User talk:Joepnl: Difference between revisions

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Welcome!

Hello, Joepnl, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question and then place {{helpme}} before the question on your talk page. Again, welcome!

Seastead on Micronation article

You recently added a link to Seastead on the micronations article. As far as I can tell there are no wikipedia-standard meeting reliable sources for the project - independent media coverage, books, etc, which establish that the project is legitimate and taken seriously beyond its own membership, that it's notable enough to merit mention, etc. Please don't insert it into the main Micronation article until you have a reasonable level of reliable sourcing and can justify it as being one of the 3-5 most notable projects in the general micronational classification of new-country projects, which is our criteria for inclusion in the main article.

Thank you. Georgewilliamherbert 21:11, 20 September 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Patri Friedman

I'm a little confused by this edit and it's summary. Am I not a picture admin? Was this image not discussed on media copyright questions and decided it's current use not ok? -Andrew c ^[talk] 15:18, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, didn't know you were, but can't find the discussion either?Joepnl (talk) 15:49, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I was talking about this.-Andrew c ^[talk] 16:09, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, removed it again. Joepnl (talk) 17:24, 23 January 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hello!

Hi! Thanks for your interest. First, about the Seasteading Institute merge, I think that's one of the few articles that can't reasonably be expanded to a full article, given the current sources, without basically duplicating the material on the seasteading page. I do have tendencies against merging but there are some exceptions!

Captialism vs. Free Market

About capitalism vs. free market, that's a very interesting question. I would like to be concise but it's tricky. First, I'm totally sold on the idea of a free market...not much to dispute there. Managed economies just don't work on a large scale.

I'm not sure the experts agree fully on a definition of capitalism, but in general, I think capitalism is based very heavily on the idea of private property, and the accumulation of wealth, the reinvesting of accumulated wealth to increase productivity. It also seems to usually embrace conventional banking and the idea of lending and borrowing, and to be associated with individualism, and it tends to have an idea that continual growth of the extent of the economic system (as measured by things like GDP) is both necessary for the health of an economy, and is a good thing in and of itself.

I am 100% in support of the idea of reinvesting accumulated wealth to increase productivity. I feel mixed about private property...I believe private property should be protected on a small scale, but I see property as a privelege, not a right, and I think that extremely wealthy individuals should bear more of the cost of maintaining the system that protects private property, because they benefit from it more--and I think in general, people should pay in rough proportion to what they own. When it comes to banking, lending, and borrowing...I get really skeptical. I think these things will always have a role in an economy, but I'd ideally think an economy should be able to function and be healthy even with ZERO lending and borrowing. This departs from capitalism, at least in its current form. Lastly, I think that growth is not necessarily a good thing...sometimes certain actions, such as spending more time at home with your kids instead of hiring a babysitter, might actually reduce GDP but create more real value for society as a whole. I think the idea of economies requiring continual growth to even function is absolutely crazy and is ruining civilization. And yet this seems essential to most forms of capitalism.

Maybe one way to look at it is in terms of decentralization. I am a big fan of decentralization, especially of power. A managed economy is obviously centralized, whereas a free market is decentralized--decisions are up to a large number of individual agents. I see capitalism, however, as being based on the centralization of power and resources. I also have a problem with the way, in capitalism, corporations end up having more power than individuals. The sort of ideal society I'd envision would have few large corporations. Instead, it would have a lot of little businesses, sometimes forming loose coalitions, trade groups, other organizations, but they would be fluid. There would be no corporations "too big to fail", no ones big enough to wield any sort of meaningful political power. There would certainly not be an equal distribution of wealth...but there would not be the sort of thing whereby some humans have hundreds, thousands, or millions times the net worth of other humans. Cazort (talk) 02:42, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Cazort,

I just updated my userpage to be honest about libertarian, so that's my POV. Which is almost completely the same as yours..

Not completely of course. I disagree that zero lending (by outlawing it?) would be a good idea. I like to live in the house I live in. If I'd have to save to buy it, I'd be 20 years older. To live in it earlier is worth money to me, also known as interest, and other people or banks have enough money so they can lend it to me to get more money back in the future. Both parties are winning. Same thing for my study. At 18 I (or my parents) wouldn't be able to afford it. Luckily government (!) lend me the money needed to be stay alive and do an expensive study for years. Of course, it needs to be paid for afterwards, but it's a good investment. And of course, if I made a tremendous invention, I'd want someone to lend me the money to buy the factory to make it without trying to keep it a secret until I saved enough money to do it myself. That would be good for me, the lender, and the rest of the society (being able to buy my invention). Interest is just the money you pay to have something now instead of tomorrow. One of the nicest thing of borrowing and lending is that no one forces you to be one of the parties. If you hate the idea of having to pay interest, don't borrow. If you hate the idea of collecting interest, lend out money at 0%.

The rest of what you're saying is almost completely libertarian! No more knee-jerking needed!

Libertarians are not primarily interested in GDP, or capital being accumulated to enhance production. It's a nice by-product. It's the reason poor people in America are richer than a king in the 17th century. Sure, they won't have the same amount of personnel, but the king would love to trade places. To be able to fly, to live twice as long, being healthier, fly, see films, and read more information on Wikipedia than all books in his library contained. But it's not the main motive of libertarianism, which is simply liberty.

Of course the protection of property should be paid for by the owners, not by all the other people. Although this is also a secondary thing, the abolishment of the state would do just that, and the current situation is that only the rich can make full use of the judicial system, whether it is about protection of property or about personal protection. The poor are the ones that really suffer from ridiculous policies like the war on drugs.

Once people do get rich (and, compared to for example 20 years ago, we are really, really rich) they have enough money to pay for quality time with their family, to take sabbaticals, to pay a bit more for environmentally friendly produced products etc. Two centuries ago (which is a quite a short time on the humanity scale) everyone, including children had to work all day, each day. Again, these are by-products of less (or no) government, but they probably appeal to you, too.

The last thing we probably disagree is the big corporations. The automobile industry being able to make you pay for cars you didn't want to buy is obviously not something libertarians like. Read some columns by libertarians about banks being “too big too fail”, it's really not our thing. In a free market economy, which is a (proper) capitalist society, failing banks would do just that: they fail like any other company can go bankrupt. I do disagree with you about big companies having power. They do when they lobby government to force you to pay for being lousy. They do when they lobby government to outlaw products by their Chinese competitors. But no matter how big a corporation is, you don't have to do business with them. If you choose not to use Windows, Microsoft can send you a bill but you don't have to pay it. Government however, sends you a bill for things you didn't order, and has enough power to lock you up so you will pay for it.

Seasteading is precisely the thing you want. Lots of little governments to choose from, but not a single one being able to monopolize. Joepnl (talk) 03:49, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I actually would not want to outlaw lending/borrowing; I'd simply want to remove the incentives for it. I think a first step would be to remove the effective subsidy of it that we have in the federal reserve system. The problem is that the U.S. relies on the banking system for their only instruments of monetary policy. I think that if people created a better currency system, the need for lending and borrowing would diminish...it would only be used sparingly. Cazort (talk) 04:27, 3 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

We both don't want something like the federal reserve. IMHO, there shouldn't be a monetary policy at all. The need for lending and borrowing will always exist though, but i think it's not a bad thing (and would really like to know why you would think it is). Lending (and paying interest) is just a way that enables people to do things now instead of some time later. Doing things earlier has its advantages. Studying may open new job opportunities, but you will need someone to pay for it before you can put it to use. Buying a machine could make you more productive. Microcredit may be a good idea, but it wouldn't be if lending money was free. Spending money equals to people doing things for you. If there are no costs attached to making people doing things for you (teaching, building factories, building a nice pool next to your house) instead of in distant future, money would very soon become worthless. Joepnl (talk) 01:07, 7 March 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Notational bias AfD

Hi -- I'm not sure what has happened or how to fix it, but your AfD is not set up correctly and doesn't appear as a separate entity in the daily list. Just letting you know, Looie496 (talk) 02:37, 16 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I noticed something was wrong, luckily Saberwyn‎ was kind enough to fix it. I didn't know I had to do this which makes it probably my last nomination :) Thanks anyway. Joepnl (talk) 03:05, 16 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Talk:Climate change denial‎

Thank you for your contributions to the encyclopedia! In case you are not already aware, an article to which you have recently contributed, Climate change denial‎, is on article probation. A detailed description of the terms of article probation may be found at Wikipedia:General sanctions/Climate change probation. Also note that the terms of some article probations extend to related articles and their associated talk pages.

The above is a templated message. Please accept it as a routine friendly notice, not as a claim that there is any problem with your edits. Thank you. -- TS 02:00, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Please avoid casting aspersions on your fellow volunteer editors, as you did here. Thank you, - 2/0 (cont.) 09:12, 23 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

You may have noticed that I was replying to User talk:64.222.125.69, who made a contribution implying that "denialists" would be more worried about 6 million Jews being gassed to death than "about the same thing" happening to the whole population. I did notice that you didn't see it fit to tell him that this is an insane accusation. Possibly you missed this and this as well. Joepnl (talk) 03:04, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

My point is that it is better to ignore such comments or remove them in accordance with the talk page guidelines (as I just did for the second section - thank you for pointing it out). That whole section was completely tangential to improving the article. If someone in the same IP range keep adding such borderline trolling, we can look into blocking the range, but most IP addresses are dynamic; unless they are actively editing at the time, the chances are poor that the message will be seen by its intended recipient. Regards, - 2/0 (cont.) 04:42, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, that's clear. Txs for hiding it all. Joepnl (talk) 18:49, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

AR4

		The Services to Science Award
		Thanks for all the fish, Joepnl, and for working collaboratively to dispel the yapping terriers of ignorance. Splendid work on sea levels at Criticism of the IPCC AR4! dave souza, talk 21:36, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

LOL Joepnl (talk) 21:39, 24 February 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Dialectic

Re: Talk:Dialectic. I'm hardly surprised you are even more confused. So am I, and I have a higher degree in linguistics! It's a clear cut case of people with profound knowledge of a subject, talking to themselves, or at least amongst themselves, and who have clearly misunderstood the mission of an encyclopdia. Ironic of course, but there you are ;) --Kudpung (talk) 05:06, 6 May 2010 (UTC)[reply]

Seasteading

Hi! Well, categories don't mean exclusivity. I believe ancap category es correct because the origin of the idea, and the category libertarian think tank also is correct because is what Seasteding Institute is, even if it expose it ideas to all ideologies. I don't revert your revert, but you should consider that my editions are right. Regards! --Sageo (talk) 14:21, 21 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, but i still don't agree. The very idea of seasteading is that it encompasses any possible political variety. Putting it in one of them is like putting "People" in the "Socialist" category, while admitting that categories aren't exclusive. The Seasteading Institute is not a libertarian think tank either. It's a "how to realize Seasteading" think tank. For a libertarian think tank you'd expect at least all employees to be libertarian which as far as I know isn't the case. The members (both paying and not paying) may be more libertarian minded than the average person, but that is probably the case for any "innovative" institute. (Or any institute that gets its members via internet for that matter). The very very least you'd expect from a libertarian think tank is publications promoting libertarianism. I haven't seen anything like "the state is bad per se" on seasteading.org. "Competition between states is great" is an idea even Marxists might adhere to. So I'm not re-reverting either :) Joepnl (talk) 01:02, 22 June 2011 (UTC)[reply]

BLP

The WP:BLP issues that violet/riga refers to pertain to the dead taxi driver's partner and children, not to the dead man. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 01:40, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

You're right I guess. The name of his fiancée should be left out. Not enough reason though to skip the whole article! Joepnl (talk) 01:49, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The article I recommended deleting was a classic WP:BIO1E. In the midst of the debate, it has been moved to a "death of . . ." article, which a bit better. My problem with an article like this is that it turns into a battle between those who want to vilify the dead man, and those who want to lionize him. Enthusiastic editors battle to include poorly referenced tabloid trivia. Cullen³²⁸ Let's discuss it 02:04, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I've seen very heated battles about Global Warming, but that's no reason to delete the article. It's easy to leave the tabloid trivia out by deleting poorly sourced information. From a reader's perspective, I do want to know what started it all. Are the rioters mad about shooting a law abiding, highly respected citizen who was known for volunteering at least 20 hours a week at the local library, or are they mad because a drug dealer got shot? In the latter case the reader's original research might be: the rioters were waiting for an opportunity to riot. (which is fair I think). It puts the whole thing into a much needed perspective. From WP:BIO1E: "If the event is highly significant, and the individual's role within it is a large one, a separate article is generally appropriate." IMHO The event is highly significant, and would not even have started (at least not this time) without Duggan. Joepnl (talk) 03:09, 9 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

Regular expressions

I noticed you wrote "Using regular expressions is not 'almost' but 'each and every single line'" in a thread about speed reading and programming, with an edit summary that said something like you could separate the men from the boys according to who hated regular expressions. I've done some programming, but not in a place that had a lot of really super programmers to learn from, so I'm puzzled as to what you're getting at. Would you like to enlighten me? Jc3s5h (talk) 02:27, 12 October 2011 (UTC)[reply]

@@ Line 95: / Line 95: @@
 ::The article I recommended deleting was a classic [[WP:BIO1E]].  In the midst of the debate, it has been moved to a "death of . . ." article, which a bit better.  My problem with an article like this is that it turns into a battle between those who want to vilify the dead man, and those who want to lionize him.  Enthusiastic editors battle to include poorly referenced tabloid trivia. [[User:Cullen328|'''<font color="green">Cullen</font>'''<sup><font color="purple">328</font></sup>]] [[User talk:Cullen328|<font color="blue">''Let's discuss it''</font>]] 02:04, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
 :::I've seen very heated battles about Global Warming, but that's no reason to delete the article. It's easy to leave the tabloid trivia out by deleting poorly sourced information. From a reader's perspective, I do want to know what started it all. Are the rioters mad about shooting a law abiding, highly respected citizen who was known for volunteering at least 20 hours a week at the local library, or are they mad because a drug dealer got shot? In the latter case the reader's original research might be: the rioters were waiting for an opportunity to riot. (which is fair I think). It puts the whole thing into a much needed perspective. From [[WP:BIO1E]]: "If the event is highly significant, and the individual's role within it is a large one, a separate article is generally appropriate." IMHO The event is highly significant, and would not even have started (at least not this time) without Duggan. [[User:Joepnl|Joepnl]] ([[User talk:Joepnl#top|talk]]) 03:09, 9 August 2011 (UTC)
+==Regular expressions==
+I noticed you wrote "Using regular expressions is not 'almost' but 'each and every single line'" in a thread about speed reading and programming, with an edit summary that said something like you could separate the men from the boys according to who hated regular expressions. I've done some programming, but not in a place that had a lot of really super programmers to learn from, so I'm puzzled as to what you're getting at. Would you like to enlighten me? [[User:Jc3s5h|Jc3s5h]] ([[User talk:Jc3s5h|talk]]) 02:27, 12 October 2011 (UTC)