The strike begins tomorrow

@cbae:

We're talking about economic value.  Value is just a variable in the exchange between a buyer and seller.  The buyer and seller each compute their own value functions for the item in question.  It's derived from perceived worth.

16 hours ago, cbae wrote

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Au contraire. That article is right on the money. The only value creators are plants capable of photosynthesis. Even fungi that use chemosynthesis are value transferors since they merely transfer value to themselves from dead animals and plants. Lichen, as in biology, offer a bit of a conundrum in terms of classification since they're composite organisms that consist of both chemosynthetic fungi and photosynthetic algae. I guess it wouldn't really matter in Ayn Rand's utopia since she'd have all lichen eradicated for displaying too much altruism in the symbiotic association between fungi and algae. Selfishness FTW!

Plants, to me, seem to be the ultimate value transfer mechanisms.  They steal energy from the sun and nutrients from the air and earth.  What do they actually contribute themselves? 

Looters.   Every last one of them.

18 hours ago, Cream​Filling512 wrote

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Haha.  Bear arms meant to "wage war" in that context.  Also 2nd amendment is only about states' right to form militias, it has nothing to do with individual gun ownership, despite fiction the courts invented.  Actually I'm pretty sure the entire bill of rights is just declaratory and doesn't really do anything.  It was just added to calm anti-federalists, or federalists?  I forget how that worked.

Not a state's right to form militias, individuals rights to form the militia at large. The militia at the time of the founding referred to the entire populace, self-armed, and self-organized in their own defense. You always see it referred to 'the militia' instead of 'militias' or 'state militias', the militia is meant to meant to refer to the people.The militia was entirely volunteer and acted at the time as police forces, since there were no government police forces. The local group of volunteers (the local militia) would do a citizens arrest and bring the person accused of violating a crime to the authorities.

The whole idea of the militia was that there shouldn't be a standing army; since a standing army would be used by a government (federal or state) to oppress people. The only way people could be free is if they were allowed to freely organize in defense of themselves.

State governments had a right to help in equipping and commanding (regulating) the local militias in self-defense, as did the federal government in times of war; but the right of the militia was always understood to be a right of the people.

There are many references you can look at to understand the purpose of the 2nd amendment. Read Hamilton's Federalist #29, Concerning the Militia for instance:

http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa29.htm

...

If standing armies are dangerous to liberty, an efficacious power over the militia, in the body to whose care the protection of the State is committed, ought, as far as possible, to take away the inducement and the pretext to such unfriendly institutions. If the federal government can command the aid of the militia in those emergencies which call for the military arm in support of the civil magistrate, it can the better dispense with the employment of a different kind of force. If it cannot avail itself of the former, it will be obliged to recur to the latter. To render an army unnecessary, will be a more certain method of preventing its existence than a thousand prohibitions upon paper.

@brian.shapiro:

At the time of this amendment, every state had laws that made it MANDATORY for males who were a certain age to keep arms (some required them stored in public armories) to bear when they're called to do so.  This (was about an obligation of State citizenship that they didn't want the national government threatening with a standing army (as you pointed out).  It didn't have anything to do with private gun ownership.

Since States no longer maintain or require citizens to serve in militias, this clause in the 2nd amendment is dormant today.

The Constitution doesn't confer any rights directly to individuals in the States, they already have all these rights.  It's a one-way transfer of rights, from the States (with the approval of the people) to the federal government, and not backwards.  So it's not necessary for the constitution to spell out that individuals have a right to own and use guns for personal defense for the simple reason that they already possessed this right.

22 minutes ago, Cream​Filling512 wrote

@brian.shapiro:

At the time of this amendment, every state had laws that made it MANDATORY for males who were a certain age to keep arms (some required them stored in public armories) to bear when they're called to do so.  This (was about an obligation of State citizenship that they didn't want the national government threatening with a standing army (as you pointed out).  It didn't have anything to do with private gun ownership.

Since States no longer maintain or require citizens to serve in militias, this clause in the 2nd amendment is dormant today.

The Constitution doesn't confer any rights directly to individuals in the States, they already have all these rights.  It's a one-way transfer of rights, from the States (with the approval of the people) to the federal government, and not backwards.  So it's not necessary for the constitution to spell out that individuals have a right to own and use guns for personal defense for the simple reason that they already possessed this right.

Yes, you're correct that the Constitution didn't need to spell out that right ---but you're still misunderstanding the concept of a militia. It was the idea that the defense forces were self-organized from the local level, from the township up to the state. It was definitely notsomething organized by some higher government, whether that be the state or the federal governement. A standing army at the state level would have been considered just as detrimental to liberty as a standing army at the federal level.

It was aided by the state government, not organized by it. Many states while requiring that individuals bring their own arms, provided a means to get arms if someone was too poor to obtain them. The role of the state government was to help make sure the militia was operational, and also help give it a command structure. The federal government, by the way, took over that command structure in times of war. During times of war, the militia became the federal army.

You also have to understand what the purpose of the militia was -- just read Hamilton and the debates I linked to. The whole point behind the Second Amendment was to prevent the government from having too much power, allowing the people the resources to overthrow it if necessary.

Aside from the intent, the states were allowed to do whatever they wanted, of course. The argument against the states doing whatever they want comes from the Fourteenth Amendment, which has been interpreted to require states not to violate any of the other provisions of the Bill of Rights, as if it was written for their legislatures and not just Congress, under either the due process clause or privileges and immunities clause. One of the reasons the Fourteenth was passed btw, was because some Southern states were denying black people the privelege of arms ownership. So it makes sense that if the rest of the Bill of Rights is interpreted that way, then so is the Second Amendment. Because militias weren't a state force, but a force from the most local level up, the militia clause doesn't prevent that kind of interpretation either. Just like with the other restrictions in the Bill of Rights, the logic of the Second Amendment can be faithfully applied to state governments.

The militia clause is also still somewhat important today. The federal army today operates under the idea of selective service, that its composed of people from the entire nation and only assembled when needed. The Supreme Court, if it went by precedent, would find a problem with the idea of a mercenary army...  since a mercenary army would not be based on 'the militia'.. and that in fact was one of the arguments against Blackwater, the private security force contracted in Iraq, people pointed out that it functioned like a mercenary army so was illegitimate.