> [RPA]Sir SupAll wrote:

> "But soldiers should be allowed to live in hospitable conditions."

Like war is hospitable?

Your residence in the barracks is different from your participation on a military campaign.

But soldiers should be allowed to live in hospitable conditions.

Schni,

I want to know how having more options and the unprecedented opportunity to enjoy material abundance is equivalent to slavery. Explain?

No I'm very healthy. I have only been sick once in the last two years, and that was this year. It was a nasty cold that lasted for only 4 days. Second, there's nothing wrong with me medically. My blood pressure is low, every thing is good.

Yes I'm skinny, but my body has sufficient nutrients. The only problem is when I go out drinking, I get a buzz in just two beers.

As for fat people out running me, so what? My lifestyle does not require much physical performance. What matters is I am healthy and at a healthy body weight with very little effort.

Lol. I just looked at Canada's tax rates. They only have territory and federal taxes. Someone who makes about $40k is going to pay no more than 25% in taxes, that's roughly $10,000. In the US, with 40 grand you're going to get owned with taxes.

In the US, if you make 40k, you already are paying 25% in federal taxes. That is also not including your state/local taxes, which adds up badly.

Of course, I'm not including deductions

Edit:

Yes Canada has higher taxes than the US, but that's only because they pwn the wealthy. In the US, everyone gets pwned.

For pete sakes, people's sexual urges are very powerful, and in our socially permissive and sexually charged society it is very difficult to persuade people to be abstinent when marriage and virginity have lost their perceived value. As are result, no matter what kind of argument or appeal to fear you cook up, our youth are going to call "BS" in their minds.

And I agree with them. However, telling them to use protection alone is not sufficient to protect them. Condoms don't protect you from a number of STDs such as herpes.  It's possible to be sexually active and minimize your risks, but practicing a little abstinence is a good idea. By that I mean limiting your partners and trying to commit to one regular. You don't have to be married, no, but there is utility in monogamy, even if it's serial monogamy or you are friends with benefits. A closed system of polyamory can also be safe, where a group of people have sex only with members of that group, and there are standards for admitting new members. However, it's also risky because the chance of someone cheating and catching an std and spreading it to every member of the group also increases. But at least it is less risky than an open system, that just creates an expansive network.

I just suspend judgment. Maybe God exists, maybe not. I can't derive the existence of Gods empirically, I don't see miracles, and the world seems to work deterministically.

> ☭ Fokker wrote:

> "Sure humans do this, but very rarely, like when their children or family are at risk."

Animals do this too.

Not sure about the next part, if that can be applied... Research time!

And my prediction is that costly children will be abandoned. That is why we have adoptions and abortions!

LP,
No it's a good counter example, showing that an organism may forsake family and offspring when it is costly for it to take care of them.

Ever hear of desperate fathers in Asia who sell their children to slave labor and prostitution?

Altruism is a bad term. It suggests engaging in activity that is beneficial to someone else but costly to you. Sure humans do this, but very rarely, like when their children or family are at risk. But even then, people tend to high tail it like they did during the Black Death.

People desire to communicate and cooperate with others. But cooperation is critical when defining this human trait, because people tend to exit costly relationships. Relationships are established and continue almost exclusively if there is a mutual benefit. Just go to your friend and bitch about how your life sucks and be negative all the time, see what happens. Hell, take it further and go to your parents and make yourself a costly parasite. Make them work 14 hours to support you. See what happens!

My point is empirically reproducible. These wishful thinking scientists are wrong, a simple experiment like the one I gave will prove them wrong!

We are cooperative and social, but we are not altruistic.

> [RPA]Sir SupAll wrote:

> @pvp

Ah.  When was Estonia formed?  Like I've said earlier, Eastern Europe throws me out of sync because of how often it seems that the countries change their borders...especially in the Balkans. >>

They do that because the Austrian Empire could not utilize nationalism to unify the people under one national identity. The French and Germans could do it, but Austria could not because of separate nationalist movements taking place. Every ethnic group wanted independence and their own state, and as a consequence Austria could not unify their empire with nationalism because if it tried it would only fuel secessionist movements.

So today we have people of different cultural identities competing for land and power and viewing each other as different.

I only dislike the American working class and super rich.

The upper middle class are civilized, hard working, and noble people. We are educated, rational, independent and conceptual thinkers, and work professional jobs or own small businesses.

The working class is zealously religious, stupid, envious of my class's wealth, and outright irrational. For example, they get married between 18-23 and pop out kids like crazy. Then they don't get married and we're left with single moms. WTF?

The upper class is also zealously religious, disloyal to the state, consumes conspicuously, and tries to raise taxes on the upper middle class while paying nothing themselves. Their involvement in politics thanks to their powerful lobbies is the greatest threat to our empire.