I think it has more to do with supply and demand. For the most part, the players have gone to better suppliers, and this is because they're simply better. Stefan is a lazy mofo who hasn't modernized IC and probably won't.

Every time a state asserts state rights, it gets owned.

Skoe,

<<You mean a paraplegic who has suffered at the cost of a big business cutting costs, such
as safety procedures being dumped to save a little $$$?

Or do you mean less generically: Some lazy slob who lives off of welfare and spends
the welfare money on smokes and alcohol, even though he/she is capable of getting a job?>>

Hehe, I was mostly kidding on this one. But yes, I was mostly talking about the lazy slobs who live on welfare and then smoke and consume alcohol.

<<Why remove athletics? Do we differ in definition of athletics? (Sports, Physical Education, etc?).

If you remove athletics, people get fat. Fat people don't work as hard, or for as long (less life-span).>>

My bad. I meant the Athletic scholarships and sports teams. They are very costly, and from what I read only a small minority are able to pay for themselves from tickets and sales. Furthermore, it's just stupid that people enter an academic institution without academic merit because of their athletic merit.

<<I agree, but "brushing over" abstinence is a good idea too. Leaving it out entirely isn't a good idea.>>

Well, I think that monogamy should be taught as the safest way. But abstinence education is usually religiously motivated, and beyond the monogamy it has no practical value.

<<Like anti-competition laws?>>

In general, stuff like that, yes.

<<Simplified yes, but not so simplified that someone who earns $80,000 pays the same income tax rate as
someone who earns $20,000. A slightly increasing scale would be better IMO.>>

I see why it seems fair to do that. But in practice, the elite aren't going to pay more taxes. They have the power to avoid it. Instead, the lower rich will be paying the highest tax burden, and that will reduce competition for the elite.

<<I also have a problem with this.

Lets take an example: Bob and Bill. Bob studies law for 3 years, Bill spends 9 years in the military.
Bill fights in an actual war. Bill looses an arm somewhere along the way. Bob, after his 3 year law
degree, moved to a farm somewhere and started wearing a potato sack.

Are you saying that the sack wearing Bob, who has not contributed to society, has the right to vote -- but
Bill, a "hero" and loyal servant of the state, does not?>>

You have a point there. But I was trying to say that honorable military service merits the right to vote imo.

Ideologies typically presume that there is a particular political or social order that ought to play out, and that is how people talk about ideologies. My end goals appeal to personal desires and pragmatism. If my end goals make up an ideology (or ideal), then it is an ideology so unique that it does not have in common what nearly all other ideologies have in common.

Thank you for clarifying that you derailed my thread on a matter of semantics...

> avogadro wrote:

> a normative is required to have an end goal, and you simply saying it isnt doesnt prove anything or "own" me. it simply makes you looks like an idiot.  for something to be a goal, there must be a reason why it is a goal.>

I have demonstrated why an end goal doesn't require a normative, and you have not mustered a response. That's why you have been owned so many times, and I'm frankly tired of explaining it to you over and over again. I can at best infer that you are trolling.

> avogadro wrote:

"2. Only through empirical means can practical knowledge be acquired. As such, government should only make decisions and policy based on evidence, and never on religion or vague ideals."

this makes him an idiot.

you cant empiraclly make ideals. without ideals the government cant have any direction.>

Which I never said. That entire sentence is about what way government should set out to accomplish its goals, but I'll give you the benefit of the doubt that you were being intellectually lazy. The direction, I implied, was about serving the public. I know that's vague, but that was the direction.

There is no sufficient reason for this law as far as I'm concerned. It has limited practical value for protecting the public at large, and considering the expansion of government because a few emo idiots committed suicide is not something I am supportive of. Furthermore, this kind of online activity goes on on a frequent basis. And again, why it should be a felony because less than one percent of people who are victims of it actually commit suicide is asinine.

I always watch BBC. It's much more amusing.

My life has been laid out for me. I have to be a Lawyer, says mom.