
My name is
David Robins:
Christian, lead developer (resume), writer, photographer, runner,
libertarian (voluntaryist),
and student.
This is also my son David Geoffrey Robins' site.
Governments are very good at squandering wealth
Political ·Tuesday March 31, 2009 @ 23:01 EDT (link)
More about Obama's War on Prosperity. We (CLAMS) were discussing taxation; the main point is a post from Victor Rosu, below, but first some context, starting with this post from KM:
Face it, if you wish to contribute to a cause, then you are welcome to do it! You are even welcome to start up your own 501(c)(3) organization and solicit contributions to do that "so much that could be done." Hell, you could create a charity that counsels cats on abortions!
Instead, you prefer the theft of my earned income, to support socialist programs that would never be considered viable if they had to stand on their own merits and run on the contributions of those who support it!
Reply from (admitted socialist) PM:
The mere fact that you believe that contributing to society is theft means that we have no common ground in this discussion. Your POV seems to consider your needs above those of the country and society. I'm not sure there is much we could do with a nation of people who feel as you do.
The main post, by Victor Rosu, posted with his permission:
Paying taxes ≠ contributing to society. That may be the primary intention, but poorly managed, poorly applied or abused can result in only a small fraction of tax money collected actually "contributing to society."
Let Y be the $ amount to be taxed, X the % rate of taxation and Z the outcome (measured as overall "contribution to society"):
Z = Y × X%
Y increases to Y1, X increases to X1:
Z1 = Y1 × X1%
Then X1 increases to X2, Y2 ≥ Y1 ≥ Y.
Z2 = Y2 × X2%
Z2 > Z1 > Z; Obama, PM and beneficiaries of Z2 (which include Obama) are happy.
The producer of Y, Y1 and Y2 is a compassionate conservative and says: "Well, I have $500 less in my pocket, but at least PM (and Obama) are happy". But, he's not upgrading his laptop just yet, because well, he's short $500. So he'll do it 3-4 months later (and that's not the only outcome, the final outcome of this particular situation is that he's upgrading his laptop every 40 months instead of 36 for as long as Y and Z stay roughly the same).
Hmm, that's $500 not going to, say, Best Buy, HP and Microsoft (and the local government for sales taxes) and some other 3rd parties. But they did go to Fedzilla.
So BB, HP and MS have a little less income to play with. And what's one of the outcomes and the purpose of their game? Less profit, less growth, less money to pay employees or hire more employees. Who are the employees? Employees are tax contributors (Y) of all sorts:
- the ones hit by X (rate) increase, the filthy rich that deserve it and can live with it,
- but also the other ones the innocent Joe and Jane (as long as they're not plumbers)
- and though you think some are beneficiaries of Z, in practice there are none or a negligible quantity.
So by the time you get to (brackets) Y3 and Y4, they're < Y so Z2 and Z3 < Z1. Who's happy now? Only Obama because he's the only beneficiary left standing (he's increased his and the government's power).
You may argue that the money is not lost, it's still gone somewhere—to Fedzilla and for a good cause, to help the vulnerable and in the process they get spent so some other part of the economy is "stimulated."
Which means that you believe that:
- The government is spending the money efficiently.
- Giving money to the unemployed is preferable to preventing the unemployed from getting there in the first place or,
- Creating make-work projects to delude the unemployed that they perform a useful function and they actually earn fair income, is a solution.
- Any other artificial, social-engineering swindle resembling the above would work.
In reality there is such a thing as "wealth creation" and there also is "wealth squandering." It's being proven beyond any sane and reasonable doubt that:
- businesses and industrious individuals are very good at creating wealth (for everyone —just look at your country, yes, yes, even today, amidst "the worst economic crisis since the great depression") and,
- governments are very good at squandering wealth (everyone's—just look at most other countries).
Where businesses fail and start squandering wealth are those instances where they grow so big that they resemble a government—in which case, just let them die because on their own they don't and can't last long. Economically speaking, everything that functions in a corrupt or artificially propped environment is wilting. The choice is to either let the sick (companies) wilt or corrupt the whole environment and everything wilts.
On another note [speaking to various liberals]: as an atheist, a proponent of the theory (nay, scientific evidence!) of non-design, 0 creationism and in perfect harmony with the theory of evolution, how do you reconcile that view, with the need to have a priority in deciding that someone is vulnerable and needs help?
There is no rational link between a perfectly scientifically objective view of a world without God (or a higher calling that is placed outside of the survival of the species framework) that can philosophically sustain any charitable cause. Just curious….
Even if government was efficient, it doesn't give them the moral right to steal money from productive people and redistribute it for any cause, no matter how well-intentioned.
Database management systems class
School ·Tuesday March 31, 2009 @ 22:10 EDT (link)
CSE P 544: Database Management Systems starts today; as with Programming Languages, the first class was fairly remedial: administrivia and basic SQL; fortunately I had my laptop and a book to keep me entertained. And I'm not really enjoying having to drive to Seattle (last quarter my class was remote-broadcast to Microsoft building 99, but this time the class I wanted is only on-site).
Using the Goodreads API
Technical ·Monday March 30, 2009 @ 23:51 EDT (link)
I was playing around with Goodreads' API. Their only example uses Ruby, which is way to schizo a language for my tastes. So I looked around on CPAN and found Net::OAuth, which I had some trouble with, but then I found OAuth::Lite, which was easier to use. OAuth is "an open protocol to allow secure API authorization in a simple and standard method from desktop and web applications." It's only necessary for calls that need to modify data; read-only requests just need a developer key.
I ended up using WWW::Mechanize (and WWW::Mechanize::Gzip) since I needed to do some screen-scraping, or thought I did. One thing I noticed when looking at the source is that Goodreads' site is much better organized (cleaner, better URLs, less badly-written Javascript) than weRead. I looked at the source of the Ruby OAuth module to find out about some defaults, and came up with this OAuth::Lite constructor call:
my $oalc = OAuth::Lite::Consumer->new(
consumer_key => YOUR KEY HERE,
consumer_secret => YOUR SECRET HERE,
site => 'http://www.goodreads.com',
request_token_path => '/oauth/request_token',
access_token_path => '/oauth/access_token',
authorize_path => '/oauth/authorize',
);
I had a lot of trouble since Goodreads was randomly failing my authentication attempts; first I thought it was timing out the access key really fast, or that I was sending invalid requests, but then I determined (through much experimentation, and showing that the same request can both fail and succeed) that it just randomly fails (401 Invalid OAuth Request, without a WWW-Authenticate header). When that happens, you just need to keep trying.
For the first (OAuth) request, you need to get a request token which can be parlayed into an access token:
my $reqt = $oalc->get_request_token;
my $url = $oalc->url_to_authorize(token => $reqt->token);
The user has to go to that URL and approve your application (if it's a web application, you can redirect them there and pass a callback URL for it to send the user to afterward). When it's approved, get an access token:
$oalc->get_access_token;
This token (available as $oalc->access_token) can be persisted (e.g. to a file or database: save the token and secret data) and then next time used to create a token to use to authenticate:
my $acct = OAuth::Lite::Token->new(token => $token, secret => $secret);
$oalc->access_token($acct);
Now you can make requests, using code like this, which returns a hash of information (id, link, name) about the current user:
sub get_user {
my $res = $oalc->request(url => 'http://www.goodreads.com/api/auth_user');
unless ($res->is_success) {
print "Failed to get user: ".$res->status_line."\n".$res->content."\n";
return;
}
my $u = $xs->parse_string($res->content)->{user}; # id, link, name
return $u;
}
Even after the first successful request, subsequent requests can randomly fail. I have no idea why this is happening; I've asked Goodreads in the developer forum and elsewhere, but they aren't saying anything, although they were very helpful with some other requests, e.g. documenting some undocumented functionality for adding a read date to a review.
Ways to starve the beast
Political ·Monday March 30, 2009 @ 22:15 EDT (link)
The beast is, of course, the Federal government. As tax time approaches, this CLAMS conversation is apropos and possibly even instructive.
KM: You actually believe Obama wants to reduce the deficit? I think you are all delusional if that's the case.
Obama wants to increase the size and scope of government, no matter the costs. The more problems that government can create, and that liberals and their media lapdogs can attribute to other causes, the more people will think that they NEED the government to get more involved. I completely believe that the complete and utter devaluation of our economy is the goal here.
JD: The only way to kill this snake is to cut off its air supply. Stop giving the government money, and it will fail more quickly and we can rebuild.
You can't have a Phoenix without Ashes, time to ash the joint.
LC: That would be a lot easier if taxes were not withheld from our paychecks to sustain the beast!!
HD: There are a couple of ways to do this:
- Take less money as pay and use other systems to supplement income. Barter and trade is not taxed (yet). Maybe have an employer pay you less but they buy you stuff or pay for services.
- Being efficient. Sometimes can be associated with being green. The car driving reductions and gas usage reduction are great examples. Being efficient means less driving, less waste and less resource uses… so less taxes. Less taxes means less power. Every transaction you don't make means less money for the state.
- Borrow. There are plenty of borrow sites for tools and equipment. You don't have to buy a saw, you can join a borrowing co-op and swap items. Members submit items they have and they are checked out by other members then returned when done.
- Always vote against any government increase if possible regardless of the altruism. There is no altruism; it's just government trying to increase its scope and control, and buy votes.
- Figure out ways to eliminate any government job by avoiding government services. This is called "counter economics". essentially use or provide services that make the government useless, redundant, unnecessary and more expensive. For example, don't use the city garbage service, take garbage to the dump yourself. Don't use the schools. Don't use the post office to mail letters (email or use a private service like UPS). Don't use public transportation. Anything you can do to bypass public services works.
- Vote to deregulate everything even if it drives you nuts. Regulation requires money, power and adds legitimacy to government. Every opportunity you have to strip government of power robs it of control, money and legitimacy.
- Always owe the government in taxes. Don't over pay. States are now lobbying to keep over payments.
"Tell him I forgive him"
News, Theology ·Monday March 30, 2009 @ 00:59 EDT (link)
A couple of stories about Christians persecuted for their faith.
Heartbreaking testimony of a Christian survivor of Lebanon's Muslim takeover (video). A Lebanese Christian talks about how Lebanon went from a Christian nation to a Muslim majority nation through multiculturalism, open borders, unrestricted immigration, and unspeakable violence (StumbleUpon).
Back in November, a Christian in San Francisco's Castro (majority homosexual—not prejudice, just fact) district was attacked by a gay activist while she was with a Christian music group. She said, "Tell him I forgive him".
First time cleaning the AR-15
News ·Sunday March 29, 2009 @ 21:53 EDT (link)
I finished cleaning my AR-15 for the first time today, using the Rock River Arms manual and these guides (there is also an AR15.com guide, but it's not as good, since it has small black and white diagrams and terse descriptions instead of large photos and detailed instructions).
Since it was the first time, it went somewhat slowly, but it's actually pretty easy: remove the takedown pin (or both), remove the charging handle and bolt carrier, disassemble the bolt carrier (by removing the cotter pin (firing pin retaining pin) and bolt cam pin), clean everything with solvent, clean the chamber with my pistol rod and chamber brush, and clean the bore with my rifle rod, alternating jag with patch and bore brush. I had to cut down my 9mm (2"?) patches so they'd fit. Apparently I cleaned the gas piston rings a bit too vigorously, because when I went shooting with the Microsoft group on the weekend it failed to fire because they had been misaligned; fortunately KA was able to fix it (he took it apart then and there with his knife, unsurprisingly a lot faster and easier than someone doing it for the first time; it was educational).
The birth of liberty
Technical, Political ·Sunday March 29, 2009 @ 21:49 EDT (link)
On Friday (27th) I picked up the computer I'd ordered from Hard Drives Northwest. I tried to install (Gentoo) Linux on it; it failed the same as the Costco machine.
I eventually figured out why it won't boot (VFS: cannot open root device): it needed SCSI disk to be enabled (for a SATA drive; apparently libata uses SCSI); kernel option CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD. As I understand it (documentation is a bit scarce; the libATA Developer's Guide was somewhat helpful), libATA implements the ATA standard and translates to the SCSI command set, which allows the use of various low-level transports such as SATA and SCSI.
The new machine will be named liberty—in hope that liberty will return to this nation: that the grassroots efforts by the Campaign for Liberty, the tax protest tea parties, the various conservative and libertarian discussion groups and book clubs and the groundswell of support to overthrow creeping socialism, to fight the liberal fascism of the left, will triumph and return freedom to these United States of America. It's a grand aspiration: but these are interesting times, ripe for revolution.
Facebook chat + multiple tabs = dead CPU
Technical, Political ·Saturday March 28, 2009 @ 20:13 EDT (link)
Does it have to open the chat window in every tab? Argh. It slows Firefox to a crawl even with as few as 5 (Facebook) tabs open. It must be doing a lot of fast polling—maybe they should switch to long polling, or perhaps they are, but Firefox isn't very efficient at it.
Short Answers to Tough Questions (Libertarian Party of Minnesota FAQ). (They had "principal" for "principle" once, in "Party of princple"; I dropped a line to the webmaster and he fixed it up.)
"You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it"
Political ·Saturday March 28, 2009 @ 03:36 EDT (link)
You cannot legislate the poor into freedom by legislating the wealthy out of freedom. What one person receives without working for, another person must work for without receiving. The government cannot give to anybody anything that the government does not first take from somebody else. When half of the people get the idea that they do not have to work because the other half is going to take care of them, and when the other half gets the idea that it does no good to work because somebody else is going to get what they work for, that my dear friend, is about the end of any nation. You cannot multiply wealth by dividing it.
—Dr. Adrian Rogers (1931-2005)
Dr. Rogers was the senior pastor at Bellevue Baptist Church, down the road from where we used to live in Cordova, Tennessee (east of Memphis, off I-40 at exit 15B).
DVDs finished: M*A*S*H: Season Six.
From my cold, dead hands…
Political, Guns ·Friday March 27, 2009 @ 21:32 EDT (link)
Erich von Holder is trying to use the chaos in Mexico to erode gun rights. Liberals never let a crisis go to waste.
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