kapikui

Actually as I understand it, the fleas that carry bubonic plague don't like much more than rats. They will jump on other animals including humans but tend not to set up shop anywhere else. Besides, the street dogs aren't something you end up in physical contact with, unlike a dead rat. Besides bubonic plague, you also have sever hemorrhagic fevers that are often fatal. You still haven't given a practical alternative as to exactly HOW they should have dispatched the rat in a CaleB approved manner. They were using a makeshift glue trap, one that the rat was about to escape from. They placed a plastic laundry basket over it to forestall the escape. A plastic laundry basket that the rat could have chewed through in a short time. They didn't want to touch it and I can't blame them. Why not explain exactly what you think they should have done. Also it would be much appreciated if you could refrain from using profanity in these forums.

Seems to have also burned the bubonic plague carrying fleas on the rat that were almost certainly there in a highly populated area of a third world country.

I hadn't heard about the issue with his daughter. Apparently she "recovered repressed memories" The problem is that recovered memories are as often as not implanted by (usually) well meaning psychologists. It apparently isn't particularly hard to make someone truly believe that they remember something that never happened.

Death is a consequence of the fall. That we have to deal with the consequences, good or bad, or an ancestor's decision is a part of life, and has no bearing on whether or not those actions were sinful. My ancestors came to the United States. Because of that I live better than the vast majority of the world. Now that doesn't mean that I am somehow more virtuous than others, only that I have a much better standard of living. Adam and Eve made a decision long ago. That decision had long lasting consequences. We live with those consequences, but those consequences do not mean that we are held responsible by God for the actions of others. God however can not interfere with free will, or the consequences that come from it.

Are you so sure that being born into wealth is a reward? After all it IS easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle... Again you're basing ALL of your idea of justice on what amounts to less than .02 seconds of a life that has lasted literally forever before we were born, and will last literally forever after we die.

I used to work in a day care. I'm pretty sure daycare centers were invented by the Russians during the cold war as a form of biological warfare.

Are you sure about that? Mormons believe in a "pre-existence" or pre-mortal life, during which time we made choices. All choices have consequences. As to whether or not any of those consequences have any effect whatsoever on how, where or when we are born, there is no revelation so far as I know, but we don't know for sure that your statement is correct. I personally like to think that each of is placed into a situation that will result in our greatest chance (not 100% as God can not interfere with free agency) of obtaining Celestial Glory, but that is my own opinion. Also as has been explained to you before, we do believe that those who have not had a reasonable opportunity to accept the gospel in this life will be given it in the Spirit World. This would seem to invalidate your capriciousness argument. What we do know is that those unto whom much is given, much is required, and unto those to whom little is given, little is required. There is a great deal about what goes on before and after this life that we simply do not know. Saying any particular part of it is unjust is a little like judging whether or not a particular movie is any good by viewing a small portion of a single frame. You simply don't have the information you need to make that determination.

Just a thought, there are numerous ways to "read" something. The entire thing is available in audio on CD and online.

Apatheist

I personally hate cities, but Salt Lake is the only large city I've ever been to that doesn't leave me fantasizing about a Tunguska Event to happening to it.

It depends on a lot. If you try some of your "moral" ways of costing your product, you will be out of business in a month. You need to charge enough to cover your materials, your labor, to pay yourself, to pay insurance, taxes, advertising (and if you don't advertise you will make a small fraction of what you could have), You will also need to charge enough to pay your investors. That is just the tip of the iceburg. You will likely incur debt unless you start off wealthy. You need to charge enough to pay that off, and if you are smarter than a radish you'll want to have some cash set aside in the business in case something bad happens, like a machine breaking, or an entire batch of product having to be recalled. Your exact margin will depend greatly on the product. Generally you want to maximize your profit. Indeed in most countries if you have investors you are legally obligated to do so and can be sued if you fail to do so. More accurate responses to your questions would require far more information about your widgets, the market in which you wish to sell, etc. So let's go through each of your questions: "Should I charge cost price plus a percentage?" Yes, this is one way to look at it. figuring out that percentage is hard and would take a couple of masters level business courses worth of information to explain it fully. It depends greatly on your widget, what market it's in, your market segmentation, your competition, and a lot of other things. "Should I charge (as Karl Marx would want) for my labour only, and what rate should I charge my labour at?" You would be out of business in a week, because labor is far from the only cost in business. At a minimum you have your materials, your shipping, taxes, insurance, rent on whatever facility you're using, pay and benefits for any other employees, utilities, etc. "Should I charge some figure that guarantees me a lot of sales, so that most people will be able to afford, and benefit from, my widgets?" The more sales you have, the more widgets you need to make, this means hiring more people to make them, and thus more money you need to pay out to make them. You may need a larger factory, more machines etc. One of the biggest problems a lot of business have (and it's a good problem to have) is higher demand than supply. A lot of businesses seek investment just to get the money they need to ramp up production. If you use this method, you will either work yourself to death to keep up demand (and thus your business will fail), or you will run up against a hard limit on the number of your widgets. If the latter happens, people will buy up all of the widgets they can, and then sell them at an obscene profit, thus ruining your moral ideal. Your last option will be to find an investor to get the capital you need to ramp up production. If you get an investor, you get other fun issues with your ideas which we'll get into on the next question. "Should I charge some figure that maximises my profit/ return on my investment?" In most free market countries, if you have investors (see previous question) you will be legally required to maximize your profit, and in many places you can be sued for failing to do so. Moreover, most investors aren't going to invest if you aren't willing to do this. They want to make their money back. Investors that don't have such an attitude only invest in a few things and then go broke. "Should I charge some figure that optimises my effort/return ratio?" This would be an advisable approach to much of life. That doesn't mean take the easy way out, but it does mean that you shouldn't do things the hard way just because you want to show how hard you work. "Should I charge each person differently, according to what they can afford to pay?" While offering discounts to those in need is a laudable thing to do, and many companies have done this, you do have to be careful because a lot of people will take advantage. What happens is not that the people who need a lower price get charged a lower price, rather the ones who don't wish to be freeloaders end up paying for those who do. Remember the money from your business comes from customers. If you charge one less, you have to charge another more. Also remember that the ones you're charging more aren't going to appreciate having to subsidize others, and many will look to your competitors. The truth is that any attempt to moralize in how you charge your customers tends to end up in your business going under. This means that you lose out, and your employees end up unemployed. Essentially it will be your fault they're poor. The reason that businesses do the things they do is because that's what works. Attempts to do other things tend to result in failed businesses.

I second the non-LDS troop.

Here's the other thing. The goal of preventing homosexuals from adopting is because you believe that it is not particularly healthy to raise a child in that particular environment. That argument has merit, but there are problems. As has been pointed out, single people have been adopting. That may or may not be worse, but also about 50% of the homosexual population are lesbians. For the most part, all they need is a donor and can have children. They don't even have to go through the state to do it. Now I'm not comfortable with homosexuals raising children (that is the crux of the issue, not adoption), but practical matters aside, to prevent it you would have to let the government decide who does and doesn't get to have children, and even the thought of giving the government that kind of power gives me the screaming willies.

2RM. Learning that you're from England makes it a lot easier to understand your position. It is a very European mindset you're displaying. One thing you seem to want to be understanding is how accepting Mormons are of Socialistic ideas. Part of the problem is that most of the people on this board are American, and American Mormons tend to be exceedingly Conservative, in the traditional U.S. sense of the word, which, as has been discussed, more similar to Classical Liberalism. In other countries your mileage may vary with respect to the political beliefs of Mormons. There are a few things that are doctrine with respect to political philosophy however: I have no idea how much you know about the founding of the United States and the core philosophies under which we were founded, so I'll give a bit of a crash course. The founding document of the United States is the Declaration of the Independence in which we declared that we were now a separate country from England. To quote it in part To put this in modern parlance, power is held by the people, not the government. It is granted to the government by the people to perform only those tasks that are absolutely necessary. If the government becomes despotic, it is not only their right to overthrow it, but their duty to do so. The government only exists to secure the basic rights of the people, and for no other reason. Now what does this have to do with LDS doctorine? D&C 98:5 . Also D&C D&C 101:80 The Constitution of the United States, though more of a legal and organizing document than the Declaration of Independence and less inflammatory, was based on the very principles, and with the same philosophy as the Declaration. The men who wrote both documents are spoken of in what we believe to be revelation from God as having been inspired to do so. Now this does not mean that someone with some socialistic leanings can't be a good Mormon, but it is clear that church doctrine seems to lean toward needing, at least for a time, a minimalistic government. Indeed it is rather clear that the Restoration, as we call it, couldn't have happened without such a government. Now as far as understanding why so many Americans see Fascism, Communism and Socialism as pretty much the same thing, because to us they pretty much are. They're all forms of government control, and lead pretty much the same place. Many of us see it as a form of slavery. I can never rise above my "station". I can't fail, but I can't ever really succeed, and if I somehow do, everything I've worked for will be taken away and used for something I don't agree with. Why should I work hard if you're just going to steal it from me? I'll do the absolute minimum. For a better explanation, look into the 5000 Year Leap by Cleon Skousen. Even if you disagree with it, it will give you a mental model for better understanding how many Americans see the difference, though we generally haven't really organized it in our own brains to the degree that it is described there.

Why are the two statements mutually exclusive? There is greater good going on now than there ever has been. There is also greater evil happening now than ever before, and thus was it prophesied.

Washington DC has the same thing.

First off, your Iranian friend is likely dead if he does anything to cause those threatening his family any problems. Even in the U.S., it wouldn't be the first time someone from a Muslum nation came here to kill a problem. For your other question, it is an interesting idea, but you have some rather common errors in idea. The first is your statement "But unless they are extended by the powerful to the powerless, I don't see how they can happen. And that will only occur if our leaders love us, and want the best for us, instead of loving themselves, and wanting the best for themselves. And that can only happen, I submit, in a Christian leadership of a Christian nation." I'm not going to touch the Christianity part of it because there are successful and reasonably free countries that are not particularly Christian, but you are correct that Islam does seem to correlate in a nearly 1:1 ratio with tyrannical dictatorships. The error you make is in saying "...unless they are extended by the powerful to the powerless...". This is an extremely common error being made now, and implies a line of thought (one encouraged by those who want to maintain power by the way), that power comes from the government and is then granted to the people in the form of rights. This attitude is essentially the same as divine right of kings. Whether or not you believe God gives someone the power or the power is just somehow there, isn't really relevant. Under such an attitude, the powerful have power and grant rights to the less powerful. This means that it is only through their benevolence that anyone rises above the level of even a slave. The alternate viewpoint is that human rights exist independent of any government or base of power. In countries like Iran, the powerful are then simply violating already existent rights. It may seem like a subtle distinction, but it is an important one. Those rights are yours, and while those rights can be violated, they are still your rights, they are not granted. Here's the really scary thing though. No government (or other form of similar power base) has ever been able to rule over a country without consent of those being ruled, either passively through lack of resistance or more often a sufficiently large portion actively supporting the oppressors. You might argue that it's difficult for the peasant class to fight against an army, but the army has to come from somewhere, and if a large enough proportion of the people is unwilling to support the oppressor, he can't oppress. Let's look at what happened in Romania in the early 1990's when the Iron Curtain fell. The Soviet Union had, for several decades, enough support from its people to maintain a large enough army to effectively oppress several of its satellite countries like East Germany, Poland, Romania and others. When the Soviet style communism started to not work so well for the Soviets, they started to pull back. I still remember the news reports of what happened in Romania. It didn't get the coverage of the Berlin wall, it wasn't as dramatic, probably because it was so fast. The day that the Soviets stopped being involved, a revolution started. I remember seeing it on the news as I was leaving for school that morning. By the time I got home, the revolution was over, and the rulers deposed. By the next morning they had bee tried and executed. Let me say that again. Less than 24 hours after the Soviets stopped propping up their puppet, the people of Romania, including the army, overthrew the government, captured the leadership, arrested them, tried them (and yes I understand that there was a trial), convicted them, and executed them. The problem in Iran and places like it isn't that the people are oppressed, it's that a sufficient number of them support the oppressors to give the oppressors the power they need to commit the oppression. The other problem in a lot of middle eastern countries is that every small religious and ethnic group seems to be absolutely intent on oppressing every other group. Even the advocates of human rights there don't seem to acknowledge individual freedoms such as the freedom to not be Muslim, or to stop being Muslim. Honestly the reason for the oppression in places like Iran is because enough of the people want it, or are willing to support it, that it continues to exist.

So let me get this straight, you feel that things would be better if the brains of men and women weren't different?

God inspires those who are willing to listen. We are held responsible for those laws we know and have been taught. People also often make mistakes in outlook. Remember the story of the king, described previously as a man of god, who fell for wife of one of his subjects, bedded her, impregnated her, and then tried to hide, eventually taking steps to have her husband killed. Even though he did these things, he was an ancestor of the Savior. His name was David. We have to remember that Columbus and his men were products of their times. Though by our standards his attitudes seem barbaric, when it comes to those thought of at the time as "lesser races" Columbus was likely one of the more progressive thinkers of his day. He also didn't exactly have the pick of the crop when it came to crew. During that time, most people who would crew ships were generally unwilling to sail out of sight of land. An experimental voyage that most didn't think they would be able to come back from is unlikely to get many volunteers. This means that there are two ways to get participants. 1. Pay them a lot. or 2. Coerce them. Since Columbus went on a rather small budget, he went with the second choice. Most of his crew were criminals who were offered freedom in exchange for going. He had to put up with a lot of problematic behavior. If he didn't let them have a certain amount of latitude, they would simply mutiny, kill him and be entirely unrestrained.

One of these, or similar.

How about one of these.

I did read the thread, thank you very much. I had the same idea as Mirkwood, namely that you were saying that anyone that didn't have a gun locked up to the point that it couldn't be accessed easily was irresponsible. Indeed, there are many people that want this to be the firm law. Let's just say that I disagree, strongly. My preference, if I needed to lock up a gun would be one of these or similar.

Guns, Coins, Scout patches, Enemies

I don't know about that, but I've played Ocarana of Time, and I can point to several instances of sexual or scatological innuendo. Probably nothing a child would get, but they're there.

You choose what's best for YOU under YOUR circumstances, and I'll do the same. I'll evaluate the relative risk of a child finding my gun, loading it and firing it, vs the risk of not having it ready, given the number of children with access, their ages, responsibility, strength, the crime in my area, etc, and you can do the same. When someone who has no concept of my exact circumstances decides to legislate what's best for me in my house, it's moving on toward time to play Lexington and Concorde all over again.