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Comment Re:Sounds completely reasonable (Score 1) 302

Who DOESN'T want minimal government? Even communists and fascists think the policies they support are necessary, and mainstream Republicrats think their policies prevent market failures. I have never met anyone who identified as an "excessarchist", only folks who believe everyone else is being excessive.

Specifically, I am referring to a return to federalism, with the vast majority of citizens' government coming from the state and local levels. You know, the way this system was intended to work.

Comment Re:Is that proven? (Score 1) 442

Kernel devs have in the past and will in the future (at least as long as Torvalds is in charge, and i fear the day he retires) keep sub-systems and such in the code if they know there are users of it out there.

Damn it, even though everyone says that you should use the ip command for anything network related, ifconfig still works. This because the interfaces between the program and the kernel is still there, after having been labeled "depreciated" for a decade or more.

A basic operating rule for Linux kernel developers is "do not break user space!".

Comment Re: Not forced... (Score 1) 302

These people randomly speed up and slow down because of changing slope of the road. No one is really paying attention to their speed, and they don't realize that you have to push the pedal a little harder uphill and less downhill to maintain speed.

Most of the time that's correct, but I see it with surprising frequency on level terrain. I think most of them are simply not paying full attention to the road; perhaps they're fiddling with a cell phone.

It's the same reason people sometimes fail to notice that the light has turned green. I mean, why should they pay attention, it's not like they're *driving* or anything...

Comment Re: Not forced... (Score 1) 302

At least in my mind, there's a huge difference between "this person has an infection, or cancer, or heart disease" versus "this person was hurt because a drunk driver ran straight through a stop sign and crashed into them". Does your law make such a distinction?

There is, but we don't consider it when deciding whether to provide medical treatment or not. We punish illegal activity in court not in hospital.

Apparently this is confusing some of you. So I'll explain how it works in the USA.

Hypothetically, let's say you cause a car accident, as in this imaginary accident is 100% your fault. As a result of this accident, another person is injured and requires medical care. Your own car insurance policy has a line item called Bodily Injury Coverage. That coverage would pay for the injured person's medical expenses.

The injured person would not file a claim with their health insurance company (assuming they have one) because you, as the person who caused the accident, are held responsible for any expenses you caused to the injured person.

I was simply asking if car insurance works that way overseas. Instead of a private insurance company that you may or may not have, you have NHS. While the NHS is provided as a public service, the care they provide does have a cost. I wanted to know if NHS bears that cost even when there is an at-fault party who caused the problem, or whether in those specific cases, the at-fault party (via their car insurance liability policy) was expected to cover it.

Comment Re: Not forced... (Score 1) 302

At least in my mind, there's a huge difference between "this person has an infection, or cancer, or heart disease" versus "this person was hurt because a drunk driver ran straight through a stop sign and crashed into them". Does your law make such a distinction?

What coverage differences do you want? Are you suggesting the person hit by a drunk driver should not be covered by insurance in the off-chance they can successfully sue the drunk driver to cover the bill?

You could ask me that, yes. Or you could put just a slight bit of thought into it and consider that there is a more reasonable alternative, which is that the drunk driver's insurance would cover this as part of liability coverage. Perhaps NHS could kick in if that's unavailable?

There's loads of ways this could be done, and since I am not knowledgable about the nuances of laws governing nations across the Atlantic, I ask questions instead of making assumptions. That's all.

Comment Re:Sounds completely reasonable (Score 2) 302

I don't like replying to my own post, but I thought of something that was worth adding. What is happening now to the word "libertarian" is just like what happened to the word "hacker".

If you say "that guy's a hacker" the average person will imagine something nefarious, probably criminal, perhaps something involving identity theft. They aren't likely to picture a hobbyist and technology enthusiast who, by means of skill, manages to get devices (that they legitimately own) to perform creative and useful functions (which harm no one) that were never envisioned by their original makers.

The difference is, "hackers" have gotten so much negative attention in the mass media that the original term is gone and it isn't coming back. The only rational response is to accept this and move on. I don't believe "libertarian" is at that point yet, though it's heading there fast. Is reclaiming a word so important to me? In and of itself, no, not really. What's important to me is for people like you to wake up and realize how easy it is to manipulate you, to prevent you from ever entertaining entire categories of thought and philosophy and thereby to steer your thinking, merely by toying with words. I think that deserves some importance.

Comment Re:Sounds completely reasonable (Score 4, Interesting) 302

There aren't any taxi token requirements or anything unreasonable. Can't wait to see what the usual Uber shills have to say about why they can't abide by a couple basic rules.

I've no doubt a few libertarians will chime in how it's intolerable government interference to require car insurance.

I'm a little-'l' libertarian and I think simple, reasonable, easily-understood regulations like this are not only perfectly acceptable, but highly desirable. As a libertarian I want minimal government. A government that does not provide reasonable regulations is less than minimal and therefore a failure. Minimal is "greater than nothing", you see, and something greater than nothing but still less than minimal is ... still a failure. I can't break it down any more simply than that.

I've never actually met or corresponded with an anarcho-capitalist who called themselves a "libertarian" (which is what you and so many others are ignorantly assuming to be representative of libertarian thought), though I have corresponded with multiple anarcho-capitalists who called themselves "anarchists" or "anarcho-capitalists". Their ideas were interesting to be sure, but just like communism, seemed designed for a species other than our own. That's why I don't count myself among them.

The problem here is that your standard "progressive" and "conservative" political schools of thought have millions of members and powerful parties backing them. That means they have great PR. Both would be quite threatened if reasonable libertarian thought really caught on. It's not exactly shocking that reasonable libertarian thought is seldom portrayed, except by individuals like me. Of course it will be distorted, misrepresented, and shown in only its most extreme and unworkable forms, until the average person finds it distasteful like an automatic reflex. Like I said, it's called PR, and it's quite common in politics. It only works because it depends on your ignorance.

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