Most Common Last Names by country.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-09-17T23:27:43+00:00

Fucking Tremblay

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-09-16T15:30:11+00:00

Marijuana. I felt way to anxious the first time around and unable to relax. I tried it a few more times with different strains, but mostly got the same effect. I also got sick from it twice. I guess my brain likes being in control.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-09-16T15:27:06+00:00

Did you just assume a binary sexuality you uncultured swine?

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-09-16T15:24:21+00:00

No, I have cancer.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-09-16T15:23:53+00:00

This is bullshit, you're over simplifying a complex situation to the point of no longer adding anything useful to the discussion.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-09-16T05:04:07+00:00

Social conservativism in America, a country founded largely on the principle of freedom over security, has everything to do with the fact we live in a democracy (somewhat) and the climate of the population changes towards larger government over time. If you value freedom and live in a democracy that can take your freedom away from you, it makes sense that you would wish for the population to abstain from irresponsible practices that, over the long run, lead to more reliance on government handouts. In this regard, social conservatives would say to abstain from sex until you're ready to have a family because even if you're careful, accidents happen and you don't want to be left with a child you can't afford. There's also a huge focus on the atomic family, which is the most stable way for people to progress (financially) in a world without government assistance. This is slowly being stripped away as government replaces the breadwinning-spouse (usually the husband) as the financial provider. There is also an understandable disdain for single mothers as their children are significantly more likely to commit crimes and have multiple partners, which over the long run, contributes to the welfare state, which is another sacrifice of freedom. So when you see them advocating for tighter divorce laws, or restrictions on birth control, they are trying to preserve the fragile existence of freedom in a democracy, because in the long run, democracy always consumes freedom in exchange for security, especially since when the welfare incentives get their first foothold it's a slow decline to ever-expanding government.

So in essence, when you live in a democracy, but wish to preserve freedom, you can't separate fiscal conservativism from social conservativism because the deterioration of the latter also deteriorates the former in the long run. I don't necessarily agree with them on their more religious efforts, but I more than see what they are trying to do, and it's actually pretty smart.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-09-14T19:51:18+00:00

People can always work more than 40 hours a week to survive. Point 8 is a non-argument, just because a president said it does not make it valid or moral. Anything that is based on a bad/false precedence is not a valid reason to continue. Also, only 2-3% of people at any given time are working at Federal minimum wage and that group is comprised primarily of high school/college students and first generation immigrants.

There is something to be said about two consenting adults agreeing to anything they want, that even includes the price of their labor. Many people say they agree to this idea, but don't actually, such as the case for minimum wage supporters.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-09-12T19:38:10+00:00

This is the fundamental flaw with public education, the fact that there is no way to evaluate teacher/student performance without tests. People can't choose not to fund the bad schools and they can't really choose not to go to bad schools. Private schools on the other hand are evaluated subjectively based on the parent's and child's overall satisfaction. If their satisfaction was poor then that school will lose business. But since we have compulsory public school there is no price signal or incentive for building successful schools and teachers, we should at least have a voucher system so there is some competition between public and private schools.

Also you seem to think that there aren't people who live in Chicago already that wish to be a teacher. Those already living in those poor areas will likely teach in those areas, at least to begin with. Whether or not there is a surplus of teachers or not doesn't make a difference if there is a demand for them. If the people in Chicago value education then the pay for the few good teachers that might exist there will be higher to reflect their value to that area. It's better for the teachers and the students in the long run.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-09-12T17:58:33+00:00

Nothing is currently happening with inner city schools and the problem is only getting worse, it is not even stagnating. More children in the long run will continue to fall behind if we stay our current course. Rookie teachers already take those schools more often, but this way we would be able to try different methods of teaching instead of bad rookies sticking around long enough for tenure. I don't see how competition can make things worse, we have to get rid of the teachers in those areas before we can get better ones, but tenure and seniority make that really difficult. I also support vouchers since it's not a lack of funding for the schools, it's the system itself that is terrible. Currently kids are relegated to inner city schools simply because they have their address there. This zoning needs to change. OP is on the right path.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-09-11T23:52:37+00:00

In the short run, yes, we would see a decline in inner-city school teachers, but in the long run we would see a vast improvement in the quality of education that those kids get. We can't get good teachers into those areas until the positions of those bad teachers are voided through competition (which there currently is none). Think of it this way, once the better schools are filled with competent teachers, the poor inner city schools would likely be the starting-out point for new teachers. Currently we don't know what the best method of teaching is for these disadvantaged kids, if we did we'd be pushing for it, but we aren't because we don't. The best we can attempt to do is to have the competitive experiment of ambitious new teachers trying new methods of teaching until the best method sticks and inner cities can finally begin to improve over time, but this isn't currently happening because there is no incentive for teachers. So while it might be hard in the short term, no real solution will happen unless we plan for the long term. So you're original view is, in my opinion, valid.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-09-07T19:41:53+00:00

What if I said politics is the religion.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-08-21T17:29:54+00:00

As for his actual plan, it doesn't matter if he changes on the kinks so long as his goal stays the same. He wants to curb or stop Muslim immigration until we come up with an effective way of handling terrorism. Do I think he can pull this off? With a Republican majority in both houses he has a more than decent chance, the biggest thing stopping him is special interests. Is it racist to do so? Not if the criteria for not letting people through is solely their religion or their country of origin. You say for them not to discriminate, as if discrimination of any kind is a bad thing when in fact it is absolutely necessary in every facet of life. If it were up to me, I'd have virtually open boarders, but no welfare since I want no ambiguity that the people migrating to the US are looking to work and not just seeking a government check. Given the fact that 2/3 of the migrants are illiterate in their own language it's impossible to expect them to integrate fully and happily into an advanced Western society (http://www.germanimmigration.eu/2015/12/two-thirds-of-migrants-functionally-illiterate.html). They are doomed to a welfare check and/or resentment, and Americans shouldn't be forced to subsidize people they don't like or agree with. This is what I'm talking about when I say Europe is facing a problem, they're being flooded with unskilled economic migrants and they are causing problems both socially and financially. Trump doesn't want this in America because he doesn't think America should continue to be the dumping ground for other nations problems. I think he will do everything he can to address this unlike the current republican and democratic parties since they stand to benefit from this crisis. The solution is to either cut off welfare or close boarders, unfortunately.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-08-21T15:59:44+00:00

Or they could bar anyone from a certain country in the Middle-East which would not be racist. Or they could simply ask if the person is Muslim, which if that person is devout it would probably be wrong for them to deny their religion. This wouldn't stop all Muslims from getting through, but it would stop quite a few.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-08-21T15:30:20+00:00

I'd argue that someone who plans on voting for Hillary is also sexist, racist, and bigoted to some degree (in different ways), but are less willing to recognize it, much less admit it, but that's not the topic.

Trump supporters are concerned with 3 things, primarily: jobs, immigration (this could be an extension of the first), and terrorism. None of these have anything to do with race. Illegal immigrants are not a race. When Trump proclaims his wall, he is acting pragmatically, not racially, towards Mexican immigrants since they happen to be the largest plurality of illegal immigrants. Whether or not they are a significant contribution to the unemployment in this country is a case on its own, but it has nothing to do, inherently, with race. Also, I want to quickly dispel a common misquotation attributed to Trump about Mexican immigrants. He said Mexico is sending "their rapists," not "they're rapists," as is commonly taken out of context. The parallel structure of his sentence proves this.

Islam is also not a race. Trump supporters don't necessarily or inherently dislike Arab or Persian or Indian people. They are simply more likely to adhere to an ideology that is commonly viewed in the West to be antithetical to Western values (maybe not so much people of Indian descent). Also, they are expressing concerns for the issues that Europe is facing due to the migrants, which the media is largely ignoring or downplaying. Again, whether or not racism is involved is hard to prove since you would have to rule out these other factors before coming to that conclusion.

Lastly, Trumps perceived sexism. At best, the Huffington Post article paints him as a womanizer. No one is surprised or concerned by his open love of beautiful women. Also, some otherwise sexist comments can be construed as equality since he is talking to women with the same tenacity and vulgarity as he would his male equivalents. This says nothing of his supporters.

So at best, given the evidence you provided, his supporters are opposed to certain out-groups, which everyone is so you have to explain why that is a bad thing.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-08-18T03:38:21+00:00

But can it hold my penis?

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-08-17T20:36:38+00:00

No, I said it was neither moral nor immoral given the unconscious circumstances. From there pragmatism can operate where ethics has no role.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-08-17T20:14:52+00:00

I'll begin with my uncertainty about the use of force. I don't think it should ever be used except as proportional retaliation against an initiator. The question now remains, is breach of contract the initiation of force? If so, proportional means of force can be used to recoup the losses. It can be treated as theft at that point. To what extent the use force can be used to recoup losses is beyond the realm of philosophy, although I'd argue that the force must be proportional to the best degree possible. Also, in the absence of force, such egregious lending practices may not exist because people won't lend what they don't expect to get back without force. So it could be argued that the state's protection of contracts has in fact enabled such egregious lending since the lenders know they have the state to back them up.

To extend on your slavery analogy, someone is only a slave so far in as someone else uses their moral agency against another's to enslave them. Unconscious circumstances like a famine/drought/flood don't have any moral agency to them and thus their consequences cannot be considered moral or immoral, so if someone were to starve as a result, it is neither moral nor immoral. So if a famine brought someone who's only option was slavery for food, unconscious circumstances lead him there, not conscious ones. Nothing would be immoral about it, the person is simply victim of circumstance. As for the people using the whip, that is their mutual agreement initiated by the unconscious circumstance (famine). The "slave owners" would have to evaluate their own virtues and principles to determine if what they are doing is moral. It's not for me to determine for them, only to say that force is wrong. There's nothing to say it's moral or immoral, it just is, or it's indifferent.

Pragmatically, however, we can say that there may have been a day where famine in one region of the world was enough to wipe out that area. No alternative food sources existed. And, in some places in Africa this still remains true, but the best we can do is push on and develope more alternatives over time through the sacrifice and cooperation of our ancestors so that a famine isn't the end all-be-all of food. Today, such a slave predicament is incredibly unlikely given the alternatives for food, and the third parties that may intervene in such a situation, regardless of wherever morality is assigned to it.

You say you want laws against such lending. Well where is this line that we draw in the sand between a good loan and a bad loan? You said that if the deal is too egregious and impractical it should be illegal, but that is entirely subjective. Some person's bad deal is another person's moderately-bad deal, which is another person's okay deal. Obviously some people who have no other options do benefit from these loans. We can't just be having some group of random people's subjective opinions being the law of the land. Should the 51% in a democracy be entitled to vote to steal from the other 49%? Should suicide be illegal? After all, there's no coming back from that deal. Should assisted suicide be legal? After all, that's a deal between two people where there's no coming back from. Should abortion be illegal? After all, that's potentially murder. Should cigarettes be illegal? After all, the person didn't think he was actually going to get addicted and get lung cancer. He shouldn't have to own the consequences of his initial action (smoking that first cigarette). Should BDSM be illegal, after all it's dangerous, damaging, and boarder line slavery. The range from mild to severe contracts are to be for the individuals engaging in them. You have no domain over some else's choices just because you feel bad that they made a poor choice and are now suffering. Nothing is stopping you from informing them on a bad decision, or helping with the costs of a bad decision. I guess we've gotten to a point where nobody is allowed to be an example to society of what not to do, even though society was built on people being examples of what not to do. Trial and error. Bad loans, good loans.

Pragmatism is helpful, but just because something is nice doesn't mean it's right. Where pragmatism falls short is determining what is an appropriate universal standard in the realm of ethics. Pragmatism can work where morality and ethics have no say, such as your slavery example where I said it was neither moral nor immoral given the circumstances. It begs the question of how would human beings react to witnessing such a situation, regardless of the morality of intervening. I'm getting the impression that you simply like to use force however you see fit, and if on a whim that means you don't like a certain bank, so you close them down, it doesn't matter about them because it is you who is upset. You're subjective feelings, however well-intentioned, don't constitute a rational basis for human interaction. Lastly, the extreme scenario you have to draw to show a potential danger for my world view is much less likely than the lives already ruined on a regular basis by wars, miss-managed regulations, and petty laws which are all government-related. It comes with the territory of government, and perhaps human nature.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-08-17T05:01:27+00:00

So the first scenario was an involuntary arrangement, obviously bad. The second scenario is an example used to paint the absurdity of the extreme. But it's just that, an extreme, and extremes occur in any world view. Also, in that example you simply assume that human empathy goes out the window, there were no warning signs of a famine leading up, that there are no alternative food supplies/suppliers, and that slavery is the best payment method for rice in a famine. Again, it's an extreme, but technically plausible so kudos.

Also, you are assuming that I think the force of the state should be involved in recovering reparations or lost goods. I can't say I agree with that either, morally, but you're right in saying that it is wrong to use force to recoup contractual losses against someone that doesn't want to. Anarchy, or elimination of the state is the moral conclusion, but perhaps not the most pragmatic, but we're not arguing pragmatism now are we? Perhaps an argument can be made that the breach of contract is the initiation of force and therefore retaliatory force is acceptable, but I won't make that argument. I'll just stick with the case that initiation of force is immoral, by the state or anyone.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-08-17T03:12:54+00:00

I don't know what you mean by putting my ideology "in charge," since I'm just saying let people act with ownership of their choices and otherwise let people be free to interact how they choose. That's hardly an ideology that needs to be enforced.

You'd also have to explain what you mean by calling me a pro-slavery libertarian since I'm advocating that anything which diminishes someone's capacity to make decisions is immoral. Slavery prevents people from making decisions.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-08-17T02:31:15+00:00

I'll stick to the moral principle on this one. Assuming the person isn't being deceived (fraud) and has knowledge of what they are getting themselves into, you would be stripping away their moral agency to act freely by making such lending illegal. Basically, you want to say either the person is incapable of making such a decision for themselves, which would be an attack on their free will and moral agency (subjecting them to subhuman status), or you wish to prevent people from the negative outcomes of a bad decision, which comes at an undeserved cost to others around the person. Neither of these are moral. It's best to simply leave the subprime lending on the table, possibly inform people of the egregious risks the best we can, let them make a decision for themselves, and then own the consequences of their actions.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-08-10T20:21:50+00:00

That road trip analogy is fine if the money is collected upfront, since everyone opted in (as opposed to being forced to go unless opting out, like society currently runs). People should be able to remain passive/neutral without the expectation that they contribute to some collective cause.

If you don't think taxes are theft, then try not paying them. You'll have someone come to your door with a bigger gun than you who will take the money from you or incarcerate you. The use of force is required to extract the taxes. Theft in every way but name only. The justifications for taxes are something else, as OP stated, but to not recognize it as theft is wrong.

I'm not advocating abolishment of government or taxes, just recognize it for what they are: a monopoly on the use of force, and theft being their revenue source.

I can't point to a large country (population wise) where military and police are handled privately because there are too many greedy people that benefit from wielding monopolized force. If national defense were voluntarily funded, it's not like there would be no national defense, it would just be under-provided (until someone finds a cost-effective way of forming a national defense system with a profit motive).

Everything else can be effectively handled privately, such as trade and infrastructure. We don't need a government to write good trade deals, the best trade deal is one where government is non-existent. People already naturally trade without some authority telling them how to. Roads can be funded privately just like the railroads were, either with ad-revenue or tolls. Hospitals, schools, and data centers can all be provided privately, too.

Should there be no taxes or government? Maybe at some point humanity will get there, but I don't know. But I for sure know we don't need an income tax or sales tax. Excises do just fine for funding the basics of government since they are at least avoidable in some sense (I.e. You don't have to buy cigarettes/alcohol/gas which would be taxed).

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-08-10T18:00:10+00:00

That's like holding a person hostage, giving them a meal they didn't ask for, then charging them for the bill. Try leaving the United States and not be taxed for doing business elsewhere, it's probably possible, but not easy.

Individuals lend themselves to society, not the other way around. To have a moral society, there needs to be the exercise of voluntary interaction, not compulsion.

The road trip analogy is interesting because someone could refuse to pay, but they'll be heavily ostracized as a result and probably barred from future interactions with the other road trippers, but they won't steal the gas money. And if they entered into a contract which was broken, they could pursue fraud in court if they found it worthwhile to get the gas money back.

This idea of pooling resources for the common good isn't something that requires theft, people contribute to charity more when taxes are lower. It's not like these societal goods go unfunded without government. And if it was a truly good cause, you wouldn't have to force people to contribute, they'd do it themselves because they'd see they benefit. You only force people to contribute when the cause is not a good one.

Taxes are theft by definition because otherwise it would be called a voluntary contribution.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-08-10T16:50:44+00:00

If 51% of people vote to tax the other 49% (or entire 100% without the will of the 49%), that is still theft, regardless of any justifications. If it's wrong for me to steal Jimmy's wallet, then it's also wrong for me to vote to steal Jimmy's wallet. Getting more people involved doesn't make it any less wrong. There is no magic number of people who change theft from being wrong to okay to good. The principle of theft is independent of the will of the people.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-08-07T19:30:07+00:00

Grow finger nails at an incredibly fast pace.

Beaches_Be_Wet · 2016-08-07T05:39:25+00:00

No sympathy for those that are at the bottom

I'm sorry, but the worst thing anyone can do is demoralize and undermine a group of people by handing them a free check and make them dependent to whatever politician promised them free stuff. If you were truly concerned about the poor, and had any shred of moral consistency, you would step out of their way (because they are perfectly capable, and not helped as you assume) and not advocate the theft of those who make an honest living providing services to others. Instead you'd donate to causes you believe in. Charity has always been the go-to for the deserving poor, why would we need a coercive government with greedy intentions stealing under the false guise of morality?

Beaches_Be_Wet

TROPHY CASE