but I cannot recall anyone trying to rely upon that fact as a basis for the conclusion that there's hardly a reason for governments to continue to sell lottery tickets. It's interesting that the attitudes of ordinary people may create and maintain what is in effect government greed. If the fee to take a high school equivalency test were high enough to generate revenue for governments, then would there be more support for lowering the minimum age for taking a high school equivalency test, and l...

Let's suppose that you work 25 hours per week for 1.4 times minimum wage for a big employer that has a number of locations. Your employer offers to let you maintain those weekly hours of work, so that you would continue to perform that same work in that same location, but in addition you would also work somewhere else for 15 hours per week, and the offer is that your overall per hour wage will drop but will remain above minimum wage. For example, your per hour wage may drop as though you had a...

If someone is below the required age to view internet porn, then how significant are the barriers to access? If someone is below the required age to attempt a high school equivalency test, then how significant are the barriers to access? Based on your values, for which activity should there be more significant barriers to access by people who are under the required age?

For example, are there feature-length movies consisting of animated abstract art?

We can all understand the emotions of a boy who is trying to get his hand into a cookie jar. In principle, there's no difference between those emotions and the impulse that attracts bees to pollen. It's an impulse that we rely upon because, without pollination of our food crops, we would literally starve to death. Thus, not only can we understand the impulse that drives a boy who is trying to get his hand into the cookie jar, but we also have reason to expect it, and to be ready for it. At s...

Who owns the job? How does someone go about taking a job? It sounds like stealing if it's simply taken from the person who owns it. Can somebody take a job without any authorization from anybody?

Alternatively, are the interactions in some cases examples of bullying, with two DU members sometimes ganging up against one? Consider the following dialog: Law Enforcement Officer: We had an anonymous tip, a complaint against you. Innocent Man: I know what you're going to say. I am frequently seen entering my home late at night with two women, and it's the same two women every time. Law Enforcement Officer: I wasn't going to say that. They're both with you at the same time? ...

"Richard" wasn't the name of the monkey, and the person claiming to be disabled wasn't a woman. "Richard" was the name of a man who had a disabling heart condition, and the monkey calmed him, but he was good about not taking the monkey into restaurants. He kept it mostly on a ranch in Texas. Nowadays, the monkey is part of a traveling circus.

They all saw the movie "Fight Club" one night, and they thought it was cool. Seriously though, does insurance management sound like an appropriate career for them? Why not day trading, or lion taming?

By "forfeits its right to exist", do you mean that outsiders should use military force to change the government of Israel or do you mean that all citizens of Israel should be deported from Israel and scattered around the world?

I'm trying to understand why the Taleban opposes formal education for girls. Are they concerned about the possibility of being poor theocratic managers of the money collected from taxpayers? Are they concerned that females in Afghanistan would put in a lot of time attending school and keeping teachers occupied without making effort to learn, and that the formal education would never be a catalyst for females of Afghanistan to make an economic contribution for themselves, for their families, or...

Why should farmers have to beg for subsidies while governments of oil-rich countries have simply expropriated the work of geologists, prospectors, engineers, infrastructure builders, etc? OPEC hasn't always existed, and oil isn't the only important commodity in the world. As time goes by, new organizations can be established.

it seems that many self-proclaimed Christian organizations try to persuade people that, by suffering a loss and having some other people gain something from it, you will receive some mystical benefit. The underlying assumption seems to be that interactions for mutual benefit aren't possible. Note that giving money to others involves a (monetary) loss to you, but doesn't necessarily help others. For example, the gift money could be used for illegal and impure drugs, creating health problems or...

If the kids understood, then the kids would agree. You cannot (i.e. must not) agree too much (i.e. at all) with President Obama. Therefore, kids cannot understand. Now, we have established the basic lemma: the kids cannot understand. We proceed quickly to the explanation. Why force kids to listen to some incomprehensible lecture on advanced Keynesian monetary fiscal quantum electro-election-life-skill-dynamics? Let them progress through the grades! They're just kids, not political footballs...

If not, then how do people decide that, among all the books that they could invest money to get translated into English, the ones that they are investing money to get translated into English are the best choices? If there are such book reviews, then where can I find a lot of them?

then how do you know in any particular situation whether the person isn't being lazy and is simply so disorganized that it would be a huge project for the person to find some information, or whether the person is simply being lazy?

If your local mass transit system gives a discount to very young riders and very old riders, then I have a question. Is the discount for young riders based purely on age? For example, if high school graduates aren't entitled to a discount regardless of how young they are, then the policy would seem to presume that being a high school graduate itself ensures that a person has the ability to pay the regular price. However, it's obvious that many young people who have graduated from high school ...

Also, please name the translator of a good English translation. Sometimes there are significant differences in the quality of different English translations of the same story. Of course, the question has no objectively correct answer. The answer depends on what kind of reading interests you, but a bit of subjectivity is okay. I can give examples of some answers to a different question: English translations of stories originally written in some language other than English. Examples The Dani...

Yes, this is an admission of ignorance. Is time and a half simply a conventional benefit, or is it mandated by law? If it's mandated by law, then it seems that some people might slip through the cracks and not receive the benefits that the law is supposed to provide. For example, consider the following simple scenario. A person works thirty-five hours per week for one employer (the "majority hours employer") and also works twenty hours per week for a completely different employer (the "minor...

You may choose to ignore the poll question itself and instead focus on the following meta-question: Is the poll question clear as posed? Alternatively, is it necessary to go beyond conventional usage and identify precisely what concepts of "even" and "odd" are being used? For example, we know that 5 is odd and 12 is even, but can we guarantee that no controversy will arise when we examine very large numbers that haven't previously been studied in depth?

There is a religious standpoint that denies the existence of free will on the grounds that everything is controlled by God, and God's power squeezes out any possibility for human influence. This is similar to a philosophical position against free will. The philosophical position claims that everything is controlled by the laws of nature, so there is no room for any agent that isn't a law of nature to have any influence over events. In particular, a human being isn't a law of nature. Now, co...

You may have seen a so-called "light switch." It's a device used in control rituals. Brainwashed people watch a performance by a light-switch operator who creates the impression of a causal relationship between the state of a light switch (on or off) and the state of a light bulb (luminous or non-luminous). We know that everything is controlled by the one big hidden switch. We conclude that a little light switch cannot control anything. Obviously the control rituals display correlation a...

If one can justify one's answer to the poll question without relying upon a newly minted ad hoc "principle", then one might be able to construct a sound argument using the same principle to obtain some other conclusion. Thus, there need not be any analogizing involved. Some principle posted in this thread might, if one accepts it, allow one to reach conclusions on topics other than littering.

There's hope for change in a democracy. Legislation can be changed. In a theocracy controlled by the Taleban, it would first be necessary to have a revolution and/or civil war to remove the theocracy before any positive change is possible. It's like rescuing women of various East Asian nationalities who were being used as sex slaves by the Japanese military. Before any such rescue was possible, it was necessary to defeat the Japanese military. Now, if you are suggesting that Afghanistan is ...

PETA was established in 1957 by Ayn Rand, shortly after she observed that fur-poor animals used force to expropriate fur from the backs of fur-rich animals. She appointed Nathaniel Branden as the first operating manager of PETA, but kept the directorship for herself. When Branden claimed that lack of self-esteem motivates some rich people to make conspicuous displays of wealth such as by wearing fur coats, Rand recognized that Branden's obvious hatred for people who are money-rich could easily...

Did the rise of the religious right introduce into society the precise mix of compassion, charity, and torture that are needed to make libertarianism a feasible program of political policy in a post-Victorian, industrial nation?

Originally, unions were illegal for a very simple reason. A legitimate economic transaction is a trade between two individuals because only individuals exist. There is no such thing as society. When more than two individuals enter into an agreement with each other to form a labor union, they are practicing collectivism. Not only did governments refuse to recognize such agreements as legally binding, but they violently intervened to break up unions. At this moment in history, we can see that...