Today I have on Fruit of the Loom Boxers. Medium. I have other brands, too.
No, not I that it would matter to me if I did and people knew.
Never counted, but I would guess about 5 times a day.
Once a day.
Not that these questions are important in any way. These would not even be the questions used to find criminals or terrorists. How can you say yout personal privacy is more important than the lives of innocent chicldren? God already sees everything you do anyways. You can’t hide anything from Him and He is more powerful than any human, so why are so afraid of some guy from the government knowing a couple of things about you. Besides, the American government only has your best interest at heart.
I don’t claim to be anywhere near as talented as Orwell, so here’s my suggestion: Re-read 1984, and see if the majority of people depicted in that society thought that the way things were was a good idea. Don’t get distracted by the fact that they accepted it; were they glad that they were being watched constantly by people who would lock them up and strap rats to their faces? Pay special attention to the kinds of things the main character did that got him interrogated: He had a life. Hobbies. And a girlfriend with whom he had the occasional sex. For this he gets the rats?
Very easily. “My personal privacy is more important than the lives of innocent children.”
As I’ve noted before, all civil liberties cost lives, and always had. The very fact that the government cannot prevent you from posting your minority and extremely radical opinions on these Boards means that the government cannot prevent the publication of the Turner Diaries, which led to Tim McVeigh and Oklahoma City.
It’s the exact same civil liberty. You have typed and posted an opinion that is repugnant to the traditions of this country. So did the author of the Turner Diaries.
Are you willing to allow the government to prevent you from posting un-American opinions such as the one you posted?
If not, you are costing lives.
My first answer is that God doesn’t exist. But as you won’t accept that answer, my second answer is that Jesus instructed us to ‘Render unto Caesar what is Caesars, and render unto God what is God’s.’ Punishment for our sins is God’s territory, not the governments.
Wow, so now you’re posting un-American and un-Christian opinions. They eliminate civil liberties like you want, and you will be the first in jail. You want that?
Quite frankly, I believe this. But I do not believe that every employee of the government who may have access to the information about how I spend my money (under your plan) will have my best interests at heart.
One of them may have a crush on my girlfriend, and decided to break us up by telling her about my spending on strippers.
Another may be a blackmailer.
Etc.
I might have something to hide that is in no way illegal. I might not want the world to know that I spend my money on magazines like “Chicks with Sticks” or that I own 32 devices used to give enemas. I like privacy.
**
It will never be impossible to launder money. Even if we switched to this wonderful electronic system they will figure out ways to launder funds. It isn’t like the drug cartels don’t already use electronic funds to launder their money.
You know, better posters than I are taking on the <tongue in cheek>merits</TIC> of the OP and so I will confine my comment (and I have been waiting for a long time to suggest this to someone posing as an Über patriot) to the following: There are, no doubt, many countries in the world that have the sort of oppressive conditions that you seek. Perhaps you should move.
In a more GD vein, perhaps you should look at governments that practiced this level of privacy invasion and see how well that went over, also take a look at if this had any practical impact on reducing crime.
Of course, that wouldn’t end drugs, murder, burgalry, rape, assault… Actually, it wouldn’t stop hardly any crime. Sure, dudes wouldn’t have any cash to steal, but they’d still have a rolex, or nikes, or a leather jacket.
Oddly, however, you don’t need cash to tip strippers. Some clubs will sell you tokens or “tip bucks” that you get by charging your credit card. The strippers turn them back in for cash- or in this case, I guess a “cash value card”.
In Europe & some of the more advanced Asian nations- “stored value cards” are very big, and cash is used less.
I have tried and I have failed. I cannot take this thread seriously no matter how hard I try. The OP is really, really dumb and I cannot believe anyone would post it seriously.
Let me just point out one minor inconvenience in adopting it: You will have to fight against the immense majority of the population and will have to impose it by force and by terror. It ain’t gonna happen. The rest is mental masturbation and I’m getting out of the way as I don’t like the squirts
Remember on the Simpson’s when Snake held up Homer and downloaded his bank account in the CyberCafe?
In reality, a very tiny fraction of my purchases are made with cash. I don’t buy fast food. I buy my newspaper when I get gasoline. I don’t drink much soda, the pizza guy accepts checks, and I don’t eat candy, so cash isn’t a necessity for me. Changing to a charge-only society wouldn’t really affect me much.
When it comes to the privacy issue, I seem to recall hearing on NPR a few weeks ago that the new Homeland Security legislation included the ability to monitor “suspicious” purchases. (Such as a ton of fertilizer when you don’t own a farm, or a nuclear warhead, I suppose). Supposedly, a “red flag” would go up if Big Brother noticed you were buying a lot of something that didn’t make sense, or changed your purchasing habits drasticly. Does anyone else remember this?
I could but then the government would find out about my super powers. Then I would have to deal with the covert CIA operatives, they have Kryptonite these days ya know, and it would be a really big pain in the butt. Plus I really like saving little old ladies from thugs instead of stopping usele…errr these kind of threads. Somehow I get more satisfaction saving little old ladies. So, I’ll just sit back, crack a beer and watch T.V.
If we placed a small, irremovable chip in each person’s hand we could prevent card theft, as cards would not be needed. This chip could also be used to track and monitor people. I think you underestimate the amount of monitoring I envision, money laundering will not be an easy thing, nor will any other crime. People will always be watched.
There is, however, such a thing as totalitarianism, which you seem to be advocating. Personally, I can tolerate a bit of crime if your suggestion is the alternative.
This attitude right here is the problem. Remember this the next time you see the news and a child has been murdered STOP and think about things and see if you feel the same.
And actually, you will have to toleratere a lot of crime.
Wow, I never thought I’d breathe a sigh of relief when I see the story of a child being murdered. Thanks for helping me see the light BZ000000
now to stop feeding the troll.
<hijack> I find it interesting that everyone is concerned about their privacy being invaded in the form of accessing their sexual proclivities </hijack>
Okay, I’m going to pretend like BZ00000000000000000000000 is actually advocating what he claims to be advocating, here, so bear with me.
It is not possible to “outlaw money”. It might be possible to cease the prodiction of government-backed currency, but people will just switch to using something else as currency, because people want to engage in economic transactions. If you try a blanket ban on all unmonitored economic units, you’d better ban posession of any material goods as well, since any fungible unit of wealth can be used as a medium of exchange. So can barter, for that matter.
It is not possible to verify identity by means of subcutaneous implants. The vast majority of people will simply cut them out, and not use the associated card (see point 1). However, even if they do, it would be quite possible to spoof this system - either carry a radio transmitter and record the signals, or kidnap someone and force them to use the card with their buying hand, or just kill them and cut off their hand. Crime would not be reduced.
It is not possible to effect the sort of totalitarian control you (correctly) envision as being necessary to effect this scheme. It is true that many people have failed to resist passive information-gathering schemes, either because they simply do not understand them, of feel that they are inevitable, or they feel some good will be done. However, you’re not advocating this; you’re advocating forcibly preventing people from exchanging currency, and forcibly subjecting them to surgical procedures that they have every reason to avoid. Such a system would require an extremely large percentage of the population to be employed specifically in furthering these two aims; this will fail simply on the vasis of a lack of sufficient thugs.
3a. More to the point, such totalitarian schemes nearly always rely on being propped up by the power of a standing army, but in this case, the army itself, as a government organ, is the most likely to be adversely affected by such policies, since the government will certainly insist on paying them according to its monitored credit scheme. The Praetors will not stand for this, which is why point 3 will not work.
Most importantly, the basic moral thesis behind your proposal -that people have a negative moral culpability for the actions of others, if they could have prevented those actions - is false. Humans have free will, and may freely choose to rob, or not to rob. The moral impetus is not on society to prevent the poor inncent robbers from robbing, as if they could not help themselves, but for the robbers themselves, as individuals with free will, to choose not to rob. Therefore we imprison robbers, but no those who fail to prevent a robbery. Punishment of the populace because it contains robbers would not only be a great injustice, but an act of such immorality that it could be considered an act of war by the state against its members.