July 14, 2011 at 5:46 am
Ninja's_RGR'us (7/14/2011)
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (7/14/2011)
GilaMonster (7/13/2011)
Jim Murphy (7/13/2011)
Gail, aren't you a moderator still? Maybe you can just whack that whole thread in Steve's absence.I've never been a moderator here.
I'd add Gail, but the moderator stuff on the page adds a LOT of overhead. Over 1kb / page, and I don't want to eat up her bandwidth.
P.S. I wouldn't mind mod access to be able to wipe out the spam myself without having to cry wolf and wait 1 hour all the time ;-).
Likewise. It's normally a lot more than an hour if I find spam in the morning, seeing as I'm 2 hours ahead of the guys at Redgate and probably 6 or 7 ahead of Steve.
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
July 14, 2011 at 5:51 am
GilaMonster (7/14/2011)
Ninja's_RGR'us (7/14/2011)
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (7/14/2011)
GilaMonster (7/13/2011)
Jim Murphy (7/13/2011)
Gail, aren't you a moderator still? Maybe you can just whack that whole thread in Steve's absence.I've never been a moderator here.
I'd add Gail, but the moderator stuff on the page adds a LOT of overhead. Over 1kb / page, and I don't want to eat up her bandwidth.
P.S. I wouldn't mind mod access to be able to wipe out the spam myself without having to cry wolf and wait 1 hour all the time ;-).
Likewise. It's normally a lot more than an hour if I find spam in the morning, seeing as I'm 2 hours ahead of the guys at Redgate and probably 6 or 7 ahead of Steve.
Ya 24 / 7 insta - anti-spam would be a great addition here.
July 14, 2011 at 6:48 am
Probably is a lot more than 1kb. There's a lot of stuff that comes down from every single forum, along with a bunch of JS. I'd have to play around with some pages. Might not be 100kb, but I'm guessing it's dozens of kb.
July 14, 2011 at 9:12 am
Matt Miller (#4) (7/12/2011)
That said - trying to disassociate law from social contract is like trying to separate a jelly fish from its skin. Without a social contract as a framework, there would be nothing separating law from, say, slavery, bullying or any other group manifestation of the "beast" Kant referred to. The social contract itself gives the law shape, and limits it to not go overboard.
then teh social contract in the USA, in the UK, in France, in Spain, in Saudi Arabia, in Israel, and in fact in every country about which I know enough to reach a conclusion has totally and utterly failed, because it has not shaped the law in such a manner to limit it so as not to go overboard exceeding all bounds of reason.
Because of that, I believe that much law is NOT based on or even influenced by any social contract, and tend to feel some sympathy for GG's description of law.
Also, in the same way you can delegate responsibility without relegating responsibility
Why is it that those at the top of the tree are almost never held responsible for the actions of their empires? How many senior bankers got fired, or took a pay cut, or even apologised for the complete wreck the banking system has made of our economies theough its irresponsible and profligate lending policies? I seems very clear that certain people are freely permitted to reject responsibility.
government is seen as an agreed system or delegation, where a selected few are responsible for shaping certain constraints for the overall good of the many. Just because my hands are not performing every task doesn't make me any more or less irresponsible.
What an odd view of government. :w00t: When "agreement" was achieved by force of arms (US Civil war, the rape of Hispanic N America, the destruction of the native Americans form one coherent example; or take the English dominance of Wales, Ireland, Scotland, and in bygone times of its American Colonies as another) it doesn't seem to me to be any form of delegation - instead it is simply arrogation.
Tom
July 14, 2011 at 9:15 am
GSquared (7/12/2011)
The idea that "law" and "non-coerced social contract" are synonymous, or even in agreement with each other, is based on a very small sample of a few laws in a few societies in very recent times, and has very little historical agreement.
Can't agree with that. In my view there is no sample in recent times on which such an idea could be based. Maybe in not-so-recent times there is a sample, but if so it's news to me.
Tom
July 14, 2011 at 9:40 am
Stefan Krzywicki (7/12/2011)
GSquared (7/12/2011)
Unless you define a social contract as "anything two or more people agree to, even if the agreement is coerced", you can't call the laws of pre-Magna Carta England (for one example) as a "social contract". But they were laws, by common parlance, and by the definition I use for that subject.Actually, you can call them a social contract and there were several levels of this. There was the social contract between king and nobles, then between higher and lower nobles and finally between lowest "lords" and the common people. There were also social contracts between people of the same level of social standing and between the "official" and commoner.
For example, the commoner paid the local lord taxes and in return he provided what protection he could. The laws about this merely codified the social contracts of the time, ensuring that everyone contributed and was covered. That these laws and social contracts were far more brutal than those we're used to doesn't mean they weren't still laws and social contracts.
A social contract is a concept under which a society functions. Medieval society, especially at the highest levels, was bound by precident and tradition. Essentially Precident was anything you got away with once and Tradition was getting away with it two years in a row.
Yes, there were degrees of contract, both implicit and explicit, but it was created and enforced by threat of death, not by informed, non-coerced, mutual consent.
Or do you really think the Battle of Hastings was resolved by William and Harold sitting down and mutually agreeing to William's rulership of England, and the Saxon barons all shook hands and smiled and said, "yeah, that'll be for our best mutual benefit"?
Rome's rule of Gaul was established when Vercingetorix and Caesar sat down, worked out their mutual best benefit and what would be best for the people of Gaul? The transition from Aztec to Spanish rule in what's now Mexico was based on mutual agreement of best benefit? Brittain's rule of India was because the people of India decided that would be more profitable for them than maintaining the Mogul empire? Persia's rule of central Asia was established and maintained through mutual cost/benefit analysis? The Ottoman Empire ruled because it made the lives of those in the Middle East and North Africa more pleasant and safer? The US dominion over the Sioux Nation was really for their own good? Rameses II ruled the upper and lower Nile through policies designed to keep the Egyptian people in the lifestyle they had become accustomed to?
The social theory on the subject, as you outlined about feudalism, is, in my opinion, very Pollyanaish. It pretty much ignores the fact that ruleship was essentially banditry with better clothing, through most of human history, including the majority of modern nations. I can't think of a single society where the rules weren't established by conquest through force, and then enforced in very arbitrary fashions through courts that had authority simply because they had the best-armed and best-trained killers in their employ, until modern democracies. And even those still enforce their laws through threat of death. They just operate on the not-unreasonable hope that the majority of people will comply with laws through judgement rather than punishment.
But, ask yourself, how much tax would you pay if it were 100% optional? If taxes were purely "give us as much as you want", without audits, without prison terms, without anything but your own judgement of how valuable government services are to you personally. What percentage of your income would it be? That's what "no possibility of punishment" really means. It means of your own free will and informed consent. Are you willing to take free responsibility for the mutual defense of your country (taxes to pay for common defense), and, if so, how much? How about government programs beyond that? You recognize their value in some cases, and not in others, but currently you are forced to pay for them all. Not "you pay them because it's your responsibility and the social contract". You pay them because otherwise you'll get punished. Right?
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
July 14, 2011 at 9:44 am
Departing briefly from the fascinating debate in progress, I would like to invite others to consider the coding problem here. I started out trying to help the OP but, in my opinion, SQL is the wrong tool for the job. I've decided not to spend time trying to pound a nail with a screwdriver, but maybe one of you can see a better way.
__________________________________________________
Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. -- Friedrich Schiller
Stop, children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down. -- Stephen Stills
July 14, 2011 at 9:56 am
GSquared (7/14/2011)
Stefan Krzywicki (7/12/2011)
GSquared (7/12/2011)
Unless you define a social contract as "anything two or more people agree to, even if the agreement is coerced", you can't call the laws of pre-Magna Carta England (for one example) as a "social contract". But they were laws, by common parlance, and by the definition I use for that subject.Actually, you can call them a social contract and there were several levels of this. There was the social contract between king and nobles, then between higher and lower nobles and finally between lowest "lords" and the common people. There were also social contracts between people of the same level of social standing and between the "official" and commoner.
For example, the commoner paid the local lord taxes and in return he provided what protection he could. The laws about this merely codified the social contracts of the time, ensuring that everyone contributed and was covered. That these laws and social contracts were far more brutal than those we're used to doesn't mean they weren't still laws and social contracts.
A social contract is a concept under which a society functions. Medieval society, especially at the highest levels, was bound by precident and tradition. Essentially Precident was anything you got away with once and Tradition was getting away with it two years in a row.
Yes, there were degrees of contract, both implicit and explicit, but it was created and enforced by threat of death, not by informed, non-coerced, mutual consent.
Or do you really think the Battle of Hastings was resolved by William and Harold sitting down and mutually agreeing to William's rulership of England, and the Saxon barons all shook hands and smiled and said, "yeah, that'll be for our best mutual benefit"?
Rome's rule of Gaul was established when Vercingetorix and Caesar sat down, worked out their mutual best benefit and what would be best for the people of Gaul? The transition from Aztec to Spanish rule in what's now Mexico was based on mutual agreement of best benefit? Brittain's rule of India was because the people of India decided that would be more profitable for them than maintaining the Mogul empire? Persia's rule of central Asia was established and maintained through mutual cost/benefit analysis? The Ottoman Empire ruled because it made the lives of those in the Middle East and North Africa more pleasant and safer? The US dominion over the Sioux Nation was really for their own good? Rameses II ruled the upper and lower Nile through policies designed to keep the Egyptian people in the lifestyle they had become accustomed to?
The social theory on the subject, as you outlined about feudalism, is, in my opinion, very Pollyanaish. It pretty much ignores the fact that ruleship was essentially banditry with better clothing, through most of human history, including the majority of modern nations. I can't think of a single society where the rules weren't established by conquest through force, and then enforced in very arbitrary fashions through courts that had authority simply because they had the best-armed and best-trained killers in their employ, until modern democracies. And even those still enforce their laws through threat of death. They just operate on the not-unreasonable hope that the majority of people will comply with laws through judgement rather than punishment.
But, ask yourself, how much tax would you pay if it were 100% optional? If taxes were purely "give us as much as you want", without audits, without prison terms, without anything but your own judgement of how valuable government services are to you personally. What percentage of your income would it be? That's what "no possibility of punishment" really means. It means of your own free will and informed consent. Are you willing to take free responsibility for the mutual defense of your country (taxes to pay for common defense), and, if so, how much? How about government programs beyond that? You recognize their value in some cases, and not in others, but currently you are forced to pay for them all. Not "you pay them because it's your responsibility and the social contract". You pay them because otherwise you'll get punished. Right?
A single society where the rules weren't established through conquest or force: Rhode Island. There are likely others, but honestly I'm not inclined to put much effort into this conversation. Your views on this are extremely simplistic and overly reductionist. Societies are not maintained by the constant threat of death over every member, they're primarially maintained through the recognitoin of mutual benefit. Yes, there are instances of conquest as you mention above, but these are exceptions to the rule of law and organized society. If the Normans, for one example, had not provided the functions of government after the conquest, they would not have lasted.
I pay taxes because I understand that that is how our society functions. Not because I would be punished, but because I enjoy roads, schools, police and firefighters, trash pickup, interstate commerce, technology, civilization and not living in a cave. That said, many popular opinions of how taxes and the economy work are flat out wrong and are why the economy is a mess.
I'm fine with paying taxes for the "national defense", but there hasn't been a credible instance of that since WWII. Since I don't like it, do I just not pay taxes? Do I claim I only do it because I'll be punished otherwise? No. I pay it and do what I can to get the policies that spend the money in that way to be changed. It is called Taxation WITH Representation. I don't behave the way I do in any aspect of my life because I'll be punished if I don't, I do it because it is the right thing to do.
--------------------------------------
When you encounter a problem, if the solution isn't readily evident go back to the start and check your assumptions.
--------------------------------------
It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.
What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?
You ask a glass of water. -- Douglas Adams
July 14, 2011 at 10:02 am
I was about to spend a bit of time and effort joining into the debate. But I find that my views are summed up quite nicely here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOOTKA0aGI0
__________________________________________________
Against stupidity the gods themselves contend in vain. -- Friedrich Schiller
Stop, children, what's that sound? Everybody look what's going down. -- Stephen Stills
July 14, 2011 at 10:04 am
Tom.Thomson (7/14/2011)
GSquared (7/12/2011)
The idea that "law" and "non-coerced social contract" are synonymous, or even in agreement with each other, is based on a very small sample of a few laws in a few societies in very recent times, and has very little historical agreement.Can't agree with that. In my view there is no sample in recent times on which such an idea could be based. Maybe in not-so-recent times there is a sample, but if so it's news to me.
There are plenty of local laws (municiple and county) in the US that are enacted by common social conscience for local needs. Even those have the implicit threat behind them that eggregious violation could, through cascading resistance to enforcement, end up with someone on the wrong end of a police firearm, but it's a very remote possibility and thus I would consider the "best conscience contract" and "the law" to be in close-enough-to-complete accord in those cases.
I would be inclined to assume that other semi-democracies outside the US have similar local regulations that everyone normally affected by them would consider reasonable and prudent, and would probably follow even without a stated law.
Such regulations have the usual advantages of policies designed to create consistent frameworks for problem resolution, and thus fall into the "contract" framework, and often do not have any significant enforcement behind them.
On a national scale, it's law that a letter have postage paid on it or the post office won't deliver it. That's a case of social contract and law being essentially synonymous. There's no penalty for not putting a stamp on a letter or package, it just doesn't get shipped. The standardization and legal definitions on this are very recent things, hence my statement about law and contract being limited in both scope and time. Other, similar examples exist, where the legal penalty for an action or inaction is simply loss of a service, without possibility of arrest. Most of these fall outside the scope of law, and always have.
Compare that to a candy bar. If you don't pay for a letter, but ship it anyway, it comes back to you marked "insufficent postage", and you get to try again. If you don't pay for a candy bar, but eat it anyway, you can be arrested and suffer legal penalties. The price of a stamp is in the same order of magnitude of the price of most candy bars. Law vs social contract.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
July 14, 2011 at 10:04 am
Stefan, we have the luxury of contributing because we choose to (anticipating the mutual benefit), but that benefit was hard-won by those who did it because they were coerced to, as Gus is suggesting. Because it is commonplace, the threat of violence is not necessary, but were this the first time anyone had asked for taxes, odds are it would not be so civil.
That's why (IMHO) we have 'frontiers' that become 'tamed' and end up with a 'civilization'.
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July 14, 2011 at 10:08 am
Steve Jones - SSC Editor (7/14/2011)
Probably is a lot more than 1kb. There's a lot of stuff that comes down from every single forum, along with a bunch of JS. I'd have to play around with some pages. Might not be 100kb, but I'm guessing it's dozens of kb.
Maybe when you get back from the UK we can test it out for a couple days, see what the overhead is and how bad it is?
Gail Shaw
Microsoft Certified Master: SQL Server, MVP, M.Sc (Comp Sci)
SQL In The Wild: Discussions on DB performance with occasional diversions into recoverability
July 14, 2011 at 10:10 am
I'd like your opinion on this one (2nd post) :
July 14, 2011 at 10:15 am
jcrawf02 (7/14/2011)
Stefan, we have the luxury of contributing because we choose to (anticipating the mutual benefit), but that benefit was hard-won by those who did it because they were coerced to, as Gus is suggesting. Because it is commonplace, the threat of violence is not necessary, but were this the first time anyone had asked for taxes, odds are it would not be so civil.That's why (IMHO) we have 'frontiers' that become 'tamed' and end up with a 'civilization'.
Possibly. But who knows how it really started? Perhaps taxation stemmed from contributions to the local good and ended up being codified because it was done regularly enough to become "tradition". Perhaps force only came into it later for some reason (there being no current project to contribute to, a change in leadership was to someone greedy instead of effective, etc...).
And regardless of how it all started, today society is not held together by the constant threat of death.
--------------------------------------
When you encounter a problem, if the solution isn't readily evident go back to the start and check your assumptions.
--------------------------------------
It’s unpleasantly like being drunk.
What’s so unpleasant about being drunk?
You ask a glass of water. -- Douglas Adams
July 14, 2011 at 10:22 am
Stefan Krzywicki (7/14/2011)
GSquared (7/14/2011)
Stefan Krzywicki (7/12/2011)
GSquared (7/12/2011)
Unless you define a social contract as "anything two or more people agree to, even if the agreement is coerced", you can't call the laws of pre-Magna Carta England (for one example) as a "social contract". But they were laws, by common parlance, and by the definition I use for that subject.Actually, you can call them a social contract and there were several levels of this. There was the social contract between king and nobles, then between higher and lower nobles and finally between lowest "lords" and the common people. There were also social contracts between people of the same level of social standing and between the "official" and commoner.
For example, the commoner paid the local lord taxes and in return he provided what protection he could. The laws about this merely codified the social contracts of the time, ensuring that everyone contributed and was covered. That these laws and social contracts were far more brutal than those we're used to doesn't mean they weren't still laws and social contracts.
A social contract is a concept under which a society functions. Medieval society, especially at the highest levels, was bound by precident and tradition. Essentially Precident was anything you got away with once and Tradition was getting away with it two years in a row.
Yes, there were degrees of contract, both implicit and explicit, but it was created and enforced by threat of death, not by informed, non-coerced, mutual consent.
Or do you really think the Battle of Hastings was resolved by William and Harold sitting down and mutually agreeing to William's rulership of England, and the Saxon barons all shook hands and smiled and said, "yeah, that'll be for our best mutual benefit"?
Rome's rule of Gaul was established when Vercingetorix and Caesar sat down, worked out their mutual best benefit and what would be best for the people of Gaul? The transition from Aztec to Spanish rule in what's now Mexico was based on mutual agreement of best benefit? Brittain's rule of India was because the people of India decided that would be more profitable for them than maintaining the Mogul empire? Persia's rule of central Asia was established and maintained through mutual cost/benefit analysis? The Ottoman Empire ruled because it made the lives of those in the Middle East and North Africa more pleasant and safer? The US dominion over the Sioux Nation was really for their own good? Rameses II ruled the upper and lower Nile through policies designed to keep the Egyptian people in the lifestyle they had become accustomed to?
The social theory on the subject, as you outlined about feudalism, is, in my opinion, very Pollyanaish. It pretty much ignores the fact that ruleship was essentially banditry with better clothing, through most of human history, including the majority of modern nations. I can't think of a single society where the rules weren't established by conquest through force, and then enforced in very arbitrary fashions through courts that had authority simply because they had the best-armed and best-trained killers in their employ, until modern democracies. And even those still enforce their laws through threat of death. They just operate on the not-unreasonable hope that the majority of people will comply with laws through judgement rather than punishment.
But, ask yourself, how much tax would you pay if it were 100% optional? If taxes were purely "give us as much as you want", without audits, without prison terms, without anything but your own judgement of how valuable government services are to you personally. What percentage of your income would it be? That's what "no possibility of punishment" really means. It means of your own free will and informed consent. Are you willing to take free responsibility for the mutual defense of your country (taxes to pay for common defense), and, if so, how much? How about government programs beyond that? You recognize their value in some cases, and not in others, but currently you are forced to pay for them all. Not "you pay them because it's your responsibility and the social contract". You pay them because otherwise you'll get punished. Right?
A single society where the rules weren't established through conquest or force: Rhode Island. There are likely others, but honestly I'm not inclined to put much effort into this conversation. Your views on this are extremely simplistic and overly reductionist. Societies are not maintained by the constant threat of death over every member, they're primarially maintained through the recognitoin of mutual benefit. Yes, there are instances of conquest as you mention above, but these are exceptions to the rule of law and organized society. If the Normans, for one example, had not provided the functions of government after the conquest, they would not have lasted.
I pay taxes because I understand that that is how our society functions. Not because I would be punished, but because I enjoy roads, schools, police and firefighters, trash pickup, interstate commerce, technology, civilization and not living in a cave. That said, many popular opinions of how taxes and the economy work are flat out wrong and are why the economy is a mess.
I'm fine with paying taxes for the "national defense", but there hasn't been a credible instance of that since WWII. Since I don't like it, do I just not pay taxes? Do I claim I only do it because I'll be punished otherwise? No. I pay it and do what I can to get the policies that spend the money in that way to be changed. It is called Taxation WITH Representation. I don't behave the way I do in any aspect of my life because I'll be punished if I don't, I do it because it is the right thing to do.
So, in Rhode Island, if you kill someone, you won't be arrested?
Of course, that's reductio ad absurdem, but the point is, there's a difference between law and social contract.
YES, most of society is controlled by mutual agreement, informed consent (to the extent that people care to inform themselves or aren't bothered by the consequences of lack of information), and not through punishment, IF AND ONLY IF, we are talking about modern democracies (republics, really). The majority of humanity does not live in these conditions. Even "modern Western democracies" only partially live up to that standard. Check under the heading of "segregation" in US history for an example of how idealistic it is to think "we live in a society that doesn't use coercion as a core part of it's structure". Is segregation recent?
You also didn't answer my question on the subject of taxes. Do you think you pay the right amount? Would you pay a different amount if it were purely up to you? If you decided to pay the amount you think is right, instead of the amount the government tells you to, would there be consequences?
If that's simplistic, so be it. I must be a lot dumber than I like to think. Personally, I prefer a society without the perceived need to threaten people with force for such things as driving faster than normal, or crossing the street at a non-designated location, or deciding that a medical emergency in the family is a better place to allocate funds than paying for the National Endowment for the Arts. And yet, "rule of law" and your so-called "social contract" means that every single one of those things is enforced by people who carry guns and are specifically trained to use them in case I decide "to go my own way". Why is that?
Don't discuss it if you don't want to. We live in societies where we can say or not say what we want. Except in those cases where doing so is illegal and subject to the threat of violence.
- Gus "GSquared", RSVP, OODA, MAP, NMVP, FAQ, SAT, SQL, DNA, RNA, UOI, IOU, AM, PM, AD, BC, BCE, USA, UN, CF, ROFL, LOL, ETC
Property of The Thread
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everyone agrees it's old enough to know better." - Anon
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