One of the more frustrating aspects of the Internet is also one of its strengths - it is the great equalizer. People from all walks of life can get together and debate about anything. It is frustrating because often times you find yourself debating on some issue you're an "expert" on with some high school kid who has no idea what they're talking about.

I will be debating a legal point or making a business argument only to find myself trading posts back and forth with some kid who is just plain clueless. They say teenagers act like they know it all. But the Internet has given them a venue to spout off their know-it-allisms to the world.  Many a time I'll be on some forum having just finished a 2 page response putting forth my argument only to realize that the people I'm arguing with aren't even adults. Doh!

Whether the topic be intellectual property law, capitalism, business ethics, politics, you name it, the net is full of people who will write passionately in response despite complete ignorance on the topic.  I've seen that a lot here on JoeUser, especially in the comments area.  People from the left and right will spout off, without even being aware of it, the "talking points" of the other side. Mindless parroting of straw man arguments and other idiocy is all too common on the net.

So let me rant out 15 points about nothing in particular that I've found are true but are often argued about by people who have no idea what they're talking about.

1) Capitalism isn't perfect. But it is the best system we have. Human beings act in their self interest and any system that wants to succeed on a large scale has to have a way of motivating people to do work that they may not want to do but benefits them and has the side effect of benefiting society.

2) All nations act in their own self interest but not to equal degrees.

3) The United States is the most benevolent leading world power in history. Pointing out its misdeeds and mistakes doesn't change that. Those who disagree need to look through history at other major powers and their actions.

4) Intellectual property law basically boils down to this: People who create things have the right to determine those things are used and distributed. Period.

5) Advertising will not pay for bandwidth intensive websites.

6) If you think George W. Bush or Bill Clinton are/were the worst Presidents in American history you should stop debating history and learn history instead.

7) If you think Democrats are all atheists or that Republicans are all devoutly Christian then you should spend more time looking into these things rather than spouting off on things you don't know about.

8) The Declaration of Independence is not a legal document.

9) Money can be exchanged for goods and services. Despite the wishes of some people, there is no referee who determines which jobs or careers are more worthy than others when it comes to deciding how much they get paid.

10) It is the state governments of the United States who perform nearly all the work that most people associate with what their tax dollars do (roads, schools, police, services, etc.). If you're arguing that the federal government should raise taxes so that it can do more "stuff" for the people you need to look at what the federal government actually does.

11) More people died and suffered long term from fire bombing Tokyo in 1945 than died/suffered from the atomic bomb in Hiroshima.

12) If you have two people paying taxes and one of them pays 90% of the taxes and the other 10% of the taxes and you give both of them a 25% cut to their taxes, the first man will receive 90% of the overall benefit and the latter will receive 10%.  Any fair tax cut will always provide the greatest benefit to the ones who pay the most.

13) Nearly every major world leader has some involvement with a major power. Arguing that "evil man X" once received help or support from the United States is idiotic because odds are same evil man X also received support from other major powers in some way as well. Moreover, it ignores the fact that times change. The #2 beneficiary of all time in today's dollars from American military aid was Joseph Stalin (UK was #1). The United States sent hundreds of billions of dollars (in today's dollars) to Stalin in World War II. Many of those weapons, and especially trucks, were later used to do hold down Eastern Europe. That doesn't make the US complicit.

14) Nearly all weapon systems and other military material used by Saddam Hussein came from France and Russia -- not the United States.

15) In any argument or fight, it is rare that both sides are "equally" wrong. In fact, most of the time, one side is definitively wrong and the other side is right. Those who attempt to use moral equivalence arguments to describe both parties are more interested in looking noble than acting noble.

update: renamed title to 15 common topics instead of "facts" since that was what I was getting at.