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That's how strikes work - they cripple their industry as an extreme resort for bargaining purposes.

Sure. All monopolies work that way — this is why we have anti-monopoly laws. We just aren't applying them to unions for some mysterious reasons, even though — letter by letter — that's exactly, what they are. Monopolies seeking to maintain and ever increase the prices of what their members are selling (labor).

If the US saw fit to block a merger of Staples and Office Depot — for fear of the resulting entity dominating the market of the freaking office supplies, how come we not merely tolerate, but encourage monopolies in the market of law-enforcement, teaching, healthcare, and construction labor?

A union would have been able to negotiate better pay and working conditions.

Hanging a couple of grievance-mongers would've improved the morale just as well — and cost much less, don't you think?

Seriously, nobody is forcing people to become — and remain — air-traffic controllers. We don't have slavery — not even indentured labor — and have a reasonably free market. If one remains on the job, then it must be good enough for him to not seek an alternative...

Just do a search on "IRS lies to congress". PLENTY of citations there. Here's just a few.

Just to be pedantic, organizations don't lie, people do, though I know there is a great tendency to personify organizations. The IRS didn't lie to Congress, people in the IRS lied to Congress. Likewise, the NSA didn't lie in (fill in an occurrence here), people belonging to the NSA lied. At times, multiple high-ranking personnel of such organization, even the heads, may have even ordered such lies to occur. Labeling these situations as "ThreeLetterAgency lied" is designed to imply that all personnel of such agencies therefore also lie, and that is not true, but it make for great ad hominem attacks, and is widely used here on Slashdot.

Just do a search on "IRS lies to congress". PLENTY of citations there. Here's just a few.

Oh wait. Yeah, I can live with the 1/10,000 chance because THOSE THINGS NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPEN EXCEPT IN YOUR IMAGINATION.

Your imagination is failing you. The rate of violent crime isn't 1/10,000, it is nearly 40/10,000 according to the FBI (actually: 386.9 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants in 2012 ), which adds up to well over a million incidents in a country of 300,000,000 people. Also keep in mind that the distribution isn't even - your neighborhood may be safe, but those of other people aren't. Should they be denied the ability to defend themselves just because you think you're safe?

Or do you think the "liberal media" is covering up the hundreds of thousands of people who use guns to prevent themselves from being stabbed in our (incredibly safe) country every day?

Defensive gun use tends to be a local story only, and seldom makes the national news. And they certainly happen. But who do you think is aggregating the stories to report on a national level on a regular basis? Is someone doing that for bowling scores too? (Last night there were 37 perfect games bowled in the US.) Do you think we'll start seeing daily reports of aggregate number of either robberies in the US, or defensive use of firearms like the media likes to do with wars in a totally neutral manner? (Yet another grim milestone was reached yesterday when 3 American soldiers were killed in ______ brining the total to _______.)

Tough Targets: When Criminals Face Armed Resistance from Citizens (pdf of just the paper)

Because of the clear implication for gun control laws, a number of criminologists have prepared studies of defensive gun use incidence over the years—with startlingly different results. The most widely known is the study by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, completed in the 1990s, when violent crime rates were higher than they are today. That study found that there were somewhere between 830,000 and 2.45 million defensive gun uses per year in the United States.1

Another prominent study was the federal government’s National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which also asked if victims of crimes had used a gun in self-defense. That study found that there were about 108,000 defensive gun uses per year.2 The National Survey of Private Ownership of Firearms (NSPOF) was performed in 1994. It was conducted partly because of widespread skepticism about the number of defensive gun uses reported in the Kleck and Gertz study. Still, the NSPOF study found approximately 1.5 million defensive gun uses.3

Oh wait. Yeah, I can live with the 1/10,000 chance because THOSE THINGS NEVER ACTUALLY HAPPEN EXCEPT IN YOUR IMAGINATION.

Your imagination is failing you. The rate of violent crime isn't 1/10,000, it is nearly 40/10,000 according to the FBI (actually: 386.9 violent crimes per 100,000 inhabitants in 2012 ), which adds up to well over a million incidents in a country of 300,000,000 people. Also keep in mind that the distribution isn't even - your neighborhood may be safe, but those of other people aren't. Should they be denied the ability to defend themselves just because you think you're safe?

Or do you think the "liberal media" is covering up the hundreds of thousands of people who use guns to prevent themselves from being stabbed in our (incredibly safe) country every day?

Defensive gun use tends to be a local story only, and seldom makes the national news. And they certainly happen. But who do you think is aggregating the stories to report on a national level on a regular basis? Is someone doing that for bowling scores too? (Last night there were 37 perfect games bowled in the US.) Do you think we'll start seeing daily reports of aggregate number of either robberies in the US, or defensive use of firearms like the media likes to do with wars in a totally neutral manner? (Yet another grim milestone was reached yesterday when 3 American soldiers were killed in ______ brining the total to _______.)

Tough Targets: When Criminals Face Armed Resistance from Citizens (pdf of just the paper)

Because of the clear implication for gun control laws, a number of criminologists have prepared studies of defensive gun use incidence over the years—with startlingly different results. The most widely known is the study by Gary Kleck and Marc Gertz, completed in the 1990s, when violent crime rates were higher than they are today. That study found that there were somewhere between 830,000 and 2.45 million defensive gun uses per year in the United States.1

Another prominent study was the federal government’s National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which also asked if victims of crimes had used a gun in self-defense. That study found that there were about 108,000 defensive gun uses per year.2 The National Survey of Private Ownership of Firearms (NSPOF) was performed in 1994. It was conducted partly because of widespread skepticism about the number of defensive gun uses reported in the Kleck and Gertz study. Still, the NSPOF study found approximately 1.5 million defensive gun uses.3

Here, the last-mile providers are acting like Marxists.

They certainly are — thanks to the monopoly-power once given to them by the government.

The solution to this, however, is not creating more rules for them to follow (with more boards and commissions to — ineffectively — ensure compliance) — these only make it harder for a would-be newcomers to appear — but to make this market properly competitive.

So screw the Koch Brothers and their idiot shilling.

While the public anger is (somewhat clumsily, but still effectively) once again redirected against the Koch Brothers, "Big Cable" donates to the ruling party en masse, CEOs play golf with the President and otherwise do the ruling party's bidding. Is it likely, that further monopolization will be blocked?

http://www.cato.org/blog/clear...

I haven't read the full report, but I'm sure you won't read this rebuttal because it's from the Cato Institute. Their predictions are off, and getting farther off with each year of data.

http://www.cato.org/publicatio...

Radley Balko has been writing about the militarization of our police for years.

This map of botched police raids is especially scary:

http://www.cato.org/raidmap

Frankly, I'd rather have my law abiding neighbors armed than the cops.

http://www.cato.org/publicatio...

Radley Balko has been writing about the militarization of our police for years.

This map of botched police raids is especially scary:

http://www.cato.org/raidmap

Frankly, I'd rather have my law abiding neighbors armed than the cops.

- $5500 x 330,000,000 people = 1,815,000,000,000, or 1815 billion, not 181 billion like you say. That's $1.8 trillion dollars, quite a bit of dough these days. But in places like NYC $5500 does not cover your rent for a single month, let alone a full year.
- I'm not a big fan of sterilization. Or offering to anyone to relocate from the US, which is the "great melting pot." As in good luck trying to keep your identity here, we'll blend you down and dissolve you. I could understand relocating somebody away from a place like Zimbabwe if they are not negro, or Norway if they are not white (there was a recent shooting of anybody off color in Norway (including Indian, Arab, African), to protect genetic purity of the race, and the guy barely got slapped on the hand, meaning that's how most people feel over there, they don't like forced breeding), or Mongolia if they are not mongoloid, or even a Native American reservation in the US, if they come up too low on score for being Native American.
- I'm assuming you're from Norway living in the US. You sound like a communist instigator. People come to the US to become millionaires, not to spread the word about the benefits of socialism and communism. That's for Norway and Sweden, where people like to cooperate and be friendly with each other, not for the US. People come here to dig gold in a gold rush with a bucket and a shovel, and fuck all the hookers, while hoping they'll hit that big rock of gold that'll make them instant millionaires. Or before that, to become free farmers after their indentured servitude term of 30 years is up, as opposed to serfs in their old land. Socialism and collective interest starved the first settlers to the point of somebody killing his own wife, because socialism, lack of private property, creates a bunch of lazy fucks that die in the misery of not giving a fuck. One of my favorite commentaries describing America is http://www.cato.org/publicatio... Private Property Saved Jamestown, And With It, America By David Boaz. Even if it may not be true or historically accurate, who cares. But that was private property with 3 acres for everybody, where they could give a fuck, not universal rent for everybody, where the landlord walks in and out without a warrant, because it's not your house, or you have to bucket the hot water, because you can't make a connection yourself to the washer (btw, lucky you, most people need to go to laundromats), and if you try to escape rent, we knock your house down with an excavator, shoot your tires on the highway to make you late from work to get a taxi to miss payments, or sell you a cheap car with a loose, fluid coupling steering, and a remote in it to spin you into the side rail at 60 mph on the highway. But the powers that be made only my pinky hurt.

Uber et. al. have obviated the need for those a-priori licensing regimes and offer safer, better solutions to the same old coordination problems.

It means the end of the useful life of the cartels and their [often captured] regulators, so of course they fight it.

Here, have a listen:
http://www.cato.org/multimedia...

Unnatural Monopoly: Critical Moments in the Development of the Bell System Monopoly,

Really? I'm sorry, but when was the last time any IRS official pulled a gun on someone and told them to hand over their money.

If you don't pay, IRS will put a lien on your house. If you still don't pay, the house will be sold — and police (with guns) will arrive to kick you out from it.

Don't be stupid disputing the obvious — all governments world-wide collect revenues at gun-point. It is normal and the only way possible. It just means, the monies thus collected should only be used in situations, where weapons would take place: enforcing laws and fighting foreign enemies.

You mean like Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, AIG [....]

Corporations don't have the means of coercing people to buy their services, don't even bring them up here.

After all, the benevolence of the private sector is so well known we sing their praises every day because they never, EVER take advantage of people or stick it to us in their quest for profits

Again, corporations are not (normally) in a position to coerce anybody to buy their services — only the government is in such a position and its role in our lives must be minimized, not perpetually expanded.

Your link is to a description of some outrage committed by Comcast — which is funny, because the company is a book-case example of crony capitalism: it (and other cable giants) grew out of government's idiocy of giving them monopoly, and their CEO today plays golf with the President.

Corporations are not any nicer, than they have to be — in order to compete. But monopolies — like Comcast — don't have anyone to compete with. And the government is the biggest and harshest monopoly of all. One can cancel their Comcast bill — even if it can be infuriatingly ridiculous. Now try opting out of Social Security...

Cutting Taxes is not the problem. Since you left in the 1980s. Per student spending vs inflation has gone the roof. Yes, much of it on things that don't educate like police at school, etc. These spending has not equaled better schools for students.

painted a picture of a corporation overrun by the neverending quest for greater profit.

A typical anti-Capitalism drivel. The listed practices reduce profit and cause the company to either collapse or be taken over — unless it has powerful friends in government.

From the article: 'These employees told us the same stories over and over again: customer service has been replaced by an obsession with sales, technicians are understaffed and tech support is poorly trained, and the massive company is hobbled by internal fragmentation.

Yep, that's what leads to losing money. Few can survive it without being a monopoly.

Or maybe not. Linked from TFA:

http://www.cato.org/publicatio...

The reason Amtrak was formed was because the Penn Central was bleeding

Yep. The classic case of:

• If it moves, tax it
• if it keeps moving — regulate it
• When it stops moving — subsidize it.

Seems like you are confirming what I said, even though you begin with a rhetorical disbelief of hearing it again...

I take it you are unfamiliar with the history of coal miner unions? Corporations have used PLENTY of violence. You may want to look up The Battle of Blair Mountain.

Yea, I did... the rebellion was put down by local law enforcement - Logan County deputies - the government.

So this just proves my point. Don't rely on government to protect you, they use violence as the means to their end.

And, let's face it, labor disputes are a really BAD example. Labor unions are certainly guilty of instigating violence in many instances, even today. And since the 1970's, they are almost impossible to prosecute when they do so.

Government has a monopoly on violence? In theory. In practice....

Legally, the government does have a monopoly on violence. This is the principle of government almost everywhere in the world.

Check the history of opposition to labor rights. Lots of corporate violence there. Corporate behavior overseas has a long and (undertold) storied history of hired thugs, violence and the threat of it all over this planet.

Unions have a history of violence as well. Never heard of the Haymarket Square Massacre of 1886? The Colorado labor war of 1903 and 1904? Most of the claims of employer violence against strikers were actually local police and militia called in. Today, violence by labor unions is cannot be prosecuted by our government, in spite of all the violence perpetrated by labor unions these days. How is that an improvement?

The budget is driven by non-defense spending - entitlements - which consume nearly every dollar in Federal Revenue that DC receives.

When you say entitlement, it evokes a bunch of money-grubbing welfare queens who have more and more children to increase their federal benefit. The truth is that the largest portion of the budget (24%) is social security, which isn't a government handout - it is funded by working taxpayers who have paid into the system for their whole lives.

Actually, social security isn't what you think it is. You have no right to anything in the fund, and your deposits are simply another tax to provide a wealth transfer. The funds paid in - especially today - simply do not cover outgoing expenses. What you pay in today covers about 80% of the money for other people - and it's a dropping percentage.

Oddly not a liberal. And the thread is on legal immigration, not illegal.

The case for legal immigrants is clear. They contribute far more, more in fact than the average native.

For illegal immigrants the case is a bit more murky. Hard to get good data on illegal activities. However the evidence is still suggest that they are net contributes. While they may not be the best educated, they do have “get up and go”, tend to be young, healthy, in the most productive years of their lives, and use social services (welfare, hospital, prison, etc.) at a lower rate than natives.

As you state liberals tend to be a bit mushy on the facts and logic. I am not a liberal.

http://www.cato.org/publicatio...

http://balanceofeconomics.com/...

http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.e...

http://www.cato.org/blog/herit...

Oddly not a liberal. And the thread is on legal immigration, not illegal.

The case for legal immigrants is clear. They contribute far more, more in fact than the average native.

For illegal immigrants the case is a bit more murky. Hard to get good data on illegal activities. However the evidence is still suggest that they are net contributes. While they may not be the best educated, they do have “get up and go”, tend to be young, healthy, in the most productive years of their lives, and use social services (welfare, hospital, prison, etc.) at a lower rate than natives.

As you state liberals tend to be a bit mushy on the facts and logic. I am not a liberal.

http://www.cato.org/publicatio...

http://balanceofeconomics.com/...

http://www.kenan-flagler.unc.e...

http://www.cato.org/blog/herit...

I don't think people plan much for the day they become the "customer" of a SWAT team and I don't even wish that you become one ;).

Quite right. If you contract out your security, you get a choice what kind of service you want: with-SWAT or without-SWAT. Most people are going to opt for without-SWAT. That's, generally speaking, the libertarian view: you should have a choice.

Democrats argue that how policing and security are provided should be left to government experts; they obviously have decided they need SWAT teams, and you don't have a choice in the matter.

Here's a map of botched paramilitary police raids, compiled by the Cato institute, which is highly critical of these practices:

http://www.cato.org/raidmap

My personal problem with all this talk of immigration reform has been the consistent desire by both parties to making the expansion of E-Verify a requirement of any bill. To sum it up, E-Verify is a way for the executive branch to block the employment of anyone that the database flags. Or more colloquially, you have to get permission from the president in order to feed and house your family.

One of the biggest problems with e-verify is the false negative rate. Even if you assume absolutely no malice, you can easily end up on the "no work list" by accident. Note, that's not a false positive - giving people permission to work when they aren't permitted, it is stopping people who have done nothing wrong in the slightest.

Requiring government permission to work is absolutely unacceptable policy in a free society. E-verify is a case where the cure is worse than the disease.

That was kind of my point, like the OP I was referring to the subset of present-day libertarians that advocate laissez-faire capitalism and who advocate this kind of crap.

It really defies belief how you can attempt to blame the policies of a Democratic supermajority in Massachusetts on libertarians.

What is happening in Massachusetts is what Democrats do. It is precisely "this kind of crap" that libertarians are opposed to. And it is libertarian opposition to "this kind of crap" that is the reason why the Democratic establishment heaps such vitriol on libertarians.

Laissez-faire capitalists will cheer along as these privatised forces morph into corporate armies until they them selves are being targeted.

The Massachusetts SWAT teams aren't "privatized" in the sense of laissez-faire capitalism; they don't operate independently of government, they don't provide a service in a free market, they are a government monopoly, and they aren't subject to civil lawsuits. Massachusetts SWAT teams are "privatized" in the way fascists and progressives "privatize" things: government subsidized and regulated monopolies exempted from market forces and liability, and even exempted from government accountability. That is exactly the kinds of abuse of power that libertarians are strongly opposed to.

Do some reading:

http://www.cato-unbound.org/20...

In a sweeping essay, Sheldon Richman explains why private property and free competition are superior to state-provided goods and services. He warns against granting “private” corporate monopolies, which are not true privatizations, but act as arms of the state. He adds that for many state activities, the best way to privatize is not to provide the service at all — as in the case of punishing victimless crimes, which no one should do. For legitimate services, he recommends a “homesteading” approach, in which stakeholders in a public service, such as a school, would receive shares in a new, independent corporation.

Here's some more on SWAT teams:

http://www.cato.org/raidmap

https://www.google.com/search?...

I cited Niemöller quite deliberately precisely because he cheered along with the Nazis until they got around to targeting him.

Yes, and my point is that Niemöller never actually changed or understood where is moral failure was: he always stayed a totalitarian at heart and always remained opposed to individual liberties. He simply shifted allegiances as it was politically expedient and to assuage his guilty conscience.

Here is what the Cato institute put out about the rise of SWAT teams:

Americans have long maintained that a man's home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they're sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

This paper presents a history and overview of the issue of paramilitary drug raids, provides an extensive catalogue of abuses and mistaken raids, and offers recommendations for reform.

http://store.cato.org/reports/...

To demonstrate how much of a problem this is, there is even a map of incidents:

http://www.cato.org/raidmap

Reason hasn't had a commentary on it yet, but they have already posted information about the privatized SWAT teams:

http://reason.com/blog/2014/06...

I expect in a day or two, you'll see a Reason article condemning the practice strongly for what it is: crony capitalism, lack of government accountability, and government overreach.

Here is what the Cato institute put out about the rise of SWAT teams:

Americans have long maintained that a man's home is his castle and that he has the right to defend it from unlawful intruders. Unfortunately, that right may be disappearing. Over the last 25 years, America has seen a disturbing militarization of its civilian law enforcement, along with a dramatic and unsettling rise in the use of paramilitary police units (most commonly called Special Weapons and Tactics, or SWAT) for routine police work. The most common use of SWAT teams today is to serve narcotics warrants, usually with forced, unannounced entry into the home.

These increasingly frequent raids, 40,000 per year by one estimate, are needlessly subjecting nonviolent drug offenders, bystanders, and wrongly targeted civilians to the terror of having their homes invaded while they're sleeping, usually by teams of heavily armed paramilitary units dressed not as police officers but as soldiers. These raids bring unnecessary violence and provocation to nonviolent drug offenders, many of whom were guilty of only misdemeanors. The raids terrorize innocents when police mistakenly target the wrong residence. And they have resulted in dozens of needless deaths and injuries, not only of drug offenders, but also of police officers, children, bystanders, and innocent suspects.

This paper presents a history and overview of the issue of paramilitary drug raids, provides an extensive catalogue of abuses and mistaken raids, and offers recommendations for reform.

http://store.cato.org/reports/...

To demonstrate how much of a problem this is, there is even a map of incidents:

http://www.cato.org/raidmap

Reason hasn't had a commentary on it yet, but they have already posted information about the privatized SWAT teams:

http://reason.com/blog/2014/06...

I expect in a day or two, you'll see a Reason article condemning the practice strongly for what it is: crony capitalism, lack of government accountability, and government overreach.

> If you want to end illegal immigration and not maintain the status quo support real employer penalties and force the SSA to actually validate every SSN used for employment is being used by it's owner (this is damn near trivial).

Don't be a sucker. The numbers on the e-verify pilot program are terrible. Not only is it not that easy, even if it were perfect it would still quickly become a tool to punish people that the state doesn't like without having to go through all the trouble of a trial and prison.

Employment verification is a terrible authoritarian tool that is neither fit for purpose nor acceptable in a free society.

This is the result of the militarization of the police:
http://www.cato.org/raidmap

No big surprise that the collapse of the unions in the late 60s and 70s coincided with the rise of minorities in blue collar/skilled labor.

Which minorities are those? African Americans? Since most African Americans have ancestors in this country going back over 200 years

African Americans were actively excluded from unions until the late 1960's, see Unions and Discrimination.

Is this Richard Lendzen MIT dude not at all respectable?

Would that be the Richard Lindzen who has been funded by Exxon and OPEC, who actually does accept the basics of anthropogenic global warming, but disagrees with exactly how high the earth's climate sensistivity is (ie the amount of temperature increase you'll see from a doubling of CO2 levels). The man who been a keynote speaker at the Heartland Institute, who writes opinion pieces for the Rupert Murdoch owned Wall Stree Journal, and who recently joined the Cato Institute?

Not so much, no.

Henry Ford specified hemp fiber-based panels for his cars a hundred years ago, but a psychopathic government leveraged its corruption to benefit the tree pulp and synthetic fibers bosses, while claiming it was about social values.

IIRC you'd need a blunt 4' long and 18" across to get a buzz from hemp, and you'd die from smoke inhalation first. It's a great cash crop for farmers, can grow in less fertile soil (while improving it), produces Omega-3 "on the vine" and is far more productive per-acre than trees. So, a clear economic threat to those friends of the powerful.

It also makes fantastic long, strong fibers, once considered essential to national security.

Firstly, I'm a law abiding citizen.

The ideal situation is that I throw my dogs in the glassed in shower in my bathroom just off of my bedroom and calmly come out and ask 'what the fuck'. The whole point of motion sensors on the flood lights is that I'll see them coming. If they've got a warrant, come on in boys and look around. Just don't shoot anybody or anything.

However, if it comes down to it I'll blow rounds through anybody wrongfully coming into my house. If they shoot my wife or anybody dear to me, then that SWAT officer is gone. Full stop. Either now or later; I've got a very long memory.

In addition, I don't think you know how fucked up county SWAT morons are; they're little better than mall ninjas. Thanks to homeland security giving them military hardware and precious little training and common sense on how to use it, they're comical at times.. until they hurt somebody.

Also, botched raids? You're welcome.

And if you're one of those boot lickers who think no-knock warrants, drone strikes on US citizens, and ubiquitous surveillance are a good thing, fuck you.

Somebody has got to put a stop to this shit. Violent crime is plummeting yet the state is escalating.

Lets burn the lawyers offices down.

The lawyers are powerless without the courts. It's the Court orders, backed by ... wait for it ... men with guns that make this environment possible.

Do you know why everybody is so jumpy and the cops are doing summary executions now? Because everybody is a criminal, everybody is a suspect, and the cops and the courts enforce these absurd laws rather than than defend the Constitution as a co-equal branch.

Hell, the Constitution didn't even make it past 1803 intact in design, and FDR accepted the Supreme Court's final surrender in 1937 from Chief Justice Hughes as a settlement to his plan to expand the Court with its cronies. Overnight, SCOTUS began finding all of Roosevelt's programs suddenly Constitutional even concluding that growing wheat for your family farm is part of "Interstate Commerce" and suddenly of Federal providence.

The problem now is that it's impossible for the People to know what the Constitution says because (supposedly) it doesn't mean anything until SCOTUS tells us what it means, which might well be the opposite of what we "think" it means (that is, the plain English meaning). The catch is that the Constitution is what authorizes the government in the first place. If the People aren't competent to understand their agreement with that government, then they weren't competent to create it in the first place and the grant of power is void.

Mod parent up. The idea that Somalia has no government simply because the government isn't your typical democratic republic, is silly.

Not only are warlords a form of government, even our much more enlightened republic includes some of the taint of arbitrary violence against the people.

http://www.cato.org/raidmap

As far as multiplicity and genetic variability goes, it is a good thing not only in software and bees, but also in forms of government. In particular, I grew up under communism, and witnessed first hand its deficiencies, but I'm proud to say my people faired better under it than the brits eating their pregnant wives when forced to be communists, see http://www.cato.org/publicatio.... So when communism fell, my priest started chiming about the virtues of monarchy, how that's a very good system of government, to be taken seriously. During communism he was constantly in trouble with the politicians for his abuses of free speech, for constantly talking politics, criticizing everyone and everything during his preachings. By the way I barely missed like 10 Sundays from church in 18 years while growing up, unless I was away in summer camp, I'd always go to the evening mass, always 5 minutes late, sneaking in upstairs to the choir, holding my head low when reaching the top steps, so the priest wouldn't see me - the organist and few people up there would see me, but I didn't fear them as much because they were not as outspoken and criticizing like the priest, who might stop sermon and criticise someone who just walked in late, by name, in front of everyone, for being late, so I'd sneak up with my head low, and sit in the back on a bench level with the back of the organ, my head only becoming visible when the first standing up is required during a catholic sermon. The masses were always very educational, and even if you did not fully agree with what was said, a lot of it was way off, as in "woow, you can't say that! not in church!," you always got a fresh point of view on issues of importance, that you may not have been aware that they were of importance before, and he was probably aware what he said was not the truth, but he was doing it to make people think about it. There are often many sides to a topic, and opposing views might each be correct in their own ways, and sometimes highlighting the most ridiculous answer brings attention to the more mediocre other answers. As shown on http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/N..., Bohr said "Two sorts of truth: profound truths recognized by the fact that the opposite is also a profound truth, in contrast to trivialities where opposites are obviously absurd." Also "Every sentence I utter must be understood not as an affirmation, but as a question." So when you discuss complex issues, like the priest did, sometimes saying absurd things is acceptable. So he started chiming about the virtues of a monarchy, Sunday after Sunday, and that was competely against what you learned in school, what the communist propaganda machine sort of forcefed you, about progress, prosperity, zero unemployment, and building a better future and creating more happiness than the proletariat exploiting capitalists can come up with, which you knew was bullshit, all you had to do was compare a West German(capital Bonn) luxurious Mercedes, with an East German(capital Berlin) frugal 2-cycle cardboard body Trabant. So even though you were taught about the shortcomings and abuses of having and allowing private property, all of which sounded true, you knew there had to be another side to the story they were not telling, that there was overall more happiness in allowing for private property than not allowing for it, that instead of private owners who "care" having the "state" or more exactly its politicians "care" for the welfare of such things as a factory seems not to be working out for the better. Even though you knew that much of the propaganda was bullshit, it was obvious that something led to it, and the people who were talking it were all probably well meaning, and if what they were preaching as a solution to the problems didn't work out in practice, it must have been because they didn't understand or were unable to predict properly, not because they intended to create

What they want is control over global industry, insane amounts of unaudited "international aid money" and absolute moral authority.

Solve the problem and you take away their power, their money, and their claims to moral superiority.

This is something they will never let die.

If we fixed the climate tomorrow they'd still be harping about it.

That's always the case when special interests have their hands in the cookie jar whether it be environmentalists (who can't agree with each other sometimes) or the fossil fuel industries. And yes coal and petroleum get subsidies. Fossil Fuel Subsidies in the U.S.. CATO again, Clean Coal Subsidies, Energy Subsidies, and T. Boone Hard-Wired for Subsidies. From Bloomberg, hardly an environmental sympathizer, Fossil Fuel Subsidies Six Times More Than Renewable Energy.

FalconWolf

What they want is control over global industry, insane amounts of unaudited "international aid money" and absolute moral authority.

Solve the problem and you take away their power, their money, and their claims to moral superiority.

This is something they will never let die.

If we fixed the climate tomorrow they'd still be harping about it.

That's always the case when special interests have their hands in the cookie jar whether it be environmentalists (who can't agree with each other sometimes) or the fossil fuel industries. And yes coal and petroleum get subsidies. Fossil Fuel Subsidies in the U.S.. CATO again, Clean Coal Subsidies, Energy Subsidies, and T. Boone Hard-Wired for Subsidies. From Bloomberg, hardly an environmental sympathizer, Fossil Fuel Subsidies Six Times More Than Renewable Energy.

FalconWolf

Accidents happen, yes, but nuclear is still arguably the safest (deaths/TWh) form of energy on the planet: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja... Even wind, hydro and solar are more dangerous.

If left to market forces, and not state planners, the markets would not build nuclear power plants. Nuclear power is Hooked on Subsidies. Notice how that is a CATO Institute reprint of a "Forbes" article first published on November 26, 2007. And in case you don't know what CATO is, from their about page "The Cato Institute is a public policy research organization — a think tank – dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace. Its scholars and analysts conduct independent, nonpartisan research on a wide range of policy issues."

FalconWolf

Accidents happen, yes, but nuclear is still arguably the safest (deaths/TWh) form of energy on the planet: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ja... Even wind, hydro and solar are more dangerous.

If left to market forces, and not state planners, the markets would not build nuclear power plants. Nuclear power is Hooked on Subsidies. Notice how that is a CATO Institute reprint of a "Forbes" article first published on November 26, 2007. And in case you don't know what CATO is, from their about page "The Cato Institute is a public policy research organization — a think tank – dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace. Its scholars and analysts conduct independent, nonpartisan research on a wide range of policy issues."

FalconWolf

France has not done well with nuclear power. Sure they get most of their electricity from nuclear power plants, however despite their lead in reprocessing France still has trouble with storage. While reprocessing allows spent fuel to be reused and shortens it's half-life doing so creates toxins and hotter fuel.

As far as building nuclear power plants go state planners on free market determines what gets built. CATO, that is the institute "dedicated to the principles of individual liberty, limited government, free markets and peace" printed the article "Hooked on Subsidies that was first published in the November 26, 2007 issue of "Forbes". The opening statements is "Why conservatives should join the left’s campaign against nuclear power." Further down it says:
"How do France (and India, China and Russia) build cost-effective nuclear power plants? They don’t. Governmental officials in those countries, not private investors, decide what is built. Nuclear power appeals to state planners, not market actors."

Now if private businesses want to build nuclear power plants they should get, and pay for, their own insurance. They would also have to finance the construction, not government. I might even invest in such a company that uses thorium as it's fuel. Provided the finances come out good.

FalconWolf

Actually, you're eight times more likely to be murdered by a policeman than a terrorist in America.
Google it if you don't believe me.

There was a legal challenge to the ACA already, and it was defeated in court. In other words: your views on the constitutionality of the ACA aren't shared by the current Supreme Court, and therefore they are pretty much irrelevant

You seem to not understand how the Supreme Court works. That's OK, it's arcane.

The particular ACA challenge you refer to was over the Constitutionality of the ACA as a fine. The Court said, "it's not a fine, it's a tax, and FedGov can levy taxes." The challenge was defeated.

Now other lawyers are back before the Court arguing that taxes must originate in the House, per the Constitution, while ACA is a Senate bill (with gut-and-replace not being a valid technique to avoid germaneness via-a-vis the Origination Clause). The Court will rule on that narrow point and then the next challenge will be heard.

SCOTUS will never come out and say, "All aspects of ACA are Constitutional".

A cop is no more able to injure you and get away with it than anyone els

Now you're just completely hallucinating.

Here's the face of that: http://www.cato.org/raidmap.

Cops get away with injuring people all the time, both on the street and in custody, not to mention via proxies in prison.

How will you ever get rid of the bad actors if you make it horrible job for anybody who might replace them?

I didn't make it a horrible job. They did.

My take on this:
1. The initial drop in usage seems to be mostly from needing to set up alternative channels - IE the black market took time to become established.
2. The long term drop might be due to increased costs, much like how increasing taxes on cigarettes results in lower usage.
3. Cirrhosis rates, because they depend upon the abuse of alcohol, might not be indicative, since increased prices will affect heavy drinkers more than light drinkers.
4. While prohibition resulted in a long term 40% drop, we've managed over a 50% drop with tobacco. without prohibition, soley by taxes and education.
5. As Portugal has shown, legalization can have many positive benefits.

Cronies? More like citizens exercising their right to freely associate, pool resources, and petition government. You know, the same argument we use to defend corporations when people whine about the rich and "1%ers"

Getting stuff merely because you're better connected politically is the essence of cronyism. Hence, my use of the label.

Incorrect. A government that did nothing was pre-1861 US. That US was little more than an extension of its colonial days, with little demand and growth.

Let's take a look at your little history retcon. The US during that period of "little demand and growth" went from around 4 million people in the 1790 census to over 31 million people in the 1860 census. That's doubling the population in a bit over 20 years for more than two thirds of a century. Land area more than tripled from 860,000 square miles in 1790 to 2,970,000 square miles in 1860. In addition, the infrastructure to support that huge growth of people had to be built from scratch.

But let's suppose your assertion was somehow correct and that the economy of the time didn't actually grow very fast. You still have to explain why growing a measure of economic activity (GDP for example) at a certain rate is more important than providing food, shelter, clothing, etc for a country which doubled almost three times over the course of those 70 years with minimal government help.

I kept going and found educated guesses for GDP over that period. It went from 1,100 in 2009 USD per capita to 2,800 in 2009 USD per capita. That's more than 150% growth in per capita GDP after adjusting for inflation. Not bad for 70 years of low government though we currently trounce them with roughly 400% growth from the Great Depression era 1940 to 2010.

So there might be a case for economic growth there, but there was a lot of growth even in the absence of an extensive government for a country which grew its population almost a factor of eight over that time. Having looked at these sorts of historical estimates before, I believe it is difficult to grow the economy per capita in a time of high population growth (for example, in Eurasia between 800 BC and 500AD). And I certainly don't buy that there actually was low economic growth during this period of time.

The rapid industrialization and growth known as the Gilded Age happened after the Civil War, after the government began expanding its influence and taking action. From federal government backing the railroads to state government discriminating against the Chinese so their wages are kept low, the US since 1861 has not been the original union the Founding Fathers would have wanted.

Given that a number of the Founding Fathers didn't actually want what they had in the first place (for example, the well known disagreement on the strength and size of the federal government), this shouldn't be a surprise.

As to the actual federal spending (see figure 2 which includes off budget expenditures for programs like Social Security) over that period relative to GDP, it's worth noting that it remained pretty steady aside from during the 1812 war and the Civil war through to 1910. And after the First World War, federal spending went down to 3% of GDP in 1930. That's 140 years of decent economic growth coupled with extremely low government spending except during major wars.

As that graph in the last link shows, after the Second World War is when things got crazy with the budget sneaking over 20% of GDP for a good part of the time even in times where there wasn't much in the way of warfare.

The norm is for people working hard all their life, but most will never reach within a few orders of magnitude of the truly wealthy.

So why should I

Should government build roads? How about run prisons? Deliver mail? Provide police/fire services?

There are private alternatives to all these. If I could take my tax dollars and pay for these myself, would I be better off? My income, between investments and salary, amounts to a little over $350K/year. Of that, I pay close to $75K in taxes. I understand that that's about average for my bracket. I hear this push for progressive taxation that will push me into the 30%-35% bracket because it's more "fair". I dunno. I live in an old house. It's the same house I've lived in for 20 years, and it's not worth much more than when I bought it. I certainly don't live the lifestyle of my peers with similar income.

What do I get for that $75K? I don't get a lot of useful mail from the postal service. Most of my packages arrive Fedex or UPS. The local police force is under no obligation to ensure my safety.

Let's talk about roads. The six mile drive to my office is not horrible. Probably a few thousand cars drive that road every day. There are over a dozen potholes/level changes/manhole covers that require me to drive on the other side to avoid. When they "fix" it, they put a strip across the lane so that it's impossible to avoid. Doesn't actually fix the problem though. Contrast this with the Turnpike. It's a gorgeous road. Smooth, well lit. It's $1/each way. I did the math and it's cheaper if I paid the tolls versus the percentage of my taxes that go towards these kinds of things. I don't think the road cares how much money I make so I don't feel quite right with paying more for the same service. Now I know that turnpikes exist because government funds the on-ramps and lets them eminent domain their way into purchasing prime land for cheap, but gee, whatever portion of that $75K tax bill goes to that, seems a bit high.

For-profit prisons ensure that the incarcerated stay that way, because that's good for the company's bottom line.

So yah, no one will ever read this rant but I just paid my tax bill and really don't want the government having more excuses to raise my taxes.

The URLs below have been accused of gross bias. They were found by a Google search on "Police Duty to Protect" and "UPS Post Office lawsuit".
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06...
http://www.cato.org/sites/cato...

:facepalm: Do you realize that hyperinflation is impossible without actually _inflating_ the money supply? Which is controlled by the central banks.

Here's a list of hyperinflation episodes during the last 100 years: http://www.cato.org/sites/cato...

Do you see there any developed country with a central bank controlled by these devious money-grabbing bankers? Nope. All such countries have generally stable currencies and moderate inflation. There's a simple reason for that - inflation hurts rich people dis-proportionally. While deflation actually benefits them somewhat and hurts poor people.

You mean like the 2008 Financial collapse? If you kept your money still invested in stocks, it would be back up to beyond where it was in 2008. How is that wiped out? Only those who were living on leveraged money took it in the shorts. Sure, my house dropped 30% in value in 2008 - but it's now back up over where it previously peaked. I didn't have a 2nd and 3rd mortgage on the place, though - so I wasn't gambling with "on paper" money - leveraged assets.

Not sure of your age, but I am sufficiently advanced (two score and 6!) that I can remember my grandparents AND parents who constantly harped on saving, paying with cash as much as possible, and paying off your debts as quickly as possible. They all lived through financial nightmares that would make today's issues seem like a stubbed toe. Where did they learn those lessons? Seeing what happens when you didn't - the results of bad decisions. Preventing people from experiencing the results of bad choices does not help them learn from those bad choices.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever got, I got from the first engineer I ever worked for, at the young age of 19. He said "you only learn from failure. Success can be dumb luck, but failure is all you". Perhaps we need to let people learn more - not everyone wins first place, not everyone will get a beachfront house and Mercedes.

As far as HOW to do it, look south to Chile. It's a system that works, works VERY well, encourages personal savings (heck, we could do the same - lift the annual cap on IRA contributions), and is guaranteed - unlike our Social Security system. It's become the model that most of South America has adopted and, when it's not riddled with corruption (Argentina) it works really really well.

Too many do not realize that Social Security is not a guarantee or promise, it carries no legal weight or requirement to pay anybody anything. It is simply an at-will program of the Federal Government and can be adjusted and even eliminated by a simple majority vote of Congress and the stroke of the pen of the President. And every penny just goes straight to the Federal Government - nothing back to any taxpayer.