Quote from: Varg on July 30, 2016, 09:11:40 PM

Quote from: Verbatim on July 30, 2016, 09:06:21 PM

Quote from: Varg on July 30, 2016, 09:02:09 PM

Quote from: Flee on July 30, 2016, 06:15:50 PM

Quote from: Naru on July 30, 2016, 06:04:39 PM

Quote from: Flee on July 30, 2016, 04:57:42 PM

Nope.

im guessing its a lot different in europe than here in america.

How so? Privatising prisons is a poor idea both here and in the US. Arguably even more so in the US, as its criminal justice system is already quite dysfunctional and has resulted in the single highest rate of prisoners per capita in the entire world (not counting a single African micro state).

you answered no to the question, so it sounded like you were okay with it

he was answering the question in the body instead of the thread title

oh, you're right

well that's confusing

Yeah, I could've been a bit more clear there.

WE NO SPEAKA DA FRANCEY

BONJUR SPRECHEN THE ENGLISH?

A government backed space program will always be better than a private one.

This is ridiculously untrue.

NASA, as a body which pursues manned space missions, is wildly inefficient and represents a pretty large mis-allocation of funding. All of the money shunted into NASA should be repurposed as grants for the NSF, and NASA should have its role limited to research and liasing with the private sector. Without counting programmes which have the purpose of supporting/improve future manned spaceflight efforts, NASA spends around half of its budget on current human spaceflight efforts. Imagine how much greater basic science output would be if all of that money--which, throughout NASA's history, has been dogged with incentive and informational problems--wasn't being thrown away because MUH FRONTIER.

NASA has a history of massively underestimated the costs of its own projects, simply because its an easier way to acquire funding. Ideally the funding of unmanned space exploration would be handled in much the same way the US handles healthcare research funding; which is a way which doesn't lend itself to massive, inefficient bureaucracies that try to do things decades before it makes any sense economically.

I have no problem with manned spaceflight in principle, but not on the public's payslip.

Politico.

The European Commission’s budget and human resources chief said Wednesday she would order a “freeze” on the hiring of men in the institution unless some of its departments gave more top jobs to women.

Kristalina Georgieva, a Commission vice president who is sometimes referred to as the EU executive body’s chief operating officer, has sought to increase the number of women in senior positions in the institution to 40 percent by 2019. But after a meeting of commissioners Wednesday at which she presented a report on progress toward that goal, she said more needed to be done.

“My determination is that if it is necessary, I will freeze appointments,” Georgieva told POLITICO. “Some departments have to reach their targets, and if they don’t, sanctions are coming.”

Georgieva said that currently about 30 percent of Commission senior managers and 33 percent of middle managers are women. She said that many Commission departments, including for communication, home affairs, justice, research and innovation, had hit the 40 percent target. However, the Commission is far behind its targets in several powerful departments, including competition, environment, single market and the EU’s anti-fraud office.

Quote from: Mordo on July 28, 2016, 06:38:58 PM

Just to play devil's advocate a group of like 7 women isn't exactly the best sample size.

using common sense is not playing devil's advocate

It's more of an anecdotal indicator than statistical evidence; it's not as if this is a fringe position. Camile Paglia, a feminist, has said before that typically 'masculine' traits lent themselves to better facilitating the development of society than typically 'feminine' traits.

A Western military actually supporting some kind of provisional government and not pussying out because "BOO HOO 5,000 OF OUR SOLDIERS HAVE DIED" is better. . .

Meanwhile 17,000 of the natives we were fighting alongside died trying to beat back the same scumbag theocrats.

I think rotting in a cell for the rest of your life is a far greater punishment than taking the easy way out

It's not about punishment.

Making people rot in a cell is actually quite barbaric.

Anyone else find it bizarre how the Democrats are the ones banging their chest saying this country is great, and Republicans are saying otherwise?

Conservatism is the new counter-culture.

But the solution is to say, "god may or not be real but here are a set of vague abstractions we KNOW aren't real. Let's worship those instead"?
I don't think so.

Human society is only possible because of fictions we have created; shared "delusions" that we sign up to. It's the reason humans are able to co-operate in such large numbers. The fact that we can agree on inter-subjective fictions is an advantage, not a flaw, of the human species.

It seems like it always comes down to "cooperate because it is useful to you", which isn't really morality at all.

And "obey or you will be punished" is?

"This is barbaric. How could they slaughter people in the name of religion just for having a different religion?

Let's slaughter people in the name of religion because they have a different religion in response."

LOL GUYS

ALL RELIGIONS ARE EQUAL

Islam is an abtsract concept incapable of physical action.

Nobody's claiming it is.

The point is that it's an effective motivator of undesirable actions for a large group of people.

wouldnt throw all of their weight behind a candidate theyve been grooming for years.

I think the question people are driving at is "should the DNC have that much weight in the first place?"

It's not as if they played it cleanly.

You don't have to respond to all of the above

Looking over it, we really don't seem to disagree on much. The most telling comment was Weale's support for stimulus in order to avoid a recession. I can't speak as to how much stimulus the government will pursue, but I would be incredibly disappointed if it were small/non-existent, especially given the noises coming from the government.

Say you were given complete control over the UK's policy on matters of taxes / trade / foreign relations / investment and so forth. What do you think would be the best thing to do?

Tax reform is an area with massive potential for pro-growth reform. In an ideal world, we would abolish corporation tax, capital gains tax and income tax; then replace them with a highly progressive consumption tax and a tax on the value of unimproved land. Of course, this won't happen, but the government really couldn't go amiss by lowering corp tax and CGT (although given her "blue-collar Tory" talk, I'm not so sure how May will approach these issues). There's also a lot of space for structural reforms regarding education, healthcare, planning etc. but given the focus on Brexit these will likely take a back-seat; but May has stated she doesn't want her government to be solely defined by Brexit.

Trade's easy. Abolish all import tariffs, try to negotiate tariff-free access for goods and services to the Single Market, come up with some kind of fairly liberal framework for high-skilled immigrants to come here from all over the globe to live and work. FTAs with any country who wants one. Will it happen? Well, we'll see, but any move towards expanded free movement of goods and services with any country/trading bloc would be a positive.

There's not really much to say for foreign relations. Johnson will be the least important Foreign Secretary we've had, but even over this last week I feel as if he's been too high-profile. I wouldn't say drop him, but Liam Fox should come out of the woodwork and start playing a much bigger role. Although his hands will probably be tied with the EU negotiations.

Investment needs to happen in order to boost productivity, which has been poor since the recession and is the underlying cause of slow growth. Investing in transport infrastructure--like HS2--should be a secondary concern, and we should focus on investing within the cities of the Midlands and the North as opposed to between them. Education reform could also significantly help in this area, as well as housing construction. I doubt the government will go mad, but with Osborne gone it's pretty clear austerity will be pushed to the back of the queue in terms of policy considerations, which is good at this point in time. I never hated Osborne, but defining your success by achieving some arbitrary fiscal target with no reference to the economy's performance was always stupid.

Anything you feel I've missed out?

Quote from: Mordo on July 26, 2016, 01:01:43 PM

Not really surprising. Bernouts are just as cancerous as Trump supporters.

>he probably supports Gary "dude weed lmao" Johnson

SICK BURN BRO

A couple of high-ranking British military officers have said war with Russia by 2017 is actually a possibility.

That said, Russia has been doing shit like flying warplanes in British airspace, conducting wargames, engaged in mass mobilisation of troops etc. for a few years now. Is this an escalation? Sure, but Putin is a grade-A sabre rattler.

Wouldn't surprise me if he tried to pull the same kind of shit he did with Ukraine against a couple of other Baltic states, though.