I think you're blending issues here. Your statement assumes that a large portion of people are poor because they cannot effectively manage their money. That's a separate issue based upon (lack of) education and self control. Are these related to being poor? There might be A relationship, but it's not a direct cause and effect.

For those who are poor because of unfortunate life circumstances and who have the proper education and self control are much more likely to live within their (smaller) means may well be able avoid overdraft and late fees by simply not spending more than they have available. For these folks, the bank option would be far better for them.

A new version of soylent green! Would it be Tang flavored?

I absolutely agree with your analysis and I'm proud to be one of those not taken into account.

Now we just need Prof. Farnsworth's smell-o-scope!

"That's not ironic, it's just coincidential." and later: "The use of words expressing something other than their literal intention - now that IS irony!" Courtsey of Bender Bending Rodriguez

So are you saying anything that has any ambiguities or regional variations in the rules (even if just in edge cases) cannot qualify as a game? Or that only games where the concept of "optimal play" is valid can qualify as games? I would disagree strongly with either of those positions.

I have played PLENTY of board games where not-so-uncommon edge cases are not adequately handled. That doesn't stop me from playing, and it doesn't stop me from having fun. Every time I sit down with a new group of people to play, say, Hearts or Euchre, I preemptively ask how we're going to handle certain situations. Different people play slightly different ways, and that's fine with me.

There is also such a thing as games which are played for the enjoyable experience of playing them, and so "optimal play" makes no sense. The children's game "patty-cake" is a pretty clear example, or any number of children's games, especially the ones that children make up on the spot. What about improv games such as on the TV show "Whose Line is it Anyway?" My friends and I sometimes have improv parties, where we exclusively play games like that. Or what about pencil-and-paper RPGs? Optimal play is often not the most enjoyable way to play, if it is even a concept that can be defined for a given game.

Maybe more importantly, I'd like to point out that quarrels, pretense, and politics are central tenets upon which many games are built -- I would argue that those things are likely the most prolific inspirations for games that one could find. Formal game theory is very useful for analyzing politics and quarrels, and has also been used to study the effects of pretense and lying. Aren't chess and Go both likely inspired by war?

The only way I can make sense of your post is if I conclude that when you use the word "game", you mean something very much more specific than the rest of us, containing only a tiny subset of what is generally referred to as a game in common language.

If you can ask that question with a straight face, you've got a backwards understanding of the way our founding fathers envisioned things. The ninth and tenth amendments to the Constitution of the United States:

• "The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people."
• "The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people"

Or in other words, unless the Constitution expressly prohibits something, it is implicitly permitted by the Constitution. (Other laws may of course prohibit things which are not mentioned by the Constitution, but that is immaterial as to what the Constitution does or does not permit.) The Constitution was founded on the idea that all things are permitted unless they are forbidden, most certainly not the other way around.

I do not fault you for misunderstanding, as we've (somehow) managed to swing really far to the other side in actual practice. However, it seems clear to me what was intended originally. My understanding is that the first significant steps toward this reversal occurred after the Civil War, which means that when the Dred Scott decision was handed down, it was still thoroughly understood that the Constitution need not expressly permit something for it to be allowed.

No, I brought it up to call you out for being confrontational in calling the judge stupid, while assuming things yourself which could in fact be entirely untrue. You are assuming that the homeowners did not provide informed consent, and/or that if they did the judge did not bother to determine whether they had provided informed consent. You then formed an opinion about the judge based on that. I am constantly amazed by how often people assume that judges, scientists, etc don't take into account various considerations, and then base their opinions on that assumption (which then becomes a rather circular, self-reinforcing opinion). If you have evidence (say, from the article, or the judge's words) that the judge did not bother to find this out, please point me to them and I will apologize for my mischaracterization of how you went about forming your argument.

To be as generous as possible, your post would have been at least as productive, and definitely less confrontational, had you simply omitted the part about stupidity. You claim it wasn't character assassination, but simply an objective description of how things are. In reality though, it wasn't a fact, it was an opinion; the fact that you can't see it as an opinion illustrates further your confrontational arrogance which led to you calling the judge stupid. And yet when I did the same thing to you (pointed out some things you may not have known and/or may have gotten wrong in an aggressive, confrontational way), suddenly you could very easily see that I was being confrontational rather than productive. I admit that freely, as it was intentional; nothing provokes me to being confrontational like someone who is being confrontational/arrogant/insulting without provocation -- it makes me want to give them a taste of their own medicine. You, on the other hand, can't seem to see that it was a taste of your own medicine. For a final ironic stroke, please allow me to call that a stupid way of being.

You say those things and then have the arrogance to call the judge, as well as a portion of Slashdot, stupid? No, of course not everyone would assume that putting their home up for sale would result in pictures on a website... that's because it's not automatic. If your realtor does that without your express permission, that realtor is asking for a lawsuit of their own. If pictures of their house were on a real estate website, it's not because the owners didn't know about them, it's because they said "heck yeah, let's put some pictures with the online listing!".

Furthermore, in my experience, the pictures are not removed once the house is sold. Why do you assume (and state authoritatively) that they would be? For example, take a look at this listing. There's a picture, and if you scroll down to the red-highlighted stuff at the bottom, you'll see the selling price, as well as the closing date... oh look, the date's in 1998, over 10 years ago! And yet the picture is still on the real estate website!

Well, at least you were right about a portion of Slashdot being stupid... methinks you weren't looking at the right part though...

Probably because it was a clear false dichotomy -- essentially claiming "well if you don't like the idea of some people being born into privilege, then you must be for a 100%, no-deductible Death Tax!" isn't a perfectly good rebuttal. Granted, it's flamebait, not trolling, but it's still not an attempt at reasonable discussion.

A non-flamebait version of that comment could have been:

To be clear, I am not trying to defend the "the US is the best country out there!" belief -- I am just saying that I think it is preferable to the "the US is perfect" belief, and that the two are not the same. You can tell me how things went down, and say "it would have been the same either way", but when your axiom is that they result in the same choices, it's just conjecture and circular logic, and thus doesn't prove anything. Similarly, I could tell you how it might have gone differently if more people had believed the US is perfect, or how it might have gone differently if more people had believed the US is not perfect -- it would be just as much conjecture.

The bottom line is that I don't see how those 2 lines of thought could be 100% functionally equivalent. I have never disputed that they are both arrogant, and I have freely admitted that both will lead to a defensive "don't criticize us" response in the face of external criticism. I have never tried to say they will not yield similar results. But to say the results will always be 100% the same... [tongue-in-cheek-irony]I'm sorry, that's the sort of absolute statement I can never, ever agree with.[/tongue-in-cheek-irony] Might the differences in results be subtle? Sure! To ignore them altogether though is the exact same sort of black-and-white, dogmatic take on the world which, IMHO, is the source of the sorry state of US politics. We need people to be more pragmatic and less dogmatic in politics or else these problems will never go away -- at best we'll do a half-hearted job of cleaning up one mess, only to find another mess has snuck up on us.

Wow. You really, really don't want those two scenarios to be different, do you? You said the resulting arrogance was the same, and I pointed out that it is not.

Of course Abu Ghraib happened in both scenarios, I'm talking about how someone would react to its having happened, so Abu Ghraib happening is axiomatic. I could talk about someone with the belief that everything the US does is wrong, or someone who takes a thoughtful and sincerely objective look at everything, and (when talking about how they would react to hearing about Abu Ghraib) it would still be a given that Abu Ghraib happened.

The difference in actions is how they would react to the situation. Or are you now trying to claim that both of those internal dialogs would lead to the same votes and other actions taken in the future?

The difference is that whether or not anyone else could be expected to do better, one of the beliefs allows for self-improvement. Saying "we're better than the rest" does not imply "we can't realistically improve" or "it is unreasonable to think we could ever do better". On the other hand, saying "we're perfect" doesn't even allow for acknowledging that mistakes can be and have been made.

To illustrate more concretely, believing the US is perfect would lead someone to claim that what occurred at Abu Ghraib was surely justified and necessary. Believing the US is merely better than every other country out there, while still an arrogant stance, would allow someone to feel regret that it happened (even if it is accompanied by a defensive statement that anyone would have done the same or worse in our place). Is the difference clear now? Or are you seriously going to try to tell me that both of those things represent an equivalent level of arrogance?

Incorrect. One belief ("the US is perfect") would lead the believer never to question anything the US ever does, and to assume that anything the US does much by definition be the best or most correct option. The other belief ("the US is better than other countries") would not lead to those conclusions. Although ruthless arrogance may result in both cases, saying "exactly the same consequences" isn't even close to accurate. For you to say otherwise indicates that you are hearing what you want to hear, rather than hearing what is being said.