The US in general might have a lot of space, but most counties don't have the money to truck their crap from the coast to the middle of Iowa. As a result, a lot of landfills are indeed filled up, and landfill space is a significant issue. Just ask densely populated areas like the San Francisco bay or Miami what they do with their inert landfill - it's expensive, and they're constantly looking to reduce what gets put into landfills. Not because it's green, but because it's getting to be very expensive.

Congratulations, you don't have to feed yourself from the land you live on. Not everyone is that lucky. It's also butt ugly to have styrofoam get into everything, and just stay there.

Yes, that was one of the original reasons. Now it's bad because it finds its way into the ocean, where it is ingested by all kinds of fish, birds and other critters and killing them off, because it just fills up their stomach. And considering how much we rely on a healthy ocean to feed a good chunk of the world's population, that's almost worse than the CFC issue. The fact that it is inert is a huge issue any place you try to have a healthy ecosystem, whether it is for farming, breeding or just generally we-like-nature purposes.

Citation needed. Air is actually a better insulator, and the reason why it's cheaper to have a little double-walled cardboard ring in cups.

Every time I hear someone complain about how dumb green or environmentally conscious people are, I find someone who has even less of a clue, has a huge axe to grind and is an asshole about it.

Damn. Out of mod points. Someone help!

Right. So there has never been any progress in math, nor is there any talent. Or in any other field that pays less than lawyers, politicians and CEOs. Oh, wait, that's wrong. Not to mention that the field of law, politics and business really hasn't progressed beyond what Machiavelli outlined a couple of hundred years ago.

In other words, data points to the fact that remuneration is inversely proportional to success.

No, the point is that anyone who has ever touched the insides of a computer knows that everything is a collection of ones and zero that are manipulated by mathematical functions. As a matter of fact, the definition of a computer is the repetitive manipulation of numbers via math. As a result, anyone who argues that something running on a computer is not broken down into math has the burden of proof.

Foed just because you're quoting Ayn Rand.

You misunderstood. I'm not arguing that there have been perfect governments. I'm arguing that when it came to contesting for resources, larger, more efficient organizations always won out. Furthermore, by standard measures of prosperity, larger, more efficient organizations always come out on top. The only exceptions are smaller organizations that can piggy-back on the services of larger, nearby organizations.

Furthermore, what's decried as tyranny is pretty damn far from what people normally have in mind when they complain about tyranny. In the US, people argue that a tax rate of 35% on the top income is tyranny, which is ridiculous. Talk to me when you get killed for criticizing the government.

Considering how wrong you are about this, I'm not sure how much credence to give to the rest of your post. Fun fact: what was the top marginal tax rate from the thirties through the sixties?

Wow. You always, always amaze me with your ability to change topics, redefine commonly used words and ignore statistics to cherry-pick data. But what takes the cake is that instead of actually following up with your ideals, you move from a somewhat socialist country (Canada) to an even more socialist country (Germany). Next, I expect you to end up in Sweden or France. It's almost as if those countries offer better opportunities than the countries that fit your small-government ideals. Nah, that couldn't be.

By the way, thanks for actually providing the relevant text. As expected, the concept that you ascribe to your quote is a descriptive detail to the overall theme of the paragraph: that the idea of federal state is being made irrelevant by easier travel, and that the concept of the cultural nation is taking over. As a result, for Nationalsocialism to compete on the field of cultural ideas, it also has to ignore the federal states. Which is quite different from what you said it does, and, coincidentally, is very similar to what you're arguing for: that the idea of laissez-faire capitalism and personal freedom has to transcend the boundaries of federal states in order for it to win in the battle with the other social ideas. Even funnier is that the carrot at the core of Nationalsocialism is more individual freedom. Ironic, to say the least.

Even ignoring for a second the fact that local government is how government even got started, your own life is giving lie to your propaganda. If even someone like you is actually moving to more socialist, more big-government countries, your ideas are losing followers, not gaining them.

The point that you're missing is that every time there was any resource contention, any conflict whatsoever, the larger, more organized group of people won out. Every. Single. Time. For fun times, check out what happened to the Indians in the US. And ultimately, that is why people band together: for safety. You might have your ideals living out by yourself in the boonies, but they don't serve you much when you're dead because a few people thought they could use your resources and didn't take no for an answer.

What's a town? If I live in the Los Angeles area, I have about as much influence on local politics as if I'd live somewhere in North Dakota. I will know the mayor about as well as the Senator from California, and they will care approximately as much about me. If it's a town of 10000 somewhere out in the middle of Iowa, my vote might carry a higher percentage weight, but what about the guy who owns the local grain processor, and whose net worth is about 1 million times mine? If I and 9000 other people in the town decide on something, and the guy with the grain processor says no, what exactly do you think will happen? Certainly not what I want.
The point (and which you're missing again) is that there's always a power center. If government is weak - whether it is by design, or because it is too local - it is overtaken by private power, which in turn is defined by resource control. And those private people will rule just as much as any government entity would. The difference now is that their power cannot be checked by elections or any voting system.

I know that's your definition. That's the only way that your argument holds the any problem. The problem with that ridiculous assertion is that the only people who think that way are those whose basic needs are fulfilled, aren't threatened by government overreach or warlord terror, and can spend time dreaming about how much life better could be it weren't for other people.

Holy crap. I had no idea that you could so completely misread Stalin. He specifically used that to point out that people are terrible at statistics, and care only about personal stories. On the other hand, it nicely illustrates your problem: the only result you care about is how a system affects you. That's it. If something has the slightest negative effect on you, it is terrible, regardless of how much it helps others. As a matter of fact, not only do you only care about how a system affects you, you are incapable of devising a system that does anything but help you specifically.

Considering how badly you mangled the Stalin quote, I'm waiting for the entire paragraph in Mein Kampf where you got that quote from. In German.

Your problem is two-fold: you think that at the core, liberty is a stronger need for humans than safety, and you think that power structures are not part of human nature. What you call the evil central government is nothing but the formalization of what used to be ad-hoc power structures. You're arguing that individuals can't compare to the killings of today's central governments - what you're missing is that until the emergence of nationalism and the nation-state, individuals WERE the central government. In other words, the vast majority of genocides, wars and misdeeds going on in the world until about 1800 were done at the command of individuals sitting atop a pyramid whose order was enforced through violence.

In other words, you're committing the oldest social science fallacy: that of the noble savage. At least you're in good company with the communists there.

You might even argue that such a government is by definition tyrannical, since it generally will only work for the benefit of its friends, and exploit everyone else. However, there are differences between, for example, some people in the tax collecting agency specifically targeting organizations that use words associated with tax revolts, and the head of the government publicly praising the incarceration of opposition members or authorizing the use of troops to force the nationalization of businesses. While both are capricious enforcement of rules that end up benefiting the ruling party, the damage caused is very, very different. As a result, the solutions need to be very different, as well.

Always keep in mind: The best is the enemy of the good.

There is one simple fact that contradicts your argument: there hasn't been a single group of people operating without a central government (you still haven't defined where central government stops and local government starts, by the way) that has made a mark on history. The closest to them might have been the barbary coast pirates, and they were ultimately wiped out by the armed forces of a centralized government. In other words, when groups competed for resources, the ones with a larger or more effective central governments always won out. Always. Furthermore, the largest and most successful nations/organizations in history were marked by highly effective, pervasive and very large central governments.

Now, you can redefine crime and prosperity, but the more successful a nation or organization, the larger its government, and the better the average prosperity and crime rates.

Just for fun, show me nation-wide numbers.

Criminal negligence is... wait for it... a concept that requires a government and regulation that is outside of contract law. Furthermore, ENFORCEMENT of criminal negligence requires an independent government, bureaucrats to track the paperwork, jack-booted thugs to apprehend suspects and judges unbeholden to the public to make decisions of law.

Considering you cry about the abuses of government in the most unimportant, small-scale and even incorrect situations (and spare me the slippery slope argument - if government was that efficient and monolithic, we wouldn't be having this argument), you seem to really be incapable of doing any cost/benefit analysis when it comes rules governing people's interactions.

Roman's comment is a classic example of a black-and-white world. In his mind, it isn't possible to have a government do anything without it automatically becoming tyrannical. Furthermore, the slightest overreach by any apparatchik is immediately an indictment of the incompetence of all government, followed by cries to dismantle government in general. Because of the extremely low threshold that people like roman have for any sort of government activity at all, there is no way to have any sort of government regulation at all. What's more though, their threshold for what is appropriate for government allows absolutely no discussion - to paraphrase someone else, you're either with them, or against them. That's the worst aspect of their "solutions": there is no possibility for debate about it.

Furthermore, you're falling into the same logic trap that roman does: there are only two states, and if one advocates against one, one is forcibly for the other extreme. What I'm arguing is that their worldview has been tested, and it is utterly failing - and has always failed in the past as well.

Yep. I mean, a thousand dead or so is a fair price to pay so that businesses can thrive. Not to mention that it's better being a dead factory worker than some scared little suburbanite living in the US with two cars and a 5 bedroom house.

Totally. Especially if you're one of the rich business owners who can afford to not work in their own factory and hire a private army to guard your assets.

For those who are sarcasm impaired - yes, that was sarcasm. I normally write people like roman off as just crazy, but they seem to be proliferating like cockroaches.

So now every civilian is judge, jury and executioner? Yeah, still not convinced.

Soooo.... why do we have any laws at all? I mean, criminals by definition don't follow laws, so bother with any? Oh, right, that's because that line of argument is clueless of the ACTUAL purpose of laws: to publicly indicate the rules which a community has decided to abide by and the punishments for violating them.

What worries me the most about the current political discourse in the US is that so often, at least one side is utterly ignorant of the actual facts being discussed. Not only that, but they just make shit up in the face of ignorance, and paper over their ignorance by shouting.

Yeah. I'm sure this will go somewhere REALLY interesting.