, being acknowledged as completely absurd.

Anyway, here's a funny thing about democracy:


As opposed to what, lizards?

They all have about the same amount of privacy (that is, none) if you don't take any extra precautions; there's https://protonmail.ch/ based out of Switzerland but I believe there's a line to get an account, plus it's only useful if you use it with other protonmail addresses since, say, if you send an email from there to a gmail account, Google still keeps an unsecured copy the NSA can get to.

There are some solutions to privacy over email, e.g. encryption (which the NSA is working hard to crack mind you), but it's very impractical for the average user; unless you're Snowden or Assange, it's probably not worth the effort.  You'd have to figure a secure way to trade keys with your recipient so you can encrypt each others emails, which of course gets complicated with people who don't see the point of doing so, or just don't have that kind of technical understanding.

Aside from that, gmail seems like the best choice for non-sensitive email: http://alternativeto.net/software/gmail/

Red herring #1: individuals acting in a voluntary manner always do so to each others benefit, whether or not it's socialistic or capitalistic; this, combined with the willingness to improve one's condition, and our technological advancements, lead to an overall improved quality of life.  Red herring #2: poverty is not always a problem for the impoverished; a man who chooses to be a vagrant should not be dehumanized into being a "problem."  If someone wants to live in poverty, we should not expect them to improve their quality of life for our sake; it's his life and he'll do as he pleases.

This is not a question about left or right.  It is not a question about "which system is best"; the best system is always the one people prefer in the moment, as even the concepts of capitalism and socialism participate in a market of economic systems, as do political ideologies (or lack thereof) participate in a market where they compete with each other for followers.

It's a question about what happens to a man's labor once he has generated it: does he decide what he spends his labor on, or does another?  If he decides, he will always decide to spend it on improving his condition.  If another decides it, he is stripped of parts of his labor, if not all, to pay for the desires of others, which inevitably leads to increased poverty (sometimes to the point of starvation, e.g. USSR.)  The former, we call libertarianism; the latter, authoritarianism.

The short answer is, you "solve poverty" once a nation's wealth is not being diverted to a select few for the purpose of monopoly (patents, subsidies, lobbying, etc.), war, and welfare, all of which can exist in socialistic and capitalistic systems so long as there is a means for wealth extraction, whether it's central planning or taxation or inflation; this is true for rich and poor nations alike.  Remember that nothing is free, and the more money a nation takes from its citizens for non-market purposes (the act itself being anti-market), the less money people will have to create businesses to generate wealth meaning less employment opportunities for the qualified to become experts and for the novices to become qualified, ergo high amounts of unemployment thus impoverishment, not to mention the natural disincentive that comes from punishing success.

You "solve poverty" through voluntary association, as will it solve nearly all other social problems as well.  Through voluntary association, the fruit of your labor is only diverted where you choose it, returning the power which comes from the motor of the world back to its origin where it belongs: in individuals acting from the self.

Only 20% take their religion seriously.  We make this same excuse for feminists; a minority are "radicals", the rest are "normal", but when you consider the principles of each, of just how insane it is to believe in an imaginary deity and devil, it's easy to see that fanaticism is a prerequisite to being a part of said groups; those who lack this fanaticism either avoid the religion, or if they were raised with it, leave it when safe.  We shouldn't condemn those who actually try to adhere to the religion in question, as this minimizes the role that the other "normal" followers play in supporting those who take it seriously; we should view the group as a cohesive whole, an ecosystem of fanatics who help the minority of people doing as the group wills, and condemn them all for their role in wrongdoings, both religions and governments (alas, I repeat myself.)

I thought it was funny, until I realized he was asking for blood money to build it.

I'll be waiting



Drawin' comics

I really wish these people who go to Ebola-affected places, would stay there.  Maybe I'm just paranoid from playing Plague Inc., but this is how it starts

Nah, they're on to the next big thing: Hillary.

Why?  Because Bill.

Glad you dig it

To deport or not to deport is a red herring; consider the following:

1. Immigration has not always been illegal; using the standard of today, the only people that would be in America, for example, would be the natives.

2. Immigration is made illegal as a result of nationalism and socialism: the nationalist wants to cultivate a society which adheres to similar beliefs, naturally that of a culture which submits to the sun god and no other sun gods, and of course immigrants coming from differing cultures "mix in" with that pool and dilute the once powerful all-hail-our-sun-god culture; whereas the socialist wants to be relieved of responsibility over his life and opts to advocate for programs and planning which help support his habit of blaming someone else for wrongdoing: the immigrant can take the freeloader's spot and eat up all the taxes to be spent on him, as many are attracted to free benefits (as, for example, many young Americans are attracted to the idea of "free college education" in other nations.)  Together, they agree, as national socialists, to keep out undesirable immigration, and so setup strict border rules and ensure the only people allowed in the nation are:

A. In agreement with the culture of the nation, including language, political affiliations, and so forth, to satisfy the nationalist
B. Educated, mild-mannered (see: complacent) and productive, so as to produce lots and lots of taxes, to satisfy the socialist

3. Immigration only needs to be illegal so long as the nationalists and the socialists are appeased; without the desire to cultivate people, and without the desire to "build great works" at the public's expense, there is no need to force immigrants out (or to keep emigrants in, which is another matter entirely); the only people attracted to said nation, lacking the national socialist desires, are those who want to make a better life for themselves, thereby naturally discouraging unwanted immigration as there's nothing to freeload from and nothing to demand adherence.

That, however, would necessitate the removal of said nationalists and socialists from the accepted norm; instead, they just call themselves by different names, and continue to evade scrutiny as people aren't principled enough to see the similarity between two same things using different guises; in America's case, it's Republicans and Democrats, but they also go by the name conservative and liberal.  Until that day, it doesn't really matter what you do with the illegals, whether you kick them out or keep letting them in to buy votes for your party; the fact that immigration is illegal at all is enough testament to just how fucked up people are.

As I understand it, colleges have a hold on job acquisition (can't get a managerial position in many places without a college degree, no matter how intelligent or experienced you are; however, I'm not sure why they do, investigating this would reveal a lot about how colleges maintain such high tuition whilst offering minimal quality of education), and they get grants from the gov which they spend on things they can't afford like new buildings and statues and offices etc., both of which contribute to hikes in tuition.  Colleges must also adhere to a government standard in order to issue degrees that are acknowledged as legitimate (which is why there's so many problems transferring credits and whatnot, even between high schools for that matter not to mention universities); this makes it difficult for colleges to form to compete in the first place (why have two colleges in the same area doing the exact same thing?--i.e. lack of diversity), but also eliminates any competition that decides to not adhere to such a standard (since the degree you'll earn there is worth even less than the piece of paper you'll get from an approved college.)  IIRC, college a few decades ago was 1/4th the cost it is today, which means the cost of it is indeed outpacing inflation.

All these combined make colleges more expensive.  It is not a coincidence; there is a correlation between breadth of government reach and the price & quality of all that it touches (which, if you investigate further, you'll find is true nearly 100% of the time for everything else, incl. but not limited to healthcare, food, insurance, and so forth.)  It's not out of control, it's on a planned increase; colleges who are willing to "put out" enjoy the hike in tuition due to government intervention, of course, but it's a shame they're not worth attending anymore.  The local college in my area, UTA, is a pure shithole, which I understood upon my visiting there, having spoken with friends who attended, and of reviews on the web (I recall one commenter saying it was more akin to a system, where they get you in, take your money, and don't care what happens after); the only one that might be worth attending is far out of my price range and a two hour drive to boot.  I'll pass on college We got the internet, who needs it anymore but the foolish.

Very troubling, let's hope for the best.

Socialists have come far in their success: they've convinced much of the population that the woes of the state are to be blamed on capitalism, and the boon of capitalism is the cause of the state.  I wonder how long this charade will go; will we see another socialist meltdown right here in Murrica?  I'm not sticking around to find out.

I doubt that; since the universe had a beginning, and since all matter has had the same rules placed on it since that beginning, the speed at which planet Earth formed into an ideal place for life to begin is going to be about the same speed as any other planet, meaning those planets, perfect for life as is ours, had creatures evolving at about the same rate and in similar ways considering they've experienced a similar environment as ours, meaning they're roughly in the same spot that we are now: intelligent beings, sentient or otherwise, duking it out for resources, with little time to focus on developing the technology and gathering the resources necessary to travel at lightspeed for decades, if not centuries (not to mention being able to live that long, or to reproduce in-between), just to see more of the same.

The universe is only about 13 billion years old, with our planet having circled the sun about 4 and a half billion years ago (that means about 8-9 billion years are spent just trying to bring order to the chaos.)  Within those 4 1/2 billion years, only the last billion has been spent with multi-cellular life forms, and only the last 200k years spent with your modern day man.  Unless this sentient lifeform managed to find a way to evolve several magnitudes faster than the species of our planet, or those planets formed way faster than all the others, it's safe to say that, while we're not alone, there's little room to precede us in technological advancement, and even if there was, the universe is a huge place and if you have the technology to travel around like that, there's probably something much more interesting locally to that lifeform.  Needless to say, there's no society that can be billions of years old, and no aliens are aware we exist aside from a mutual understanding that the odds of them being the only sentient species in the universe are zilch.

I'm not going to get anything out of it, I know that much.  SS was always a scam; just put a portion of your earnings into some kind of savings and you get the same effect, except it's:

A. Voluntary, ergo humanitarian and virtuous
B. Not tied to whether your nation will go broke or not

IIRC, during the time period this was passed into law, people retired around 60, and died very shortly after, usually surviving only another 5-7 years, so the cost of SS made sense.  Then people started to live much, much longer, and the cost of SS got out of control.  Also happened to be that America had a huge boom in population, who we all know as the baby boomers, who also lived much, much longer than what was intended for SS, and who are now showing us why central planning never works, even if it works for a while.

So here we are, getting bled dry for cash we'll never see again, to take care of people who were taught that they could be absolutely careless with their money because "the government would take care of them."  The past 70 years of American history have been one long party and now it's us who get to experience the hangover.  The best part is, this was all unintentional; the intention was, take care of these hard working Americans until they passed away.  Such is the effect of interfering with an economy.

Stop giving out free candy and these neighbor kids on your lawn will go away on their own.

I only sell my talents for bitcoin