The third world can't pull itself up by it's own bootstraps, or won't? What made the US an immediate 'first world' nation? Was it born that way, fully industrialized and ready to go, or did it have to get going on it's own? Who helped the US to become first world, if it wasn't immediate?

The idea that somehow it takes a first world nation to give everything to a third world nation and that they can't industrialize on their own is arrogance at its finest. It isn't an easy process, sure, but it can be done if there's a will to do it. It is far easier to get it from people that have already done it, but the benefits are better if you do it yourself. Hell, we've probably had more than a few 'first world' nations that have fallen back into 'third world' status. Rome comes to mind. I'm sure they were 'first world' in their time, and they fell into disarray for a while. So, it seems like we've been able to reinvent the wheel a few times. I'm sure even if we left the third world alone, they could eventually figure it out.

You have obviously never indulged in flights of fancy or other thought experiments that are fun to explore but not fun to live. To take this stupid analogy further, let's explore...

Playing World of Warcraft is rehearsal for killing the hordes of orcs.

Playing Payday 2 is rehearsal for robbing banks and shooting cops.

Playing Left 4 Dead 2 is rehearsal for the next Zombie Apocalypse, because you know it's coming.

My child had a princess party once. Surely, she's royalty, or soon to be married into it.

Get a grip, man. Sometimes playing a game is just a game. Crimes need to be based on real actions and real intentions rather than what one would indulge in for a game. Too many games would be unacceptable real world behavior, and yet we have them because it's fun to play them when there are no lasting penalties for those kinds of actions.

I have a different take on this matter. What exactly does a CEO do that provides so much more value to a company than an engineering team or assembly line laboring away at designing products? Sure, a CEO has a place and can be very instrumental in the effectiveness of the company, but then so too can a brilliant engineer or a factory foreman that can design the next Big Thing or improve efficiency because they know their work that well? Where are the brilliant engineers making CEO pay? Or the factory foremen? And don't think for a second that a CEO is so unique as to be irreplaceable. When a CEO is replaced, shockingly a company keeps running unless he is so bad as to drive the company into the ground. Being unable to attract good talented engineers or having your assembly line strike because of bad treatment can cripple a company just as badly as a bad CEO.

So, the lesson I'd like to give is that every level of a company, be it designers or sales or factory or CEO, has a place in a corporate team and no one entity is less crucial than the other. The only problem is that the CEO disproportionately earns that much more than everyone else. It is about time that the people that labor to make the products or to do the work, that serve as the face of the company moreso than the CEO does, share in the fruit of their efforts.

They probably meant 'natural' as in 'direct imaging', instead of post-capture image processing to correct artifacts.

There, fixed that for you. Seriously, isn't it obvious that even secret data gathering techniques are known by SOMEONE, and if there is a spy truly worth their salt, they'd know about it, or simply take precautions that are less than traceable (throw-away numbers, random dead drops, encoded classified ad messages, etc). That you go out and claim 'We have to trust the administrator' flies in the face of all the known abuses we've had within the US, within recent memory, and within organizations still in existence today (Hoover and the FBI, Nixon, McCarthy, and so on). Trust, but Verify. Secrets are great for specifics, but not for the fact they're doing it nor for the law on which they base their actions. We cannot live within the bounds of secret laws and still claim freedom.

To be honest, Nixon shouldn't have just 'lost his job' over that scandal, he should have been impeached and in jail. If they crow about how punishments are a deterrent to bad behavior, that the punishment for a blatantly illegal scandal and abuse of power by the president is losing your job and getting to go back to doing anything else you want sure seems harsh to me. Not.

While your ideas are interesting, the point I was making is that wealth need not be THE defining criteria for success. Other elements such as dominance in a market and ability to deliver what your customers want every time can be a measure of success as well. In some cases, this can actually be seen in the current marketplace. The point you quote is well visualized in a news article by ABC concerning companies that do NOT treat their employees like slaves, yet still somehow turn out successful.

However, just because there are some examples of companies that do right by their employees, there are many more examples of those that do not. In those cases, there tends to be a huge disparity between the pay at the top and the pay of the workers earning that money. Among the employees of those companies, only those at the top, those that have money or skill or power, really get to set the levels of compensation and define who gets to be greedy, which is kind of the point I was making. If someone at the bottom attempted that, they'd be kicked out in a heartbeat for someone else willing to slave away for a pittance.

It isn't just that tax avoidance has lost favor. It's that most people have come to the realization (I think) that big money interests work with legislators, whether obviously or covertly, to see to it such loopholes and 'special perks' exist in the first place. It's like playing poker and stacking the deck in your favor every time. It isn't hard to see how that puts the corporations on the 'wrong side' and how it comes off as unfair in most people's minds.

If the perception was that big money does not have a hand in the creation of laws and receives the same "bad treatment" everyone else does, then I imagine you'd see tax avoidance come back into favor.

Something tells me you answered your own question just there. And if it is 'the people in those countries' deciding when too much is too much, then the GP poster commenting he feels Gates has too much is certainly within his rights to say.

Saying that the problem isn't that some people are too rich, it's that some are too poor is trying to make excuses why being overly successful (in some cases, abusively successful) is desirable and 'them good for nuthin' lazy poor folk' are in the wrong for not being successful enough. The whole game is set up so that a few accumulate a lot that could otherwise be feeding the many. The phrase 'you have to have money to make money' didn't come about because it's a cute saying. I can't imagine that anyone that's rich now continued to slog away on the assembly line until they were rich. At some point they stopped doing manual labor and let their funds work for them through investments. Even still, SOMEONE needs to slog away on that assembly line, don't they? Why can't they be paid commiserate with the total value their work brings in, just like those awesome investors that ponied up a little dough but didn't otherwise put forth ANY effort for their return? It'd certainly keep them unsuccessful poor from being so poor, wouldn't it?

The simple fact is that people are greedy assholes no matter which end of the 'rich' spectrum you're on. It's just that those that have (money, skills, power), they get to flex their greed more strongly than the rest. If everyone played fair on their own, sought balance instead of their own aggrandizement, we wouldn't feel the need to put in such silly things like regulations and limits and 'how much is too rich' and such because you just wouldn't have that problem anymore.

What, you mean there's a reason we sometimes use vacuum insulation in our hot/cold thermoses? Scandalous ;).

And less-ironically, I could see this as being a massive problem for farmers trying NOT to have their fields contaminated by Roundup Ready crops. So they have a field, and it gets cross-contaminated with pollen from Roundup Ready plants, and it's enough that the new seeds produced will not germinate. The farmer, having practiced the art of replanting seed stock from his field will find that his fields will no longer grow, and his seeds (or a portion thereof) are useless.

That totally doesn't cause collateral damage in the market place, does it?

I think it's valid to state that, if you cannot operate a vehicle/weapon safely in the company of others and wind up killing someone, then fuck yes your capacity for operating those items should be questioned. However, despite the alarmist position you seem to hold, my understanding is the proposed reforms are targeting individuals deemed incapable of using those tools properly, and there is no push to remove ALL weaponry from the hands of ALL citizens.

If that viewpoint is incorrect, please, enlighten us and let us see the evidence for your viewpoint.

Funny. I thought our elected officials job was to represent our collective voices and discuss with other representatives the best ways to solve the problems our country faces. I didn't think they were elected to be the dam, telling their constituents "Whoa, slow down there dude. You're going to hurt that poor little rich guy (a minority, right?) if you ask him not to be so damn greedy."

And you do know that most people that are 'rich' don't make the majority of their money bringing in income, right? They do it using investments and such, things that get taxed under this thing called 'Capital Gains'. That thing that used to be 15% of what you brought in that way. So what's the point of talking about what the marginal rate on income is when the biggest loophole you'll ever see is staring you in the face?

You can't invest your way entirely to prosperity, so this heavy incentive to invest seems foolhardy. Eventually, SOMEONE needs to make something useful.

I hope you're making a mistake in saying that patients don't make all the key decisions about health care, at least when it comes to their own care. See, most hospitals I've ever gone to have this big thing about consent. You must consent to care before it will be given. Sometimes that consent is pretty broadly written, but consent can be dialed back to only those things you actually consent to. To the point about whether they know what they're deciding or not, that doesn't matter from this standpoint because if they don't understand, the professional advising them should do their best to inform them the implications of what was found, what the outcomes are, and what can be done to treat it. That turns simple consent into 'informed consent', a term brandished about the profession.

The decision on what to do ultimately rests with the patient, as the patient must give consent for it. If you don't include consent into the mix for patient care, then you subjugate anyone with a 'medical ailment' to someone else's will and force on them something they may not want. Last I checked, we consider force in that instance to be wrong, with possible exceptions in times when consent cannot be obtained for people certified to be unable to give consent (incapacitated, mentally ill, etc). Even then, though, someone deemed responsible for that patient is asked instead, if available.

Issues about cost, payment and the like are irrelevant from the decision standpoint, and something that the hospital or medical professional can make sure the patient is able to pay, first, before costly treatments. If unable, the hospital, to my knowledge, does not have to provide care outside of ER scenarios.