Repeat DUI driver kills cyclist, gets 6 years

[Izits]

Cars don't drive themselves. Neither do roads. Neither one can be inattentive. They can't behave negligently. They can't behave aggressively. They can't attack someone, then lie about it being an accident. They can't speed. They can't be drunk or drugged. They can't feel entitled. They don't misinterpret traffic laws or right-of-way in their favor. They can't decide that their text conversation is worth more than the lives and well-being of others.

This is simply an irrational and ignorant argument. Chalo is constantly telling us how great things are when they're run by the government. So the government takes away our right to make our own roads and we let the government completely run the road network and guess what, it's crap. It's deadly, it's inefficient and costs way more than it should. Does Chalo humbly admit the government did a lousy job? Oh no, he doesn't blame the government, he doesn't blame the roads, he blames the poor saps who had to pay for it all. He blames you and I for having imperfections. Bear in mind that the road network was specifically designed for normal cars with human drivers and all their human faults so he can't say no one expected drivers to make mistakes. The very people who the road was designed to service, that's who he blames.

His solution? Not better roads, not better management, his solution is take away all the cars because the government did such a crappy job at running the roads. And of course he'll say THEN everything will be fine, THEN the government will do a splendid job managing the next round of taking away whatever we have left.

If that isn't the most inane argument, I don't know what is.

 

[Chalo]

I ask you then, what could the cleverest roads, designed by the cleverest people for their own profit, possibly do to mitigate the faults of drivers that I have specified?

Nothing, I think.

The matter stands that since antiquity, only states have ever built good highway systems. Left to the vicissitudes of the markets, we had mud tracks. Then after good state-built highways appeared, we had various tollways that attempted to capitalize on the presence of the existing public highway systems. But they were not improvements upon those public highways. Did they improve drivers' behaviors or keep people from being maimed and killed? They did not.

I don't suggest that roads can't be improved. I only state without reservation that private commercial enterprise has never done so. And that nothing public or private road builders could possibly do would ever make up for the grievous faults of individual drivers.

 

[Dauntless]

It took a lot of government law - and a pretty memorable war - to end it in the US, because the market's desire for it was VERY strong.

Actually it took a lot of government law to keep it going. In the 1830's when you couldn't give your slaves away and they were being set free the government stepped in to stop that. What? You mean the Civil War could have been avoided? No, because the Civil War wasn't about slavery. But the issue was resolving itself before the government decided not to allow that. Of course that really upset the slave state of Virginia, where they had state law protecting the right to set slaves free.

Chalo, don't get all upset the way you do, (I only read this because I became curious what YOU said to piss someone off) but think real hard about the way you use the phrase "Market Process." Of course it was their last breath or they wouldn't have died, right? Slavery was an exercise in supply side economics. It was named after the Slavic people that were so plentiful and that the Greeks/Romans could enslave so easily. Then the European continent thought they were done with it, (The Crusades had slavery as one issue) but those Africans just kept offering a wide selection of Europeans and Africans at giveaway prices. . . . All the while the English government was making a pretty penny selling off their excess 'White Trash' to the colonies. So see if you can use THAT constructively in your surrational arguments. Aren't self driving cars, in fact, enslaved?

Oh, did you know that even after the Civil War the government retained the right to "Hire Out" the exslaves if the government wanted to?

Oh, wait. Did I just inject reality into ANOTHER surrational argument? AGAIN? I wonder what the surrational response to THAT will be?

 

[1JohnFoster]

Yeah, whatever, pompous post-rational goof.

Aren't self driving cars, in fact, enslaved?

Haha! No actually they are devices of enslavement; try one, you'll see. Then again likely you won't understand.
I guess there's no point in trying to enlighten someone spends their time turning cornflakes in to fruitloops.

 

[Dauntless]

Then again likely you won't understand.
I guess there's no point in trying to enlighten someone spends their time turning cornflakes in to fruitloops.

Because haters gotta hate, eh? Even you flakes---er CORNflakes. Too bad I already used that video of the christian demonstrators trying to offer just your kind of enlightenment. I just don't understand how you think your dark ages attitude really could enlighten anything. Enlightenment normally refers to a step FORWARD, not getting knocked backward. I mean I'd ask you to enlighten me on that, but. . . .

 

[billvon]

Actually it took a lot of government law to keep it going. In the 1830's when you couldn't give your slaves away and they were being set free the government stepped in to stop that.

Well, specifically, southern states stepped in to stop that. Big threat to their way of life. In the 1830's the government was composed of both southerners (trying their best to keep slavery going) and the northerners (who were getting more and more outraged by it.) Thus you saw some incoherent law coming out of that sort of a government.

Go back to 1789 and you will see the beginnings of that divide. Even the original US constitution had a provision saying you had to return escaped slaves to their owners - because southerners were, even then, worried that the north would provide a safe haven for their "property." They would not budge on that point, so a compromise was reached.

No, because the Civil War wasn't about slavery.

The Civil War was fought over economics. The South relied on slavery to keep their economy going. The North didn't need slaves, so they saw less barriers to freeing them. The South became very angry when the North tried to free slaves, because this was a direct threat to their economy and their way of life. This led to a war.

 

[spinningmagnets]

I live in Kansas, which was incidentally, quite a battleground over the issue. The southern states didn't mind that the northern states had freedom for all, they did not want a centralized federal government to end slavery in the south. The northern states voted to eliminate slavery for anyone in the US.

How could they accomplish that? By a tally of votes in congress. Kansas was a territory, and had not yet achieved the requirements to achieve state-hood. However, Kansas was headed in that direction. So...how would Kansas vote, once it became a state, and had two senators and several congressmen? Pro-slavery? (Kansas City, Missouri), or...anti-slavery? (Kansas City, Kansas?). The entire region was abroil with conflict.

The Civil war was won by the north because they had industrialized (could build guns and railroads, etc), and the south was sparsely populated (many were slaves) and they depended on agriculture for the majority of their economy.

Why was the north industrialized? the region known as "New England" had a widely varying terrain and consistent snow in the winter. This meant that they had consistent water flows over a significant elevations, and that was the best place to build a high concentration of water-wheel driven factories. New England was a tough place to start a farm, but a great place to build a factory (in the 1700's), the South was the opposite.

Its hard to understand now, but...the American South was highly desirable territory at the time, and jealously fought over. In Europe, land-owners could have the farms worked by peasants. And corrupt laws could be passed to keep the poor in an oppressed societal position, from one generation to he next. When immigrants came to the US, they had a multi-generational value ingrained into them that the only thing worth fighting over was to acquire and own farmland. If you were not the land-owner, you and your children would be hard-working peasants forever.

Alabama, Mississippi, South Carolina...they were all very fertile lands with a long growing season. Why build a factory, and train skilled workers, when farming was so easy, and hey...you could even buy slaves back then?

The North would have struggled if they had depended on farms to try and compete to create commerce, but...the South could have built factories if they wanted.

 

[Dauntless]

Kansas, where the Civil War was fought for years before Lincoln was elected, serves as a cautionary tale for the way Americans 'Support' causes. Church groups sending crates of "Bibles" which contained rifles and ammunition, the worst offender being Massachusetts. Just another example of how some in this country really want to settle their differences.

It all starts with the conservative New England states wanting to dominate the liberal, majority south. The senate NOT being based on population but limited to 2 no matter how big was part of that. Then the South may never have seceeded if not for South Carolina, already known as the 'Nullification State.' 4 of the first 6 presidents came from Massachusetts, it took Washington and Jefferson to break through that.

The interesting thing would have been if the potato famine had occurred before the 'Panic of 1837.' With all the cheap labor available, it would have only increased the desire to get rid of the damn slaves in the south. Already it was costing them more to feed them than they could accomplish, what it all those Irishmen were standing around waiting a chance to harvest for 2 weeks?

But everyone fixates on the idea that the South simply wanted to own slaves. What about the much untalked about fact that free and/or runaway slaves formed some of the worst outlaw gangs since before the revolution? Some had fortifications and fought pitched battles with local militias, in both the north and the south. There was much the south feared about freed slaves. And much that the north feared.

So when the freed slaves form collectives and lease land, (With the bonus money they'd saved while they were slaves, in case you didn't know about that) how do you convince them to keep growing cotton? Much in demand, the cash crop would support them nicely. An important component of causing the Civil War was the government effort to create more farmland in the territories to export grain to Europe, which met with mixed results, in order to topple "King Cotton" as the leading American export. But now even with the tenuous grain prices these black farmers didn't want to grow cotton, they wanted to grow corn, wheat, etc.

Oh, just one more detail to shock you. The freed slaves didn't join the conservative Democratic party. The liberal Republicans pointed out to them that since there were so few Republicans in the south there would be a black majority running for office, etc., in some areas if they were all Republicans. Thus began the era of Black Republicans Vs. Conservative Democrats. For a time, the Black Republicans were winning.

 

[1JohnFoster]

~free and/or runaway slaves formed some of the worst outlaw gangs since before the revolution? Some had fortifications and fought pitched battles
~freed slaves form collectives
~even with the tenuous grain prices these black farmers didn't want to grow cotton, they wanted to grow corn, wheat, etc.

Very interesting Dauntless. I didn't know any of this. Reference link? Book titles?

 

[Dauntless]

Very interesting Dauntless. I didn't know any of this. Reference link? Book titles?

So what you're saying is that in spite of your normal hateful behavior I'm supposed to be ready to believe you're really willing to educate yourself?

Ah, well, I'm a succor for battling ignorance. As for me providing you with one stop shopping to read up, I'm just a history junkie who's read all this dating back to grade school, you learn about this stuff from reading about the various incidents in books on different periods or issues. I've never actually seen a single book that covers this as its' subject. But when you find these varied sources if they're written by proper historians they have sources in the back of the book and you can track down other books, etc.

I assume that CD collection is the same thing as what we had at our public library that I used in a high school report. The KKK is far different than you're led to believe in grade school media reports. Such as when they start realizing that the real reason that these black men act so goofy and shipwreck the case when they're called to testify against Klan members is because they were members themselves. . . .

But one simple link to the way so many things blamed on the KKK actually turned out to have nothing to do with the KKK would be https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Night_Riders