I know you are, but what am I?

> ☭ Fokker wrote:

> > [...] Just make up any scenario, other than voting, in which you would want to know about someone's mental health and what it would influence you to do as a result. <

Apparently I'd ask them valid questions regarding their illness and treatment, then be quickly arrested for "trolling".

+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+
| Vote Harrington, for another ten glorious years of Totalitarian Government. |
|                                           ...or else!                                                     |
+---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------+

Valid questions?

1: What questions.
2: Why?  What purpose would they serve other than to influence your vote?

It's a simple problem: Yes, we should know about mental illnesses.  But the issue is that if you say you will not discriminate against someone with mental illnesses, then you should not need to know about said mental illnesses unless you can find another justification for it.

Think of it like this: We lived in some world where technology allowed the dissemination of race to be possible.  When candidates go on TV, give speeches, etc., they all look like the same race.

Unless you can answer the question I posed above, what you are doing is equivalent to someone saying "I want to know what race this guy is!  Honest, I wouldn't vote for or against someone just because of their race!  I just want to know!"  In short, either:
A: You're lying, or
B: You're telling the truth, but other people who will discriminate would discriminate, and that becomes a more serious issue than letting you know just for the sake of knowing.

> sKoE )= wrote:

> > Many people suffer from conditions such as depression and
> many people also make full recoveries. Someone's previous
> problems may not in any way hinder them or affect their thought
> or decision making processes.

Thats a complete load of shit. All politicians should be under full disclosure when it comes to their mental health -- it may not hinder them right away, but it may well come back. Sure, no one should be discriminated against it -- thatd be abusrdly awful -- but it still should be known.

Hypothetical situation:

Two politicians are running in your district.  One is fully mentally competent.  The other suffers from depression.
What will you do with that information, aside from using it to influence who you vote for?

> Econamatrix wrote:

> But not sure how much a 2000 mile??? (guess) long kill zone would cost

A lot!  A 2,000 mile kill zone, starting from the US southern border, would cover the entirety of Central America.  I don't think the border patrol was meant to deploy tactical nukes. 

The Yell meant "1,000 meters."

Fair enough, take your time.

Page 22, 3rd post on the page is the devastator.

> xeno syndicated wrote:

> > "This puts you in a double-bind: Either pegging the currency, which removes those 1's and 0's, solves your harms, or it does not, in which case removing the 1's and 0's does not solve the problems you highlight, which proves your plan does not work."  -  proves nothing

How so?  Try backing up your argument.<

I did so in the rest of my argument.

Lies.  You have not explained, even remotely, the difference between your resource-based economy and currency pegging.  In fact, you didn't answer that until the post right before the most recent, and that argument does not answer this at all!

No answer to this.
Now, you're also in a contradiction here: By putting an answer on the original post, you have affirmed it as "sound."  Either your definition of "sound" and "unsound" is purely subjective (and thus, most likely used to dodge arguments you don't want to, or can't, answer), or it isn't subjective and it was affirmed as sound originally, and you ignored it when I asked you to answer it specifically instead of just saying "I did it earlier."

And no, saying "I addressed this earlier" isn't an adequate response.
1: I don't know where you answered it.
2: It's a simple thing to do.  Just copy and paste the old post to show you made that argument if you don't want to type it.

Same post, devastator number 2:

>"Then I have a question: Where do these saved resources go right now?"<

These resources are not stored as much as they should.  And the little that is actually stored is stored by cartels (especially in the case of diamonds) in order to create artificial scarcity, in order to create inflationary trend in prices.

I didn't ask that.  I asked... where do these resources that would be saved under your economy go?

So if there are 500 barrels of oil in the world, and your society would result in 100 additional barrels saved... under the current economic system, where are those resources currently distributed?

A simple question.  Unanswered.  I dare you to say this one was not sound.

Next one... same post

>"The problem arises because agriculture requires vast amounts of fertile, yet empty land in order to be effective."<

No, it does not.  The way in which people have chosen to do agriculture is part of the problem.  There are more efficient ways of doing agriculture, namely in vertical gardens, whereby let's say crops with deep roots like carrots, yams, potatoes, and beats could be grown under the surface, the each taking nutrients the others do not need, and the bio degradation of a portion of which would provide nutrients for crops grown above them: small shrubs (low-light-growth), like lettuce and cabbage, squash, pumpkins, mushrooms, rice, again, the bio degradation of a portion of which would provide the nutrients for not only the below surface, deep rooted vegetables, but your taller, (high-light) crops as well, such as your banana, and corn, and wheat.  These 3 layer gardens are common in your so called 'under-developed' countries, from which you in the west think you have little or nothing to learn.  LOL.  You have no idea how screwed you people are, do you?  You don't know how to grow enough food for even your small, what 500 million pop.  Embarrassing. 

1: How does vertical gardening deal with sunlight issues?
2: If it was more efficient, why isn't there any example of it in practice outcompeting current agricultural practices?
3: We in developed countries have more than enough food to provide for our people.  The issue isn't one of supply, but distribution.

Three questions:
One a simple question asking to better understand your advocated farming method.
One asking about empirical evidence.
One indicting your claim that the developed world doesn't produce enough food to feed its own people.

Sound?  Um... yes!  There's no argument in most of these in the first place!

More to come.  Have fun explaining yourself.

Culture?  Definitely.  Believing culture has a value that justifies one culture being separate from another culture is blatant discrimination.

However, at the same time, I don't think it means we should actively work to erase culture.  On the contrary, the expression of one's culture allows the exchange of cultural ideas between different cultures, resulting in a modified culture that becomes a blend of both cultures.  Melting pot?

As for religion, however... I think religion provides something more than simply a moral statement of right and wrong.  I won't get into the issue of whether God is real or not.  But aside from right and wrong questions, religion can be a source of inner peace and tranquility.  Depending on the teachings, it can be an extremely effective psychological assistance.

Page 22, post 1

But as for the information issue... two problems here:
A: People only need certain resources at certain times.  I only need a diamond when I'm proposing to someone or during some other really special occasion.  So I have to spend hours doing research online for something that will take five minutes.
B: Then you have the problem of communication with the computer.  Let's take the diamond example.  I want a diamond that is most appealing to me.  How do I enter that into something for the computer to understand?  How do I say "supercomputer, what is the most beautiful diamond I can buy?"  Hell, I can't even do this asking another person at a store.  We just use trial and error... going through the diamonds at a store until we find the one we want.  Or going to a restaurant, ordering a dish, then if we don't like it, not eating that dish again.  That's what a computer can't do.  A computer can think.  It can't feel.  If you prick it, it does not bleed.  If you tickle it, it does not laugh.  If you poison it, it does not die.  And if you wrong it, it does not revenge.

No response.  How is this argument not sound?

Next up on the docket, same page:

"Why can't pegging the currency to gold do this?"

> Why limit your portfolio to merely gold?  Not smart; not as stable as diversifying.

Okay.  So you concede this does 100% of what your currency does in terms of everything else.  The only thing I have to do is answer this argument.

First, currency is, and never was, meant as an investment.  It's simply a medium of exchange.
Second, pegging currencies to gold/silver/other precious metals does not prevent people from buying non-food commodities.
Third, your society has a uniquely more unstable currency, because it's backed up by degradable resources.  Gold doesn't fall apart.  Potatoes degrade after a few months.
Fourth, this system has been empirically used in society for hundreds of years, and it proved stable.  The tiebreaker in this issue will be that gold has been empirically used in society, and has proven success.

My gold suggestion was unanswered at this point.  It is a sound suggestion: It pegs the currency to a resource, instead of letting it float.

Then there's the issue of the value of cities.

You assert that cities are a bad thing.  I indicted this claim quite extensively, and challenged the viability of transitioning out of cities.  The post is below, to refresh your memory.  Page 22, post 1.  You answered maybe 2 lines of this, and did not indict the core arguments:

>Here's the problem: Cities have three characteristics which makes them extremely problematic for a transition:
A: High population size and density,
B: Lack of access to food by the merit of the region being a city, and
C: Generally, built on crappy land.,

The problem arises because agriculture requires vast amounts of fertile, yet empty land in order to be effective.

So let's assume your society takes place.  Everyone in cities is told on the news, "By the way, you guys won't be getting any food while you're living there because it's too far to ship things there.  Now back to your regular programming!"

Result?  A massive exodus from the cities.  I live in a large city, and there's no way I would live here if grocery stores decided to stop shipping stuff here.  We would be forced to move to rural areas.  City dwellers would need to find areas with farming and go there.

What results when tens of thousands of people decide to move to the few remote farms in various regions?  Those rural areas become urban areas.    Twenty million people live in New York City alone.  Another 20 million in Mexico City.  I believe 15 million people live in Tokyo.  The list goes on.  All these people would be forced to abandon their homes and move into the farming communities.

This would degrade the farmland in those regions.  We can both agree that cities, in general, are pretty polluting places.  Lots of cars driving around.  Garbage everywhere.  Industries polluting.  All these industries would be FORCED to move out of the far away cities and into the farmlands.  This is extremely bad, because the most important land on the planet is polluted the most.  In short, part of the idea behind the city's existence is because we WANT it isolated from important resources.

Then you have issue #2: The amount of industries that would be lost by abandoning cities.  Cities aren't meant to be centers for harvesting natural resources.  Rather, they are centers of manufacturing, refining, and distributing resources to the people.  Some examples:
Tokyo... hell, all of Japan (Japan has no agricultural sector.  At all.  By your argument, they would have to abandon the entire country): Huge center for production of electronics, such as the computer you're using right now.  Oops!  No more software is produced, and your resource-based economy falls apart immediately!
Detroit: Auto manufacturing center.  Oops!  The amount of vehicles produced and sold is cut in half, and we can't ship resources that are backing up the resource credits anymore!  Your resource-based economy falls apart immediately!
New York: Extremely important center for shipping goods and services across continents.  Another cause of how you destroy international trade, just in case we weren't sure.

These are only a couple examples.  I promise you that any person in this forum who is living in an urban area could probably point out a major industry in their city.  You lose ALL these industries.  That's an IMMEDIATE economic collapse, xeno.

Now for issue #3: Even if we disregard both arguments 1 and 2, your society would require that we rebuild every city on the planet, or start massively killing urban populations.  Either there's another economic collapse from the massive costs associated with rebuilding these cities and keeping refugees alive at the time, without the resources being produced from cities to provide capital for these new cities, or you just caused a massive genocide hundreds of times worse than the holocaust (I don't say this lightly, and I'm willing to bet you will argue that we will rebuild the cities in other locations.  Consider this a preemption in case you say that we should not have as many people on the planet).

And finally, issue #4: If you do decide to argue that we should all live in rural societies, many professions in the world simply are not adequately able to survive in rural societies.
Some examples:
Advanced medicine.  Medical equipment is extremely expensive, and the amount of medical experts in each field is limited (I'm not talking about just "doctors."  I'm talking about different specialties within the field... brain surgeons, heart surgeons, etc).  A heart surgeon in New York, with a population of 20 million people, will have more patients than he can possibly handle.  A heart surgeon in a population of 20,000 people will spend most of his time sitting around and rearranging chairs in his office.  That's a massive waste of resources, that probably would cause hundreds to die with each wasted doctor.
Law: Same thing as above.  Specialized field with a limited amount of people working there.  We want them to be able to handle the most people possible.
Same would hold true for fields like accounting, finance, plumbing, research and development, and basically any field that requires an education.  Each of these fields would be a waste of potential resources and thus a loss in economic growth.
Oh, and I forgot to mention something: Your resource banks would also be one of these specialized fields. 

1: Or you could just try debating in the other thread.
2: Your logic is stupid.

Think of this like a pro football game.  Spectators come to watch the two teams play against each other.

What you're doing is the equivalent of a spectator running on the field, catching a short pass, then running for a 1st down.

Your most recent post is the equivalent of the spectator being confronted afterwards, and telling everyone, "If you didn't want this to happen, you should play your football game in some dark alley where nobody is around!"

I find the use of negatively connotative references to other people to be offensive.  Stop them immediately.

Flint, I'm willing to ignore other outside posters in this thread if you are.  It will make this debate much easier, since obviously other people can't respect that this is supposed to be a one-on-one debate.