The whole RMS is only a dick for those that don't understand him doesn't work around here. You just have to accept that many people understand him and his motives and think he's a dick.
There needs to be a "free software extremist" though. That role is necessary so that when someone like myself stakes out a less-extreme position I can't help but seem reasonable in comparison.
I accept that many people, despite a longstanding superficial familiarity with RMS and his work, are nevertheless cretinous ingrates who don't understand the first thing about software freedom or RMS's role in preserving same.
"His motives"? Really? What are you thinking here? Fame? Fortune? Pull the other one.
Bizarre. I didn't think anyone would so completely miss the point. There isn't a single insurance company in the world that makes business decisions on the premise that climate change is fake.
If a denier is so sure, there's a huge and ridiculously obvious opportunity to either get blindingly rich or else lie on financial reports as the business fails.
The healthcare isn't free no matter how many times you people say that.
But you're also wrong about Australia being "a very similar society to the US". Maybe at one time, but Australia has some very authoritarian laws these days - from gun control to internet filters, etc..
Healthcare is free in that anyone anywhere can go to a hospital with anything and be treated for it without paying anything. (And everyone who earns enough money pays taxes).
You really want to argue that healthcare isn't 'free'?
Gun control isn't 'authoritarian' it's sensible. Only with a screwed up U.S agg-prop point of view could you construe it as 'authoritarian', there is no mention of guns as a "right" in any of Australia's (or almost every other country in the worlds) constitution or case law... So could you justify how you came to your point of view?
There are no active internet filters in australia... Though there is talk of them, and some ISPs filter stuff... Do I need to remind you about Wikileaks getting it's Amazon servers shutdown... Even if there was a filter in Australia, it would be 'closer' to the US not further in similarities.
Australia is very authoritarian. They actually confiscated the guns. not just made them illegal. They threatened law abiding citizens with prison time for not turning them in.
They made it illegal to own (certain) guns, then offered a buy back scheme, then they confiscated guns from those that didn't bring in... This works much like how 'drugs' are illegal, and the police confiscate them, so the U.S is just as authoritarian (but with drugs) in this regard.
Gun crime reduced dramatically, though when categorised as violent crime, the reduction was smaller and overall the crime rate has decreased year on year... so I don't know what you are referring to.
Mandatory voting is 'authoritarian'... are you kidding me? It stops 'vested interest' or disenfranchisement of portions of your population, and moves closer to real 'universal suffrage', I can see there is valid criticism in arguing it impinges personal freedom, but authoritarian again just seems you are pushing some odd right wing agenda here.
Compared the the U.S, Australia sits well and truly to the left, but the similarities I was referring too, was about the make up of the populations, Australia is a good test case (for the U.S) for assessing policy outcomes, especially when Australia has implemented said policy and has strong correlative outcomes.
You seem to have derailed the thread some-what with your propaganda and pro-gun agenda, which I have sadly fallen for.
You have to show up (or post) a vote, there is no requirements on your actual vote (it can be completely blank, or a picture of ponies... but you have to put your bit of paper in the ballet box (or postbox)).
Punishment for not voting is usually a fine. Though encouraging people not to vote or to post invalid votes (i.e. subversion), can carry jail terms of up to 12 months (from memory).
* you need emergency care and make your own way to a public hospital
* you're prepared to wait for a non-essential treatment
* you see a bulk-billing general practitioner
* you earn enough such that the cost of medical insurance (plus out of pocket expenses if you do need treatment, making this calculation tricky) is less than the dollar value of the additional 1.0 to 1.5% tax you would otherwise pay as a Medicare Levy Surcharge. (Ballpark figure is >$120k individual or >$200k as a family)
For the poor, (i.e those that earn < 28k in Australia)... they pay no tax. Thus Healthcare for them, is in every sense of the word: free.
For those that earn > 28k, they pay tax, which a portion of goes to healthcare. So from 28k to probably (random guess) about 70-100k, healthcare is heavily subsidised. For 100k - 200k healthcare costs probably about as much as it would if they just paid for it themselves (given the wealthier tend to be healthier). The 200k+ they are probably paying more for it than they use.
But those who need it most (i.e the poor/poorer) get it free/subsidised.
This is called a progressive tax system. If your care about the majority of your society (keeping in mind, in australia the mean wage is around the 50k mark), then it is without a doubt a better (utilitarian) solution.
Only a distorted, rightist mindset interprets ``free healthcare'' as meaning ``healthcare magically appears from the sky'' rather than ``you can walk into a hospital and get treatment without having to pay a bill afterwards''.
There's also the fact that liberals - the ideological faction most likely to protest these programs - have been reluctant to criticise a president from their own party.
That's not true, but not surprising coming from the bbc. The BBC needs to differentiate between leftists and liberals. Leftist regimes throughout history have always been for surveillance.
Surveillance isn't just tapping lines. It's also forced government mandates of the individual that are effective in knowing what you're up to.
