humans are slowly killing themselves...

Discussion in 'Science & Society' started by korey, Aug 2, 2003.

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  1. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    Legal or openly tolerated racism is not the only reason that members of minorities don't settle in particular places. One of the strongest reasons is that years of segregation create distinct communities which people have ties to and don't always want to leave. That's why minorities are bigger (if that sentence makes any sense) in larger population centers. There are enough to reach critical mass so they maintain an echo of the community they used to belong to. No matter what the law says and how sincerely the majority welcomes people, it's not easy to make the transition. It's even more obvious with immigrant communities who bring languages and cuisines from another country. How many of us are adventurous enough to settle in a place where we'll never hear our native language or eat the food our mother cooked again? (Well with my mother's cooking that would be real easy.)
    No, you've got it exactly backwards. The main reason drugs hurt people is that they're illegal. Most "drug-related deaths" are: People caught in the crossfire of the War on Drugs or in battles between mobsters who only exist because there's a black market to support them; People who get the wrong dose because their drugs don't come with labels telling them how much is in them; People who get drugs they're not expecting because dealers cut them with cheaper but more dangerous stuff like amphetamine or methamphetamine; People who find it difficult to get the drug they want because it's too hard to conceal, like smelly, bulky, urine-tainting marijuana, so somebody sells them something that they hope will give approximately the same high but is more dangerous like meth; People who have the similar experience of finding their drug of choice more concentrated because it's less risky to transport, e.g., crack instead of powder cocaine; People who learn that the entire world has been lying to them about marijuana so they figure they're probably lying about all the other drugs too and they try one.

    Deliberate and accidental misuse of legal prescription and OTC drugs kill about ten times as many Americans as all illegal drugs combined. No one has ever been killed directly by marijuana. I'd rather share the freeway with a million paranoid, right-lane hugging, slow-moving pot-heads, than the usual assortment of finger-stabbing, tailgating, horn-blowing caffeine junkies that are out there every single goddamn morning.

    When L.A. police chief Darryl Gates said about fifteen years ago that he wished he had the legal authority to shoot marijuana smokers, a letter from one of his desired victims was widely published. The point was, "Of course you do. That's the only way you old farts can make the drugs WE use as deadly as the alcohol, tobacco, and caffeine that YOU use!"
    The poison is lies. I'm sad to learn that you've been infected. My mother watched Prohibition destroy America. Women started going to bars. Children were recruited as moonshine runners because the cops would go easy on them. Gangsters were more prosperous than honest businessmen and became more attractive role models. People were being killed by contaminated hooch produced by amateurs. And more people drank during Prohibition than before it. She was a knee-jerk Republican who hated FDR, but till her dying day about five years ago she said she forgave him for all of his "liberal mistakes" because he got Prohibition repealed. And she didn't even like booze. Even she, at a cranky 87, saw that the War on Drugs was just Prohibition II, and it made her cry.
    Exactly. England was eyeing the Confederacy jealously, wanting their cotton. They would have re-annexed them in a second. And the slaves would have been freed instantly because it was already illegal in the British Empire. Lincoln caused Americans to come out of the Civil War believing that it was fought over slavery. The half million dead created an unconscious rift between the black citizens who were presented as the winners and the white citizens who had to bury their dead and began to wonder if it was all worth it. A rift that to this day has not healed. Especially when Brazil, the last holdout and the land of the cruelest slaveholders in the world, abolished it peacefully within thirty years and now they don't even have white people and black people.
    Alternate histories make great stories. Personally I think the entire 20th Century would have been different if Woodrow Wilson had had the strength of character to allow the people to speak out against the US entering WWI. They probably would have prevailed, since A) they were still strongly isolationist and B) there was a still lot of enmity between the US and Britain, half the citizenry would have wanted us to enter on the German side. Instead he jailed the protesters, pulled off the Lusitania scam, and tried to go down in history as the man who united the world, instead of one of the most deceitful megalomanic assholes in the history of our country. If Germany had won WWI, there would have been no humiliation at Versailles, no Third Reich, no paranoid Stalin feeling the need to waste half his nation's GDP on a war machine, no French Indochina ready to fall under the spell of Ho Chi Minh, and China would have remained under the domination of the Japanese, which could hardly have been any worse for them than Mao, and a whole lot better for the rest of us.

    But at the very least, if we had let the eleven southern states have their way, we would not today be continually having the Union flag waved in our faces by people who still fly the Confederate battle flag over their own statehouses but pretend to be more patriotic than we are.
    Who can figure out the Texans. Suffice it to say that they have managed to maintain an isolated power grid. The rest of us could have a blackout that would knock out the entire continent north of the Rio Grande... except Texas would still have air conditioning.
    Most people find it becomes more difficult to commit violence as they age. You'll probably be a vegetarian in ten years if you're not already. And when President Jenna Bush tries to invade France, you'll be carrying a picket sign with the rest of us.
     
    Fraggle Rocker, Aug 16, 2003
    #41

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  3. guthrie

    guthrie paradox generator Registered Senior Member

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    "Power is very attractive to me, and unless I have a change of heart, I am going to "do it." However I have trouble killing insects, and I am still just an adolescent. Am I corrupt? Or will I be?

    If the world is still around in forty years, and I'm at or near its top, we'll check back on that question. Until then...."

    OK, if you get near the top and start taking power too much for its own sake, can we look you up and shoot you? Or just kidnap you and take you for a ride like Scrooge got?
    The major corruptor of young adults is called "reality", also known as a reality check. Its when you realise you arent going to change the world by yourself, and that half the ideas youve had and things youve done dont count for anything. Then its very easy to say "fuck everyone else, I'm looking after number one" forgeting the importance of society to your continued well being. And then you end up believing that people shoudl only be as selfish as htey can, and everything will be OK. But also remember that there has been a lot of damage by people who say they are doing good, but actually doing things for themselves, and those who feel the need to get into other peoples lives and sort them out. Many people like that get into Gvt, and so bring it all into disrepute. Many of the latter go into business, and mess everythign else up for us average joes.

    So what do you want to be?

    (but read some Aldous Huxley if you want stuff to read.)


    "There is a point at which the wealthy become unassailable
    --------------------------------------------------------------------------------



    Possibly. It is possible, however I would like to try to sally them out when I'm older. Or maybe just become one of them. I can feel the ring calling for me...
    "

    Yup- Fraggle rocker is right. One of my friends is a communist who is scared the rich are now getting ready to pull the ladder up behind htemselves and basically take over part of the world for themselves, ro merely more nakedly run it all for their own benefit. And remember, sallying them out is very hard by yourself, if not impossible, theres plenty of ocean or desert to lose a body in. And you can see how important co-option is to prevent people getting in the way, after all, there is a great deal of attraction in having a nice job, stable set up etc, rather than always being on the edge and uncertain about your next job because your on a blacklist, etc etc.

    "I find it hard to believe that there is only fifteen minutes of newsworthy material happening around the world in a day."

    Your dead right. Ive been noticing it more recently. I want to know whats actually going on around the world, in Iraq, Afghanistan, the economic and social stuations in my country and otehrs. Instead we get five minutes on celebrities, or three minutes shot of burning oil wells, without much actual background.

    "How many of us are adventurous enough to settle in a place where we'll never hear our native language or eat the food our mother cooked again? (Well with my mother's cooking that would be real easy.)"

    Quite a few. And in many more cases, its do it or die slowly.

    And fragglerocker is right about the drugs. pot is to a large extent safer than alcohol, how many die from that each year, how many fights, etc, whereas pot heads just sit there and dont bother anyone. My dad would like to legalise cannabis, after 30 years in the police hes had his share of drunks to deal with.
    oh aye, and allegedly it was all banned in part from the fear of competition of hemp fibre to the already established monopolies in the USA.
     
    guthrie, Aug 18, 2003
    #42

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  5. and2000x

    and2000x Guest

    I think you would enjoy Harry Turtledove, the world's best alternate history writer, he writes all sorts of crazy scenarios, like what if the Confederacy allied with the Germans in WWII? I think there was one were Gandhi became a fascist dictator. It's very fun stuff: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/search-handle-form/002-8982671-6788820
     
    and2000x, Aug 18, 2003
    #43

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  7. Pollux V

    Pollux V Ra Bless America Registered Senior Member

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    *inhale*

    True. Although it is barbaric, and virtually every facet of our culture believes it is barbaric, racism is still legal, and rightfully so. People have a right to dislike someone for a stupid reason. I'm not sure exactly how to eradicate racism in the US, but I do know that in most cases, except for perhaps Arab-Americans, it is in the decline, and will likely remain that way.

    Making a transition from culture to culture, language to language, is hard enough, but I think it becomes a bit easier when you're moving into the United States from somewhere else, legally or illegally. Some of the shit I see on conservative forums, about how evil illegal aliens are, how much they're out to steal our welfare, just makes me sick. I'm not sure of the facts, and I don't want to generalize like they do, but I doubt that when an alien moves into the US the first thing on his to-do list is to sign up for welfare. Is there any way of measuring that? Any census'?

    Okay, fine. What happens when you legalize all drugs?

    I've never been against marijuana because, to me, it seems more harmless than tobacco. However crack, heroine, LSD, and many other drugs are extremely addictive and dangerous. They're much worse than cigarrettes. If you start using heroine your life expectancy drops to two years.

    So, look. I'm ready to learn, but I need some numbers and citations if you're going to convince me. How many people are killed by overdosing on drugs as opposed to the other ways that you have described?

    I'm not sure that this is the reason that there is such a cultural difference between some (but not all) blacks and some (but not all) whites. Slavery was different in America from slavery elsewhere in that the blacks were seen as less than human, no better than the muck on your feet, whereas elsewhere, correct me if I am wrong, slaves were seen as equals, albeit unfortunate equals who were at the very least human. They were spoils of war, tributes paid to keep away invaders, while the blacks were abducted from their homes.

    It's possible. But there are far too many variables. If the south had won, everything is automatically immensely different. The future is changed forever, and probably by a great deal. For one, if Stalin hadn't wasted so much money, resources, and good men in WW2, Russian might be the language of science instead of English. He might never have come to power in the first place, WW1 was one of the reasons for the Bolshevik revolution, after all.

    One of Goofyfish's old quotes went something like "there are no warlike people, only warlike leaders." I've met plenty of nice Texans before. It's just the rich guys there that are asswipes, but that's the same anywhere you go on the planet.

    I try to avoid conflict whenever I can. But as for being a vegetarian, mark my words, that's not going to happen. I've considered it before, but I just enjoy the taste of meat far too much. Red meat, chicken, lamb....*drools*...I've grown up in a household that has not only a phenomenal, professional chef as its cook but one that has meat almost every night for dinner. I couldn't live without it, eating meat is almost a part of me. Honestly, it's more of an addiction, and I would rather not be eating animals that were once alive and conscious, but I can't help it, and I don't really want to. If I gave up meat then I would change more than anything else, become a completely different person. Unless, of course, they could actually substitute it with something that tastes exactly the same, and has the same kind of value. They'll probably do it sooner or later. But until then...

    More later. Time to depart.
     
    Pollux V, Aug 19, 2003
    #44
  8. Pollux V

    Pollux V Ra Bless America Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    6,495
    Continued...

    I've already read a little of his stuff. Suffice to say, I think it's ooookay. My friends made fun of him because they felt that he had a stupid name, so naturally that's been engrained into my psyche.

    Second option, please!

    True. Hasn't quite hit me yet. I'd still like to try. But it's very possible that my thoughts will have changed several years down the line. One year from now I'll do an update on this very thread and see if I'm still as young and brighteyed as I am today.

    I'll look into it. Heard about him.
     
    Pollux V, Aug 19, 2003
    #45
  9. guthrie

    guthrie paradox generator Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    4,089
    "Second option, please!"

    OK.

    "True. Hasn't quite hit me yet. I'd still like to try. But it's very possible that my thoughts will have changed several years down the line. One year from now I'll do an update on this very thread and see if I'm still as young and brighteyed as I am today."

    That would be interesting. I'm predicting you'll change most in the couple of years after you leave school and are at college.

    "I'll look into it. Heard about him."

    He was looking at the same sort of problems that I and others now are, except 60 and more years ago. The perennial problems that afflict mankind.

    "Okay, fine. What happens when you legalize all drugs?

    I've never been against marijuana because, to me, it seems more harmless than tobacco. However crack, heroine, LSD, and many other drugs are extremely addictive and dangerous. They're much worse than cigarrettes. If you start using heroine your life expectancy drops to two years.

    So, look. I'm ready to learn, but I need some numbers and citations if you're going to convince me. How many people are killed by overdosing on drugs as opposed to the other ways that you have described?"

    Its at this point that it gets complicated. Your htinking clearly, but from now on it depends on your basic assumptions, ie are you for maixumum personal freedom even at the expense of killing yourself, ie with drugs? Or so you think of them more in an economic fashion, ie a market exists?
    The basic point is that people have been taking narcotic substances for millenia, the problems come when doing so directly affects other people, and in a close knit society it does, whether you being stoned means you arent grinding corn, or you being on crack means you beat up old ladies for money. Therefore, many societies evolve rituals to help contain the problem, or else prohibitions to prevent it. Eg. goign down the pub on a friday or saturday night, or drinking cocoa like the Aztecs, or something. Either way, you end up questioning how much rights "society" has to restrict what someone does because it harms and costs society, compared to the individuals right to do as they pelase with themselves, and to hang with the consequences. Or do you have mercy upon them and want to help rehabilitate them? It is a demonstrable point that more peopel turn to drugs when their life is pointless and dull and dangerous, eg in inner cities, or when destitute and poverty stricken, ie with gin a few hundred years ago.

    Then theres stuff like heroin, which is so clearly a bad thing, that nobody in their right mind would take it. So you need to start creating a society of people in their right minds. Of course, you could argue that these druggies are ruling themselves out the gene pool, but really, genetics doesnt work that simply. Think how many creative people have been on drugs, and think also of whether everyone has the right it life or not.

    damn, am i getting preachy. i need to work on overall comprehendability though.

    some urls, i am having trouble finding all the stuff ive read about this topic over the years:
    http://www.lynnejones.org.uk/drugs.htm
    on social breakdown etc in south wales: http://society.guardian.co.uk/drugsandalcohol/story/0,8150,467009,00.html

    I think the Dutch have tried more leagalised approach to heroin as well as cannabis, and not had much trouble. People have to want to take drugs, have the low self esteem and lesser self control that leaves them vulnerable to pushers.

    useful websites:
    http://society.guardian.co.uk/drugsandalcohol/page/0,8149,728603,00.html

    http://observer.guardian.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,521967,00.html
     
    guthrie, Aug 19, 2003
    #46
  10. Fraggle Rocker

    Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,690
    Re: *inhale*

    Actually racism is in many important ways illegal in the US today. It's illegal to discriminate against someone in employment, housing, education, business. You can dislike somebody for being of a different race but there are very few legal ways to express that dislike. As Hank Hill said on "King of the Hill," "What kind of a country is this where I can only hate a man if he's white?"

    But yes, racism is clearly on the decline. Most people have gotten accustomed to bumping into each other at the office and the supermarket. "Familiarity breeds content." Arab immigrants are going through a bad patch now, just as all foreign-looking people do when our country decides to make war against theirs, but it will pass. Nobody's getting it worse than the French.

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!

    How about personal experience? My wife was a social worker for half her life. The poorest immigrants, the ones against which the redneck hatred is focused, come from countries where there is no welfare and very little private charity. They don't even understand the concept. They come here to get jobs, which is something they do understand. A few of them hear stories about Americans being paid not to work, but they think those are just fairy tales, they can't imagine anything so preposterous.

    Eventually a portion of every demographic group falls on hard times and they discover the welfare system. But immigrant families from poor countries are not disproportionately represented. Her experience was that the biggest welfare cheats were immigrants from prosperous countries who had practiced beating the bureaucracy over there, and thought they'd come try their skill against the big casino. She'd see women stuff $5,000 worth of gold and jade jewelry in their purses in the elevator, and then go apply for free medical care.

    One thing about our welfare system, just like all of our bureaucracies, they reward the clever, the people who know how to fill out the forms just right. There was a question on the medical eligibility form, "Do you own a chicken?" Of course half the Latino families in Los Angeles have chickens, it's just part of the culture. So they'd answer "yes" and disqualify themselves. They thought they were demonstrating a willingness to help themselves by at least producing their own eggs. The government saw them as retards who didn't know when to lie.
    Pretty much what happens now. Millions of people will be killed by tobacco and alcohol, a hundred thousand or so by legal pharmaceuticals, and a few thousand by recreational drugs except marijuana. At the height of the hippie era something like sixty million Americans were regular users of recreational drugs. Now it's about twenty million. That's forty million people who simply grew up, got jobs, had children, went to PTA meetings, and didn't find a place or a need in their life for the drugs any more. Compare that to the recovery rate from alcoholism or smoking. The "addictiveness" of even the worst of the recreational drugs is just one more government lie.
    Bullshit. Before they cracked down on the opiates in the 1930s, lots of middle- and upper-class people were heroin users. Doctors shot heroin and then went in and performed brilliant surgery. Today's "heroin deaths" are 99 percent due to dirty needles and unreliable dosages -- both due to heroin's illicit status, not its inherent properties. LSD is barely a blip on the radar any more, another once popular drug whose users simply quit. I lived in Hollywood during the 1960s and 1970s and saw it all. I never knew or knew of anybody who had one of those ridiculous "bad trips" on acid that the Drug Warriors lie about. Yeah some people had a really bad time and wished they hadn't done it, but after several hours of looking pissed off it wore off. I know there are a few documented cases of bad LSD trips but they have been vastly overblown. Prozac is far more dangerous, I've seen a person have a suicidal reaction with my own eyes.

    You have to put this shit in perspective. You're absolutely wrong in your comparison of illicit drugs to tobacco. None of them, not even meth, which as far as I can tell is flat out the worst of the lot, is as dangerous as tobacco.
    USA 1998 figures:

    Tobacco: 400,000
    Alcohol: 116,000
    Legal pharmaceuticals: 106,000
    Illegal drugs: 19,000
    Marijuana: -0-

    That illegal drug figure does not include gunshots from the War on Drugs. But it does include deaths due to unreliable street dosage and poorly administered syringes. It also includes a lot of people who were found dead with a mix of alcohol and other drugs in their blood. Most jurisdictions put that in the other drug column, not the alcohol. Every high-profile drug death all the way back to Janis Joplin and Jimi Hendrix was a combination of drugs and alcohol. Here's the website:

    http://bbsnews.net/drug-deaths.html

    It cites reliable sources but you may doubt its credibility, so feel free to surf for another. I have been an anti-drug war activist for years and keep up with the stats. These are in line with all the other sources I've seen. I saw one issued by the DEA itself a few years ago that was very similar, but I can't put my hands on it.
    Speaking of slavery throughout history, sure. But if you're talking about slavery in the New World, you're talking strictly about kidnapped Africans. If you're interested, check out the history of slavery in Brazil. The accounts I've seen say that nowhere on Earth were slaves treated as badly and considered more as beasts of burden than in Brazil. The bastards even hung onto the institution until something like 1896. Yet it was abolished peacefully and today Brazil is one of the most thoroughly integrated countries you can find.

    Now if only the Latin American nations could be as nice to their native peoples.
    So you're waiting for Star Trek's replicators like the rest of us.

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    Fraggle Rocker, Aug 20, 2003
    #47
  11. Unregistered

    Unregistered The Original Conservative Registered Senior Member

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    206

    We can harvest and eat and kill and destroy just because it can and it satsifies us..and since what makes us happy is things like that..wealth, sex, power..then it cant be wrong and whatever dies in the process is entriely irrelevant. We are only slaves to our human desires, we can't be guilty of our own nature.
     
    Unregistered, Aug 24, 2003
    #48
  12. korey

    korey Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    65
    lol, yes, it "can't be wrong" can it? Hmmmmmmm.....humans are morons...I can't wait til we are all gone...and it is so amazing how we actually CAN control ourselves, but we all would rather be animalistic whores...oh well :-/
     
    korey, Aug 24, 2003
    #49
  13. kazakhan

    kazakhan Registered Abuser Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    915
    Dirty needles generally spread disease, dirty heroin etc (dealers cutting it with other crap) more often than not is the killer for experienced users.
    You have not had much experience with LSD then i gather. The "Drug Warriors" are not lying. Other than having a bad trip myself, a friend died directly from LSD, he walked straight off the top of a 22 storey building while "day-trippin" and there is nothing overblown about that. I don't know if a certain dosage of LSD can kill but the hallucinations certainly can when taken as real. Of course a lot of people don't have any problems but as with most drugs you can never be sure of exactly what your getting or how much to take particulary for new users.
     
    kazakhan, Aug 24, 2003
    #50
  14. guthrie

    guthrie paradox generator Registered Senior Member

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    4,089
    "We can harvest and eat and kill and destroy just because it can and it satsifies us..and since what makes us happy is things like that..wealth, sex, power..then it cant be wrong and whatever dies in the process is entriely irrelevant. We are only slaves to our human desires, we can't be guilty of our own nature."

    You know, such a statement completely ignores the experiences and desires of most of the people on the globe, who would rather not be killing and destroying. So why pretend its so good?

    As for LSD, I have no personal experience, but I htink the point is that it can get like prescription drugs. youve noticed the hoo haa about seroxat- well, compare that to illicit drugs.
     
    guthrie, Aug 24, 2003
    #51
  15. SergejVictorov

    SergejVictorov Registered Member

    Messages:
    6
    Recent events prove that men are out of control. Take Iraq for example. I've been thinking a lot on this topic and I just can't understand why the US can "play police" and bother with other countries' affairs.

    I don't live in the US so what I'm saying might be wrong. Please correct me in that case.

    I would say that something like the War Against Terror is absolute bullshit. Everyone knows that Iraq is no threat to the US in any case, so why is it possible that Bush can enforce a war without anyone really trying to stop him? Yeah probably the Iraqi suffered of the dictatorship, but I don't believe bombing the whole country is the right way to get rid of a dictator. Everything we got is a lot of innocent victims.

    Just think of the huge expenses that war has caused. It would be enough to feed whole Africa for some time I think.

    Instead of building better power plants and improving electricity in the US, huge amounts of money are put into military research, weapons and stuff like that.

    Why the hell would a man build a hundred times as much nukes as he needs to destroy the whole world? What is it for? Can anyone explain it to me?

    It's a natural phenomenon of intelligent beings that they tend to destroy themselves. That's what scientists say. So why bother when we know it won't change anything? Everything is exactly pre-programmed...

    Men have developed the a-bomb. No mouse would ever build a mouse trap.

    So much about my thoughts. Seems nothing new to you, right? I'm absolutely aware of that. But maybe it's necessary that someone writes down the trivial problems we have right now.
    I think Bush doesn't understand those trivialities. But he should.

    The thread was "humans are slowly killing themselves". And I ask you:
    Can we do anything about it?
     
    SergejVictorov, Aug 27, 2003
    #52
  16. korey

    korey Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    65
    probably not...but oh well..
     
    korey, Aug 31, 2003
    #53
  17. Agent Smith

    Agent Smith Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    103
    How about we go, break up the cities, and start farming. Everyone would grow food for them selves and becme self sustaining. People coudl grow vast fields of weeds (for fuel). People living in unarable land would be more like industrial workers. Scrap money and trade food, products etc. 20-10% of harvests would be required to go giant silo's incase of famine and other calamities. Their would be a few trains here or their but we would go back to using horses. If family gets large, just build "up" and even start growing things "up" its possible. Also, people could utilize aquaculture and grow fish and other animals if their climate is sutible for this.
     
    Agent Smith, Sep 1, 2003
    #54
  18. SergejVictorov

    SergejVictorov Registered Member

    Messages:
    6
    Well...

    It's a good idea, but how are we going to manage it? You can't persuade a prosperous businessman to stop making money and go living on a farm in nowhere. And even if he does, he would probably start to establish alliances between farms after a while. Give 'em some property and they start thinking about money. If we weren't so intelligent we wouldn't have to worry about money.

    I'm not sure I wouldn't act the same way under certain circumstances... capitalism pays, but what else do we have??
     
    SergejVictorov, Sep 1, 2003
    #55
  19. Vortexx

    Vortexx Skull & Bones Spokesman Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    2,242
    Ask the Amish... You need a big boss up there in the sky to keep you in line
     
    Vortexx, Sep 18, 2003
    #56
  20. Quasi

    Quasi Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    50
    A lot of segregation is also tied to economics, and minorities attitudes towards education. Just look at various african americans who are upper middle class to wealthy- you won't catch them living in the ghetto. Unfortunately, poverty feeds on itself. So now we have the MCAS test for school kids, but school funding is based on property taxes in Massachusetts, so poor communities have worse schools. Poverty leads to crime, ill health and every plague of mankind. So to overcome these problems, we need to develop these areas and re-adjust our government spending. The same is true of the environment, the more economic development and free market capitalization, the better we are at protecting the environment. This is why Kyoto is such a total failure, it is counter to what works. As for racism? Give me a break, if it came to me (white male,) and an african american woman, even if she had less experience, most companies would hire her in a heartbeat over me- I probably would not even interview. The same applies to graduate school- the minority will win virtually every time. So in my perspective, we are doing a lot of good things, but nothing is perfect. I feel we have lost perspective- pot is not so evil we have to imprison every smoker. Poverty is not so insurmountable that it cannot be beaten.
     
    Quasi, Sep 18, 2003
    #57
  21. and2000x

    and2000x Guest

    That is the most retarded thing I have heard in a long time. How does free market ensure a better environment in any sense?
     
    and2000x, Sep 22, 2003
    #58
  22. BigBlueHead

    BigBlueHead Great Tealnoggin! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    1,996
    If American Justice is so great, why didn't the US agree to the international criminal court? I thought that sounded pretty fair and egalitarian to me.

    The US actually has a long history of resisting any globalization of power; when they helped to create the League of Nations (if anyone remembers that disaster) they didn't even join it.
     
    BigBlueHead, Sep 23, 2003
    #59
  23. and2000x

    and2000x Guest

    Because up front globalization of the USA would be a disaster, as history has shown for all global powers. Thus the US must do it indirectly through organizations like the UN.
     
    and2000x, Sep 23, 2003
    #60
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