In Nazi Germany, people accepted totalitarian rule because of economic growth, low unemployment and resurgent nationalism. In China and USSR, there was growth, redistribution and nationalist fervor. Extraordinary police powers were viewed as costs worth accepting in light of the real progress that had occurred.
The idea of protecting everyone all of the time is often the "wedge" that is used to start the totalitarian states.
Can you name one where this was true? In Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union and China, political control and ideological purity were the motivation and the wedge.
You can have low taxes or good infrastructure but not both.
This would be true if we had a full employment economy with no output gap. (Or, alternatively, if we didn't have our own currency).
I have never heard of a requirement that bystanders interfere.
I accidentally conflated Good Samaritan laws with duty to rescue, and apparently misremembered New York as an example. Such laws do exist in several states however.
There are places where the Police are tasked with protecting everyone, they are technically called "Police States".
Police state is a term denoting government that exercises power arbitrarily through the police. There has never been such a state, which tasked its police with "protecting everyone."
See Good Samaritan law
What's funny about these is that many of them coexist with legal precedent establishing that the police have no duty to protect citizens. So in New York for example, cops have no requirement to interfere, but ordinary citizens can be guilty of a crime if they do not.
The UK's cities have video cameras on every street corner, Australia wants to heavily regulate 3D printers in case someone decides to make a plastic gun, China DOSes web sites it doesn't like, ISIS is slaughtering Christians and Jews wherever it finds them, and the USA is a laughing stock because of its morally defunct justice system.
FTFY.
Maybe the kid shouldn't have hacked into the teachers computer
Ah, you're one of those types who equate accessing a contextual menu with hacking. Sorry, but your nerd card has been revoked.
changing desktop wallpaper [is] not befitting of a member of society
Jeeze, I bet you're the life of the party.
the scientists on the 'environmental' side
This is a generic false equivalence which contradicts the positions of the actual Oklahoman scientists who provided the majority of the material in TFA.
In fact, these scientists all support the Oklahoma oil industry and continued injection via disposal wells. They want 1) the government to recognize the scientific evidence on the matter, 2) firms and government to investigate which wells contact basement rock and 3) firms to move wells which do in fact contact basement rock.
'harvest' the 'scientific results'
No harvesting or picking of results is possible in this particular case, because while there are ~25 studies supporting induced seismicity in Oklahoma, there are zero studies with alternate conclusions.
So why the focus on this particular cause?
We're discussing an article about it. The article is not about other forms of induced seismicity - although the events you mention are useful in demonstrating that the amount of water injected in Oklahoma is quite significant.
it's your political view coloring your analysis of the situation.
I read peer-reviewed research in order to understand phenomena like the one in question. You on other hand are devoted to a particular position on an empirical question regardless of published research. You've already lied about the USGS' position, and are now resorting to non sequitor as a cheap rhetorical trick, in a discussion thread already replete with astroturf.
English words do tend to have alternate definitions which can be confusing to non-native speakers. As the AC said below:
[Percentage is] an accepted euphemism for "advantage", stemming from gambling and loansharking.
1) Gallons are not a unit of energy.
I didn't say it was - the energy involved comes from 1) Earth's gravitational field and 2) the internal energy of the water. Both are proportional to the water volume. The amount of water in question, around 50 billion gallons, is not small. Unfortunately, I don't think there's a percentage in arguing with someone who doesn't believe in conservation of mass or Le Chatelier's principle.
Link with minor quakes
About magnitude 3.0 to 6.0. M3 quakes are pretty small, but underestimating 4.0 - 6.0 quakes is a dangerous mistake. Prior to 2008, magnitude 3.0 and greater quakes were very rare in Oklahoma, and structures are not earthquake resistant. That's why "minor" ~5.0 quakes are causing tens of millions of dollars in damage.
The USGS and Oklahoma Geological Survey say [huffingtonpost.com] that the quake was natural
In fact, the USGS has concluded that disposal well pumping is responsible for increased seismic activity in Oklahoma (the article you link merely quotes a single geologist who works at the USGS). And, while the OGS does officially state the quake was natural, this position is not supported by even one study result - it's instead an arbitrary, politically mandated claim. The director of the OGS himself has even published research which does support induced seismicity in Oklahoma, and in TFA strongly implied that the OGS' official position is the result of direct political interference.
TFA has nothing to do with fracking. It is about disposal wells. Indeed, TFA states that fracking is linked only to very small earthquakes, unlike disposal wells which have now been conclusively linked to earthquakes of magnitude 3.0 - 6.0. Further, all of the article's scientific statements are quotes from geologists who live and work in Oklahoma, or simply relate to the amount of research which has so far linked seismic activity to disposal wells.
They should take time to learn about the geology of flyover country.
You should take the time to learn something about petroleum extraction in Oklahoma.
One way to make your old car run better is to look up the price of a new model.
