davekinkead

10 ms·

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by davekinkead 14y ago
I think you've got this backwards. The patriot act wasn't a result of direct democracy, but getting rid of it would be much easier under direct democracy. Government involves both the creation and ammendment/removal of statutes. Direct dem
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by davekinkead 14y ago
> You could grant the use of your vote to another citizen or a group of citizens. This idea is common in a lot of new ideas about representation (eg the German Pirate Party's Liquid Democracy http://liquidfeedback.org/ ) yet I'd argue
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by davekinkead 14y ago
Really? Its far from unheard of. http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/security-it/super-bad-first-sta...
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by davekinkead 14y ago
A parliamentary system is one in which the executive and legislative branches are one (EG if the president was a member of congress, and chosen by congress). @lmkg seems to be referring to a proportional electoral system, not parliamentary
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by davekinkead 14y ago
As someone reading this post while working from home on my sunny balcony at 10:30 am and still in PJs, the freedom is worth at least $25k per year.
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by davekinkead 14y ago
Yeah, because high tax rates always discourage entrepreneurship </sarcasm> Norway - with one of the highest tax rates & comprehensive welfare states on the planet - has higher rates of entrepreneurship than the USA does. http:/
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by davekinkead 14y ago
+1 It's not cynicism, its realism which must be reflected in the strategy for change, otherwise failure is inevitable.
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by davekinkead 14y ago
I'd be keen to try it but it seems your email validation only accepts first order domains which kind of rules out anyone using .co.uk, .com.au etc :(
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by davekinkead 15y ago
> If you're going to be working 40+ hour weeks for a boring soul-crushing job, then you might as well get a few perks out of it, such as health insurance. Part of the problem is that health can even be thought of as a 'perk' in the firs
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by davekinkead 15y ago
While not as sexy as fighting SOPA, representatives still need to hear your support for bills like this. Otherwise, opposing bills like http://arstechnica.com/science/news/2012/01/here-we-go-again... will prevail.
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Bill to make open access mandatory(arstechnica.com)
1 points by davekinkead 15y ago|1 comments
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by davekinkead 15y ago
Actually, registration and gas taxes don't even cover the damage cars do to tax payer subsidized roads. The real taxpayer funded contribution to transport is almost identical for public and private transport. The key difference is that car
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by davekinkead 15y ago
I wonder if celebs could apply this ruling to pappazzi? Simply employ 1 pap to photograph the celeb partaking in a typical celeb action (coming out of a rehab centre, cavorting with intern) in typical pap style. Then sue for copyright infr
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by davekinkead 15y ago
What's more terrifying - Having no control over what your representatives vote on (except to vote them in or out) or having binding veto power? Too many people confuse direct democracy with majoritarianism. The same checks and balances tha
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by davekinkead 15y ago
+1 do it now. -1 wife & kids don't matter. We moved to St Anton am Arlberg (Awesome ski resort in the Alps) with a 15 month old & mortgage. Ski by day, work remote by night, best six months in a long time. So good, we are doing an
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by davekinkead 15y ago
Actually, there is significant case law to support this. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gonzales_v._O_Centro_Espirita_B... A christian/amazonian group fought the government to import and consume a schedule 1 narcotic in their ceremonies.
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by davekinkead 15y ago
You are missing the link between rights and duties. If you have a right to bear arms, then in the positive sense I have a duty to provide you with arms and in the negative sense, I have the duty not to stop you bearing arms. I'll assuming
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by davekinkead 15y ago
You are missing Cerf's point. It may be a desirable but its not a human right. What you are describing is negative freedom: no one should stop me from doing X. But this is very different from a human right: something that is inalienable a
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by davekinkead 15y ago
Any discussion of rights without discussing duties is vacuous because rights can't exist without duties ie: My right to X imposes a duty on you to provide or not prevent me from X. So if internet access was a right, what is the correspondi
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by davekinkead 15y ago
There is actually a very strong structural argument for why public goods such as education and health, should be distributed equally: If those in power have to use the same system as those they hold power over, then they have a strong incen
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by davekinkead 15y ago
Actually, its a myth that its a myth that public transport is cheaper (see http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/08111140802369820 ) Once the massive externalities of private motor and road subsidies are accounted for, private motor i
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by davekinkead 15y ago
Direct democracy will never work in a complex system. Having a 300 million person committee is about as close to decision making disaster as you can get. But direct democracy is still the answer IMO. What needs to change first however, is
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by davekinkead 15y ago
Representational democracy also fails for the same reason.
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by davekinkead 15y ago
'In these tragedy-of-the-commons types of scenarios, all can be willing to agree to a change of the rules, so long as no actor gains immediate "unfair" advantage.' That, sadly, is why I am so pessimistic about political change via the curre
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by davekinkead 15y ago
TL;DR The problem wont fix its self. The system will prevent solutions that limit it. Nothing will change until you do something. That something needs to be withing the current rules of the game. What I find most amazing about any analysis
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by davekinkead 15y ago
Did you create any of the following posts? http://news.ycombinator.com/submitted?id=zokier A hyperlink is a form of distribution so you may want to clarify what you mean by 'you shouldn't distribute anything you haven't created yourself f
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by davekinkead 15y ago
If anything, Id say its the kids who understand the normative justifications of copyright better than their elders. As has been previously mentioned, there is a growing disjoint between the legal status of copyright laws and their moral und
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by davekinkead 15y ago
I think this type of learning will be considerably more effective in quantitative subjects than qualitative ones. Maths especially but essentially any subject that has 'right' answers lends its self well to this as content and tests can be
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by davekinkead 15y ago
"He didn't come up with a new and interesting way to sell shit." So now you have to be first to be an entrepreneur? Tell that to Brin & Page.
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by davekinkead 15y ago
Happy to stand corrected on that one. I had thought that autobahn fatalities were worse than Euro average (noting that Germany but it seems that Germany pays no penalty for unlimited motorway speeds.

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