Xerox "Routine Backup Test" Leave 17 States Without Food Stamps 305
An anonymous reader writes "People in Ohio, Michigan and 15 other states found themselves temporarily unable to use their food stamp debit-style cards on Saturday, after a routine test of backup systems by vendor Xerox Corp. resulted in a system failure. Xerox announced late in the evening that access has been restored for users in the 17 states affected by the outage, hours after the first problems were reported. 'Restarting the EBT system required time to ensure service was back at full functionality,' spokeswoman Jennifer Wasmer said in an email. An emergency voucher process was available in some of the areas while the problems were occurring, she said. U.S. Department of Agriculture spokeswoman Courtney Rowe underscored that the outage was not related to the government shutdown."
Words that should never be spoken (Score:3)
"[A politician] underscored that the outage was not related to the government shutdown."
These words should never have to be said.
Senator Obama on raising the debt ceiling (Score:5, Insightful)
Let me remind you all of Senator Obama's words from 2006 regarding the raising of the debt ceiling. He voted against raising the debt ceiling at that time.
"The fact that we are here today to debate raising America's debt limit is a sign of leadership failure. It is a sign that the US Government can not pay its own bills. It is a sign that we now depend on ongoing financial assistance from foreign countries to finance our Government's reckless fiscal policies. Increasing America's debt weakens us domestically and internationally."
Source [snopes.com]
How true are those words? I only wish President Obama still believed what he did as Senator.
Channeling Ron Ziegler from 1973: (Score:2)
That statement is no longer operative.
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That contrasts with the current administration which was given a large deficit to start with (made worse by declining tax revenues due to the recession) that has cut government spending.
Re:Senator Obama on raising the debt ceiling (Score:4, Insightful)
|Congress controls the spending. Btw, "Bush's wars" propaganda is getting boring. Democrats overwhelmingly supported them (unanimously in case of Afghanistan) and it was Clinton admin that set the stage for Iraq war with regime change policy (Iraq Liberation Act 1998). You can argue whether it was right or wrong but you can't blame just one side for it - they all had the same intelligence. Same applies with the current administration. Would they really cut the spending if Republicans weren't fighting for it all along.
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Let me remind you all of Senator Obama's words from 2006 regarding the raising of the debt ceiling. He voted against raising the debt ceiling at that time.
The debt ceiling really isn't related to the government shutdown. The media (and certain politicians) are trying to conflate the two -- and it seems that they're succeeding, because most people don't seem to realize that there's a difference.
In other news: (Score:2)
"[A politician] underscored that the entry of the US into WW2 was not related to the attack on Pearl Harbor."
This is exactly why testing backups is necessary (Score:5, Insightful)
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The local Walmart was lacking in any backup method. They had at least 50 buggies packed full of food sitting around the registers and a lot of pissed off customers. Glad they got it back up, I don't look forward to that riot.
Re:This is exactly why testing backups is necessar (Score:4, Funny)
The local Walmart was lacking in any backup method. They had at least 50 buggies packed full of food sitting around the registers and a lot of pissed off customers. Glad they got it back up, I don't look forward to that riot.
Ye gods, the crowd could get ugly...
Too late.
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Moreover, merchants are supposed to have manual means of recording EBT payments for just such a scenario.
Those lead to fraud loopholes, and not just EBT. Someone can claim, "oh, my card doesn't work because the system is down, just fill out the paperwork for me, please." Thats more problematic when nothing distinguishes a "DECLINE-card has no funds" from a "DECLINE-system is broken" to the cashier.
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Did you just pull random speculation out of your ass? If the system works, the card gets used. Most people on the registers are not going to know about any backup system. Want to use your card? swipe it first. Doesn't work? swipe it. I need to know what the problem is so I can ask my manager.
Manager comes over. What happens when you swipe it?
Now, if you're talking about friend of the cashier, that would raise lots of red flags to have piles of swipes work, followed by a single transaction by the fri
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Backups don't always work - that's why you test them. This time they did not work - much better that you experience problems when you anticipate them than when everything else is going wrong, too. It's unfortunate that the system was down, but it seems they got it back up in a reasonably quick time frame. Moreover, merchants are supposed to have manual means of recording EBT payments for just such a scenario.
Exactly. Imagine a more catastrophic meltdown down the road and all of the Nancy Naysayers saying, "WhyoWhy didn't anyone test it?"
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... much better that you experience problems when you anticipate them than when everything else is going wrong, too.
So what you're saying is: if you make a 1 million dollar mistake, your response should be "Phew! At least I didn't lose 5 million!".
An outside observer might suggest that losing the $1 million is bad on its face. Mitigating the outrage by making false comparisons is the sort of thing politicians do, as a dodge for responsibility.
Should we be sanguine about these sorts of problems because they're not the worst possible scenario? Is that an acceptable excuse?
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Should we be sanguine about these sorts of problems because they're not the worst possible scenario? Is that an acceptable excuse?
To some degree yes, mistakes happen, especially with large complex systems. We should count having avoided the worst cases scenario as a success and see what can be done to mitigate the failure mode that did occur in the future, and the answer to that question might very well be nothing or nothing less costly than the future number of anticipated similar failures.
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When i test failover, I announce the test in advance so people can have a plan ready in case the failover doesn't. It sounds like this was un-announced and nobody had any sort of plan to deal with a failure.
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... and it's also why, when you do test them, you make sure to test them on the data affecting 17 different states!
k-ROGER that! (Score:2)
Hahaha I was walking thru Kroger's yesterday and they kept announcing over the speakers "We cannot accept EBT today because our computers are having problems."
Fail-safe (Score:4, Insightful)
People in Ohio, Michigan and 15 other states found themselves temporarily unable to use their food stamp debit-style cards on Saturday,
Why is it that a convenience -- our credit cards, are able to weather a failure like this by simply allowing all purchases, but our food stamp cards simply stop working? Credit card systems are, at every level, designed to cope with a failure by simply authorizing the purchase. Only a very small number of transactions would have been failed anyway for insufficient funds, etc., and these are reconciled when that part of the system is restored to service... meaning there's very little loss to the provider for this.
For that matter, if they've decided to design the system in this fashion, where were the redundancies? If a routine backup can result in failure on this scale, then it begs the question of where and how the backup of the actual systems, not just the data, got overlooked.
Re:Fail-safe (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Fail-safe (Score:4, Insightful)
One of the news articles mentioned that merchants were supposed to record transactions manually and allow purchases up to $50
Due to the government shutdown, I cannot provide primary source data such as would be normally available from the USDA, etc. In lieu of that, the links provided represent the best non-authoritative sources available at this time.
The average household size is 2.48. Source [usatoday.com].
The average person spends about $70 a week on food Source [loweryourspending.com]
76% of people on food stamps are disabled, elderly, or children. Source [feedingamerica.org]
Around 44 million Americans are on food stamps now*
* [Couldn't find credible source; Estimated from multiple sources]
This would mean that the average weekly trip to the grocery store, for an average household, would be $173.60. If your number is correct, then the government has opted to allow vendors to 28% of a family's food to be processed. Also according to the article, this outage may last up to three days.
Now here's the thing; A lot of those families live 'paycheck to paycheck'. Even if it is welfare; They don't have a fully stocked pantry. If they don't buy food today, a lot of them don't eat. And most people go shopping on the weekend. Your quoted $50 means the average family runs out of food in just under two days. I was unable to find any citation to back your assertion that they were allowing purchases as long as they were under $50 as well, so I have my doubts as to its validity. Anecdotally, two of my friends who have food stamps in the midwestern area reported being unable to purchase any food or remove any amount of cash benefits from their accounts.
So either the situation is 'rather bad' -- 1 in 8 Americans will be going hungry for at least one day this week on average. Or it's 'very bad', in that 1 in 8 Americans will be going hungry for three days. And possibly longer -- many of those people use public transportation or arranged rides to get to the grocery store every week. Especially the elderly and disabled. These rides are picked out weeks ahead of time. For them, they could be looking at not eating for a week or more.
So I return to my original point: Why is it that credit card companies, who offer a convenience, do this, but our government, which provides something that in a very literal sense is life or death to some people, does not? There is no answer to that question that I come away with that makes this look like anything other than criminal neglect of a vulnerable population.
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I need to challenge your premise a bit.
Living paycheck to paycheck should have no bearing on how stocked a pantry is when the pantry is being stocked by welfare benefits cards. It is literally like me saying here is $174.00, buy food with it and only food and you waiting until your paycheck comes in to purchase the bare minimum and save the rest for your next paycheck.
Furthermore, and I understand this is anecdotal, but it is representative of most of the people I know getting food stamps via EBT cards, mos
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My thought was that allowing up to $50 is certainly not enough for a typically grocery trip, but that if the outage was of a short duration (measured in hours rather than days), that it might be sufficient. It's at least a system in place today rather than one that would ostensibly need to clear numerous political hurdles.
I think some of the other threads have covered that EBT is run more like debit
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The one I work for didn't. But then, they couldn't. There is no mode programmed into the (computerized) cash register system in the stores to allow such a thing (at least at the chain I work at).
Also, the lack of such a capability may be no accident. With no way to verify that a card was still good or had money on it, well, -the people might, um, forget how much they're really
Re: Fail-safe (Score:3)
That's because the EBT cards function like Debit cards, not credit cards. So they need to contact the account to verify funds every time.
They could make it some other way, but we wouldn't want people cheating the government by getting one extra cart of groceries early, would we. All because we didn't program the computer to check the cards balance every time.
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That's the system they went to in New Mexico when I was working for a card processor there. When the system first started, there was no default approval.
That was bad. Try telling someone "Sorry. Your kids are going to go hungry tonight."
So, they allowed store level approvals up to a certain amount when the system was down. It got abused some, but was a much better option than a blanket denial.
This was in the late 1990s, and would have varied from state to state, obviously. I would expect most states would h
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Credit cards are taken as a promise to pay. If you have the card, either you are good for it or the credit company is the one who has to come after you for payment.
Debit cards don't work that way. If they can't verify the funds in your account, they don't get paid.
This can get scary: (Score:5, Interesting)
In the late 1990s, the company I worked for was one of many processing EBT card transactions for grocery stores in New Mexico when they first switched to it from paper food stamps. The bank that was the approving authority for them (the next higher link up the chain from us) had a system problem and had been down for about 45 minutes.
I got a call from a very stressed sounding manager at a store in a bad neighborhood of Albuquerque and explained that the outage was statewide, and I'd already called the next highest level.
His response: "You don't understand! These people carry guns."
I really didn't have a good answer for that one, but certainly sympathized.
They later changed the rules so that when the statewide system was down, they could approve it at the store and then take out any overuse from later payments. That got abused, but it made some store managers a lot less nervous.
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Obvious trolling is obvious.
Regardless of who it is, try telling someone "Sorry, but your kids are going to go hungry tonight." The response won't always be a fun one.
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Actually, he probably meant gang members and thugs which would likely be more apt to vote democrats then republicans or tea party members.
However, I'm not sure why you jumped to political affiliations. It is not like only republicans or only tea party members own guns or carry guns. To think so it sort of silly.
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Generator transfer switch test? (Score:3)
With various reports referring to it as a power outage and others as a test of backup systems, I'd guess this was a generator load test where something went wrong with the transfer switch. We do those off-hours monthly at the data center where I work and, being the nervous sort, I'm grateful they usually coincide with one of my days off, although ours have gone smoothly.
Don't jiggle the jello (Score:2)
If I had to point any fingers it would be that they should have a multi-layered deployment system where they deploy to the test center, a small random group, a larger group, and then na
what does Xerox provide? (Score:2)
Blame their copies (Score:3)
Maybe they can blame their buggy copiers [theverge.com]. Didn't this used to be a quality company?
Re:GET A JOB YA BUMS (Score:5, Informative)
Re:GET A JOB YA BUMS (Score:5, Insightful)
There Are 3 Unemployed People Competing For Every Job Opening [huffingtonpost.com]
But is this a measure of people competing for jobs in good faith, or is it merely the number of people unemployed divided by the number of jobs? From TFA, I see it's the latter.
This doesn't take into account people like, for instance, my sister, who hasn't worked since the mid-nineties and is grimly determined to do whatever it takes to remain on government assistance for the remainder of her life. Justified by "I had bad things happen to me in my youth; society owes me a comfortable living in the manner and place of my choosing as a result."
I'm pretty sure she's not the only one.
Re:GET A JOB YA BUMS (Score:5, Informative)
But is this a measure of people competing for jobs in good faith, or is it merely the number of people unemployed divided by the number of jobs? From TFA, I see it's the latter.
1. To be counted as unemployed, you must be actively looking for a job. If you aren't, you are officially a "discouraged worker" and removed from the unemployment rolls. So, for example, if your sister hasn't worked since 1995, an hasn't even been trying to get a job, she isn't one of those 3 people trying to fill a single opening.
2. Even if, say, 1/3 of people who are counted as unemployed are really bums trying to mooch off the government, that still means that half of the people legitimately looking for work are coming up empty.
It was even worse a few years ago, when the ration was more like 5 unemployed people to 1 job. In that situation, you could be demonstrably good at your profession, and still not be hired because they could get the best-of-the-best for a pittance in that economy.
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1) No, you have to appear to be looking for a job. I've known many unemployed people and appearing to be looking for a job is pretty easy. For example I recall the requirement in my state being something like, apply for 3 jobs a week, which is easy, apply for the same four that rejected you last week, the extra job is in case one of those wants to move forward toward offering you a job in which case you don't report it and find another place that wont hire you next week. These were of course my more educate
So what? (Score:3)
Is this an astro turfer or something? I'd like to b
Re:So what? (Score:5, Interesting)
I've known people on gov't assistance. It's a few hundred dollars a month and you have to be making about half the poverty line to get it. If you're sister is on gov't assistance for real then there's something wrong with her. I don't mean that as an insult. I mean there really is something wrong, and she needs the help. You don't get enough from the gov't to live, you get enough so that if your family is giving you a lot of help you can just barely eat.
Is this an astro turfer or something? I'd like to believe noone is this much of a jerk in real life...
We've talked about this in various Slashdot threads. Yes, there is something supposedly wrong with her. My sister purports to have "agoraphobia". This means that she can't go shopping, can't hold down a job, can't drive. Open spaces purport to cause panic attacks. Moreover, she purports to have various medical conditions, including crippling arthritis and a heart condition, which prevent her from working. (This is not the only way she works the system -- more on that later.)
Yet, she has a recreational vehicle with which she takes camping trips, and a 4-wheeler with which she joyrides out in the desert in Nevada. But these are parked out of sight when her social worker visits her single-wide, at which time she uses a walker to get around. Oops, scratch that, she now has a motorized wheelchair acquired at government expense. When she's not under scrutiny, she doesn't need any of these things. (I know this from personal observation.) Yes, it's open fraud. But so far she has gotten away with it. (I pay my way, and she has stuff I could never afford... You know, just never mind.)
She owes money to basically everyone, has no intention to pay any of it back, and has developed coping skills to avoid same. Her house has been in default (or in and out of default; I don't follow it that closely) since at least the late nineties. She's been on the edge of repossession since at least the turn of the century, but somehow the house never quite gets repossessed.
Yes, I'm perfectly willing to stipulate that there is something wrong with her. What is wrong with her is that she has decided that there is no moral reason not to game the system. And by "the system" I mean several systems -- various types of government care, and the collective ineptitude of various companies in trying to get their money back from her. We haven't even talked about how she managed to acquire a foster child, and what a fiasco that's been.
A few years back she talked our elderly mother into putting her (my sister) on the lease for the family homestead, ("for tax purposes") and promptly took out a loan against her own mother's house. Not to pay off her charge cards, or anything practical, but to take a cruise and buy herself stuff. That started a legal battle that she eventually lost. After several complicated transactions and some expense the house is free of the debt and I'm the sole owner. (My mother still lives there, and I will call the local sheriff if her daughter ever shows up.) Since then, my sister calls me on random days at 3:00 AM to cuss me out. She knows that I'm on call and have to pick up the phone. Eventually she gets tired of me hanging up and I'm good for two or three more weeks. (I also have a drunken aunt that calls me in the middle of the night, but that's a different story.)
The point is, just because someone is on government assistance doesn't mean they deserve it. I'm sorry if that bursts everyone's bubble, but it's true. Sometimes, all it means is that they found a way in, and decided that getting a check from the government beats the hell out of actually working for a living.
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Re:So what? (Score:4, Funny)
You are my new favorite person.
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There Are 3 Unemployed People Competing For Every Job Opening
But is this a measure of people competing for jobs in good faith, or is it merely the number of people unemployed divided by the number of jobs? From TFA, I see it's the latter.
1. Is this a measure of jobs offered in good faith, or jobs which are being offered in bad faith which will be granted to no one in order to justify hiring an H1B or outsourcing?
2. Are these jobs you can live on? From TFA, I see it isn't. ("Not coincidentally, most of the industries with the highest numbers of job openings in May, according to the JOLTS data, were lower-paying sectors, including health-care services, retail sales and restaurants.")
3. The article expressly addresses your objection and explic
the health care system made so people where better (Score:2)
the health care system made so people where better off not work then working even an part time job with no health care or an plan that did not cover anything while they end makeing to much pay so they got kicked off there government assistance plan.
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Luckily, she's a statistical minority. She's only your sister, not mine.
Agreed. I wouldn't wish her on anyone. But I'm not so sure people like her, (not just her) are a statistical minority. I'd like to think so.
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Government spending != wages, unless you're talking about government wages, which I don't believe we were.
Infrastructure (Score:2)
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Think about it. The money has to go somewhere. All money eventually ends up in the private sector.
And if the money stayed with the taxpayers from the start, where do you think it will eventually end up? Yup, you guessed it, the private sector, maybe. The big difference between government spending and individuals having less taxes is that less taxes allows people to save, and it allows them to have absolute freedom to choose how that portion of their money gets spent.
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The only people saving money now are the rich 1%.
They put their money in Swiss bank accounts.
They are free.
The rest of us are wage slaves.
Yes, it does (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Yes, it does (Score:4, Insightful)
I have never understood how anyone could morally justify confiscating 90% of someone else's income for income over a certain amount. I don't care if your intentions are altruistic or not, you simply don't have the right to make that choice for me. If you want to spend that money, go earn it yourself and spend it however you want, and I'll do the same.
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So, if I get you right you are claiming that taxes they take are all used for services that improve the lives of the people paying those taxes directly?
Wow, that must be an amazing utopia to live in, it sure as hell doesnt work like that around here..
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Because those services use SUCH huge amounts of FEDERAL tax dollars. Of course how could we be so blind.
Go read a graph:
http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/01/16/us/politics/16fivethirtyeight-gov1/16fivethirtyeight-gov1-blog480.jpg [nytimes.com]
Most of that money goes to entitlement programs, military contractors, and the NSA (if the $1 trillion budget is a real thing then they cost more than police, fire, etc)
You'll notice "infrastructure and services" is combined into one to encompass everything you said. So yeah,
Nobody paid those rates, dumbass (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, the top rate was 90%. BUT NOBODY PAID 90%!!! There were all sorts of write offs, loop holes, etc and people paid close to what we paid today.
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They normally don't sit on the money. Typically it goes into traditional investments, which are money drains. Some goes to venture capital, which benefits the economy. Some is a measure of worth based on their holdings of a company in which they hold majority share.
The last means they are determining how employee futures go. Which was a good thing until the short term profit scene hit.
So there are some fat cats sitting on money or making bad decisions, and many controlling or supporting business well. You k
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I'll just make a note here... Anyone who makes a fucking party political issue about a story which is not a party political issue, I'm going to mod down as offtopic from now on in. I don't care whether you're replying to someone, if you're commenting on a topic which has no fucking relevance to party politics, you're the fucking dipshit.
It might help if the Dems quit importing competition for all those unemployed.
Who the fuck modded this AC "insightful" in a story about Xerox. Fucking kill these commen
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It's hardly fair to expect people to get a job just to eat. Everyone is entitled to food, shelter and reasonable transportation. It say's so in the US Constitution.
It does? Where? Since when?? The closest my US Constitution comes is "Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness."
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To be pedantic: life does, in fact, require food. One might even include shelter in that requirement given that much of the US climate can be considered deadly to the unsheltered at certain times of the year. Reasonable transportation is a bit of a longer stretch, but liberty would include at least the freedom to move about, and the pursuit of happiness could imply at least the ability to find transportation which enabled such a pursuit.
Personally, I'd like to see them starve, die from exposure, or - at the
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One might even include shelter in that requirement given that much of the US climate can be considered deadly to the unsheltered at certain times of the year.
In that case, plenty of cities and states are violating the right to life by denying people the right to pitch a reasonable tent on public land.
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To be even more pedantic, the life mentioned in Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is not a right to live, but your right to control your own destiny or die trying. That is where liberty and pursuit of happiness come into play. It is only limited by your abilities and resources due to the life you created for yourself.
The concept of life liberty and the pursuit of happiness is not about what a person is entitled to. If that was the case, the very first congress would have instituted welfare. It was
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Natural rights are those that cannot be taken away by others, not a declaration of entitlements. Someone else cannot take your liberty, but you are welcome to chain yourself to a fireplug.
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So you don't mind if they go hunting in the neighborhood? You're fine with it if your neighbors plow up the lawn, plant crops, and get a cow?
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The fact that we have natural rights does not preclude us from making other laws. Are you serious or trying to build a straw man?
By the way, I would like very much if someone would like to come safely hunt or trap the deer and rabbits that are eating my garden. I have a neighbor with crops in the front yard. Eclectic, but whatever. There are no cows, but one lady (same as the crops) does have chickens in a movable pen. Another guy moved up from Texas and had chickens for a while, but he seems to have given
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The point is that that all of that has been made illegal in many places. Many of the means by which a non-lazy person might gather the essentials for living in the absence of offered employment have been taken away, but no suitable replacement seems to be on offer. That is at the least unethical.
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That is at the least unethical.
Fair enough. I'm afraid I didn't get where you were coming from. I think we agree - I'm not a staunch libertarian. Once you implement something like property rights (not to mention property tax!), you pretty much sign a social contract to help those who lose out as a result of your legislation.
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So you don't mind if they go hunting in the neighborhood? You're fine with it if your neighbors plow up the lawn, plant crops, and get a cow?
I am fine with all of that. Although if you try hunting on my lawn, I'll consider you a poacher and a legitimate target.
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I'll bet you'll find there are laws forbidding it where you live. You might should get those repealed since you are fine with the behavior. That or offer a suitable substitute.
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> So you don't mind if they go hunting in the neighborhood? You're fine with it if your neighbors plow up the lawn, plant crops, and get a cow?
No, not really. I are proceeding from the false assumption that those of us that believe in personal property rights are flaming hypocrites.
Truth be told, there isn't much good hunting to be had in my neighborhood. That whole "urban" thing has scared off most of the wildlife. I am not sure how much you could make out of the few rabbits and squirrels that remain.
As
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So the commons were closed. In most cases, agriculture beyond a small garden somewhere in the yard are forbidden. meanwhile, no reasonable alternative has been offered.
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In other words, they don't exist. Because you may think you have a right to live, but anyone can take away your life. If the right to live isn't a natural right, nothing else is either.
Re:GET A JOB YA BUMS (Score:4, Insightful)
It is exactly because natural rights are violable that it is important to protect them.
Your "right to life" is not a directive to the rest of us to keep you alive, it is a directive to the rest of us not to actively try to kill you.
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So letting someone starve violates no rights.is that about right?
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It violates no natural rights, but it's not very compassionate. I'm actually a supporter of government-sponsored charity, even though it involves coercion.
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Fair enough, but just because most countries don't respect natural rights, doesn't mean there isn't a whole ideology built around them.
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Sorry to interrupt the pseudo-religious smug fest, but that clearly refers to people who refuse to work as they were taught. It does not refer to those who nobody has taught or who are willing but cannot find work.
Where is the teaching people how to do needed work? Where is the work to be done as people have been taught? I see no command to get to work as there is no work offered. Where are the people sitting down and talking to them as someone who cares?
Jesus said many other things about the proper way to
Go on the net and learn to start a business (Score:2)
Where is the teaching people how to do needed work?
On the Internet, if Nicholas Negroponte's One Laptop Per Child project is to be believed.
Where is the work to be done as people have been taught?
In your own business that you started. Do you think Jesus's adoptive father Joseph was the equivalent of a W-2 employee, or was it more likely that he owned his own shop?
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I'm barely managing to keep myself employed that way ATM. It seems lot of people haven't even managed that much. OLPC is a nice start, but I don't see any children around here with one and I don't see a lot of employers willing to accept "I have a laptop and the internet" as a substitute for the relevant degree.
Even people with the relevant degrees are having trouble getting work these days.
Also notable, do you believe Jesus meant people should be left to starve? In particular, any children involved?
Joseph
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I don't see a lot of employers willing to accept "I have a laptop and the internet" as a substitute for the relevant degree.
Unless you're in a highly regulated field, thoroughly documented projects completed on your own time count for a lot.
Also notable, do you believe Jesus meant people should be left to starve? In particular, any children involved?
No. But I don't recall him saying that feeding the poor should be the responsibility of Caesar (the government) either. if everybody with a job gave 10 percent of adjusted gross income to a reputable charity, perhaps we wouldn't need Caesar to run our social programs.
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Apparently though, that doesn't happen a lot. However, as I pointed out, farmers were at one time expected (by Caesar) to make part of their crops available for the poor.
The AC above was more than willing to use scripture (or I should say a flawed understanding of a selected bit of scripture) as an excuse to do nothing. The GOP has proven perfectly willing to be 'guided' by scripture when it suits them.
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Go back and look, the "life, liberty and pursuit of happiness" quote (happiness not property) is from the Declaration of Independence.
Fourteenth Amendment (Score:2)
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Here [wikipedia.org] you go. :-)
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Ugh! The only American made car uglier was the AMC Pacer.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1975_AMC_Pacer_base_model_frontleftside.jpg [wikipedia.org]
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Every civilization since the dawn of time has requires taxes. Get out of your retarded fantas. Paying taxes is no more slavery than obeying speed limits is slavery.
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if your right is dependent on taxes then it's not a right. If you land on a uninhabited island and there is no state, your 'right' to a tax funded food disappears but you still have your self-ownership, right to speech, right to be happy, right to provide yourself with means of survival. What about natural disasters? same deal - people cut off from the rest of the world, no food on the store shelves, no water in taps... Suddenly the right to food goes poof. Call these things perks of civilization or whateve
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Rights are in general what a society deems then to be. "Natural rights" are in essence a fiction western civilization has largely agreed are inherent, and ought not be violated save in very specific and limited circumstances. Other societal rules also come into play; in particular enlightened self interest, wherein you agree to certain basic protections in exchange for your potential (though possibly never realized) need of them at some future date. Along with that goes the idea that such programs means des
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This situation could have resulted in violence (or worse) if this wasn't rectified quickly.
Food riots? The government Soylent Green People Scoopers will clean them up really fast. Which will increase the Soylent Green supply, so that it can be given away free to food stamp card holders.
Store Clerk: Sorry, our food stamp card system is down again, but you can have some Soylent Green for free, so you won't need to go hungry . . .
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Another thing you fail to realize while you were ranting about "A PRIVATE COMPANY", is that people that got screwed over by this system's failure now don't have a chance in hell to switch to a competitor. They're stuck with the system that "A PRI