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Comment Threads

• Charlie Stross commented on Invaders from Mars
  I am getting the distinct impression that you're here to troll. Don't Do That. (Consider this a friendly hint.)...
• scentofviolets commented on Invaders from Mars
  @ 490: When the argument is the person, as you yourself admit too Well, that is one way of seeing it... AFAICT, you admitted to being a contrarian in the post I was responding too. So I don't see any other way of seeing it. You could prove me wrong by completely disavowing Cato for the propaganda mill that it is As I wrote -- I don't know much about Cato, I do trust the integrity of the guy that wrote that report for them. If there is a good answer to that, please post it. I'll be grateful and...
• scentofviolets commented on Invaders from Mars
  @ 500: 1. For the fifth time, I don't know (or care) enough to have an opinion about Cato; I am not a Libertarian. I wrote about a report they presented. See 493/494. You don't have anything to say about that? Rubbish. If you really didn't know before, you've been presented with enough evidence here that they are nothing but right-wing propagandists. Since you claim to still not know enough to tell if this is true, that means that you really don't have enough competence to verify whether or not a source is good or not. Note that I didn't...
• mike.hamerski commented on Invaders from Mars
  I unfortunately haven't had the time to go through all the replies, so perhaps someone else has said something similar to what follows... Charlie, I (mostly) heartily agree, but I think you should also consider two other things which evolved from the 19th century: nation-states and democracy. Briefly, the advent of competing nationalisms gave corporations an actionable lever (war) through which to sell their products. One way to see it is that an empire provides less markets than a dozen states (Greene describes this quite nicely in The Confidential Agent). The advent of modern democracy (one citizen, one vote) on...
• Charlie Stross commented on Invaders from Mars
  Paul, compulsory voting doesn't fix things; if it did, Australia wouldn't have to choose between Julia Gillard and the Mad Monk for PM. As for "none of the above", that would apply to candidates, yes? Not parties? I suspect you're American and looking at the problem from the background of lightly whipped parties that are themselves umbrellas for different interest groups. Apply "none of the above" at an individual candidate level to a system with tight party discipline and all it does is strengthen the central party's ability to control internal dissent. As for "none of the above" in other...