Social-Democratic Aspies?

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I don't think that socialist democracy would be a much better system if a better system at all. There will still be corruption and the common person can barely manage their own lives much less a government. The major problems of the modern system only exist because people are morons.

Global warming can be solved within the capitalist system through regulation. We simply have to account for the negative externalities placed upon us by pollution and we have to enforce international efforts to control pollution. The problems that we have are problems with democracy, not with capitalism because the beast can easily be restrained. We could easily have the same problems under socialist systems, the USSR had horrible pollution problems and there have even been reports of areas with massive amounts of mental retardation due to pollutants. Heck, I even heard from my French teacher that France had greater problems with dealing with the health issues of smoking because of the fact that the government was the organization selling cigarettes. This is similar to the FDA's problem with the obesity problem due to the fact that the FDA was designed to support farming and is now conflicted between farm interests and the interests of public health.

The problem that we have is the government, not the economic system. The government has the power to limit the excesses of the economy, it just chooses not to due to a lack of public interest in it doing so. I think that mankind will survive global warming when it occurs, maybe not all people but a good amount will survive.

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Me? Irritated? Not at all. What makes you think so?

Which quote is it? Why, both: "new drug" in the sense of "breakthrough" in the sense of "as a result of real investment in R&D" - by the drug co's, that is.

Yes, I agree with all the points you made there, David, and it is a shame that left-wing interests are being suppressed on this board.

Though I would have said that you were a Democratic Socialist rather than a Social Democrat. The former is slightly more left of the latter, with Social Democrats typically not taxing more than 40-45%, but Democratic Socialists do tax the rich a lot higher than 40%.

I anti-agree with every point listed.

I'd be in favor of laws against bullying if I thought there was any realistic way of applying it.

But here's the first thing to keep in mind - one of the ways one becomes a successful bully is mastering never getting caught. Bullys also tend to be able to charm adults in position of authority.

Also, if there were strict rules, how long do you think it would take students to learn to take advantage of them?

Pretty soon you'd have the kids who were being bullied as the ones getting in trouble - especially if they're Aspies who're unable to articulate to the authorities what was going on. Read the parents forum about how school administrators tend to treat aspies and then tell me you don't see this happening.

The best thing to do about bullying is to make the teachers take it seriously, and actually make the punishments that are already in place to deal with it, stick. Zero tolerance rules don't really have much effect on kids smuggling switchblades into school, but they do get kids suspended for bringing plastic knives in their lunchboxes to cut their bananas with, or drawing pictures of soldiers who have muskets on their back.

The authoritarian approach (and I don't think socialism is possible without authoritarianism) is that for every problem you "solve", you create at least one new one, frequently more.

Yeah, that sounds pretty true actually but in theory that is the only thing on the list I could support to some extent. However, most ideas to solve this would probably be worse than the problem itself. Like you said, zero tolerance negatively impacts acceptable behaviors more than it affects the unacceptable behaviors. I figured that you were not pro-bullying though.

I like the Japanese method for handling bullying initially. The teachers treat the children as independant. The teachers do not try to control the way people think like in North American Classrooms. In the end, the children help each other out.

For example, one child tried to play with a seemingly agressive other child until the bully punched him. Then that same child manufactured a throwing star out of aluminum foil and pretended to throw it at the bully. The bully stepped on the child's foot. A girl came to the young child (the one being harmed, and crying) and said "if Haisen doesn't want to play with you, then don't play with Haisen."

However, that is only worthwhile as an initial step.

I sort of wonder how well the Japanese style of handling bullying would work though. Japanese culture is different than Western culture in many ways and how Japanese students handle their problems is different than America. The Japanese have a problem known as Hikikomori where people live their lives in their room, this problem is not very common in America compared to Japan.

Also, does the Japanese method work? I have seen some articles where there are complaints about problems with bullying in Japan, these even include reports of suicide and of extortion up to 10,000 dollars. Maybe they have changed things but I have read some articles here that claim that there are problems.... I am not sure how those problems compare to other systems though.
http://www.humiliationstudies.org/news/archives/2004_07.html
http://www.bookmice.net/darkchilde/japan/ijime.html

I guess the fact it does not completely work is what you mean by an initial step but I need to understand what the entire process would be. The initial step by itself does not work.

So is that living their life in their room the same as being a hermit? Because I try to live my life in my room. I spend like 90% of my time here.