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Your commission of logical fallacies is not "my capitalist indoctrination," it's you being illlogical. Did the USSR provide free healthcare? Yes, yes it did, and I quote:

"With the elimination of private expenditures for health services, the form and amount of medical care were now dependent upon the budgetary priorities of the State. All members of the medical industry were put on low fixed monthly salaries and were mandated to examine and treat an overwhelming daily quota of patients. Medical research became dependent upon inadequate annual budgetary allocations from the government. Doctors’ and nurses’ incomes no longer depended on their professional skills or the number of patients they treated. Total unionization of the medical profession made it practically impossible for anyone to be fired. Without markets and prices determining the value and availability of health care, the government imposed a rationing system for medical services and pharmaceutical products. Specialized services (mammograms, ultrasounds, and so forth) were available only in a few select hospitals where the doctors were supposed to treat patients as well as participate in research. For example, in the case of brain or cardiovascular surgery and treatment, there were only a few specialized hospitals available in the entire country. People sometimes died waiting in line to be admitted for these treatments."

Dying while waiting in line for rationed health care because you're "not a budgetary priority of the state!" Wow, what a great system you're advocating for! The other aspects mentioned worked the same way. Soviet worker payroll was a clusterfuck to say the least.

As for Flint's water, you say that as if Flint's water problems are caused by capitalism, but that's complete bullshit. Flint's water problems were caused by the city government. Detailed information on the lead-up to the Flint water crisis. You keep trying to hold Flint up as some sort of failure of capitalism when it's nothing more than a government entity being lazy while trying to cut costs. Ironically, all of your attempts to back your opinions are having the opposite effect.

So every time anyone loses an hour or gains an hour of sleep and it causes serious health problems, it would be an easily proveable hypothesis, and a theory acceptable to near certainty.

In fact, it is an easily provable hypothesis, and it is thoroughly proven. We do the same experiment every year, and every year, we see the same statistically significant increase in deaths.

Does this statistically significant increase include those who get the same amount of sleep? Are their no effects related to the time of year?

You're assuming that it is generally possible to get the same amount of sleep when your alarm clock wakes you up an hour earlier than usual. It is just barely possible, if you plan very carefully, to start slipping your schedule earlier starting a few days before, to minimize the impact, but most people don't even try, because it is too much of a pain in the backside. So the net effect is that nearly everyone gets an hour less sleep.

And no, this has nothing to do with the time of year. The statistically significant increase is relative to the week before and the week after. There is literally a huge single-day spike in traffic accidents on the Monday after the time change, compared with every other day of the year.

Do our bodies simply know that the standard time is the one true time, that is dangerous to alter lest we die?

Our bodies do have a preference for something vaguely resembling sleeping during the dark hours and being awake during the light hours, but they tolerate a lot. What they don't particularly like is suddenly being forced to get up an hour earlier. It is roughly equivalent to the entire country being jet-lagged on the same day.

Worse, there's a network effect that compounds the problem. Most of the time, car accidents involve more than one vehicle. If one driver is tired, he or she might make a mistake, but when that other person is also tired, he or she is less likely to react to that mistake in a way that prevents the accident.

Here's a little thing that might need explained. According to your apparent sources, the heart attack rate drops when moving back to standard time from Daylight savings time. What causes this? 24 percent increase in spring, and a 21 percent drop in the fall. https://www.sciencealert.com/d...

People often get more sleep on one end, and less sleep on the other end. I would think the difference would be obvious.

I don't necessarily dispute the DST as a killer numbers. But here's the issue. We get to see many accusations. https://fee.org/articles/dayli... REad it. Here the poor fellow is whining about being groggy because of the change in teh fall. Oddly, that's when WebMD says that people have less health problems - when moving back.

On one end, pretty much everybody gets less sleep. On the other end, it varies from person to person. In theory, you should get more sleep, but in practice, ever since they changed the date when the DST change occurs, my body clock starts shifting at or around the earlier date, and I actually start getting less sleep for the week prior to the time change, and only then get a full night's sleep. It is really quite bizarre. But this learned behavior likely explains why the momentary drop in the week after the shift to standard time is less than the momentary spike in the week after the shift to DST.

I never notice the DST shift, but as a frewuent traveler, going between the east and west coast can be a real issue. In fact, if the DST killer is real, flying back anf forth across several time zones should kill people easily. I feel like crap when I'm jet lagged, and quite the same with

So every time anyone loses an hour or gains an hour of sleep and it causes serious health problems, it would be an easily proveable hypothesis, and a theory acceptable to near certainty.

In fact, it is an easily provable hypothesis, and it is thoroughly proven. We do the same experiment every year, and every year, we see the same statistically significant increase in deaths.

Does this statistically significant increase include those who get the same amount of sleep? Are their no effects related to the time of year?

Do our bodies simply know that the standard time is the one true time, that is dangerous to alter lest we die?

Here's a little thing that might need explained. According to your apparent sources, the heart attack rate drops when moving back to standard time from Daylight savings time. What causes this? 24 percent increase in spring, and a 21 percent drop in the fall. https://www.sciencealert.com/d...

Seems like the body knows exactly what time it demands, eh?

So you have to not only say that going forward kills people, and going backwards saves them. What happens if we keep moving the clock backwards? Will we eliminate heart attacks? What are the effects between the equater and the higher latitudes? If disruption in sleep, night, and day cycles is the cause, people in places like Alaska should be dropping over.

I don't necessarily dispute the DST as a killer numbers. But here's the issue. We get to see many accusations. https://fee.org/articles/dayli... REad it. Here the poor fellow is whining about being groggy because of the change in teh fall. Oddly, that's when WebMD says that people have less health problems - when moving back.

And interestingly, the same site claims that there are less assaults during the DST months because less people are outside after dark. I wonder how many of those were killed during those standard time assaults?

But that's all beside the point, because when I see not necessarily supported "data" I get pretty suspicious.

Regardless, does this mean that we need to classify loss of 40 minutes of sleep (from the last link) as a health hazard? Should tthis be made law? If we cannot change between DST and EST without causeing many deaths, should we likewise not cover people for risk-taking behavior like going to different time zones?

I never notice the DST shift, but as a frewuent traveler, going between the east and west coast can be a real issue. In fact, if the DST killer is real, flying back anf forth across several time zones should kill people easily. I feel like crap when I'm jet lagged, and quite the same with the time of day shifts. It's much the same thing, only much exaggerated.

As well, when I've gone to Alaska, the effect is even heightened - a 4 hour time differential, plus drastically extended daylight in the summer, and a lot of darkeness during the winter.

My ending point? It the data is real, they do have to eliminate a whole lot of other things, then explain how thousands of people voluntarily go through much more drastic changes of exactly the same phenomenon and returning happy. And I've been on cruises to Alaska with some people who were obviously fulfillingt a bucket list.

An hour long train ride is not a good substitute for building housing where people actually want to live. I live in Silicon Valley, and we have mile after mile of low-rise sprawl. There is plenty of space to build high density housing in the core area where the jobs are.

Liberals love to criticize Republican tax cuts for the rich, but coastal city zoning regulations contribute as much to income inequality by keeping people of modest means away from the best job opportunities.

Zoning laws and the rise of inequality

Fighting inequality through zoning

The left is waking up to inequality cause by zoning

When it comes to inequality, liberals need to stop asking "Who can we blame for this problem" and start asking "What can we do to fix this problem."

Having an FCC to regulate communications is Fascism

Yes, having government control interactions between private entities is an element of Fascism. Not surprising, the FCC happened, when Fascism was hot, introduced by an authoritarian President beloved by contemporary Fascists.

Sure thing bud

I'm not your "bud" — you should not even dream about any kind of familiar affiliation, or you may be overcome by suicidal disappointment upon waking up...

He doesn't seem to be a fascist. Being called one doesn't make you one.

Nope. It was protectionist tariff regimes that followed a decade of lax regulation and overweening corruption under Republican misrule.

They even managed to sucker folks with a lack of properly apportionment for the House, which still haunts us today.

Don't worry though, this time the right-wing will finally succeed in their plan to take over government.

Drug that doesn't have its price gratuitously jacked sky high: The drug in TFS, yesterday and before.

I've never heard of a drug called "TFS", nor would I know anything about its price. That's not a citation.

Examples of loose IP laws allowing pharmaceuticals being manufactured cheaply

"Manufactured" is the key word here. Once the research is done and paid for, actual manufacturing may be cheap. Your very article is about poor countries being allowed to manufacture, what the pharmaceutical companies have researched and created — at high expense. That expense is being borne by the patients in the rich countries.

Example of state-owned pharmaceutical companies working

That link is also about manufacturing. The Chinese — quite telling for a Collectivist to offer China as an example — are particularly infamous intellectual property thieves.

Again, once it is known, mass-producing it may be cheap. Researching the next drug, however, is funded by the profits from the previous ones. Your attempts to tell companies: "No, you can not charge this much" — threatens those profits for them, and the availability of new drugs and treatments for the rest of us.

Keep your grabby Collectivist hands off — what you want, in essence, is price control, a notion far more evil and destructive than anything one CEO ill-trained in the Art of Public Relations could come up with.

It’s a measurable fact retard. Before wide spread use of fossil fuels, like expectancy and standard of living was much lower. With out fossil fuels, the industrial revolution never happens.

This is pure politics, with ULA buying its way to the top with political "contributions".
The USAF recently completed a bid process for launching secret missions and SpaceX won the bidding.
https://www.space.com/40978-sp...

"This is the fifth competitive procurement under the current Phase 1A of the EELV program since SpaceX entered the market to challenge ULA. The $130 million award for the Falcon Heavy launch is considerably lower than the average $350 million price tag for Delta 4 launches. "

https://fee.org/articles/compe...
"One of the keys to SpaceX’s success has been its ability to substantially undercut the prices of its competitors. While SpaceX lists its Falcon 9 rocket starting at $62 million a flight, the US Air Force budgeted $422 million for a single ULA flight in 2020."

In time competition will bring the competitors together. SpaceX will raise it prices and the ULA will have to cut their to compete. The ULA will switch from using Russian RD-180 engines to the BE-4 engine Bezos is developing, but hasn't begun engine qualification testing and doesn't plant to till 2019. Meanwhile, the ULA has ordered, and Russia will supply by the end of 2018, TWO new batches of the Russian RD-180 engine.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news...
Those engines make the ULA dependent on the Russians and pose a security threat to the US.

Amazingly, NASA says the ULA is "ahead" of SpaceX! Only in NASA and the ULA's political dreams. I wonder how much money changed hands for NASA "insiders" to claim the ULA is "ahead" of SpaceX when SpaceX builds and supplies every part of their American made Falcon9 and Falcon Heavy, engines included.

Yes, he wants to be the exporter--the one threatened in the trade relationship by the capacity of the importer to just go to the next country over and pull the plug on your economy--so he's willing to harm America by reducing the benefit we get from lower-cost goods.

Mostly, he and Bernie Sanders don't understand economics, and they're projecting their failed grasp of macroeconomics onto a nation.

You get a lot of vacation; we live in the place most people want to go to and has in most cases the highest standard of living.

https://fee.org/articles/most-...

"...Most European countries (including Germany, Sweden, Denmark and Belgium) if they joined the US, would rank among the poorest one-third of US states on a per-capita GDP basis, and the UK, France, Japan and New Zealand would all rank among Americaâ(TM)s very poorest states, below No. 47 West Virginia, and not too far above No. 50 Mississippi. Countries like Italy, S. Korea, Spain, Portugal and Greece would each rank below Mississippi as the poorest states in the country...."

So yeah, enjoy those days off in the one bedroom apartment you don't own, the tiny car you drive, with the one kid you can afford.

Actually most of the Syrian refugees are quite well educated and liberal.

Really? More than half? I for one can't find a source for Europe, but for those who are approved for entry into the US, less than 20% have anything more than a high school diploma.

They don't hate Jews for the most part either.

How do you know this?

https://fee.org/articles/what-...

Q: What did socialists use before candles?
A: Electricity.

It's an old joke, but unfortunately, dark humor is the reality in Venezuela. The socialist regime of Hugo Chavez and his successor Nicolas Maduro has created catastrophic shortages of toilet paper, food, medicine, comedy, beer, and electricity. (There is, of course, no shortage of its increasingly worthless paper money.)

Automation frees up labor for more interesting work over time. Plus it typically creates a whole work force around it https://xkcd.com/1319/ . If you're smart find another thing to do, if you're not just wait around to be forced into something else that you didn't choose. Look at what other Biotech people went to, or find a different thing. Don't be a socialist. Seriously https://fee.org/articles/why-s... .

the change that is guaranteed to reduce competition

Citation needed, don'tcha think? This libertarian think tank says exactly the opposite.

FTA: "Net neutrality closed down market competition by generally putting government and its corporate backers in charge of deciding who can and cannot play in the market. It erected barriers to entry for upstart firms while hugely subsidizing the largest and most well-heeled content providers." https://fee.org/articles/goodb...

Speaking of which, anyone else find it funny that the same folks who tell you gov't can't do anything right also tell you gov't can't be allowed to compete with private business because it would be unfair? What are they afraid of, the gov't's just gonna fail anyway, right?

Governments can sell items below cost and make up the difference in taxes. Government has little incentive to control costs since ultimately they can tax. Government can mandate that you purchase only from them. Lots of other issues too.

You even ponder this? - Why Communism Failed

You seem to have a distorted view of what goes on in the United States at times, including this issue. The US has a full range of public assistance programs although they can be structured differently than in Europe.

Poverty and the Social Welfare State in the United States and Other Nations

One unfortunate aspect of some of these programs, together or in isolation is that they can trap people in poverty due to the incentives they create that make progress difficult.

The Welfare Trap: Maze of Programs Punishes Work
How To Liberate America From The Poverty Trap That Is Enslaving Us

As far as job creation and enterprises go, there are lots of things that can go on. In general they tend to not hire unneeded people, but "need" is sometimes squishy unless times are very tight, and is subject to being redefined based on experience. And that is before you get to interns, charity, and so on. Sometimes the charity is in who gets hired as opposed to creating a job that isn't strictly and completely needed.

Can you give us an example of a private space that has become forced into a public "speakers corner", with the company owning it unable to control the content any longer?

Did you try your own backyard? What do you think speakers corner came from. You can also read this here. There's also a couple of cases from the 1960's relating directly to this, but I can't remember the case name at the moment. You can also look up "ag gag" for similar cases. This may or maynot apply as well to some places, i.e. the "mall of america" is an example because the protests were in a building, thus the 1st didn't apply. You can also read People v. DiGuida(around 50 pages) for more insight, note the annotations as well. There's a few hundred of those and are required reading.

In any case, I agree that

Really, you agree that that slipshod, incoherent, thoughtless post is what it means to be an American?

That's damning by association. Don't you dare insult America like that again.

Further, if you want to understand how to parse the language, and avoid the misunderstanding that the 2nd only applies to militias, there are lots of articles out there which discuss how to parse it in the context it was written in, such as this pretty long article about it.

Lots of articles? True. But that's an empty and vacuous article that fails in the second paragraph:

But the Second Amendment of the Bill of Rights is indeed a well-crafted sentence.

No, it is not. It's poorly written, and an honest historical analysis would admit it. The most damning thing? He doesn't deny the facts of the inconsistent written versions. So by his own words, he should know better.

I don't know why so many fools insist on sanctifying the specific wording of the Amendment, when they could accomplish so much more avoiding such wasteful and fruitless argumentation by engaging in a direct addressing of the particulars instead.

some other reading on the subject.

That's what it should mean to be American. Thoughtful, earnest consideration, by people with the integrity to realize that they cannot rest on the laurels of the past, that glorification of what was is a way to ignore what is, and that they need to be responsible for their own decisions.

This is the sort of thing that makes me think that the Second Amendment Advocates are worse than the Sixteenthers, they could make a legitimate and persuasive argument, but obstinately refuse.

This guy nailed it. Read that, and learn what it means to be an American.

Further, if you want to understand how to parse the language, and avoid the misunderstanding that the 2nd only applies to militias, there are lots of articles out there which discuss how to parse it in the context it was written in, such as this pretty long article about it.

He never actualy said "Jews" you know that ? Every speech he said "Jews and Socialists" - he ALWAYS considered those groups in cahoots.

Yes, and Stalin had Trotsky killed — does that mean, one them was not a hard-core Communist?

it was NEVER the platform of the ruling NAZI party, it was abandoned long before then.

First of all, thank you for accepting the listed points from Hitler's "Programme" as common with (other) Socialists. Second, the platform was decidedly not abandoned — the points listed were all implemented, including the "universal healthcare" so dear to the hearts of today's Collectivists (Fascists and Socialists alike), including ANTIFA.

https://fee.org/articles/the-m...

http://www.nationalreview.com/...

https://sweden.se/culture-trad...

https://stream.org/5-myths-nor...

It's mostly a myth.

For more insight on why pointless make-work jobs are NOT "good for the economy", you can read The Parable of the Broken Window.

Better yet, read Economics in One Lesson. It's effectively an extension of the broken window hypothesis you point out, but applies it to various different contexts. Very eye opener and makes you wonder why people are hellbent on protecting any and all jobs, regardless of their actual contribution to society (hint: if your job can be easily replaced by little kiosks, you're no longer a contributor).

That may be true, but how many people die when the FDA fails to approve drugs on time? Why not just have incentives to avoid hurting people rather than telling them how to do it? If someone falsely advertises, they can be sued for fraud. If their drug has X side effect (maybe even death), they can be sued for all damages caused by their nondisclosure of said side effects. Federal regulation is not the most effective way to keep people safe. The problem is that we have an easy time imagining what would happen if the FDA doesn't exist -- "snake oil," unsafe drugs, etc -- but we fail to see what innovation didn't happen or what lives weren't saved because of the FDA.

What in the holy fuck do you think is going on in bathrooms?

Every once in a while females get raped and otherwise assaulted there. No, not by actual transgender lunatics — by "regular" perverts.

For security and/or police to be able to prevent such assaults, a law explicitly banning men in women's bathrooms may be necessary — without it, such people can not be removed from there preemptively.

Republicans are against big government but want government to monitor their [obsenity] bathrooms.

Not "their" — the law is about public (and otherwise publicly accessible) bathrooms. You can still pee however you want in yours, even if — thanks to certain Democrats — you aren't free to properly flush afterwards.

The problem will be when able bodied people decide to live only on UBI and nothing else. That's detrimental to society and a mechanism should be put in place to prevent that.

May I suggest certificates of performance?

That's true. There are laws against it. However, that's not how it should be. As the owner of your property, you have the right to discriminate. This is the same reason why the flower arrangement case makes no sense; there is no reason anyone should be forced to buy or sell from anyone. Is that not freedom of association and protection of private property? In fact, the market relies on your ability to discriminate between products and services; labor and renting are only a few of those.

Now, unfair discrimination could be a problem, but there is no reason to make it illegal. If someone wants to hurt their own ability to do business, then let them. As Rothbard explains,

Suppose, for example, that someone in a free society is a landlord of a house or a block of houses. He could simply charge the free market rent and let it go at that. But then there are risks; he may choose to discriminate against renting to couples with young children, figuring that there is substantial risk of defacing his property. On the other hand, he may well choose to charge extra rent to compensate for the higher risk, so that the free-market rent for such families will tend to be higher than otherwise. This, in fact, will happen in most cases on the free market. But what of personal, rather than strictly economic, “discrimination” by the landlord? Suppose, for example, that the landlord is a great admirer of six-foot Swedish-Americans, and decides to rent his apartments only to families of such a group. In the free society it would be fully in his right to do so, but he would clearly suffer a large monetary loss as a result. For this means that he would have to turn away tenant after tenant in an endless quest for very tall Swedish-Americans. While this may be considered an extreme example, the effect is exactly the same, though differing in degree, for any sort of personal discrimination in the marketplace. If, for example, the landlord dislikes redheads and determines not to rent his apartments to them, he will suffer losses, although not as severely as in the first example.

In any case, anytime anyone practices such “discrimination” in the free market, he must bear the costs, either of losing profits or of losing services as a consumer. If a consumer decides to boycott goods sold by people he does not like, whether the dislike is justified or not, he then will go without goods or services which he otherwise would have purchased.

So, what's your point?

Is it that we should have a more educated populace? Public schools in the United States have been failures, even though Since World War II, inflation-adjusted spending per student in American public schools has increased by 663 percent. Obviously, more money isn't going to help, and that's all I hear from people who make claims like "It's the dummies."

Here's the real issue: we have people who don't have any interest in actually learning about the policies politicians support (of either party), and they have the reigns on power in a democracy. The likelihood that anyone will affect the outcome of an election is minuscule, so people vote for "civic duty" or the entertainment value of the event. No one is making a list of policies each politician is expected to support and calculating cost/benefit for each. Heck, most people know that politicians are bad at keeping their campaign promises, much less their "values."

The problem is not education. The problem is a system that allows people who have no interest in making a calculated choice to make a choice that is foisted everyone. You can't even claim that outcomes would be much better if everyone who voted was required to have a Master's degree.

Nope sorry bullshit. If you had an actual free market (instead of the crony capitalism that passes for it in the USSA) then the people in those areas could form a co-op and pay for their area to have fiber and towers...but they will be crushed by lobbyists for the scumbag telecos that won't run out there but don't want any competition, no matter how small.

As long as you have corps big enough to buy their own laws you will have corruption and unfettered capitalism has been tried here before, it was called the age of the robber barons and ended up with corps having their own private armies and beating (and even killing) those that tried to unionize and blowing up rivals businesses...yeah lets go back to that, how about NO.

Further there are people that lump Libertarians in as Alt-Right (as in they're not establishment conservatives).

Yes, but we libertarians are usually pretty offended by it. And the truth is that the beliefs and focuses are very different.

Except for the perpetually angry leftist blacks, the average reasonable black citizen agreed with Trump.

You have got to be joking, that was one of the more calculated tweets. He knew the press would react immediately to any criticism of anyone black. Except that Trump's criticism was accurate, so it actually weakened John Lewis (who was coasting on a history of civil rights support fifty some years ago until that point with no accountability for current inaction) and also made the press look stupid for fervently protesting against a valid point. Even black women in Atlanta (Lewis's district) agreed with Trump.

And you call that uncalculated... that tweet was carefully chosen in target to increase black support for Trump.

You do realize that the makeup of the "1%" has a high turnover, right?

Democracy, two wolves and a sheep voting on what's for dinner.

It never works out in the end.

And it hasn't worked out in Scandinavia.

https://fee.org/articles/the-m...
https://www.bostonglobe.com/op...
http://www.thenewamerican.com/...

If all you listen to is Left-wing news and Bernie, you'd never know socialism doesn't work.

The FAA has already said no to ridesharing. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/...

The FAA has already said no to "Uber in the sky". http://motherboard.vice.com/re...
And http://marginalrevolution.com/...
And https://fee.org/articles/how-t...

The reason for it is that the FAA has different rules for carrying yourself as a private pilot, carrying others for commercial gain, fare-sharing, etc. The regulations for fare-sharing mean you actually ALL have to be going TO GO DO the same thing, not just going to the same place. https://www.tnooz.com/article/...

The FAA has a higher requirement of pilots, equipment, and maintenance when used to carry passengers (other than private pilots who are NOT getting reimbursed).

Ehud
OB DISC: I'm an FAA certificated commercial helicopter pilot

And you can challenge asset forfeiture

No, actually, you can not — the laws allowing the forfeiture do not require police to prove anything. For example:

Air Force veteran had $63,530 seized after he was pulled over for changing lanes without signaling. After a drug sniffing canine “alerted” to possible narcotics, a sheriff’s deputy conducted a search and found the cash, but no drugs.

Brewer told the officer he was on his way to Los Angeles where he intended to make a down payment on a house, but the deputy seized the money anyway. Brewer took his fight to the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled that circumstantial evidence, like the fact the money was being carried in a plastic bag near two magazines with marijuana-themed articles, was sufficient to tie the money to criminal activity. Brewer never saw his $63,530 again.

See? If the officer's suspicion was reasonable, the forfeiture will stand, even if no actual crime has ever been proven... This is far worse than a bogus warrant, because it allows literal robbery of completely innocent people, whereas with a warrant — justified or not — police still have to find evidence of a crime.

You were "just following orders!!!!"

Huh?

write some nonsense down on an application, take it to a judge who rubber-stamps a warrant, and then grab all of the information they can about you

Actually, no, it is not. You can challenge evidence obtained with such a warrant and avoid conviction.

There has to be checks and balances on the system.

Of course, there should be!

Once you even consider the idea, that having "too much" money is wrong, you've enabled a civil forfeiture somewhere...

It is not all lost — Nebraska, for one, has officially abolished civil forfeiture already. But it is certainly disheartening, that such an obvious injustice sprung up and continues to exist in the US, while people get fired up over complete nonsense and outright lies instead.

Another reason is that Posti recently launched a lawn mowing service which operates on Tuesdays.

USPS was (barely) self-supporting, before its government's monopoly on First Class Mail was obsoleted by e-mail.

I wonder, if Finland will now similarly make it illegal for private competitors to mow lawns...

Norway is not socialist, far from it. Norway arguably is a more market economy than even the United States. https://fee.org/articles/the-m...

That's an interesting article. Sounds like a system that would actually work.

Norway is not socialist, far from it. Norway arguably is a more market economy than even the United States. https://fee.org/articles/the-m...

Relevant: http://fee.org/articles/18-spe...

So tell us great sage, who should we turn to for help against criminals,

You probably have no recourse. If someone breaks into your house, the police aren't even going to take fingerprints, if they even come out at all.
If you get death threats, the police will tell you they can't protect you. They have no legal obligation to do so.

For the REAL record, it started with RICO back in 1970 with Congress passing a veto-proof RICO bill. It's grown out of that, reaching full-swing back in the 1970s - and not stopping since then.

Unfortunately, many assets are seized and kept without charges even being brought. Seizing assets should only be accompanied by an actual criminal charge (per the 4th Amendment), and kept by the Government only if a conviction is upheld (8th Amendment). Any other seizure and retention is patently unconstitutional.

Scandinavians pay for these benefits with high taxes. The governments make no effort to hide this, as evidenced by this paragraph from a Danish government tax guide for new citizens.

There isn't a great deal of difference to me between a government or a multitude of corporations making themselves privy to an increasing share of our personal lives

Actually, the difference is vast: for a corporation to compel either you or another corporation to reveal any data, it has to win legal case — or, a least, convince a judge to issue a subpoena. The government has been gradually lowering this bar for itself over the years — recall the "National Security Letters" (and how easy they are for the government to obtain).

And that's when it bothers with the legal process at all — often it can simply just bust in and take your stuff (without warrant), seize any property on mere accusation of it being used in a crime, and confiscate bank accounts without even an accusation, only suspicion , or, as was the case with Reason.com, demand your "voluntary" cooperation or else...

But my point was not, that the government ought not to investigate legitimate threats against judges and public officials — even hard-core Libertarians would agree, that this is, actually, a proper role of the government. The point is, this particular investigation was patently illegitimate — the "threats" were bogus and hyperbolic and DoJ could not possible have hoped to ever win a conviction.

Their intention was to simply harass the dissenters by hitting them with subpoenas and giving them threatening "talking-tos". The prosecution, in other words, was malicious. That's the disgusting part.

The aspects of Libertarianism that relate to being largely left alone to pursue our lives appeal to me [...] The eagerness of Libertarians to remove regulations on corporate behavior

But there is no difference! What's good for the goose, is good for the chicken as well:

• If a corporation can not discriminate on race or age in hiring a secretary, then you can not discriminate on same in hiring a babysitter.
• If a corporation's employees can vote to obligate their employer to only hire from the same union they just joined, by what logic should your local supermarket be unable to vote itself into becoming the sole legal source of groceries for you?
• If a strip-club can not turn away a transgender entertainer, then you can not be averting your eyes from "her" either — and it would be manifestly bigoted of you to not stick your dollar-bills right next to "her" penis.

Even more obvious examples abound. For example, the EPA considers any billabong in the US to be under its control and protection — so both private citizens and corporations alike now need a Federal Government's approval to build anything on their property, if it happens to have a lake, a stream, or a swamp, however small...

Man, your indoctrination is really complete, isn't it. And your use of slanders of insults betrays the fact you are unable of critical thinking or reasoned debate. So sad that you choose to deny reality, and you help to advance the fascist agenda of the Statist Collectivists who necessarily must crush individual liberty.

I find that to be a fascinating accusation coming from someone who posts a diagram presenting a political spread with terminology supported by only a tiny fraction of people, existing primarily only in the United States, who are regarded by almost all other groups of people to be insane.

Please study the following diagram: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_TI8b... [blogspot.com]

I'll raise you a bullshit blogspot opinion diagram with a bullshit wordpress opinion diagram.
https://sepetjian.files.wordpr...
or another:
http://fee.org/files/imglib/20...
Hell, let's just go with some reading material.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
In particular:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
The citations are numerous, you may go through them- though many are books used in classical political science courses.

In economics terms a Fascist system is one where: The Means of Production remains in private hands, but the Fruits of Production are controlled by the State.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F...
More reading for you.
In a fascist system, everything is controlled by the dictator, for the will of the dictator. Those who play ball are allowed limited autonomy. Simply because the dictator is effectively "the State" does not mean that the economics in play are left-wing, particularly because the State in no way represents the people anymore in an autocratic dictatorship. Fascism is not left-wing economics. It's pre-Magna Carta England economics: Do what I say, or I'll fucking kill you. Hail to the King, baby.

This is exactly the system that the Democratic Party of the USA is trying to implement. They chose Barack Obama to help advance this agenda (which he agrees with, if you listen carefully) because of his skin color. This US is so racist it judges people by their skin color, and Barack Obama is immune from criticisms that a white President would have been impeached for. The Left knows this and used it against the population of the US that it seeks to subjugate and control ("for their own good") as it takes a flamethrower to citizen protections in the Constitution.

This is a massive pile of horse shit that you can't begin to back up. While I think most people wouldn't disagree that Democrats are certainly Statists, they're in no way unaligned with the Republicans on this point. It's one of the few things they agree on. The primary disagreement is on protection of the people rendered powerless by both parties, and protections of the Corporations from attack by the people. The social issues are purely red herrings to distract the weak minded.

Do you not understand that Far Left Fascism and Extreme Left Communism were rivals in World War II? It is only disinformation from the communists against their rivals (starting in the schism of the Left in the Spanish Civil War) that calls the Far Left National Socialists "right wing" (which everyone is from the perspective of the Communists of the Extreme Left).

Again, Nazi Germany was far-right. Nazism is far-right. Fascism in general evolved to be far-right everywhere it was instituted. No matter how much you seem to want far-right to be

I hope Tesla wins as well! http://fee.org/freeman/detail/...