[QUOTE=Drake;1092347]And your logic is flawed. Again, causation is the key here. Correlation does not equal causation. Come on. That’s statistics 101. By your OWN logic, Africans should be banned as well.[/QUOTE]
I’m discussing it spreading, ie the cause of the infection entering the body. HIV/AIDS is spread much easier by homosexuals as opposed to heterosexuals.
Of I didn’t say they CAUSE the disease. They just spread it faster than us normal people. 
[QUOTE=BJJ-Blue;1092352]I’m discussing it spreading, ie the cause of the infection entering the body. HIV/AIDS is spread much easier by homosexuals as opposed to heterosexuals.
Of I didn’t say they CAUSE the disease. They just spread it faster than us normal people. ;)[/QUOTE]
And you can quantify that with what data?
[QUOTE=BJJ-Blue;1092352]I’m discussing it spreading, ie the cause of the infection entering the body. HIV/AIDS is spread much easier by homosexuals as opposed to heterosexuals.
Of I didn’t say they CAUSE the disease. They just spread it faster than us normal people. ;)[/QUOTE]
Quantify. And from something valid, thanks.
[QUOTE=BJJ-Blue;1092276]Agreed. I believe I even pointed that out myself.
But it still begs the question, why are some laws passed by the “majority rules” standard ok, while others are not?
And I’m serious here. At least 2 of you are on record saying the Government can ban certain light bulbs, toilets, washing machines, etc, but are not ok with them banning gay marriage. I want one (or both) of you to explain to me the difference.[/QUOTE]
Really, it’s not such a hard thing to grasp. As an American, I am both a citizen of the State and an individual. As such, each has to make compromises.
As a citizen of the State, the State is within it’s rights to dictate certain things to me (how fast I can drive, no sex in public places, which countries my taxes pay to bomb, restricting substances that cause harm or disease, etc…) These are things supposedly decided for the collective good.
But as an individual endowed with inalienable rights, there are certain things the State has no right to dictate to me (what I eat, how I raise my kids, my choice of profession, religious preference, who I marry, etc…) These are things supposedly left to my rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of my happiness, whatever that may be.
[QUOTE=David Jamieson;1092369]And you can quantify that with what data?[/QUOTE]
I’ll do it when I get home. I’m at work and don’t think that surfing for info on this topic would be a wise idea.
Speaking of quantifying assertions, can you please show me where the Federal Reserve is a private corporation? 
[QUOTE=MasterKiller;1092447]Really, it’s not such a hard thing to grasp. As an American, I am both a citizen of the State and an individual. As such, each has to make compromises.
As a citizen of the State, the State is within it’s rights to dictate certain things to me (how fast I can drive, no sex in public places, which countries my taxes pay to bomb, restricting substances that cause harm or disease, etc…) These are things supposedly decided for the collective good.
But as an individual endowed with inalienable rights, there are certain things the State has no right to dictate to me (what I eat, how I raise my kids, my choice of profession, religious preference, who I marry, etc…) These are things supposedly left to my rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of my happiness, whatever that may be.[/QUOTE]
You’re right.
But what we disagree on his how much than can legislate. I feel what washing machine I use is my business. You don’t. I think what car I drive is my business. You don’t. I think what toilet I use is my business. You don’t. I think it’s the parents business what they feed their kids. You agree with me on that one.
I just want to know why you say the Government needs to stay out of our bedrooms in terms of sexual acts and abortion, but has every right to dictate what lighting we can use in said bedrooms.
[QUOTE=BJJ-Blue;1092466]I just want to know why you say the Government needs to stay out of our bedrooms in terms of sexual acts and abortion, but has every right to dictate what lighting we can use in said bedrooms.[/QUOTE] Our energy policy is a National Security issue. Issues of National Security defer to the State.
Gay marraige and abortion (which I have already stated should be regulated after the 1st trimester, anyway) are personal issues.
If you cannot find that data without causing issues with using a work computer, then what does that tell you about your source?
Peer-reviewed journals or government statistics. Anything else is laughable from an academic standpoint. Because… how do you know they aren’t just making up the research and the results if it isn’t peer reviewed (government stats are peer-reviewed, typically)?
In other words… it sounds like an excuse. You can’t Google this and post something from a questionable website. This is a very cut and dry scientific matter.
Resources are often zero sum games. There is a quantifiable amount of oil, tungsten, steel, light heavy metals, etc.
The light heavy metals in our phones and hand held computers are mostly from China, which has had to announce the cutoff of supplies do to coming shortages. We can find some locally, but these elements are, by definition, not plentiful on our planet, so they will run out.
Even the more common elements, when facing usage by the massive population of world consumers, approach shortages.
Recycling of those materials from previously manufactured items costs further resources, leading not to more of anything, but ever less of each material that we can afford to reclaim.
Since excess power usage means a combination of use of gas, coal, and nuclear power, unnecessary usage can have an impact on the society at large.
The founding fathers were never at odds with the idea that members of society give up certain rights in exchange for being part of society, and largely those rights were the rights to do things that harmed the society at large or could harm it.
To put it in the modern bombastic paradigm, wasteful energy use is a direct payment to a suicide bomber.
[QUOTE=MasterKiller;1092477]Our energy policy is a National Security issue. Issues of National Security defer to the State.[/QUOTE]
I disagree it’s a National Security issue. MK, even those passing the laws don’t use that resoning.
[QUOTE=Drake;1092489]If you cannot find that data without causing issues with using a work computer, then what does that tell you about your source?
In other words… it sounds like an excuse. You can’t Google this and post something from a questionable website. This is a very cut and dry scientific matter.[/QUOTE]
I’m not gonna risk it. Typing certain words in a search engine could cause me trouble.
And it’s no excuse. How can you even suggest that considering I said I’d post the data later? It’s not I did like Jamieson does and flat-out refuse to source my assertions.
Economics is not a zero sum game, but it requires resources, the primary ones of which are zero sum(conservation of matter). Recycling requires resources, and reclaims, but does not create, resources, so that the resources available in a form we can use will constantly diminish. Thus, economics, especially free trade, cannot avert loss of resources. Only by adbicating rights for the good of society, a political idea the founding fathers were well versed and never raised any notable objections to, an idea that educated Westerners of their era considered one of the cornerstones of a functionaing society, do such problems not occur: by nature, we have absolute rights, in free trade, we have absolute commercial rights, to act in a society and receive its benefits, we abdicate rights that would harm its members, to not run out of resources, we must abdicate some commercial rights and consumer rights.
[QUOTE=BJJ-Blue;1092492]I disagree it’s a National Security issue. MK, even those passing the laws don’t use that resoning.[/QUOTE]
That’s irrelevant, the existence of such laws is predicated on a legal reasoning that is based on, among other things, consumer protection and national security; whether the lawmakers pushing this one recognize that fact or not, they are still laws of that same ilk, and they exist and are constitutional based on that legal reasoning.
[QUOTE=BJJ-Blue;1092352]I’m discussing it spreading, ie the cause of the infection entering the body. HIV/AIDS is spread much easier by homosexuals as opposed to heterosexuals.
Of I didn’t say they CAUSE the disease. They just spread it faster than us normal people. ;)[/QUOTE]
For a hetero man to get HIV through vaginal contact, other STDs causing open lesions usually have to be present.
A woman’s risk of acquiring the AIDS-causing virus (HIV) from an infected male sex partner is nearly 18 times a man’s risk of contracting it from an infected woman.
KC, you will never convince me that the Founders would want the Federal Government to tell us what light bulbs, school lunches, washing machines, cars, and lawn mowers we can and cant buy/use. Notice they put the 10th Amendment in the Constitution. Read that, then tell me they would disagree with me.
[QUOTE=BJJ-Blue;1092532]KC, you will never convince me that the Founders would want the Federal Government to tell us what light bulbs, school lunches, washing machines, cars, and lawn mowers we can and cant buy/use. Notice they put the 10th Amendment in the Constitution. Read that, then tell me they would disagree with me.[/QUOTE]
One thing the Founding Fathers were clear on is that America isn’t a Christian nation, but some Americans want to force the rest of us to live otherwise, too.
[QUOTE=BJJ-Blue;1092532]KC, you will never convince me that the Founders would want the Federal Government to tell us what light bulbs, school lunches, washing machines, cars, and lawn mowers we can and cant buy/use. Notice they put the 10th Amendment in the Constitution. Read that, then tell me they would disagree with me.[/QUOTE]
The tenth ammendment did not do away with the idea of implied powers, and the commerce clause alone allows for it.
It does not help your argument when you try to make it sound more ridiculous than it truly is. Had you suggested to the founding fathers that it should be each americans right to use light heavy metals beyond the nation’s capacity to obtain them, and potentially prevent future access, and explained to them(who had no knowledge of the topic, but understood resources in their time) that the economy was based, in many ways, on the technology these light heavy metals are required for, I seriously doubt they would have allowed the use of them to endanger the society itself. In their time, they could not have counted on the military power we have now to ensure unrestricted oil use, so the idea that such a necessary item, without reasonable access to which the whole economy would collapse, would be allowed to be ****ed away for individual amusement is questionable.
The founding fathers did believe in the social compact, which implied abdication of some rights by all in order to avoid the state of war they believed was the state of nature, a case of all against all(free trade:D). They favored Locke’s version over Hobbes, so they did not believe in the absolute power of government over the individual, but they still did believe in the social compact, and the conditions that required it, and the abdication of individual rights implicit in the idea.
As I already said, it is the energy use that is of national interest. Since private oil industry requires our military to secure their interest, it is absolutely of national interest, and the federal governement does have a say. Since interruption of oil supplies, cessation of current amounts, or depletion of reserves, would, in a way no other resource would, adversely affect the economy of our entire society, wasteful use is exactly the sort of right that the social compact says the individual has a moral responsibility to abdicate, and the failure to abdicate that right is the same as saying that one is not choosing to be part of that society, in which case they may leave, but cannot, from a false position, claim to be part in the social compact.
Since nuclear power is especially of federal interest, since no one in their right minds would want it to be unregulated, for strategic and safety reasons, it also falls in the federal rubrick.
Since coal must be regulated, due to the dire and historically proven consequences of its overuse, and since it also must be regulated to ensure continuation of industry and the maintenance of our economy, it must be regulated.
Since the population, in total, can and has used energy resources to the limit, and since the population is growing, and since the worldwide population that is using the finite resources has grown markedly and will grow, then any product that, overall, can control a market well enough to become a norm, that also uses excessive energy as a feature of it’s construction and/or use, will then lead to shortages of resources vital to not only national economy and defense, but worldwide economy.
The assumption that choosing not to abdicate the right to conspicuously use limited resources of a national interest is in any way a social compact is incorrect. The founding fathers believed in a social compact, therefore you are wrong. At best, you could argue that they would be against the government intervening before the fact, but they would be quite capable of making the case that, by abdicating the social compact, and thus choosing not to be Americans, it was irrelevant what rights were owed Americans when discussing those who were clearly choosing not to be part of the society, and certainly the society of their day dealt with threats to their economic continuity in even more underhanded ways than those requiring the government.
[QUOTE=MasterKiller;1092545]One thing the Founding Fathers were clear on is that America isn’t a Christian nation, but some Americans want to force the rest of us to live otherwise, too.[/QUOTE]
And they are wrong. We are on the same page here. And I’m Chrisitan, but notice you don’t see me calling for laws banning other religions.
But that still doesn’t convince me they would be ok with the Government taking away our choices on the products I’ve mentioned throughout this thread.
Again KC, you cannot convince me that the very people who risked their lives to have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness would be ok with the Government taking away our choices on such minor things as light bulbs, toilets, and washing machines.
And you just don’t seem to grasp that if you allow them to take away out right to choose on such small (yet very personal) things, they can easily take our right to choose on bigger things. I mean, if we’re not free to pick the light bulbs we want to use, how free are we? Even Hitler didn’t take those choices away.
[QUOTE=BJJ-Blue;1092587]Again KC, you cannot convince me that the very people who risked their lives to have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness would be ok with the Government taking away our choices on such minor things as light bulbs, toilets, and washing machines.
And you just don’t seem to grasp that if you allow them to take away out right to choose on such small (yet very personal) things, they can easily take our right to choose on bigger things. I mean, if we’re not free to pick the light bulbs we want to use, how free are we? Even Hitler didn’t take those choices away.[/QUOTE]
Then explain what it means to say the founding fathers believed in the social contract(I keep saying compact for some reason today)? The idea includes that the individual abdicate some rights that are harmful to the whole. Your statement suggests that they do not need to.
Again, it is not a small thing to run out of light heavy metals, it actually would destroy the world economy. Same with oil. However, conservation of mass dictates that IF economics is not a zero sum game, AND most economics uses resources, THEN the more economic activity you produce, the less unspent resources you have, and that economic activity could never reach an infinite level as long as it uses resources, which would reach zero long before economic activity was infinte. It is simple fact that the specific oil we need, the specific light heavy metals we need, for current needs, are not going to be around for long at increased usage, are only going to deplete slower, but still be spent, with lessened usage, and currently both lack alternatives and are cornerstones for both our technology and our industry. Using them as examples, if we allow unlimited usage for any purpose that will sell, in protecting today’s consumer, we fail to protect tomorrow’s. So the argument that you are protecting consumers by allowing them to deplete resources is false, you are already choosing to screw future consumers for the benefit of current ones. Since you already intend to screw the rights of consumers, it is better to screw them equally in both areas by managing limited resources, and more constitutional. It would be a better society made up of people who chose not to screw future consumers, but since only a naive moron would expect that to happen, we require the social contract between people and government and thus allow the government to place reasonable limits on resource usage.
You cannot make oil or light heavy metals, and once used, you cannot recycle all of them, and, at best, can only recycle at some other cost. Since our communications and industry are based on such things, and since there is no logical argument that they will not run out(again, Lavoisier), since we can measure worldwide usage and known levels and place an enddate for usage that even most oil companies could agree on, citizens who would use resources that put their country and society at risk are abandoning the social contract by its very definition, and are no longer something the founding fathers would call citizens.