That's a shame because I liked your comments about principles and cowardice. Appreciating the point I was making would be consistent of you.

Methinks you forgot to check the Post As AC box.

You, sir, make me regret having already posted in this discussion.

Someone, please mod this up. I get tired of the consequentialist mentality myself.

Because they've been sold this crazy idea that by destroying the middle class, you will somehow elevate the poor. The problem is, the middle class is the backbone of the economy. Without a functioning economy, people get desperate and rule of law is the first thing you lose. Hypothetically speaking, you just might find out that the "1%" you thought you were sticking it to are the ones with supplies, guns, guards, and contingency plans.

If you really want to stick it to the 1%, stop believing the horse-shit lies and understand that no one with power is ever to be trusted, and that anyone who can afford to launch a multi-million dollar media campaign is doing it because they know what you want to hear and they benefit by having you believe it.

I know everyone wants to believe that their favorite guy is the sole exception and it's all the others who are corrupt liars. That's called divide-and-conquer.

It wasn't exactly a civil war. A civil war is when two or more factions are fighting to control the same government.

The Confederacy was a separate nation. The American "Civil War" was a fight between two sovereign nations. It wasn't actually a civil war. But it did have all the horror of a civil war, especially family members fighting and killing other family members.

Afghanistan is the perfect choice for an indefinite perpetual war. Look at the history. No one, and I mean no one, has ever been able to conquer those people. The Afghans simply will not surrender and it's impossible to annihilate them short of nuclear weapons. The Soviets couldn't do it and the USA couldn't do it. They have lots of experience at wearing down superior opponents.

It's the perfect choice for a controlled war that doesn't touch your own home soil and lasts as long as you need to pass whatever legislation you want. After all, "Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia".

Sun Tzu's Art of War, Chapter VII, # 36:

When you surround an army, leave an outlet free. Do not press a desperate foe too hard.

Some translations I have read word the second sentence like "desperate men will fight very hard".

I believe our leaders (the ones you see on TV who run for office, and the powers behind the throne that actually get those into office) understand these things. They're despicable, sociopathic, without morals or ethics or qualms, and completely dehumanized, but they are not stupid. If you really want to understand "why they hate us", you can start here. A little research will reveal that we've done things like this all over the world, particularly in South America and the Middle East.

That leaders who certainly know the same thing can stand there before the nation and say things like "they hate us for our freedoms" with a straight face is a level of cold-blooded that most people could never imagine.

Indeed, exile used to be a relatively common punishment for misfits and others who pissed off the state.

If you think the medical support is expensive, take a look at what it costs to run police, courtrooms, and prisons.

Which by the way, how has drug prohibition stopped those people from obtaining and using drugs? Oh yeah, it didn't. So we'd have the same situation we have today, except without the astronomical costs of futilely trying to stop it. We would come out ahead. This is simple.

Most people simply don't want to practice polygamy. If they do, that's not my business and it's not my job to stop them.

Both myself and my significant other want a one-on-one, monogamous relationship. Let's say a home down the street has a polygamist family. Polygamy is the only usual thing they do; everything else is quite normal. All members of that home understand what polygamy is and have entered into the arrangement willingly. In what way are they harming you or me? On what grounds would you use the police power of government (force, guns, threats of force) to stop them?

There is no answer to that question that makes sense. There are lots of "I want to force, at the point of a government gun, other people to live the way I live" type of reasons. Those make no sense; they're just an egotistical fantasy.

You failed to explain why you consider this problematic. It works better than nit-picking semantics. I read your link and it sounds like everyone involved consented. So long as no one was ever forced to participate, I don't see the problem here. If you think what they did was fucked up (and I agree, it is) then all you have to do is not knock on their door and ask to participate. Isn't that simple? They got to choose and you get to choose, which is something actual victims don't get to do. I realize the state loves an excuse to use force, but there is no actual crime here.

So then: what activity among consenting adults do you believe would damage society and in what way would that damage occur? Note, the moment third parties are affected you fail the "consenting adults" criteria. (I.e. Drinking? Fine. Driving drunk? No, because now you are endangering others who did not consent to be endangered. That is a crime and deserves to be treated as such.)

The real solution to that is ending the War on Drugs and finally recognizing that anything consenting adults want to do is NOT a crime. Nice joke, though.

That's exactly what DRM is designed to do. By putting up with it, you are subsidising your own restrictions.

Anything else amounts to expecting the gaming corporations to act against their own profit motives. If they can tempt you into accepting unreasonable restrictions with the latest shiny, they will. If they can either kill off or control the used games markets, they will. These things make them more money. It's just that simple.

Anyone who purchases DRM'ed titles and complains about this needs to take a long look into the mirror. Expecting goodwill from these corporations is madness. They view you in much the same way that coal companies view the mines. You're a resource to be tapped. What's right and wrong to these sociopaths is whatever you'll bend over and take. I mean, this should be easy: we are talking about gaming systems here, not food and water. The slightest discipline means you prevail and *they* bend over and take it because their alternative is going out of business.

The situation is downright pitiful. I think the executives see it this way as well, which is why they feel completely justified in their exploitation. They feel completely justified taking advantage because it's what so many people want (or don't care about) and are willing to pay for.

Neither will I.

If there are advertisements, then the hardware and games should be free. If the user is paying for the hardware and games, there should be no advertisements.

I have this distant hope that gamers will learn the lesson taught to us by cable TV. Originally cable TV was ad-free on the basis that you were paying a fee for it. Then ads were introduced and for some reason, viewers tolerated it. They grabbed their ankles and took it just like they typically do, so cable TV ads became firmly entrenched.

Gamers, the same thing will happen to you if you put up with this. There can be no doubt about it.

That's the way it's supposed to be, yes. Unfortunately our politicians long ago discovered that divide-and-conquer can easily be implemented by pitting various groups against each other while promising to protect each from the others. This is why the USA has a collective unhealthy obsession with group identity. It's always black vs. white, rich vs. poor, Muslim vs. Christian, homosexual vs. heterosexual, etc. etc. Individuality is given only lip service by comparison.

This malignant design has been sadly successful. It has one primary goal and one secondary goal. The secondary goal is to herd voters into blocs that can be reliabily depended upon to maintain the ridiculously high incumbency rate. The primary goal is to conceal the one true division: the ruling class vs. everyone else.

We manage to have that problem despite our genetic diversity because we have so precious little diversity of philosophy and viewpoint. The decline of federalism and the establishment of a very powerful central government sealed the deal. Now we have lots of people who look different but think in the same way. Cosmetically that's great. In every other way it's more of the same old status quo.

You'll find that average Americans tend to be much more provincial than, say, the average European. Mainstream Americans usually speak only one language and don't visit foreign countries nearly as often as mainstream Europeans.

You know what REALLY discourages people from getting involved? The inability of most people to hire lots of lawyers and lobbyists which, when the media so grossly fails to do its job, is the only way things actually get done in Washington.

This simply cannot be rated highly enough.

Your perspective is that of an adult who is able to deal with reality. Those complaining that it's somehow "not nice" to expect real answers from people who are our servants and routinely act against our interests have some serious growing up to do. If everything the NSA did were acceptable and beneficial, these wouldn't be "uncomfortable" questions. It just can't be that hard to understand.

We're being transformed into a nation of pussies who can't deal with reality unless it's brought down to a child's emotional level, dumbed down to about a 5th-grade reading level (not a joke - the media targets this), condensed into 10-second sound bites to suit the prevailing attention span, spoon-fed, and guaranteed never to offend the most irrational and overreactive among us.

You can blame Wall Street, megacorps, sociopaths in government, and the like, but those are opportunists who saw a weakness and ruthlessly exploited it. The truth is, the nation is losing its prosperity because it is no longer worthy of it. For all the people who like to put on a big show this time of year concerning how fashionably patriotic they are, so few are actually looking for the root of our problems.