By the sound of you and GP maybe we should just clone all of Australia and give up.

Isn't "cultural conditioning," just another way of saying "how to raise your kids?" So what are the types of conditioning that are personally acceptable to you?

At this point, on this planet, just about everything that can be owned already *is* owned. So the exchange of property (i.e., matter) for money (i.e., time) and vice-versa works within that system according to the rules that emerge from natural rights.

If by "natural resources," you mean stuff that somebody already owns (e.g., land, minerals they've mined, etc.), and that ownership is legally recognized by some contemporary government, but you have some sort of cosmic-fairness-based argument why they *shouldn't* own it, objections about how they historically came to own it, or ideas about how we ought to provide some sort of reparations for the wrongs that came along with that initial establishment of ownership, then please just stop here - I don't care to have that argument. We had our "Wild West" days of expansion and acquisition, and I wouldn't disagree that many people were wronged in that time. But the sad fact is that, no matter how you personally feel about it, those things *are* owned, and in just about every nation there's a framework that both supports the legitimacy of the current owners. That argument is focused on the redistribution of current ownership based on past grievances, not a real critique of property rights.

However, I agree that there's a problem if by "natural resources" you mean "stuff that nobody owns yet." That's an interesting issue - given, at this point that would almost have to be something extra-planetary. The right to property can't exist unless there's a government that can effectively prevent others from depriving you of property by force or fraud. While we're done with the Wild West days on this planet, there's a whole universe out there that isn't under lock and key by any planetary government.

So the question is, can we somehow devise a system under which the next phase of expansion and acquisition is done in a more orderly and just fashion than the last one?

I think that natural rights impose an obligation on others to not unduly take from you one thing or another. I also think that natural rights can't be anything that obliges someone else to provide something for you. The distinction might be narrow, but it's important.

For example, the right to life imposes an obligation on others not to deprive you of that - in other words, not to kill you. But even though there are things that you need in order to remain alive (e.g., food, shelter), those are not natural rights because that would require an obligation on someone else to provide you with food and shelter.

The right to liberty imposes an obligation on others not to forcefully or fraudulently cause you to do something against your own rational judgment. However, it does not provide things like freedom from the consequences of your volitional actions.

When you consider natural rights in this way, the right to property kind of makes sense - it obliges people to not unduly deprive you of property, but it makes no obligations on others to provide you that property in the first place.

The place of government is to provide a framework that protects our natural rights with minimal imposition on those same rights - we pay taxes in order to have police and courts and such, in order to protect us from being forcefully or fraudulently being deprived of life, liberty or property. But taxes are, of course, a violation of the right to liberty because money is just a means of exchanging your work, or really your time and efforts, for someone else's time and efforts. When you're forced to provide money for a thing, it's really that you're being forced to give up your time and effort for that thing.

It's not perfect, but the point behind the concept of natural rights is to maximize the liberty of all, with the knowledge that in order to provide that liberty, you've necessarily got to impose on the very rights you intend to preserve. That's why it's extremely important to have a very minimal set of "natural" rights - every thing you declare as a "natural" right is only provided by government at the expense of another.

Just out of curiosity, what do you consider to be 'natural' rights? And could you explain how is the right to property not one of them, since you clearly think it isn't? And what constitutions/rules of governance throughout the world *don't* provide protection for property rights? The US, Canada, the EU, the UK, Australia, and most South American and Asian nations do. I'm hard-pressed to find one that doesn't.

That's mostly why I'm surprised at your comment - your opinion seems to be in the *vast* minority, and historically, nations that have lacked protection for property rights have generally been third-world nations run by dictators, or else proven to be abject failures and collapsed under their failed economies (i.e., the USSR).

Was your comment just sophomoric romanticizing of collectivism? Or have you actually thought this through?

I agree that more informed choice among browsers among consumer users is a good thing. But that wasn't my point - My observation was that these companies are jockeying for *position* in a list, which implies that they recognize that, for some significant portion of users, it'll end up being essentially a random choice.

I figure people will fall into three categories: 1) Tech-savvy users who know exactly which browser they want - My guess that this will come out probably favoring Mozilla, 2) Casual users who haven't really thought about browser choice will probably be slightly confused by this screen, but don't want to make a totally random choice - My guess is that most will recognize 'Microsoft' and pick that by association, and 3) People who will just click 'Next' and take whatever's selected by default (essentially a random selection).

Point is that all this scheme does is to chip away at Microsoft's market share via group #3 - the totally clueless people who really, really don't care what browser they use (or maybe even know what a browser is). These are the people that'll end up complaining to their friends (and Microsoft) that their Interwebs are different and weird because they randomly selected, say, Opera on the ballot screen.

Anyways, I'm really really interested in seeing how the selection rates come out.

*That* however, is very green.

The only possible reason that you would care about your position on a serial list of choices is if you knew that the majority of people making said choice really don't care about what they're choosing, and their choice would end up being random (i.e., primacy effect, serial position effect, google it).

But the premise of this whole debacle is that people are not given a choice of browser when they install an OS, and that is the reason that IE has such a large market share (since it's installed by default).

So basically, these other browser makers are fighting over how to get their browser randomly selected the most among people who don't care what browser they use. So that they can claim that their browser is used more. How does that make any sense?

What do you find so reprehensible about SUVs? Is it the gas consumption? The size of the vehicle? SUVs are pretty much the same in size, shape, and gas consumption as minivans and pickup trucks. Some smaller SUVs get gas mileage that's comparable with sedans.

So what, exactly, are you upset about re: SUVs?

You hope that people die in order to increase the sales of battery-powered cars? Wow.

Mod parent "Asshole, plus I hope you die in a car wreck."

This is reason enough for me to quit. I hate the idea that I might stink.

Really? Huh. I will start washing my clothes more often. No joke, I was not aware of this...

I hear you can do that in Silverlight.

Good idea to go along with your idea: Remove the arbitrary limit on the number of total representatives in the House. Instead, tie it to population (e.g., 1 rep per 50,000 citizens, or something like that). Reps will actually represent their much smaller constituencies, and the ability of "money" to influence voting will be greatly diminished.

Completely agree. But unfortunately, the very people we elect to these positions are the only ones with the power to change their compensation.