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Comment Re:Civilization removes natural selection. (Score 1) 637

Just be because someone wouldn't survive against a saber tooth tiger doesn't mean we're interfering with natural selection or that it reduces our survival rates. If we discarded our "weak" the way primitive societies did, we wouldn't have discovered people like Stephen Hawking and John Nash. Our species' altruism and shared survival gives us a much greater pool of potential skill, labor, and creativity to draw from, and these potential contributions help each member of our species as a whole survive better as a result. Just as we didn't know a millennia ago that one day Einsteins might be of more worth to our society than skilled hunters, we can't necessarily foresee what might help us in the future. What if the 'retards' you want to cull from our species turn out to be the only ones with genetic resistance to a future epidemic, for example?

Comment Re:Squeezed for cash? (Score 1) 316

Read the original post. A cap on profits, not wealth. Profits can be reduced by reinvesting it in the company with hiring and capital spending, which is more useful than being paid out as dividends which get taxed at 15% rates to the rich and then sit in Cayman Island bank accounts.

Comment Re:Don't worry, Romney... (Score 1) 836

Mitt paid 15% using the "carried interest" loophole, meaning he takes a percentage cut of his clients' gains and that gets taxed at 15%. In other words, it's not his invested money that he initially earned but his clients'. Regular salesmen at the local mall pay taxes on their commissions at the same rates their base pay, but Mitt (and other investment bankers) don't.

Comment And? (Score 1) 161

So having poor people automatically disqualifies a country in the geographic west, speaking a western language, believing in a western religion, ruled by a western style democratic government, and having a population of mostly white people from being Western? Or does West mean only rich Anglo-Saxon countries? I suppose it's far easier to assert Western superiority by including only the successful countries in the definition.

Comment Re:And the UK! (Score 1) 289

This. For the two centuries before the the World Wars, Iran/Persia basically alternated between being a British or Russian puppet, until the two decided to share and Russia got the north while the Brits got the south. This arrangement continued into World War 2 with the Ango/Russian invasion and occupation of Iran. Even in the second half of the twentieth century, the UK still had Iran by the balls. Iran was still stuck in a treaty with the UK that guaranteed the oil concessions on behalf of the Anglo-Persian Oil company until the 1990's (negotiated in the 1890's as a hundred-year treaty), with the split being something like 85% profits to the company and the rest to Iran (the usually being a 50-50 split). When the government tried to renegotiate this agreement, the UK and the CIA lead a coup against him that led to the overthrow of the constitutional monarchy and the installment of a puppet shah in `953.

The Anglo-Persian company has since gone on to do bigger and better things, like the Deepwater Horizon disaster, under its new name, British Petroleum, or BP.

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