Seasons

It seems everyone else has been getting into the big philosophical stuff around here lately. I suppose now is as good a time as any for me to join in.

My first point is small and regards the suggestion about taxing advertising space. The thing of it is that the tax is not going to really do any damage to the corporation you are referring to. They have the kind of advertising budgets that represent a couple of lifetime's income to the rest of us. They'll still plaster their name on everything in sight.

What a tax on advertising space will do is hurt smaller businesses: independent hardware stores and retail outlets and pizza places or whatever that are trying to make sure they don't get lost amidst the thunder and hype of the big chains.

The second thing regards the evolutionary discussion. I remember reading recently that there are a lot scientists these day that dispute evolutionary theory. They aren't going back to the bible, they just feel that random genetic mutation alone cannot account for the subtletities or complexities of the forms of life on this world. They feel that while fossil records and the like do suggest that what is alive now descended from what came before, but that some form of will is driving it. Call it God, the universe, collective unconscious or what have you.

Kind of reminds me of a passage from William Peter Blatty's "Legion", where Kinderman points out that all the parts of an egg (yolk, white, shell and bladder) all need to be present at the same time or the egg cannot do its function. If the egg could only evolve a bit at a time it doesn't work. And remember, the egg is used by the less complex forms of life on the planet.

Yeah, regarding the advertising, sure advertisers have power over news sources, in fact the amount of power is directly related to the size of the audience, which makes sense if you realize that the advertisers are basically the people's de facto representatives. The advertiser's interests *are* the people's interests, unless they screw up, in which case they'll be punished by losing money and we all move on. Which was my point: because advertisers want their ad to reach the most people, they excercise their power over the media in such a way as to make it appeal to the most people.

As for the notion that news shouldn't be entertainment but is serious business, not every newspaper is or should be equal in this regard. Clearly the person who chooses the Daily News over the Wall Street Journal every day is making a choice to receive one kind of news over another -- and anyone selecting either paper is choosing their form of entertainment. If we didn't want to hear news, we wouldn't read it, watch, or listen to it, so I think you have to concede it is fundamentally entertainment. Luckily, one of the things many of us demand is a modicum of journalistic integrity. There are newspapers that have a very high standard of objectivity, but as you might imagine, not very many of us want to read them. As a result, advertisers hold less sway over them and they are more directly influenced by their direct readership. Point is, the degree to which we cede control over the media correlates exactly to whether we see entertainment as doing so or whether we are entertained by learning something somewhat true about the world. And all this is a good thing... look around the world, when government runs the newsmedia you do *not* have an improvement over the American media.

Got lots on your message Rahz, but I'll come back later for it!

sunshine. Windy.

Hey Sir Rahz, now we're back from exile here's the rest of what I had to say, responses to excerpts.
“Crab, how many Nike, Xbox and Tommy logos are we willing to plaster all over the place in the name of free speach? What about the freedom to open your eyes and not having to think about buying something?”

Freedom of speech, not freedom from speech! But in your own home or on your own property, you can control your environment to eliminate all record of branded product if you so choose, or any notion that you find offensive or distasteful. Once you leave your own space, you’re going to be exposed to new ideas, sights, and beliefs. If that’s not your bag, there remain places where public thought and displays are controlled by oversight. May I recommend Saudi Arabia?

“But wait a second now... The government is protecting the minority? How's that? Once again I'll have to get you to explain this to me... because I don't really understand how our government would be the least bit interested in protecting the minority. What for?”

Because there is a constitution that guarantees us freedom from government control over private aspects of our lives, like religion for instance, and because we have a court system that is charged with interpreting the law as opposed to hunting for votes. The government is not interested in protecting the minority, it is limited in its power to overwhelm the minority, and it is constrained by the rule of law to protect the minority using its executive power and police force. That’s how it is supposed to work, and what makes this a democracy is that we have a responsibility as citizens to uphold this standard and improve it rather than sink into the mire of mutual bribery and mob rule.

“Here's a stat you can't refute: more than 95% of the global wealth is controlled by less than 5% of the global population. “

And it’s a good thing, too, for reasons I stated earlier. The accumulation of capital being necessary for progress. And I agreed with you that democracy doesn’t work because Congress can bribe us with our own money, but this applies equally to the rich and the poor in this country anyway. Seriously. Look, the billionaires have the luxury to vote freely perhaps, but the many millionaires can be bought just by promising to curb the death taz! That can’t be good for a government. But seems like we agree on this, so I’m totally confused about why you want to give the government MORE oversight.

“Even though companies are accountable for financially, doesn't mean they have any scruples. And most of us don't. That's why we need to take control of the things that get out of hand. We don't have to control by direct interjection... But we need to find some other way to encourage everyone's best interests and keep earth's human population as well as all the other species healthy. You often refer to this miracle of capitalism that's the best we got to satisfy the consumer. I'm still not convinced though. Companies try to make money - regardless of whether or not the consumer is happy. Take cigarettes for example. Everyone knows that they'll kill you and every smoker wants to quit at one point or another. This type of company can just as easily say that they're just satisfying the demand and wipe their hands clean, but you and I both know that they spend billions of dollars researching new ways to get everyone as addicted as they can. How does this benefit anyone other than the owners of the tobacco company?”

This is unfair to people who smoke and damagingly short-changes the power of human will. If I didn’t want to smoke a cigarette, I would not buy one. There are plenty of addictive substances I can buy that I don’t. Actually, I hardly ever buy cigarettes either. For that matter, sugar is nearly as addictive and according to some studies far more damaging than nicotine, but let me be the last to say we should penalize Mars for making an even more attractively-packaged, still more stuffed-with-nougat Milky Way. I want that Milky Way! And I should be allowed to decide how many Milky Ways to buy and eat.

The way to encourage everybody’s best interests is murky indeed because who authorized you to determine what’s in my best interest? Not me. Now, you should feel free to try to influence my behavior through non-coercive means. That means, produce persuasive studies, present me with the facts, support them with anecdotes, whatever you want to do to influence my or public opinion (as long as you don’t lie or slander). It will have an effect. It’s having a massive effect on smoking, for instance. What you must not do is make my consentual behavior criminal or collect discriminatory taxes (read: fines) from me.

“Capitalism has been great in bringing us to this level of evolution, but we've now outgrown it. If we're still around in a few hundred years, we will be laughing at the idealistic phrases we ranted and raved during the era of capitalism.”

While we… do what? Maybe you’ve outgrown it, but most of the world is still hungering for its benefits. Still, I’d be interested in your vision of a worldwide system of government that respects freedom and encourages progress yet does not permit or require capitalism.

Points Noted.

Nice try jbryanc, the weather's just a screwed up as the rest of the world, so no easy chit-chat there either...

Glad to read you all again. I was starting to suspect the FBI had confiscated the server's hard drives and put Benji in electroshock therapy. Before anyone starts suggesting good medication, the thought didn't last too long, I'm fine.

Actually, anyone else think we need a specific forum for this sort of debating? I like it, but I don't want to force people to have to put up with it when they'd rather be talking about the foot of snow in front of their door...

I'm out for tonight, lot's to discuss tomorrow night though!

I dunno Rahz, the forum's title box does say it is for pretty much anything. I think regardless of how many forums you put up for different things, each eventually gets taken over by one discussion. We had two going at one point, the evolution and capitalism one. Now capitalism has won out again (like it always seems to). If these forums were split off into one for debating of issues and another for more general chit chat the latter would eventually get tied up with some intense debate or other. It's the nature of conversation and how it evolves.

Good point Corwin. I ended up thinking the same thing. It's just that sometimes people on the west coast tend to take advantage of their climatic advantages in news groups dedicated to the weather.

I'm just kidding, but my mom does seem to call me from Vancouver more often when it's sunny on her end of the continent.

Is it often sunny in Vancouver?

It's not always sunny in Vancouver, but it nearly always is on the Sunshine Coast, several miles north, where lies the true Centre of the Universe.
It's raining today tho'.

no no no...the center of the universe is houston. always sunny, always cloudy, always a drought, and there is always rain and hail too...and even from all of the places i have been, the moon seems so much larger in houston then in any where else in the world.

Hey!
There;s a brass plaque on my front door that says "Center of the Universe."
You can't argue with brass plaques, lady.