I'm done with slashdot. No more faux-outrage mentally ill social engineer victim narratives will take up another instant of my time, thanks. If anyone can recommend a better site for actual tech issues leave it in the comments.

Fill in observatory, Large Hadron Collider, museum, theme park or whatever as needed. Why does this need to be said.

Also I'm guessing difficult to keep attached to the ground in high winds. I wouldn't want to be in this in any kind of adverse weather conditions.

It most certainly is, the communist manifesto gives clear instructions for the ordering of society, including details on how to treat emigrants and rebels which Stalin applied with gusto.

Hitler wasn't a capitalist, he made it fairly clear that his aim was to destroy the banks entirely. He wasn't really a conservative either when you consider how hellbent he was on creating an entirely new mythology for his third reich. In almost every regard he was a reforming man of the left.

Saying "crony capitalist" in this context is the exact same as saying "corrupt tinpot autocrat", and as far as I'm aware they've existed throughout history. No, what communism brought to the table was the incentive and excuse to murder and oppress tens of millions and sleep well that night. On top of which the sodding thing doesn't even work.

Remind me again, which political system stamps out religion, freedom of speech, individual expression, political opposition and indeed all resistance, often leading to mass murders on a scale impressive even by twentieth century standards?

Right.

Yes, there was. Food and shelter were provided to all, but luxuries were earned. Scotty bought a boat. Benjaman Sisko's father worked in his own restaurant. In the DC Comics story “The Final Voyage“, Spock’s back pay was stated to be around 611,700 credits when his five-year mission ended.

And more: http://en.memory-alpha.wikia.c...

Wrong: http://www.ex-astris-scientia....

Hahaha! Seriously, capitalism is a purely economic system, communism is a bizarre blueprint for an entire society from goatee-universe.

You need to reform the entire judicial system for that to work. As long as even relatively minor infringements can get someone sent off to forced labour camps with added rape, the police are never going to be part of the community.

Communism flat out doesn't function as it has no means to communicate value. It. Does. Not. Work. Even in the presence of abundance communism fails. It's a really stupid idea.

Star Trek wasn't a communist society, it was a democracy with private property (Picard's brother owned a vineyard), a currency, religion (Bajor), individual rights and the captains had better quarters and facilities than the crew.

If you want a communist society try the Borg.

As for capitalism being dead and stinking make sure you let countries like China know, they've been reaping vast rewards since they embraced it.

That's pretty much exactly what I was saying, and that there needs to be a mechanism for restricting the availability of megaticket items. Enter capitalism. It mightn't even need that much regulation at the end of the day.

It always cracks me up when headbent leftists imagine that communism is the only way a cashless society can function.

That's kind of the drive capitalism harnesses though. It's not a bad thing to want to improve your situation, nor is it always neccessarily linked to one-upping the Joneses, maybe someone really badly wants a 20th century ocean liner. I know I'd love to have my own personal observatory and not because it would make the neighbours jealous.

We do live in a universe of absurdly abundant resources so it's only a matter of time before we're able to adequately harness these, whether that becomes a more developed form of capitalism or some form of state-capitalism hybrid remains to be seen.

Short answer, not really. Longer answer you'll always need some means to control supply, even if only for extreme luxury items.

Consider this scenario: a couple of centuries from now the solar system is well developed, we have gargantuan manufactories orbiting the sun, being fed near-limitless amounts of raw material by automated harvesting operations working through asteroids and comets. Technologically and economically it would be quite feasible to build and supply an entire 20th-century ocean liner for every one of the earth's 18 billion odd inhabitants.

Is it desirable to do so? Of course not. So for items with a vast physical, environmental or sociological footprint (like nuclear warheads) there will always be a cost price. While I'd expect things like one car per person to become almost free, along with ubiquitous healthcare and good spacious housing, economic competition aka capitalism will always have a place. The targets for the competition will simply become more grandiose.

Maybe for a short period but this scenario relies on organised crime somehow surviving an apocalypse that wiped out all government authority and associated infrastructure. There's no reason to believe that they'd be hit any less by a pandemic for example. Afterwards what you've got is a gang of people preying on a much larger group of people who no longer need to fear repercussions from the law if they just up and shoot Don Corleone's strong arm men, and this is something often overlooked - the law protects criminals from the geneal population because the general population has a lot more to lose than criminals by retaliating in kind under the aegis of civilisation.

Take that away and the sheep very rapidly turn into wolves. Neighbourhood watch groups become armed militia and then vigilante raiders. Susie homemaker picks up a shotgun to look after her kids. While organised crime would probably thrive for a while, especially in societies without much gun ownership, the longer term road warrior scenario would require some fairly specific circumstances to become possible.

My problem with the left isn't generally with the causes they promote or the social positives they latch on to - generally the left hasn't been all that bad at actually identifying problems, with a few glaring exceptions (rape culture or the effects of atmospheric lead pollution on crime anyone). Environmentalism is good, reducing pollution is good, increasing worker safety, building the middle class, strong social safety nets, these are all fine ends to work towards.

No, my problem with the left is that their proposed solutions are generally tipping the hat to if not being completely glued at the hip to bizarre socioeconomic theories that matured and should have expired in the 19th century, often revolving around pseudoscientific or completely invented social dynamics. Coupled with Alinskyite tactics and still drawing to an extent on cold war era agendas, the left is often more problematic than the right - which in modern political parlance translates to anyone who disapproves of the abovementioned package.

I would hope that with the dawn of the information age as embodied by the internet and the growing awareness it brings to people, we can finally begin to move past these sickly old manifestos and failed cultural experiments and move on to something more practical - not just evidence, but evidence based solutions. If something is working, leave it alone unless a clear improvement can be demonstrated. If there are problems let's not pick our Emmanuel Goldstein du jour and try to somehow work the solution into an attack on that group as demanded by the dualism that is leftism. Let's work out the best way to deal with each situation on a case by case basis.

As should be clear from the above I'm neither a leftist nor a conservative, I'm just one of a growing groundswell of people who are rapidly getting tired of the received wisdom of noisy polemicists, and not in a way that's going to lead to a communist revolution either.

A lot depends on the woman, the culture, her personal attitudes and experiences, and how she actually feels about the man in question. For myself I've found Eastern European women to be quite forthright about what they want or don't, while American women run the gamut. In some places and for some women immediately responding in the positive to an approach, even a welcome one, is considered somewhat slutty. And it must be said, by far the most ferocious criticism of women for so-called "slutty" behaviour comes from other women in my experience.

Just to be clear, I'm not talking about unwanted kisses, groping and massages - that's not acceptable in a professional environment or indeed any environment (and let's not kid ourselves that men are the sole perpetrators either), but rather approaching a woman with the aim of perhaps beginning a romantic relationship.

Again personally I take rebuffs at face value but I recognise there are other nuances which aren't as cut and dried as they may seem at first glance.

Oh and never, ever date a feminist.