Taylor

To me, McCain isn't worth passing up the opportunity to elect the first black president.

He's sooo old.

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Taylor Wesley Stafford

Mireillu

If you find a minute, browse the internet to know what those books talk about. They all are "anticipation" books (it's supposedly translated as "science-fiction", but it's a particular style of sci-fi, in which the story takes place in our world in a possible (near) future, usually dystopic, instead of an imaginary/far-in-the-future world, like in the Hitchiker's Guide)

1984 was primarily a critic of the stalinist regime, but nowadays, all "modern" countries use most of the ideas in there (telesurveillance, manipulations of information, repeating things to the public until they become true, hiding and changing official history, using a scapegoat to channel people hates (staline had trotsky, bush has bin'laden), simplifying the language (the "newspeak" in the book, deletes words every year, in our world it's the development of "street talk", cellphone messaging, as well as the slow but steady disapearing of reading and litterature) to make people's thoughts narrower and more simple, ultimately to forbid certain thoughts, like an urge for freedom, or rebeling thoughts, to them (if something can't be said, it can't be thought)... etc...)
Anyway, very good read. Sure as hell it's not funny, but what actually is is to see things that are absolutely outrageous, and written to appear as such in those books, and yet the same things, or even worse, are considered normal in our today's world.

About offshoring... well as you seem to agree, the pay offered to those people is ridiculously small, and only allows them to survive. Which they do by buying food to sellers down there. Sellers who, then, along with a only a very few other people among the mass, like factory managers, make enough money to buy the same stuff as us... which consists in TVs, computers, clothes, which some of them are american -or french for that matter- brands for instance... and yeah, that includes the occasional pair of nike shoes that many young chinese and thai folks belonging to the 10% wealthiest love to buy...
So no, that's not bringing money in their economy... that's only using very very very cheap disposable workers (can you say "slaves"?) for OUR economy. Almost free in terms of price, and totally free in terms of laws. Laws in there are solely to the discretion of factory owners/managers. Kill them, beat them, rape them, make their kids work 12 hours shifts at 14yo. Nobody will prevent you from it, specially since your factory security services are the local army and police, with the help of the local government, to make sure NO strike/revolt is possible. And let me repeat, Peter, those are not "sob stories", those are the usual, normal and accepted things down there.

About store chains... there is so much to say about those crooks. Crooking their customers, and crooking their suppliers too. That and the fact they sell us "poisoned" industrial food, with the complicity of the agronomics sector primarily, and the retirement insurances sector secondarily. Force them to eat processed food thanks to advertisement, cost of "real" food, and lack of time to cook due to working all day -and watching TV all their "free" time-. Make them fat and heart-ill (the first exemple that comes to my mind is the use of "trans" fats in processed food, extremely favorable to the production of bad cholesterol, cloging your arteries), and hopefully you won't have to pay for their retirement since they'll be dead by 50 or 60. Have you seen the movie "SuperSize Me" ? The numbers he talks about are frightening. And after checking, they are absolutely true.
(EDIT : and here is another fact that's quite eloquent to me : our average life expectancy in northern/industrialized countries has DROPPED these last years. That is supposed to *never* happen. And that's a curious coincidence it happens when so many "technological advances" like cell phones, monsanto's GMCs, or new food-processing components, have been tested about their effects on the human body, very thoroughly, years ago... and results still have NOT been disclosed to public...)

As always, it all relies on abusing the consumer, which has to be the most receptive and braindead as possible. And that's what TV and advertisement do. You say it's the responsibility of parents to regulate that ? How ? Should i repeat how many ads an average kid sees every minute in our countries ? How do you compete with that ?
I see 12 years olds with freakin cell phones ffs... obviously the parents are total failures... but wait... actually many of them are. Actually... and that's what is sad... MOST of them are.
So maybe we should stop saying it's their individual fault, and start thinking about WHY so many of them are so more and more dumb, more braindead, more sheeplike moronic consumers overtime.
I think TV and advertisement in general, along with the subtle lightening of public schools teaching courses over decades, did that.
You seem to agree about TV being a streaming pile of sh*t (pun intended, i hope it works, haha !), but let me tell you, again, MOST people don't think like you about this subject. Most of them do not think at all about the subject. They just turn it on and relax after their long working day.

PS : although, South Park airs on TV, so TV can't be *totally* bad, since SP is one of the very best TV shows i've ever seen. But i'm pretty sure most people watch it without paralleling it to the real world, tho.
Showing intelligent and funny shows about serious subjects is not enough. Gotta teach people how to watch it and think again, first. Gotta teach them to read between the lines, too.

edit : you're right about advertisement in france, it's nowhere better than in USA. The problem is in all industrialized countries i think.
About the role of violence vs the role of sex, i think i prefer the second one tho, and i'd say that it's related to that everlasting "gun-culture" you have in USA. But no, i don't want to enter a gun legality argument with an American, never again. I've had bad ones already. And yes, using violence OR sex is using basic human primal instincts, and it's one of the many, many tricks of the advertisers. You'd be surprised to see how many other tricks and ploys they have at their disposal, too. Most of them based on primal instincts. Most of them requiring a "brainwashed" target, living on instinct and beliefs instead of reasoning, to be fully effective. Same goes for politicians tricks. No wonder advertisers and politicians are so friendly to eachother. They have the same job.

edit 2 : i didn't intend to beat you on the post lenght :-)
Oh and btw, i dunno if you were trying to exagerate, or if you finally ditched the bad faith, but i would actually do pretty much everything you said i would about this or that specific problem.

BlanK

Yes money is brought in, but it's insignificant really. They're still getting paid more or less just enough to survive. They're getting paid like the poor did during the Industrial Revolution (read epitome of Capitalism). And no, there's no way any working class person in the Industrial Revolution could've became rich, the whole family was already working 12+ hour days, usually 18 for adults I believe, and getting paid just enough to survive. You can't work 18+ hour days every day except Sunday for long before your body breaks down. Sleeping for 5 hours a night (gotta eat and what not) on a comfy bed isn't enough, so sleeping on maybe hay, possibly dirt, wouldn't do you any better.

Trust me, America tries to put it's laws where they don't belong (like the Internet, or Sweden, or the Middle East to name a few) all the time. They just won't interfere with companies because they don't wanna get into a fight with companies about how much they're paying their employees. No war would arise between the US and China if American companies had to pay their employees in China more, because all it would do is put more money into China, and China wouldn't be paying those employees anyway, American companies would be.

America sees it's fair share of dollar signs too, most of those companies I was talking about in the previous paragraph give some money off to American politicians to keep their companies wheels turning without having to change to the current time period (read Intellectual Property Industries, Oil industries, etc.).

I hope one day corporations let communication become faster, but chances are, the ones that control communication and the like will try to keep it for their own power.

Actually no I've only ever seen one or two episodes. The WoW one and the stem cell one. I don't really have a huge problem with chain stores for some things (school supplies and such), but a lot of things are better left to "mom and pop" stores (food + chain stores = bad). There is a point though when once you hit so many chains, progress slows down. Monopolies are bad for competition/progress, and eventually bad for businesses in the long run (can't adapt anymore, look at what happened to the auto industry when Japanese cars hit America). If every company was limited to say 10 stores under a name, there would then be a lot more competition and then everything progresses a lot faster to try to make more profit. And with thus more profit. The problem is that this profit requires more work, thus being the lazy post-industrials we are, see it best to keep competition down, so everyone has to go with exorbitant prices for a shoddy product (like Windows Vista [no offense to those who like it]). There's an argument for limited chains without a real moral standpoint (unless you think that being lazy is moral choice), feel free to debate.

Parents aren't always around to make sure their kids don't watch things they shouldn't, and when it comes to ads there's no way to stop it, everything is riddled with some kind of subliminal advertising, look at I, Robot, it had advertising for Converse in it, blatantly too. When I was growing up my parents didn't have the time to keep an eye on what I watched and my grandmother wasn't much help with that either. Her attempts to get us to watch PBS were thwarted unless she was in the room, otherwise it was back to Jerry Springer or some other **** TV like that.

Brainwashing is different from influences. A debate will influence you, a TV ad with catchy music being shown 4x an hour is brainwashing. In NY, the station Z100 plays new "hit" songs as many times as possible, and the more you hear it the more you like it because it gets lodged in your head. That's brainwashing. If a debate was brainwashing then I might be rooting for McCain right now.

I dunno about you, but if I had to listen to a kid screaming for an hour about wanting a Happy Meal I'd probably ****ing buy it one just to get it to shut up about it. There's only so much torment a mind can take. But if said kid was grown up to listen to ads that brainwash, then chances are the adult will be brainwashed by said ads.

There's a difference between saying "you shouldn't be making 10k times more than this person" and "we're limiting your income". No one needs to make billions or more a year, unless you're trying to put the world through college. Regardless, ads are annoying to begin with, so yes they should be limited. You can advertise your product good and fine, but making processed foods that are worse for you seem better than real food or making your ad go up so many times that every other ad is forgotten is bull****. This goes back to competition, that kind of advertisement destroys competition, thus destroying progress and ending everyone up in the way 1984's economy was, everything was stagnate and there was no progress except the type of progress to make sure no progress happened.

Also I do like billboards, they're fun to deface with speech bubbles and the like.

These tests have nothing to do with the tests on the effects of advertisement I brought up before. Yes they have under developed perceptions, but if a normal person who's worried about saving time and all that jazz sees a bunch of business people eating at McDonalds enough, he/she will most likely start to think that McDonalds is a great place to eat. Our previous generation (baby boomers) weren't much better in the brainwashing sense, seeing as they grew up when WWII and Cold War propaganda were coming out of everyone's ass like none other. Their brains are used to complacency and brainwashing too, it's not just starting.

Now what about the mass of America who don't know about this. Not everyone has your level of thought, or your type of thought. Most of America doesn't understand this, and take news and the like like an IV at the hospital. While the problem may not include you, it does include the masses.

I dunno, frankly I don't understand the whole "OMG the naked body is something hideous that needs to be covered!" thing most of America is into. Yes it's the start of sex, but if everyone grew up being used to nudity, I can guarantee that we wouldn't all be ****ing like rabbits at any given time. I'm not promoting using it as a way to attract people to a product, but on the plus side, at least sex doesn't end in death or bodily damage (generally, but at that point it turns into violence). Anyway I've totally digressed, and both you and Mire are right on that one.

Again, as long as Capitalism is involved though, (unless looked at at a global level, which is still impossible), you're knocking someone down the ladder as you go up. You can't succeed in the fast food business if everyone is succeeding in the fast food business, or everyone left to succeed somewhere else. There aren't enough poor college kids to do all the **** jobs without everyone having 8 kids and throwing the world into overpopulation mode. Even then though, we still have someone at the top and a bunch of others at the bottom of the ladder. Not everyone can be upper class in a class based system. To put it in an RPG sense, you can't have a party full of Mages with a high DPS, Mages have notoriously low HPs, you need some Knights or something to Tank and take the damage (Mages being the upper class with high DPS and Knights being lower/middle class with low-mid DPS).

Just means you're working hard =P Wonder if we'll hit a char limit soon...

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samtheman768

Lol well looking at McCain's VP pick im even in more support of McCain =P

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SamLJaxxon - BL

"You're the evil man and I'm the righteous man and Mr. 9 millimeter here, he's the shepherd protectin' my righteous ass in the Valley of Darkness" - Samuel L Jackson as "Jules Winnfield"

Choobinator

When he wins you definitely won't be joking about it.

These are indeed the last days. Be prepared.

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BlanK

I dunno, the idea that religion plays a part in the government needs to be abolished. I believe this government is partially based on "Separation of Church and State". So if the Bible was to explicitly say "No Abortions" on the first page (or any page, or not explicitly) you shouldn't be able to use the reasoning "It's a sin, so it should be illegal." to get a law passed. More so, to call someone the "Anti-Christ" is quite an accusation with little to nothing to back it up on.

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Atlow

IMO it's no longer a presidential race, its a VP race. Obama is a young unexperienced guy with lots of potential and is all about change blablabla but he chooses an old white dude who is set in his ways as his VP. McCain is an old white dude on the verge of keeling over and chooses an unexperienced woman with potential. I don't see it as McCain vs Obama, I see it as Palin vs Biden. Palin's got my vote.

BlanK

In an off topic kinda way, to get all "patriotic" on that subject, Palin's Canadian accent is really unAmerican. We can't trust a Canadian to run the country a year after McCain's brought into office (and dies of old age) can we?

I'll get more ontopic about that when I have the time to look more into the VPs.

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PeterTheLeader

Oh, hey! The forums back up!

Anywho, I don't really see why people think that McCain's age is why he shouldn't be voted for. It's really an attack against his looks and not his character. Saying I am not going to vote for McCain because he is old is like saying I won't vote for Obama because he's black. Being old means he has more experiance, and being black has nothing to do with experiance or in-experiance. Heck, Obama isn't even full black, he's mixed. People are never going to stop that using the racist card, though. Also, Obama's wife said a while back that it was the first time she felt good to be an American. I know she isn't Obama, but ya think a guy running for presidency who marries someone would choose a good person of character.

Back to the debates that are off topic in the first place but have longer posts!

Countries need to have a minimum wage. Outsourcing is good. It builds a sort of bond to other countries. Outsourcing to countries with leaders who have no morals is bad.
Chains are good, but monopolies are bad.

I ask again, though. who are we to tell someone who has the ability and tries his hardest (in an honest way) to make money that they can't have it? I understand the billions of dollars they have and you think it's some sort of waste, like it could go somewhere else. Most of the money does go somewhere else, as I have said before, and isn't always stagnant. For an example as how I see it, it's like telling a worker, as a manager/boss, that they have to stop working so fast or doing what they are doing so well because they make everyone else look bad. The persons potential is limited and one will never know what he/she could achieve. It's possible to have that worker become CEO of a company one day, but one had to explain why he couldn't get a raise for some retarded reason. More responsibility, more money. Common sense really, but apparently you guys see it in a different way. Leaving a "sky's the limit" sense allows one to want to achieve something. When someone restricts that and goes "Well, you really can't go past this point", it kinda makes the person not want to work any harder because they know no matter what, it won't make a difference. Just doing something to make yourself feel good on the inside is NOT a good reason to better yourself. Imagine if where you work everyone was a slacker, didn't do their job right, and treated customers (or objects you make) poorly. Your the only one who gives a darn about your job and help people (or craft said object like it was worth something), was fast, and did your best. If you got payed the same wage as others I doubt you'd keep doing your best because it feels good. It doesn't have to be a low-level environment such as flipping burgers, it can go for corporate positions as well. Is there really a difference in limiting someone one way or another? What would be the point of working hard if it doesn't make a bit of a difference?

The main point that this all seems to revolve around, is where is the line where your an idiot who should know better and it's a psychologically, un-avoidable, great influence affecting you?

For TV ads showing the same thing over and over...that is like a monopoly isn't it? A monopoly that capitalizes on a show that is popular. Your right Blank, It should be regulated on how often it is. For the whiny kid asking for a happy meal at McDonald's, giving it away because they whine too much is the parents fault. A kid in that situation would most likely have gotten his way before (a toy or something) by whining and knows how to manipulate his parents.

Rulzern

Obama, as does most of the rest of the civilized and socialized world.

Of course, for most of us europeans, both candidates are far far off to the right, so us wanting the leftmost candidate might come as no surprise.

Anywho, I wanted to chime in on the debate you have going.

Earth to peter, your economic system isn't capitalism, what you're calling capitalism is a mixed economy. What you're calling communism is... well, I'm not entirely sure what it is, but I assume it's not referring to the government in either of the two current democratic communist states in the world.


Do you get full advantage of every tax dollar you pay? Do you only pay the percentage of taxes that you gain a benefit from?

Or, to put it in a different way:

Do you have health insurance, and if so, why? How do you think health insurance works? What would happen if nobody had health insurance? What's the difference between a dead person, and a person who's unemployed (or unable to work)?

Religion is more or less the basis for many of the laws currently in place all around the world. When you take away religion, you have to find a new reason for those laws to be in place, or remove them.


Sorry, I just couldn't help it!

Also, on the subject of "making lots of money is bad!", that money doesn't leave the economy when it enters the bank, it leaves the bank pretty quickly to be invested elsewhere, otherwise the banks would have no reason to want your money. This money goes to the heads of companies, who use it to pay employees, it's your union and you that ensure that you are being paid enough for your services.

As an aside, it seems to me that a disproportionate amount of americans have a negative view of unions, is this because they're "commie bastards", or is there a sensible reason?

EDIT:
And for the record, I don't agree with the whole brainwashing thing, nor do I agree that most people are stupid, or many of the other things said in this thread, it's just easier to discuss something when people present a sound line of reasoning, rather than just making (seemingly) baseless assumptions.

Akai The Froggy

I really....I dont know either way I see that we are totally Efferd!

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PeterTheLeader

I think of communism as stereo-typed Russia. Of course, it's much deeper than that, as are all economic systems, but that's the jist of it.

Yea, it is a mixed system, but capitalism is the back-bone of it. More than 90% of my view of it involves capitalism more than anything.

Yes, I have health insurance. Pretty easy to get health insurance, though not like Canada where it's free it's still there. If no one had health insurance I would assume the government would take care of it, sort of like Canada's health insurance system. You can go see a doctor if you need to any time without having to worry about it. Basically, people in the medical field would be under the governments pay roll. As for having to fork over money yourself up front, it's a ridiculous notion since poo hits the fan plenty of times in life. You could have the money at one point and the next something could happen that leaves you temporarily out of cash.
The difference between a dead person and a person who is unemployed is a dead person is dead, no one cares. An unemployed person has the ability to be employed and gain money, still has life yet to live. As for the or part, very very few cannot work. People in wheel chairs, people with no hands, the deaf, etc... can still work. Albeit they can't do a diverse amount of things as someone who is not as unfortunate, but they aren't in a position where they can't do anything. Some examples: A deaf person could still wash dishes in a restaurant, a person in a wheel chair can still craft things with his hands, a person with no arms can use a touch-free telephone system for sales. I had a scout master who had his arm chopped off in an accident, yet he still can eat, pitch a tent, etc... fine. I have a lot of respect for the man. Were you expecting me to say that they were useless to us since they can't achieve as much as others? Did you expect me to belittle the unemployed by saying they might as well be dead? Was that where you were going with it Rulzern?

Poppycock. A lot of religious beliefs and systems that have laws is not just something defined by God. If you read the Bible, one would recollect that Jesus taught his disciples and others why God has the rules he does. He explains it in parables and reasoning, not "God said so so that's why". If you take away religion you still have the reasoning for the laws. There is no new reason, the reasons are already there. That does not change.

As for banks, yes your right. It does go somewhere else. Money in a bank isn't just sitting there, it's used for loans and such.

For unions, it really is situation based. The reasoning is that unions cause companies to give more than union members deserve. Like a boss milks money in most stereotypical cases, unions milk bosses for all their worth. By threatening to not work and lawsuits, they can demand anything they want since the boss is put in a corner because if he/she does not meet their demands, the boss will be out of business. Kinda hard to understand I guess, workers taking advantage of a company? Well, think of it this way. Your in a group of, say, 100 people. You each work in a factory making low wage so you guys form a union. You demand the boss give a raise to everyone or you will all quit. The company boss doesn't have enough money to back up month's of no workers to exasperate the employee's, or is fearful, so he/she agrees. You guys start to think" Gee, that was easy. I wonder if we can get more". So, you keep threatening and it gets out of hand where you get all these benefits and pay, where the boss starts to make very little money.

Now, it doesn't always happen and unions are needed at times, but for the most part unions should be temporary.

For baseless assumptions, not everyone knows everything. The point of a debate is to win your idea over an opponent (despite what "real" debaters do). If you know a bit more then it merely serves to help you over someone else.

Rulzern

First of all, great post Peter.

No, no and not quite. The reason I asked those rhetorical questions was to set into motion a train of thought into what taxes are, how they work, and why we pay them. What I was trying to lead up to was that we don't pay just the taxes we want to, we also pay taxes for things that other people want. The final, rather inflammatory, question was related to what sick and unemployed people can contribute, and why we pay taxes/health insurance to support them.

Yes, but the reasons are based in religious beleifs. Looking at other (especially older) cultures, there are many things that have been done differently in terms of morals (murder, polygami, property and many other things).



On your comments on unions, I don't agree that employers are powerless in the negotiations, nor do I beleive that unions should be temporary. If they are temporary, they will only be formed when conditions are unacceptable, and if conditions are unacceptable for the workers, it means that the workers can't get a better offer somewhere else, which also means that there are probably more unemployed people who are in a more dire economic situation than the workers in the union, again meaning that a strike would be ineffectual since the employer can just get non-union workers to do the work. It would also be very hard to get people to join a temporary union, since some people can't afford the risk of a strike, some people would feel that conditions aren't as dire as other think, and so on.

PeterTheLeader

Murder and property are not quite solely connected to religion. Reasons are obvious. Polygamy, on the other hand, definitely is. Why can't someone have more than one wife, if they can support it? Why can't a wife have more than one husband? The reason is highly because of religion. There is a logical standpoint, however, that's more of a psychological thing than anything. One would think reason is that it shouldn't matter, but it does. It's basically the same thing as why it's bad for brothers to be on the same professional team, or a relative can't be the boss, permanently anyway or as long as it isn't family owned, of a family member in a company. Reason being, since they are closely intertwined in life and have been together and experienced the same things, one wonders how it's possible the two could not have the same pay or job. There is also a psychological feud between the two that would affect their work because of this.

As for debating unions, I agree they have their place and it's very beneficial. They keep the boss in check so workers aren't taken advantage of. Managers have the final word, no matter what, so it's a touchy subject and a balancing act more than anything. There is a huge gray area and it isn't all black and white.

Sick (whatever you mean by that) and unemployed people still have the ability to work, except for the very few. The government should take care of them, even if it does come out of my paycheck. If you can't do anything because life decided it, there isn't much to do. Besides, as we research and develop new technology handicapped people lose their handicapped status (Think Luke Skywalker's new hand. We are already developing such technology to allow nerves from the brain react to create mechanical signals that emulate a real hand. It's very basic now, but it's happening).