The My DB Has More Strawmen Than Your DB Thread, with a side order of How California’s New Immigration Law Affects Screening Policies
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More abstractly, I think the suggestion is that the structure of a government is strongly correlated with its size, thus any comparison of differently sized governments that controls for how they are made up is invalid. However, the direction of the causal relationship is such that using ‘size’ as a proxy for ‘structure’ is likely to lead to sloppy thinking.
Also I think you've summed up fairly well what I was trying to say and have done a good job of pointing out the flaws of any possible conclusions that could be drawn from it.
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I don't have actual data to back this up, but it seems reasonable to me that there would be a correlation between "size" in the control/power sense and "size" in the number of government workers sense. Fewer workers would, in general, be less able to assert control/power over the populace. Certainly there could be exceptions; a small-size government could be a big-control/power government if its few workers were concentrated in police, domestic intelligence and related functions. However, if the structure of a government is unchanged, just reduced in size, it is likely to also be reduced in power/control.
Speaking to the point I bolded above, not necessarily so. They could have absolute power while being small - IF they had the complete cooperation of its citizens in what it's trying to accomplish. In such a case, the citizens are not deprived of power, they simply enable the government to have power, which is not oppressive at all.
A small government with a tiny police/military as compared to the population cannot effectively oppress its population.
This is why @darkmatter loses me when he claims:
Uh.... my entire point is that SMALLER GOVERNMENT IS NOT NECESSARILY LESS CONTROLLING.
HOW could it be more controlling without cooperation from its people, then? Please explain this to us.
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A small government with a tiny police/military as compared to the population cannot effectively oppress its population.
I don't disagree. Any apparent disagreement arises, I think, from the tendency to equate "power/control" with "oppressive use of power/control." I admit that I tend to equate those without realizing it, and I think I am not alone in doing so. Perhaps the disagreement with @darkmatter (if not pure trolling) is the result of his not equating them, if he's not, while you're assuming that he is doing so.
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I don't disagree. Any apparent disagreement arises, I think, from the tendency to equate "power/control" with "oppressive use of power/control." I admit that I tend to equate those without realizing it, and I think I am not alone in doing so. Perhaps the disagreement with @darkmatter (if not pure trolling) is the result of his not equating them, if he's not, while you're assuming that he is doing so.
That may be the case here. @darkmatter is not known for being a Troller in the sense that was apparent today, at least that I've seen.
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Ob: "But the climate's great!"
It is, though! Out where I am right now, there are a good 3-4 months where going WOT in first gear spins tires. And being hindered from pulling sub-5 second 0-60's makes me more grumpy than usual.
And the taxes
Sales tax there is a bit higher than in the socialist paradise in which I currently live, but people bear it somehow.
laws
Yes, it is a testbed for new laws, and a lot of states end up following suit on the ones that work. It's like buying the first model year of a new car - you get to deal with all the benefits and defects that people who wait don't.
traffic
Apart from US-101 and a couple other roads, I'd take most Bay Area rush hour traffic over what's considered peak where I currently am.
Mexican drug gangs
I lived half my life out there and have yet to encounter one.
Also ob: GET THE BLANK OUT OF THERE if you're a business owner...
I'm sure that if the taxes and regulations ever get to a breaking point, people will vote with their feet to somewhere more business friendly, like Montana or West Virginia. Curiously, people seem to be voting with the opposite of their feet.
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A small government with a tiny police/military as compared to the population cannot effectively oppress its population.
Except the part where I noted that in the US it's mostly just libertarians that want smaller government AND military. The rest of the "smaller government" crowd in the US up until at least the latest wars in the Middle East have been gungho about our military staying large and heavily funded.HOW could it be more controlling without cooperation from its people, then? Please explain this to us.
Cooperation is irrelevant if the police and military enforce your laws. By that logic, if people think our government is too controlling right now, then everyone should just stop cooperating and it wouldn't be controlling us anymore! Except that's kinda not how it works.
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@darkmatter (if not pure trolling)
I am half-trolling the instances where certain commenters can come up with nothing better than TDEMSYR to argue against points that clearly make some sense because they've been written about/discussed in plenty of other places prior to me bringing them up in this thread.
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I am half-trolling the instances where certain commenters can come up with nothing better than TDEMSYR to argue against points that clearly make some sense because they've been written about/discussed in plenty of other places prior to me bringing them up in this thread.
So you're claiming that just because it's been argued elsewhere it must make some sense?
TDEMSYR.
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A small government with a tiny police/military as compared to the population cannot effectively oppress its population.
It feels like you haven't put much thought into how to effectively oppress a population. For the most part, that is a good thing.
Increasing suppression without decreasing the population's ability to fight back is a terrible strategy. Outright oppression only increases the population's desire to fight. As the second amendment demonstrates, it is far more cost-effective to limit people's access to weapons than it is to try and win an arms race against them. Similarly, limiting the lower classes' access to healthcare, education, etc. reduces the strength of potential uprisings, and is a far more effective way to oppress society than direct military or propaganda campaigns could ever be.
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So you're claiming that just because it's been argued elsewhere it must make some sense?
TDEMSYR.
Your inability to even form an argument against anything I've said only reinforces that the real fool here is you.
Filed Under: this is how you troll.
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As Edited By @ben_lubar, the new title:
"The Strawman Thread, with a side order of How California’s New Immigration Law Affects Screening Policies"LOL +1 (since I can't give it a like)
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Cooperation is irrelevant if the police and military enforce your laws. By that logic, if people think our government is too controlling right now, then everyone should just stop cooperating and it wouldn't be controlling us anymore! Except that's kinda not how it works.
I'll ignore the out of context response for the moment and say this:
Big if. (My emphasis in the quote)
Look up French Revolution. Bad economy = public uprising against the ruling bodies (repeatedly), and I would assume given the bad financial condition of the country, couldn't pay enough to employ enough military/police to quell the dissent. Q.E.D. that that is exactly how it works.
This is why I was worried about my family and friends in 2008, when more and more protesters were showing up in the streets of major cities to protest Wall Street and where it had led us. If the economy hadn't stopped declining when it did, that would have only become worse, eventually necessitating the government to step in and quell the resulting mobs. Add to that the country's growing debt, which if it led to insufficient financing of those same police forces (many of our cities and states are already in crazy fiscal trouble), and you have the prefect recipe for a French Revolution on US soil - something I hope I don't live to see.
Crazy? In this particular case, I hope I am. I don't want to be right about that.
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you have the prefect recipe for a French Revolution on US soil - something I hope I don't live to see.
I'm sure it should all be fine though—the French Revolution was the result of a fairly unique confluence of circumstances leading up to it, which aren't likely to be repeated 220(ish) years later on a different continent, and it's not like Americans have any particularly revolutionary traditions anyway...
Filed under: what is a "George Washington", and how is one relevant here?
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Hyperbole is lost on everyone always. Clearly if literally everyone stops cooperating and joins the same cause against a regime that is intentionally oppressing the masses, they would overthrow the government, especially if they get the military/police to join too.
But we're talking about the US here. The "big government" is not oppressing the masses. The people "marching on wall street" made up such a tiny fraction of the total number of US citizens, it's laughable. More people showed up to see the stupid ball drop in Times Square.
My problem is that a government is always going to be trying to have its hand in your lives in some ways, regardless of its size. Our current big government boom has led to a tendency to try to regulate things for the good of everyone, which infringes on freedoms and pisses me off. But the rhetoric of the small government backers shows that a good number of them still want to infringe on freedoms, just different ones. Just this past week a number of those very leaders chastised Obama for not declaring Christianity as the one true religion in his address to the nation. Fuck them and their "small government"; they want to rule my morals instead of my checkbook, and they can fuck off.
I would much prefer a "limited government" - as in, the government is legally unable to impose its will in manners of civil liberties, which is similar to how the constitution & bill of rights are supposed to work. I don't care how many branches it has or people it employs, as long as they can't tell me what I can or can not eat, what consenting adults I can choose to sleep with, or what religion is the "correct" one.
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My understanding of @darkmatter's position here is that if we were to decrease the size of the government, we would pretty much have to rely on that same government to carry it out, and there is the risk that they would remove all of their checks and none of their balances.
I have no idea if that's really what @darkmatter was getting at, but it's definitely a problem. What's worse, without a significant ideological change, we could very well end up with the same thing in a few years even if we did somehow manage to make significant changes in the near term.
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What's worse, without a significant ideological change, we could very well end up with the same thing in a few years even if we did somehow manage to make significant changes in the near term.
“Ask not what you can do for your country, ask what your country can do for you.”
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*deep breath*
OK: let's do this!
I don't vaccinate
To me, that's a sign of neglectful parents, because they're basically saying 'I refuse to protect my child against serious infectious diseases'. But then again, there was that whole MMR = autism thing a while back (debunked of course), so I can sorta see where they're coming from.
@lolwhat said:"Everyone needs free health care"
QFT
@lolwhat said:"We need more taxes on the profits of those evil big corporations"
I don't see why not; make them pay their fair share for a change.
@accalia said:i would, but i'm already banned from all of my local auction houses.
apparently there were complaints that my boxes of mystery contained live bobcats.
I can't quite figure out if that crosses the line from mischievous to evil or not… ;)
@accalia said:trying to make a joke actually, but apparently i failed there.
I got it; I just couldn't think of a snappy response that involved me, your current avatar, and not coming across as a total prick
@flabdablet said:article of faith that small government automatically leads to better government.
There's less people to fuck shit up I guess, but that's about it really.
@Onyx said:I am against any government that doesn't accept my absolute rule over the planet (and / or parts of the Solar system).
Well, there goes my quest for world domination
@blakeyrat said:But... they are criminals?
Criminal law vs civil law. Then again, the wordcriminalhas, in modern usage, also come to mean those who break civil laws as well, despite its accuracy in that being questionable.
@blakeyrat said:Our immigration laws, already probably the easiest hurdle to jump of any western nation? I think are still to strict. I'm all for removing quotas and making immigration to the US easier.
Forgetting immigration between EU member states? The only way you know you;re in a different country is by seeing a road sign
Except for getting into the UK, because we still have this stupid idea that we're in Europe yet not European
@blakeyrat said:Boomzilla and I agree on something
@darkmatter said:I'm just shocked that so many people naively believe that no one in power will abuse that power regardless of how many branches of government are removed.
Power corrupts, political power doubly so.
There's a reason I don't want to be a TL4 here…
@dkf said:Communist Monarchy
Those two words don't go together…
@abarker said:How is something illegal but not a crime?
Civil law.
@Captain said:It would have to violate criminal law to be a crime. Merely violating sovereign law or civil law is not a crime.
QFT
There's probably about 3279.583 Hanzos in there… and I don't care
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Criminal law vs civil law. Then again, the word criminal has, in modern usage, also come to mean those who break civil laws as well, despite its accuracy in that being questionable.
Bullshit. Even if the act of passing over the border isn't criminal (and I'm 99% sure it is), it's impossible to live in the US as an illegal for 5 days without doing something criminal.
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Bullshit. Even if the act of passing over the border isn't criminal (and I'm 99% sure it is), it's impossible to live in the US as an illegal for 5 days without doing something criminal.
I'm… not really sure how that contradicts my point?
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Just because someone does one thing that's illegal under one government, doesn't mean they broke every law under every government ever.
Coming into the country illegally doesn't make the person illegal. It's pretty damn hard to imagine a way for a person to be illegal.
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So you were giving me a lecture on the difference between Civil and Criminal law, while agreeing with me that I used the correct term to describe illegal immigration?
... ok then I guess.
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Coming into the country illegally doesn't make the person illegal. It's pretty damn hard to imagine a way for a person to be illegal.
But it's really easy to imagine pedantic dickweedery!
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It's also apparently really easy for certain TV personalities to imagine an "illegal person".
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So you were giving me a lecture on the difference between Civil and Criminal law, while agreeing with me that I used the correct term to describe illegal immigration?
No. Yes. Maybe? I dunno.Sorry; I challenged @accalia to outdo me on avatar choice, and the one she chose for me is a bit distracting…
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Criminal law vs civil law. Then again, the word criminal has, in modern usage, also come to mean those who break civil laws as well, despite its accuracy in that being questionable.
2¢: If people who break criminal laws are "criminals", then people who break civil laws should probably be called "civilians"...
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It's also apparently really easy for certain TV personalities to imagine an "illegal person".
It's also apparently really easy for certain TV personalities to imagine links between vaccines and autism...
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But it's really easy to imagine pedantic dickweedery!
Okay, so remember that picture just upthread featuring the word "illegal"? Here's what it means:
live in the US as an illegal immigrant for 5 days
You a word there. I the word back. Every time you a word you're being a dick. @ben_lubar tried to explain it to you but you didn't get it, instead you doubled-down on being a dick.
Stop being a dick.
@boomzilla posted the poster to protest against not being able to use "plain english descriptions", but not even he uses "illegal" without "immigrant" following it, because it's wrong.
INB4 "SJW"
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If you know what I meant, and you do because you're not that fucking dumb, then I did not leave out a word.
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you're not that fucking dumb
I've been validated by Blakeyrat!
I did not leave out a word.
Because you're a dick.
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Giving that a like and a +1, not because I agree with all your responses, but for the amount of discipline you exercised by responding to no less than 14 different posts in one Discursed post. I consider that a herculean effort to comply with the reasonable request of Discurse to limit multiple responses through the unreasonable editing tools provided for exactly that function. Bravo!
*deep breath*
Understatement of the year in Discurse.
EDIT: 3 edits to get that right. Yet you only needed one to get yours done.
- Discuuuuuurse!!!!
- @RaceProUK like I said, nice job.
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@darkmatter is not known for being a Troller in the sense that was apparent today, at least that I've seen.
Yes. Yes, he is. He's quite proud of it, too.
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Yes, it is a testbed for new laws, and a lot of states end up following suit on the ones that work.
But, they don't usually get rid of the ones that don't work. Not that they're unique in that, of course.
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But, they don't usually get rid of the ones that don't work. Not that they're unique in that, of course.
Don't know how it works in Cali/the US, but if it's anything like in the UK, if a law is passed that contradicts an older law, the older law is repealed by default. So if California passes a law that contradicts one of the ones that doesn't work, the one that doesn't work is repealed by default, and the problem fixes itself ;)
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I'm sure that if the taxes and regulations ever get to a breaking point, people will vote with their feet to somewhere more business friendly, like Montana or West Virginia. Curiously, people seem to be voting with the opposite of their feet.
California has been getting a lot of people and businesses moving out of the state. This page is a nightmare:
https://www.census.gov/hhes/migration/data/acs/state-to-state.html
I don't know what the "Excel" files there are, but they don't seem to be Excel files. I was able to look at "Domestic Migration Flows for States from the 2005 ACS [PDF - 141K] " which is some kind of bundled document thing that asks for Adobe (though Okular was able to extract them). From that, I found that CA had an estimated net domestic migration of -268,403 +/- 32.137.
So, voting with the feet it is! NY was next at 239,848 +/- 22,707. Louisiana was next, but I suspect that's mainly due to Katrina.
I think you're confusing people from Mexico voting with their feet. I don't think many people would argue that Alta California is a lot better place to live than Baja California.
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Your inability to even form an argument against anything I've said only reinforces that the real fool here is you.
I was waiting for you to complete your arguments so they made sense. I think I see the confusion. Were you were claiming that the fascist dictatorship wasn't oppressive or that it wasn't "small?" I think both claims fall under TDEMSYR, but maybe I was stressing the wrong T.
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My problem is that a government is always going to be trying to have its hand in your lives in some ways, regardless of its size. Our current big government boom has led to a tendency to try to regulate things for the good of everyone, which infringes on freedoms and pisses me off.
As Carlin said, fascism with a smiley face. Or as H.G. Wells said, we'll need a liberal fascism. It's better than the jackboots of Italy or Germany, but it still sucks.
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I don't know what the "Excel" files there are, but they don't seem to be Excel files.
I tried to figure out what they are, but neither me nor Excel 2013 could figure it out.At least it's being served with the correct MIME type.
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It's also apparently really easy for certain TV personalities to imagine an "illegal person".
I think it's easier for bedwetters to imagine that certain TV personalities are imagining "illegal people." Can you point to an example where they're calling a person illegal?
This seems to require a blakeyrat level of aggressive and ideologically motivated illiteracy. But I'm open to be proved wrong.
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@boomzilla posted the poster to protest against not being able to use "plain english descriptions", but not even he uses "illegal" without "immigrant" following it, because it's wrong.
SUB-HUMAN!
Sorry, this is just dumb.
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Don't know how it works in Cali/the US, but if it's anything like in the UK, if a law is passed that contradicts an older law, the older law is repealed by default. So if California passes a law that contradicts one of the ones that doesn't work, the one that doesn't work is repealed by default, and the problem fixes itself
But they don't pass those laws that effectively repeal the stupid shit. Not enough. Do you think the UK does that enough? I honestly don't follow you guys closely enough, but I'd be shocked if they did. It's just not how people operate.
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Bullshit. Even if the act of passing over the border isn't criminal (and I'm 99% sure it is), it's impossible to live in the US
as an illegalfor 5 days without doing something criminal.FTFY
Most people can't even drive to work without doing something criminal.
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Do you think the UK does that enough?
Probably not
@antiquarian said:Most people can't even drive to work without doing something criminal
Case in point: I almost hit 90mph on my way to the office this morning (for non-UKians, national limit for cars is 70mph). Didn't notice till I looked at the speedo.It may be a 1.2 Vauxhall Corsa, but damn it rides well
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Case in point: I almost hit 90mph on my way to the office this morning (for non-UKians, national limit for cars is 70mph). Didn't notice till I looked at the speedo.
Yikes. And to pile onto the type of law dickweedery above, in my state, 80mph+ is an automatic misdemeanor, so you can't rely on speeding being a civil infraction.
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national limit for cars is 70mph
On dual carriageways or motorways (basically anything with a central reservation). On other roads it's 60.
On a not entirely unrelated note, in the last year, somebody near me was caught by a speed camera doing 128MPH in a 30 zone.
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On a not entirely unrelated note, in the last year, somebody near me was caught by a speed camera doing 128MPH in a 30 zone.
Depending on the type of camera, if he was doing 140+, he wouldn't have been caught, as the camera would be too slow.
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Yes. Yes, he is. He's quite proud of it, too.
That brings up the other possibility: that I simply haven't seen it until now. :-(
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Do you think the UK does that enough?
Probably not. The Law Society works through areas of law and produces recommendations on what can be repealed through it being completely obsolete, and that then goes to parliament for (effectively) ratification. They're not something that we hear about a lot as they tend to be non-controversial and so don't sell
newspapersadverts. They also grind away fairly slowly; a lot of law can silt up between visits to a particular area…
Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear - Wikipedia
