Checksum Arcanius

Bernie Zimmermann seems to be the catalyst for a lot of my recent material on here. Bernie recently got a speeding ticket from the gestapo… I mean, the Washington State Patrol. (Not sorry right now, but by way of explanation, maybe it’s just that I forgot to do my drugs the last couple of days that I’ve been a little more on edge recently.) For those of you afraid of going to Bernie’s site, and for my own nefarious archival reasons, I transplant the conversation here. My apologies to Bernie for stealing so much of his material, but I hope he understands.

RCW46.61.4W

Originally posted on July 19, 2004 12:07 AM in Miscellaneous

I went to Vancouver, BC today, and what do I have a show for it? One sunburnt arm, a pocket full of Canadian change, and a $183.00 speeding ticket issued to me by the good ol’ Washington State Patrol. Yes, smokey caught the bandit. According to the ticket, I was in violation of RCW46.61.4W with a vehicle speed of 81+ in a 60. That beats my previous record by 1 mile per hour. At least I’m making progress.

Comments

July 19, 2004 7:16 PM
Arcanius
http://arcanius.silverfir.net

Don’t take this the wrong way, Bernie – I hate to see anyone get speeding tickets from this nanny state of ours. I just got back from seeing ‘I, Robot,’ and a line from there fits here I think: “Somehow, ‘I told you so’ just doesn’t cut it.”

You weren’t driving out of control. You weren’t endangering anyone any more than the guy driving 50 on his cell phone. But you passed an arbitrary limit and some cop decided to make you, a law abiding citizen, a productive worker, and a contributor to society pay simply because he has the power to.

As long as we give police the authority to screw over ordinary citizens like this, we will never really be at peace with them. Its always a game of cat and mouse, and you lost this round, and the $183.00 is just the beginning. Your insurance rates go up, you get doubly paranoid about speeding, which wastes your and my time (because I have to drive behind you), even more money goes to the most inefficient institution ever concieved (namely, government), and nobody feels good.

I hereby call for an end to all arbitrary speed limits in the state of Washington. Who’s with me?

July 20, 2004 9:57 AM
Bernie Zimmermann
http://www.bernzilla.com/

I don’t know if I want to overthrow any state laws just because I got a ticket ;)

I knowingly broke the law, and it just so happens that I got caught doing it. The speed limit was 60, and I’m fairly certain I could have gone 75 and gotten away with it since, as you put it, I wasn’t endangering anyone. I chose to go 80 though, attracting attention to myself, and I got a ticket. The only thing that really upsets me about it is that the fine is so high. My only other ticket I’ve gotten was for the same violation (80 in a 60) and it was something like $88. I think this latest fine was a bit excessive, so I’ll most likely be going to a mitigation hearing to try and get it reduced.

There’s a big difference between me cruising along at 80 miles per hour in a rush to get home and someone cruising along at 80 miles per hour after having spent their evening at some bar getting drunk. If it takes pulling a few Bernies over to catch those guys, then so be it.

July 20, 2004 11:35 PM
Arcanius
http://arcanius.silverfir.net

Bernie, if you haven’t used a deferred hearing in the last 7 years, then you can use one now. This means that you pay $100 now, and if you don’t get another ticket in a year, this one goes away – it doesn’t even make it on to your record… but, if you do get another one, you pay the full price of the new ticket and the old ticket and both go onto your record… but it worked for me, so I suggest you give that a shot. But you have to either go for a contested or mitigated hearing to swing that one.

Now, back to your other point. I am sad to see so many people like you so willing to give up their freedoms for percieved security. Benjamin Franklin said it best – “They who would give up an essential liberty for temporary security, deserve neither liberty or security.” What we must do is find a way to provide security without destroying liberty.

Now you might argue that driving fast isn’t an “essential liberty,” but I say that if you are not endangering someone other than yourself or other consenting adults, then the state should shut up and let you do your thing. Certainly, there is a point where recklessness is reached – but this point is defined not by some sign on the side of the road, but on the amount of traffic, weather conditions, road design, and so on. So let the law say that reckless driving that endangers other is illegal, then enforce it universally. Then we ensure security and protect liberty.

As to your “If it takes pulling a few Bernies over to catch those guys, then so be it,” pardon my german, but it sounds to me an awful lot like “If it takes killing a few Jews to fix our economy, then so be it.” Sure, a $183 dollar ticket isn’t exactly the Holocaust, but when do we draw the line? No one in power today in our country or in our state seems even remotely interested in making government less pervasive and less powerful. They just grow government in their particular favorite direction.

How about we allow you to be pulled over for driving in a manner which concerns an officer. But if you are found to be of sound mind, under no influence of drugs or alcohol, and genrerally no threat to anyone else on the road, you go on yur merry way. This way, the drunk guy still gets caught, and average citizens don’t go around hating cops. Secuirty is improved and liberty is not lost. Everyone is happy – excpet of course, the drunk guy – but he had his happy hour.

July 21, 2004 12:28 AM

Arcanius
http://arcanius.silverfir.net

One more thought to throw in here, since I’m on a roll tonight. Bernie, you said “The speed limit was 60, and I’m fairly certain I could have gone 75…”

You just said that you could get away breaking the law, without flinching. Well, of course, nearly everyone speeds all the time. Which shows just how ridiculously ill-concieved the whole speed limit idea is in the first place. It has a variety of negative effects which I feel strongly outweigh the little good it arguable does:

1. Arbitrary spped limits create disrespect for laws and, ultimately, the rule of law. Having a law which is univerally broken cheapens what law is supposed to be about. In order to maintain the rule of law – where no person is held higher than the law – we must all be beholden to the law. By creating laws which only a few people are beholden too every once in a while, we effectively say that laws are meant to be broken, when you an get away with it.
2. Arbitrary speed limits make enemies of average citizens and the police. Nobody likes having a cop around when they’re driving because it cramps their style. Everyone slows to five under the limit, just to make sure, and everyone breathes a sigh of relief when the cop exits the freeway. Police prey on the side of raods for unsuspected innocents and many motorists try to signal each other when an enemy is ahead. Its very much like a guerilla war against the slightly-faster-than-average driver.
3. Aribtrary speed limits make traffic worse. When all four lanes of the highway are going the same speed, congestion always results. A more fluid highway system, such as those often seen in Europe, with a left lane that goes considerably faster than the lanes to the right, congestion would be lessened and, ultimately, there would be fewer frustrated and dangerous drivers and fewer collisions.
4. More generally, an abundance of laws, such as we have, means that no one can keep track of all the statutes they are supposed to live under, and people in percieved positions of authority tyranize law-abiding citizens. For example, did you know, before reading all of this, that RCW46.61.4W even existed? Well, certainly, you knew that speeded was “illegal” (when a cop’s around that cares, at least), but do you have any idea what RCW46.61.3 says? Or any of the other hundreds of thousands of laws that you are subject to? Any bureaucrat having a bad day, including a cop who has on hand a few obscure RCW’s, can screw you and I over, and we have no clue. Rule of law is further sacrificed. Fortunately, most people, including cops, are generally good people that don’t tend to do this, but I have had a cop threaten to put me in jail over a hit in run that didn’t happen, and I was only 15, and I would have had no clue what to do if he really did that.
5. Having cops chasing around a bunch of people that have never committed a real crime ever is a pointless waste of manpower that should be used to deal with the real criminals and real problems.

But the big one in that list is that we are, by upholding speed limit laws, helping to destroy the rule of law, the very fabric that our democratic good society is based on. And arbitrary speed limits are by no means alone in this desecration of law, they are just convienient to use for making this poitn because nearly everyone has had expereince with them.

“Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. ” –Thomas Jefferson, The Declaration of Independence

While it is still possible to make things better, let us try.

Yesterday, my company, Microvision celebrated recieving its 100th US Patent, which is quite a feat. While I love MVIS to death, and really want to see the company to succeed, one of the speakers at the party (I think it was the CEO, actually) described Microvision’s intellectual property holdings as “a thicket of patents.”

To me, that statement effectively describes a lot of what is wrong with patent law and its cousin, copyright law, in this country, and throughout the world. Don’t get me wrong – I strongly believe in the need to protect intellectual property while promoting its public release, which copyrights and patents allow. Without these constructs, we would be much worse off. But with so-called submarine patents, effectively indefinite copyrights, and so on, there are clearly many ways these constructs could be improved to better serve the public good with minimal negative impact on (and, I would argue, net gain by) the creators of the intellectual property.

Copyrights, for example, currently last until 70 years after the author’s death, a time limit which congress seems to extend every time Disney’s oldest movies are about to enter the public domain. Companies these days don’t have Disney’s problem, however, because works for hire are copyright the company, which magically never dies. Copyrights are effectively indefinite. (This is my understanding; If anyone knows differently, please comment!). Indeffinite copyrights are ridiculously opposed to the purpose of the copyright in the first place.

And patents can be issued for the most vague and ludicrous things, from “3D First Person Perspective Interface” (Apogee Games got sued over Duke Nukem 3D by some company with a patent stating something like that…) to patents of human genes. Furthermore, all patents last 17 years in this country, a huge amount of time in many technology and biomedical fields. If a patent’s contents were ever useful, by the time the patent expires, its useless in most cases.

The idea behind intellectual property rights is that the works are protected for a long enough time that the creator can reap the financial rewards of producing something useful to society, then the IP is released for everyone’s use. This works because intellectual property really is entirely different than physical property: Intellectual property is a public good that can be shared by all without one person’s use of it making it any less useful to someone else; With physical property, on the other hand, one person posessing it neccesarily prevents anyone else from posessing it. Therefore, it makes sense that after being protected for a time, the intellectual property should be released so that its usefulness as a public good can be maximized to society at large. If the time period that the work is protected is long enough, then the effect on the creator of the intellectal property is minimal, because most of the comercial appeal of a product fades over time, so financial gain is almost entirely front-loaded.

I propose a 10 year copyright expiration from time of release to the public, and a variable length, continuous-use-only patent arbitrated by the party applying for the patent, other interested parties, and the patent office. The benefits of these two simple changes are profound and resounding. For example:

• Old software, such as Windows 3.1 at this point, becomes free to distribute. Microsoft certainly isnt making any money off of Windows 3.1 these days, and a lot of old computers could be useful in places without computers with software like that installed without cost (hey, we all used it at one time, it can’t be that bad). However, it is important to note that the source code to Windows 3.1 does not enter the public domain, because that was never released to the public.
• Old songs become free to distribute (how many CDs get sold after the first 10 years anyway?). Old songs can also be resold and used for derrivative works. Think of how great it is that Bach’s symphonies are public domain. Then take any great music, and ten years later you can use it to make something even better – a remix, a re-recording, etc. This is great, because it encourages the production of additional intellectual property, which can eventually be enjoyed by everyone. Also, it creates an incentive for artists and creators to continue creating instead of relying on old works to do all the work for the.
• Drug patents expire quickly, long enough for the researching company to recoup expenses and profit, but not so long that millions of people are screwed over for years and years because they can’t afford a proprietary medicine. Remember, we have to keep the incentive in place or the drug companies will never make the medicine in the first place. But there is no reason for government to continue perpetuating a monopoly that does more harm than good.
• The patent arbitration process makes it so that only reasonable patents are granted. Having multiple parties with differing viewpoints gives the patent office much better and more balanced insight into the process of granting patents. The continuous-use term means that patents which go unused expire early into the public domain. This encourages patent owners to actively pursue projects which utilize the patented idea of method, and it eliminates submarine patents, where someone creates something, only to be sued later by someone who applied for and got a bunch of random vague patents that can be construed to cover whatever the actual useful product the first guy created.

Cetainly, these ideas need to be fleshed out, but I feel strongly that changes to patent and copyright law, such as the changes mentioned here, would help create a system friendlier to and better for both producers and consumers of intellectual property.

According to this article, Michael Moore’s Farenheit 9/11 leaves much to be desired. The whole Carlyle group thing didn’t bother me too much, but the plane trips thing did, and it is interesting to see that the claims that these flights were illigetimate were fabricated and that the person who approved the flights was none other than Richard Clarke, now an outspoken critic of Bush.

It doesn’t change, of course, the Patriot Act or the Iraq War vs. The Afghanistani War, but it does make you wonder about the rest of the claims in the movie. If Moore had simply left all verifiably false stuff out, then the entire film would gain credibility. But instead, he leaves it in and calls all the content into question. Of course, without the claims addressed in teh above article, it would have been a pretty short film about mostly Iraq, and we’ve all had enough of that.

Today after a wonderful day at work in which I ended by successfully generating on-the-fly a control barcode for the Flic barcode scanner using code written from scratch by yours truly, I went with Maneesh
to see Farenheit 9/11.

My first reaction to the release of this movie is that I would not see it. This because Michael Moore is an avowed leftest, and I didn’t want to support him, his propoganda, or his causes. But then, after some reflecting and reading of reviews, I decided that watching it would be useful. I wanted to hear oposing viewpoints, if for no other reason than knowing what they were. While I went in with more than a grain of salt, I also tried to keep an open mind.

First, since it is a movie, I think visuals should be discussed. Large parts of the movie consisted of footage blown up from TV quality images. While it was bearable to watch, anybody who gave it a high score in visuals is retarded. And there were plenty of people that did just that on Yahoo! Movies. ‘Tards.

The attempts to direect the audience emotionally were well done. I’m not terribly emotional to start out with, and I had to grimmace to make it through the emotionally charged parts still keeping my wits about me. The hardest were the mother who lost the son in the war and the Iraqi woman who lost some family members.

The large array of factual evidence presented is the most convincing. For example, the military commitments to Afghanistan and Iraq were oppisite of what it sees they should have been. Fewer troops went to Afghanistan than police patrol the streets of New York. More than ten times the number committed to Afghanistan are in Iraq. It tooks months for US forces to penetrate Afghanistan, and only days for Iraq. Its not to hard to believe Mikey, then, when he suggests that this is the reason Osama got away, and Sadaam got caught. It is also fairly easy to believe, with the other evidence presented, that the Bush administration took on Afghanistan out of neccesity, whereas Iraq was the prize they sought, with 9/11 as the means to that end.

And that became the most disturbing theme in the movie, because of how true it seemed upon personal reflection. September 11th was used as a justification for agendas that existed long before. Take the Patriot Act. It was very telling when Michael Moore was interviewing a congressman who said that members of congress don’t actually read what they turn into law, because to do so would take too long. So Mikey decided to go and read the patriot act to them. If it takes someone whose job is to legislate too long to read a single new law, how in the world are the rest of us, who have real jobs to do, supposed to read all the laws that we are supposed to abide by?

Other interesting tidbits

• the Afghani pipeline for natural gas
• the tactics of Marine recruiters
• Only one member of congress has a child overseas in the service
• Members of congress don’t like the idea of getting their kids to sign up for the Army

Overall, seeing the movie was a good experience. I just wish there were a conservative version of Michael Moore, so we could have an equally skewed version of this sort of commentary from the right. Maybe then people would realize how screwed up the system really is. While the rest of the movie went on to try to paint Bush and Cheney as unique in their ties to Enron and Haliburton, one truth remains. If you filmed anyone in politics for 4 years, you could make them look any way you wanted, because they will certainly provide enough ammunition. Unfortunately, the truth is that most of our government is corrupt and its not getting any better. Sure, its called politics as usual when senators get contracts for their home state and they get campaign contributions in return. But pretending that is somehow different than bribery doesn’t make it any less harmful.

In the end, this movie reaffirmed rather than challeneged my core beliefs. It did shift my perspective on Bush, but it didn’t rule out my voting for him. It certainly didn’t make me any more likely to vote for Kerry, even though an old lady wearing a Kerry for President pin tried to get me to register to vote (I am already registered). But it still seems clear to me that the government which governs least governs best. Government started the War in Iraq for a number of legitimate and probably a number of illegitmate reasons as well. But government also supplied and supported Hussein and Bin Laden in the first place. Imagine the lives and money that could have been put to better use had government just stayed out of it all.

Vote freedom first.

Peace.

[23:51:53] Clifton: Hey, Ryan! :)
[23:52:03] Ryan: how’s your orkut time?
[23:52:13] Clifton: hmm?
[23:52:17] Ryan: I read your posts on the socialism is stupid (or whatever) community
[23:52:31] Clifton: oh boy!
[23:52:39] Clifton: thanks for reading, but did you post back?
[23:52:53] Clifton: how did you find them?
[23:53:24] Ryan: I got to the community via your membership in it
[23:53:27] Ryan: and read the first post
[23:53:30] Ryan: that sounded interesting
[23:53:39] Ryan: and fell in love with what his name
[23:55:25] Clifton: who!?
[23:55:44] Clifton: that anti socialism essay that somebody posted?
[23:55:55] Clifton: I hope you didn’t fall in love with Stefan!
[23:56:04] Ryan: maybe that’s who
[23:56:14] Clifton: who?
[23:56:18] Clifton: describe.
[23:57:07] Ryan: the capitalist
[23:57:25] Clifton: they are all capitalists.
[23:57:44] Ryan: oh
[23:57:47] Clifton: the guy that shot down my post?
[23:57:51] Ryan: yeah, that guy
[23:57:59] Clifton: you fell in love with him?
[23:58:21] Ryan: well, not like boy-girl love, but like, wow love
[23:58:22] Clifton: that is Stefan.
[23:58:29] Clifton: *Shrug*
[23:58:33] Ryan: coool
[23:58:36] Ryan: then stefan
[23:58:47] Clifton: I enjoyed his posts until he responded to me.
[23:58:56] Clifton: I think his last post is way off.
[23:59:03] Clifton: but I can’t prove it until I read Marx
[23:59:07] Ryan: notice that we both describe ourselves as “very libertarian”
[23:59:08] Ryan: well
[23:59:24] Clifton: oh, I noticed!
[23:59:27] Ryan: his last post didn’t respond to you in the way you thought you’d be responded to
[23:59:48] Clifton: you could tell how I thought I’d be responded to?
[00:00:34] Ryan: you wanted someone to either try to defend violence in the name of capitalism or agree with you
[00:01:13] Clifton: and then he said ‘Capitalism is inherently peaceful’ … which is a very lofty thing to say.
[00:01:15] Ryan: instead, he pointed out a fundamental flaw in your argument, namely, that violence in the name of capitalism is not more capitalism than were, for example, the crusades Christianity
[00:01:20] Ryan: well
[00:01:22] Ryan: he is right
[00:01:24] Ryan: you see
[00:01:30] Ryan: that’s what made me go, wow
[00:01:31] Clifton: but that is exactly the same argument that the socialists make!
[00:01:38] Clifton: they say that the violent socialists weren’t true socialists.
[00:01:39] Ryan: but he provides evidence
[00:02:19] Ryan: whereas people that say your quote have no evidence as far as I know, other than how they define socialism
[00:02:35] Clifton: I have some to the contrary. take Texas for example. it was originally a joint USAmerican/mexican agricultural business venture, but then the farmers themselves decided to violently take the region by force.
[00:02:41] Clifton: similar situation in hawaii
[00:03:16] Clifton: then there’s the whole colonization of the Americas, in which capitalists toppled empires, and raped/killed by the hundreds of thousands. ;)
[00:03:32] Clifton: that wasn’t the government, you know? it was the traders.
[00:03:55] Ryan: and that force, as stephan points out, was not capitalism
[00:04:04] Clifton: then Stalin wasn’t socialism.
[00:04:13] Ryan: capitalism would have been to buy the land at a price both parties agreed to
[00:04:31] Clifton: and socialism would be to take care of all people, and eliminate poverty.
[00:05:24] Ryan: socialism would have been to forcibly take everyone’s property and distribute according to some arbitrary centrally mandated decisions
[00:05:31] Ryan: that’s the point he made
[00:05:47] Ryan: that very few people are willing to give up their property
[00:05:56] Ryan: which is why socialism is inherently violent
[00:06:28] Ryan: whereas in capitalism, all exchange of any sort is voluntary by all parties involved
[00:06:35] Ryan: so violence is completely out of the question
[00:06:39] Clifton: like during the USAmerican revolution, when we violently seized territory and political power from the king?
[00:07:14] Ryan: you are making no sense. are you saying that the revolutionary war was a capitalist endeavor?
[00:07:22] Clifton: all major structural changes to society are violent. you can’t say socialism is inherently violent because it is a revolutionary movement. Capitalism went through the same phase.
[00:08:03] Clifton: let’s see? a bunch of plantation owners were pissed about paying taxes, and figured they could make more profit if they governed themselves… nah, doesn’t sound like a capitalist venture to me. :)
[00:08:17] Ryan: I disagree. There are times when a society has become more capitalistic though violence, but you are confusing the means and the ends
[00:08:27] Ryan: its not
[00:08:40] Ryan: capitalism would have had the exchange be voluntary
[00:08:42] Clifton: come on!
[00:08:47] Ryan: don’t you see that
[00:08:48] Clifton: the colonies themselves were capitalist ventures
[00:09:39] Ryan: they were profiteering ventures
[00:09:47] Ryan: which you seem to associate with capitalism
[00:09:51] Ryan: which is not correct
[00:09:59] Ryan: is the colonies were capitalistic
[00:09:59] Clifton: common socialist mistake.
[00:10:07] Ryan: they would have purchased the land from its inhabitants
[00:10:16] Ryan: not slaughtered them to get it
[00:10:17] Clifton: but see. there was plenty of political profiteering in socialist revolutions.
[00:10:55] Clifton: it’s the same thing in socialist regimes, except political power in place of money.
[00:11:50] Ryan: no, its not the same at all, because in socialism, the exchanges are not voluntary. They are coerced by those in power. In capitalism, all exchange is voluntary, or the exchange does not happen
[00:12:23] Clifton: except for when it is forced.
[00:12:39] Ryan: when it is forced, it is not capitalism
[00:12:55] Clifton: like when the USA took half of Mexico, when bush ‘took’ Iraq, when cowboys took lands from native Americans.
[00:13:13] Ryan: you see, you are trying to attribute non-capitalistic things to capitalism and then saying capitalism is bad because of it
[00:13:28] Ryan: none of those were capitalistic exchanges
[00:13:49] Ryan: they were all coercive with the use of force
[00:13:51] Clifton: ok, this argument hinges on one point. Did Marx himself advocate violence in order to instill socialism. If so, then Stefan is right. if not, then he is taking the same arguments that the socialists take.
[00:15:03] Clifton: capitalists that claimed to be capitalists have a long history of using coercive methods. Socialists that claim to be socialists do too. both sides refuse to recognize these people as true (capitalists or socialists)
[00:15:21] Ryan: I’m not well enough versed with Marx to answer authoritatively. However, I believe Marx advocated a revolution by the proletariat (sp) to forcibly take over the means of production from the capitalists
[00:15:40] Clifton: Well, if that is so, then I yield.
[00:15:46] Clifton: but I can’t be sure until I read Marx.
[00:16:02] Ryan: people that claimed to be Christians have long histories of murdering, torturing, and hating other people
[00:16:11] Ryan: that doesn’t make Christianity bad
[00:16:14] Ryan: or Christ wrong
[00:16:34] Clifton: no, but it does nullify the Christian argument that Arabs are inherently violent.
[00:16:42] Clifton: if one should be made.
[00:17:15] Clifton: I’m not arguing that capitalism is bad. just that it is hypocritical and short sighted to condemn socialism on violence alone.
[00:17:19] Ryan: well, it is true that socialism can be achieved among willing participants
[00:17:32] Clifton: it’s proven.
[00:17:33] Ryan: and in that case, socialism and capitalism coincide
[00:17:42] Ryan: because no exchanges were involuntary
[00:17:43] Clifton: often, and it is beautiful.
[00:17:49] Clifton: sure. :)
[00:18:08] Ryan: where capitalism and socialism go apart is where socialism turns to force and violence to spread itself
[00:18:28] Clifton: capitalism does that too!
[00:18:38] Ryan: so, so borrow a term from differential equations, there is a bifurcation there
[00:18:42] Ryan: there is overlap
[00:18:42] Clifton: they go apart when the other uses force.
[00:18:56] Clifton: thank you!
[00:19:03] Clifton: that is half of the point I’m trying to make.
[00:19:11] Ryan: but the capitalism never calls for violence to expand, except, as stephan pointed out, in cases of self-defense
[00:19:31] Ryan: we should post this conversation to the community
[00:19:34] Clifton: and also when it is more profitable to use violence than to abide by laws.
[00:19:41] Clifton: it is way too long,
[00:19:47] Clifton: but maybe a sum up.
[00:19:51] Ryan: wait, what do you mean by “and also when it is more profitable to use violence than to abide by laws.”
[00:19:51] Clifton: when we come to consensus
[00:19:59] Ryan: I won’t let you sneak that one in
[00:20:21] Ryan: you are once again confusing profiteering with capitalism
[00:20:27] Ryan: they are not at all the same creature
[00:20:32] Ryan: *creature
[00:20:37] Clifton: you are once again confusing political profiteering with socialism.
[00:20:49] Clifton: unless Marx did condone violence.
[00:20:58] Ryan: which I believe he did
[00:21:02] Ryan: but that’s not the point
[00:21:04] Clifton: but can’t prove.
[00:21:13] Clifton: my entire argument can be destroyed if he did.
[00:21:20] Ryan: the point is that capitalism and socialism coincide as long as force is out of the equation
[00:21:30] Clifton: well, that is a point.
[00:21:32] Clifton: and a nice one.
[00:21:53] Ryan: because, when there is no force involved, socialism is a form of capitalism
[00:21:58] Ryan: you see, that’s the key here
[00:22:24] Clifton: it is just a structure that could exist within capitalism. not a form of it, in any way I can see… or did I miss something?
[00:22:43] Ryan: when socialism moves away from capitalism, then it becomes violent
[00:23:58] Ryan: and since socialism decries capitalism so much, I think it is very easy to conclude that socialism is inherently violent, especially since (I believe) Marx advocated forceful takeover of means of production, even if people like you see that capitalism and socialism can coexist
[00:24:19] Clifton: and by stefan’s argument, when capitalism becomes violent it also moves away from capitalism.
[00:24:31] Ryan: capitalism can not be violent
[00:24:41] Ryan: by its definition
[00:24:58] Ryan: it is the VOLUNTARY exchange and nothing else, no coercion allowed
[00:25:11] Ryan: as soon as violence enters the arena, capitalism is no longer
[00:25:20] Ryan: they are mutually exclusive
[00:25:56] Ryan: so, when a society claiming to be capitalist moves to violence, then it is no longer capitalist, that is true
[00:26:01] Ryan: which may be what you were trying to say
[00:26:47] Ryan: what I want to hear from you is, if it exists, an explanation of how socialism, when it is outside of the subset of capitalism, is possibly non-violent
[00:28:24] Clifton: brb
[00:28:29] Ryan: kk
[00:31:37] Ryan: I need to be sleeping soon
[00:33:09] Clifton: we can resume later, I guess. :(
[00:33:26] Ryan: no, I want an answer to my question
[00:33:59] Ryan: also, I read the part above that I missed earlier where you said you were not condemning capitalism, simply saying that it was shortsighted to condemn socialism on violence alone
[00:33:59] Clifton: it’ll be a minute or two – ten
[00:34:03] Ryan: and you may be right
[00:34:39] Ryan: because socialism is bad in many more ways than just its tendency to violence
[00:35:29] Ryan: and as you tried to point out, even if capitalism is non-violent, capitalist societies have committed their fair share of violent atrocities
[00:35:33] Clifton: oh!
[00:35:37] Clifton: that was my whole argument!
[00:35:53] Ryan: but then that’s the breakdown of capitalism
[00:36:00] Ryan: not a condemnation of capitalism
[00:36:18] Ryan: but a plea for its more universal application
[00:36:21] Clifton: can you post that explanation in my defense?
[00:36:26] Ryan: yes
[00:36:27] Ryan: I can
[00:36:31] Clifton: thank you.
[00:36:39] Clifton: I’ll read your question now.

Well, the Comcast Guy came and replaced our cable modem. Everything seems to be better now, I am mucho happy. I have yet to se the new modem myself, but my brother reports that it is black (woohoo!). I will ost pictures sometime maybe.

Two weeks and a day until my last final this school year. I’m stiall waiting to hear from the UW.

I saw Uniform at the Seattle International Film Festival today with Dan & co. It wasn’t very good, but I’ve seen worse too. Primer, which I have higher hopes for, is Monday.

Clifton sent me this link, about how to get more women into Linux. My specific interest was different, how to get more women into the TRC… Reading the howto left me feeling a little guilty and a little confused and a little indignant. Guilty because once I made a sexist joke to the two most promising girls on the TRC. I meant to apologize, but I never got around to it, and now I rembmer that I need to again. Confused, because some things seem to contradict. Do we want to treat women like everyone else (as she says to do at one point), or do we want to be extra careful to let them type the commands themselves (as she claims at another point). Finally, indignant because the author cites both at once how we raise males and females differently that leads to discrimination against females. Does this differentiation in raising children not just as strongly (or, these days, even more strongly) “discriminate” against me being a nanny, for example? Of course, this isnt really discrimination, is it, since I don’t really want to be a nanny. But then, what percentage or girls want to be (insert technical field here). Of course it is argued that these preferences come from differential treatment of genders in the first place. But what of that? My parents did not introduceme to the joys of autoworking as a child, and perhaps as a result, I’m not terribly interested in auto working. Does this mean I was discriminated against? If this happened to a girl, would that make her discriminated against?

I actaully wrote all that last night… enjoy!

Day after tomorrow today…

While driving north on 405 to work today, I was passed by a Washington State Patrol vehicle doing better than 85 (I tried to pace the car briefly). The policeman behind the wheel was the sole occupant of the vehicle driving in the HOV lane. I smiled to myself when he got stuck behind a driver going the speed limit in that lane just a short ways ahead of me. Then I got indignant when I saw the cop pull off the road to set up a speed trap for other motorists.

I think John Stossel coined the perfect phrase for this kind of behavior in his excellent book: “The Conceit of the Annointed.”

The police view themselves as the annointed enforcers of some select laws of the land, but in that capacity, they often don’t feel that they are subject to the same rules they enforce. This behavior erodes the legitimacy of their mission and the laws they are charged to uphold. Along with the facts that the speed limit law is universally broken and arbitraily and sporadically enforced, the intentional and blatant breaking of the law by Washington’s “finest” damages the Rule of Law which is the foundation of our very society.

If I am ever a cop, I will pull over exclusively other cops to give them a taste of their own medicine. I have been told by some more knowledgable than I that this will lead to me being beaten in locker rooms and fired with the mildest excuse. All I can say is that I will have a camcorder running.