$ jlc (10,317)

I think it is an interesting idea. I have been glad of such organizations as the Institute of Justice and Pacific Legal Foundation because they make their purpose fighting the gov for the rights of the individual. No way do I have big enough bucks to hire a high class lawyer to defend me if I stand up for freedom sometime. I would have to hope that someone would think the cause itself were worth defending and stand up for me in turn.

The idea of treating this like a kickstarter so that a lot of use who fly under the radar with our lives can contribute a bit here and there - and the money is used to try to extend personal freedom - is one that matches with my wallet and my philosophy.

Jan

Actually, read the second of khalling's links. The story seems to be different than that.

Jan

If you follow the second of khallings links, above, it goes into the Monsanto case, including the fact that the farmer sprayed the field with Roundup and kept the seeds of the plants that survived. The Canadian Supreme Court ruled that he had violated Monsanto's patent but had received no benefit from it so he owed Monsanto no money.

Jan

Thank you for both of these links.

Jan

No, I cannot find it. (I can only find one of her songs.) I remember her singing it, though. She wrote it for one of her friends who loved the Mars books.

Jan

Which one, please?

Jan

Where law and regulation are concerned, you always have to assume that the neighbor is a jerk-neighbor, or the law is useless. I am in favor of 'a few big laws' and not 'a ton of crappy little regulations'.

"Your right to throw a blow ends at the tip of my nose." is a good big law. What we have to decide is if the 'pollen' is a 'fist'. And questions come up: What if I am doing kata and someone walks into my space and gets hit? Is that his fault or mine? This is directly related to "If I have been growing my crops here for decades and now you decide to plant an organic farm downwind, should this be 'my fault'?"

These are important questions that relate to what an individual is responsible for.

Jan

There are two questions in your question, johnpe:

(1) what are the actual differences
(2) what will the market support

Fortunately, we are in a group of folks who understand and respect the importance of economics.

Let me answer as I see it, and we will let AMeador correct me where I am wrong.

It is really not a question of GMO. Let me suggest that if I had a natural tomato plant and my neighbor had a natural pork plant and they could cross breed, then my next generation of seeds would be tomatopork seeds. But my customers are Muslims and will not eat tomatopork produce, so I must keep my tomato plants pure and free of pork plant pollen.

In this case, things labeled GMO are considered religiously offensive to environmentalist - and it does not even matter if there are foreign genes in the genome of the plant in question or not. Once a plant is labeled GMO, then it compromises the ability of the neighboring farmer to collect seeds for his next crop IF he is ethical and wants to label his product accurately for the market.

Jan

This is a point that I have made on other threads. The truth of the matter is that 'what you do on your own property' does not necessarily _stay_ on your own property. The example I used was noise pollution, but pollen is an excellent example - one that would never have occurred to me.

I am tremendously in favor of GMO crops, but you have posed a well constructed problem that goes like this:

1. I, as a person, am not opposed to GMO.
2. My customers are.
3. Ethically, I sell what I say I sell.
4. I say I sell organic heritage produce.
5. If GMO pollen contaminates my plants, then the next generation of seeds will be heritage/GMO hybrids. I will not then be able to ethically label my crops as heritage.
6. The market does not support the additional cost of my buying new seeds every year.

"Pollen" is a physical substance, but one over which we have little control. If a herd of "cows" crosses a property line and damages a neighboring farm, we have ample precedent for considering this the responsibility of the cows' owner (even it he is not negligent). If a herd of "pollens" cross a property line, we really do not know what to do.

Jan

Interesting input. Thank you for your 'from the trenches' perspective.

Jan, thinking now

I agree.

Jan

If you think that your questions may alter how she approaches an aspect of economic or personal freedom, then it is well worth your putting up with her event to try to do so. While no one on this list (that I know of) favors her as a future president, there is a good chance that she will be the one elected.

Even making an incremental change to her policies will be of benefit in such a case. Hillary as pres would still, in my opinion, be a total disaster but 'damage control' may be all that we can do.

If you do not think you can change anything, then stay home and read a good book instead.

Jan

Yay! That you are!

I have actually heard the victory song of the women of Helium sung. (A modern folk artist wrote and sung it.)

Jan

Exactly. Kipling needs to be read in that context too. Both of these authors are way behind our modern image of equality, but they were leaders in their own eras.

Jan

I, personally, would not even call the recipient a moocher. To me, 'moocher' represents a lifestyle or philosophy choice. Hmmm - how do I clarify this thought?

If someone has run three times in his life, I do not call him a 'runner'; if he runs every other day, then I call him a 'runner'. I use the term 'moocher' in the same way - it means (to me) 'someone who characteristically mooches'.

Jan

Granted, but if the above factors are correct, the 'background' IQ of the general people may be a lot higher than we thought it was.

We still need the super bright folk to move us ahead. They may come from India for the next few generations.

Jan

You are welcome, Ducky. I appreciate you working your way through the Middle English verse. (I had not actually thought that anyone would be interested - a couple of folks had asked me to post it and I thought they would be the only people who read it.)

I think you are all very valiant for not 'taking one look and running screaming'.

Jan

This is wonderful! We now have another paving stone on the Path to Hell for the socialists: To, "you really did not make that" we can now add, "society's lottery winners".

What the former phrase did was to disenchant a lot of small business people who had previously been pro-Obama. Let us encourage rational conservatives to further point out to small business that the gov now considers them to be just "lottery winners" and not hard workers.

This phrase is worth good gold. We need to run with it.

Jan

I like IQ tests and encourage their use, in spit of the fact that they only test a certain type of intelligence and underrate individuals who do not test well. I want to have more objective metrics, not less. IQ tests have not been made simpler, they have been made more complex over the years - to keep everyone from scoring in the genius range (from a 1900's test).

Let me start by saying that I am quite fond of Darwinian evolutionary parameters - I say this because what I will say next will seem anti-Darwinian, but you must understand that my underlying premise is that we inherit our capacity for IQ.

Three points on IQ increase:

Firstly, while we inherit our IQ potential, we know that the ability to develop that intelligence is related to nutrition. If a brain lacks protein or vitamins whilst it is growing, the IQ of the individual will be lowered. And, while we complain about eating habits in the US, there are very few children who now do not get enough protein and vitamins in their diet. (This is a personal advantage that can be derived from 'feeding the world'. If we want warp drive, we will get it faster if all the children are well fed.)

Next is the environment in which we are raised. An interesting study posed this question (example - one of many) to people around the world: "All animals that inhabit polar regions have white fur. What color would a bear be if it lived in a polar region?" In existing primitive cultures, the people answered "I would have to see the bear." These were not dumb people (many were the chieftains of their tribes) - these were people who had never been trained in the logic of classes. We live in a world the complexity of which requires us to think in set theory (whether or not we are explicitly trained in it). Our ancestors, even our recent ones, were able to look at the world as series of individual events much more than we are; we find rules and paradigms for just about everything.

Lastly, the volume of information is incredibly different. I have read that 'the amount of information in a single Sunday edition of the NYTimes' approximates the amount of information that a 15th C farmer would have had access to in his Entire Lifetime. Our brains have become little data processing centers - it is not surprising that this shows up on tests.

So, I believe that these are the reasons the IQ is steadily increasing. These reasons do imply that there is a natural limit that will be reached. I personally suspect that by the time that is true, we will have chip augmentation and our capacity will be extended further.

Jan

Yes. It sounds quite enviable. And wonderful.

Jan

Thank you. That is very kind of you to say.

Jan

There are differences, but not as significant as we would like. In the Gulch, we feel that we are watching a train wreck and we are all baffled that everyone else cannot see the approaching crisis too. If we are going to turn away from this, it will take some sort of a change that is extreme. This doesn't have to be a political change - an asteroid striking the Earth would do the trick quite nicely - but a political change is the most likely method (and the most pleasant).

Jan

Thank you for getting my momentary vision of the border problem in terms of gas laws. The key is that the flow will continue until equilibrium is established. If you fill the 'vacuum' on the US side by filling job openings with people who were formerly on welfare (and prevent other folk from getting on welfare) then a new equilibrium is established without illegal immigration.

It occurs to me that the problem with this theory is that I am only looking at a single dynamic. If you are fleeing Mexico because people keep shooting at you and your family there, then the 'vacuum' becomes 'safety' and the flow continues.

Jan

I can't compete with your dad - can I start with 6 and try to work up from there?

Jan

I think we are on the same team, johnpe. I am not a coach - too much time as a lone wolf. I can be a 2AM philosopher, though.

Imagine a group of us sitting together in a library at the small hours of the night, perhaps dressed in proper Victorian fashion, discussing the philosophy of self-realization and intrinsic self-worth and drinking good brandy while the fireplace crackles in the background and the Aussie dog snores softly on a politically unacceptable bearskin rug.

Jan