Amantha

Everyone read The Golden Compass, trust me - it's good.

Moving on, in response to your post Taylor, I like the idea, however I do see one major flaw in it and that is, how are you going to force someone to work to stay in prison? What is the consequence if they don't? It's not like they can just be released to the streets to be homeless...these people are criminals, after all. Now don't get me wrong, rotting in a jail cell is not being productive and if there's one thing that society thrives on it's the productiveness of the lowest social rung on the ladder to success, but that's not to say these people will work given the choice, and they do have a choice simply because there is no consequence otherwise. Right now, prisoners are given jobs as a kind of reward for good behavior, as the inmates see it as an escape from the mundane, they get to feel that productivity we all secretly yearn for. I completely agree though that making prison a lesser alternative than living on the street would be for the best...obviously we don't advise people to aim for homelessness, but if more homeless equates to less crime, I'll take the homeless, thank you.

Now, the whole privatization thing obviously is going to have some short-comings, and that's fine, I'm not saying getting rid of taxes all together because I do understand that most of that money does go to very beneficial budgets, I may not see physical evidence of it being put to good use, but I am of good faith that most of it is used productively. My beef is with the pointless bureaucratic money drains which I think would be mostly eliminated if the government was run more like a business and less like a government. If a business doesn't trim out it's wasted management, they die - the government just raises taxes, that's inexcusable. If we were operated more like the European nations where they pay as high as 50% of their income to taxes but everything is a public service, I'd have no complaints because I can see where that money is going...health care and college education, etc...instead I'm funding a trillion dollar occupancy I was against in the first place! It just seems like the government sees themselves as a lot more powerful than the voice of the people, especially since the Patriot Act has been more successful at silencing the people than anything else. The truth is, I'm concerned...the dollar continues to plummet, jobs continue to flock to other nations and the only thing I see being done is another troop surge in Iraq and the sad thing is, I don't see any of the presidential candidates really turning that around...they may improve this or that, but we are on a very steep slope here and it might not be too long before we look into living elsewhere worldwide because America is no longer economically viable. I hate to look at things that grimly, but that's how I see it. Bummer.

On a side note, I have two new topics which we can discuss.

1) Now currently we use a flowing conversation system where we just post our responses or new topics (I must insist on stressing again, if you don't want to talk about what we're talking about feel free to post a brand new topic, or if you want to reply to something said months ago, bring it up again - evolving conversation with a splash of randomness is my target here). Now, my question is this - do we like our current system of evolving conversation, or would we like to look a bit more focused and clean and just respond via 'comment' to whatever topic is discussed and new posts are reserved for new topics? Personally, I like the current system but if it is intimidating or impersonal (both of which, I would understand), let me know and we can pound out a better system for all of us to participate equally and fully.

2) If you could live anywhere and anyway you want, regardless of resources, how would you live? For instance, would just travel worldwide or would you own twelve homes and just move from home to home constantly, would you live in LA and just go out every night? Where would your houses be and what would their main features be, etc...? What would you do with infinite resources and please be creative and thorough, or else my response will make you all look like chumps because, I'm warning you, I've got a shit load already in mind so be prepared. That's all for now, I didn't have Internet at home for three weeks, hence my absence, but I'm back now and plan on posting frequently, so please - all of you - come back and post often as well (also - invite your friends, we're slowly growing but we have to keep on it, the more the merrier). That is all for now, Wednesday my resource free life - ta.