Re: Weasels vs. transparancy / traffic cameras (& taxes)

From: Martin Ling (martin@nodezero.org.uk)
Date: Tue May 23 2000 - 14:37:58 MDT


On Tue, May 23, 2000 at 08:17:08PM +0100, Mike Steven wrote:
> Martin Ling wrote:
>
> > On Tue, May 23, 2000 at 03:46:39PM +0100, Mike Steven wrote:
> > >
> > > And as for Martin Ling's comments:
> > >
> > > "It's not stealing if those people have agreed to pay. Which,
> technically,
> > > they have. By remaining in the country, and by
> > > upholding the government and its taxation policies."
> > >
> > > I'm sorry, but this is ludicrous. The fact that I haven't emigrated is
> in
> > > no way an endorsement of government theft of my money. I didn't vote
> for
> > > them and the only reason I "agree to pay" (to use your terminology) is
> > > because if I don't, my property itself will be stolen or I'll be
> imprisoned.
> >
> > I *know* this is ludicrous, and it was intended to be obvious as such.
> > See my next paragraph, in which I point out Michael for using this kind
> > of reasoning with regard to political dissidents being mistreated by the
> > government.
>
> Hi Martin,
> Apologies if I was a bit slow on the uptake and misinterpreted your
> position. In my defense, sarcasm isn't always the easiest thing to pick up
> on in the absence of any audio cues.

No, it's not - although admittedly seeing whether people spot it or not
can at times be somewhat amusing. A friend of mine once commented "Your
sarcasm detector appears to be broken. Try rebooting and installing
Linux on it...", which has subsequently been repeated in various forms
all over the place.

I don't usually use sarcasm.

My post was badly thought out, in that it was targeted at Michael directly
and required reading of previous comments by him which were not quoted
within it.

Martin

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