Really. I remember the democrats having meetings with Trump repeatedly to achieve things in this year. As horrible as he is they were willing to negotiate and make compromises on things that could be compromised on to achieve something genuinely important to the people. Hurricane relief.
And even if you had been right it would just have been a response to what the Republicans began 6 years ago. Either way it can't be fixed until neither party controls the whole government alone.
Let's say you're right. That doesn't change that on this issue at least a democratic wave would be a win for society. Now you can argue that this is only because dems are corrupted out to corporations whose interests in this regard happen to allign with our own - you may even be right, but you're STILL wrong to claim changing the majority party can't fix this issue completely.
Even all that aside, if you believe that both parties are equally corrupt - you really, really WANT a system where the opposition party controls at least one house on the hill, the best way to stem corruption (especially in this hyperpartisan era) is to make it so it's absolutely impossible to pass any law without a significant number of opposition politicians actually agreeing with it.
That was how Washington used to work - in fact as recently as 2010 it's how things worked. Reagan passed his tax reform as a bipartisan effort that took two years of cross-party negotiation. Obamacare took two years of negotiation with loads of input and ammendments, public hearings, things added and removed by republicans - and quite a few republican votes in the end.
Then came the "lets make him a one-term president by actively blocking ANYTHING he wants to do - even if it's something we wanted to do ourselves for years" thing (it had sort of begun with Obama's election but only really picked up steam after the republicans 2010 midterm gains allowed them actually behave that way).
Now I chose those two examples quite deliberately. They came from opposite sides of the spectrum, based on completely opposite ideas of how things should be done - but in both cases they were done slowly, deliberately, in a negotiation process that ultimately got most of the opposition on-board.
Thus far this year, both those topics have been up again. Healthcare and taxes. In both cases republicans have tried to fly-by-night the legislation, keep it secret until the last possible moment, done all in their power to avoid any public debate or any chance for even their OWN politicians to know what's in the law before the vote. This is what happens when a party has full control of the government and no longer gives a damn.
What's worse - their approach seems to be that they think they'll be forgiven any horrible thing they do, just so long as they "fuck the liberals". No need to govern the COUNTRY, no need to try and make decisions that benefit their districts, their voters or even their base - their base will be happy as long as they fuck those annoying liberals over.
Somehow, since 2010 - being willing to negotiate a decent compromise bill and acknowledge you're there to serve the ENTIRE country went from "how the good politicians do things" to "an act of treason we will not tolerate in a republican", somehow liberals, democrats, progressives and whatever else you want to lump in there on the left went from "fellow Americans I disagree with" to "an enemy that must be destroyed by any means necessary" , somehow they aren't "real Americans" anymore, and any negotiation with them, any attempt to consider their views is seen as giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
That's a recipe for a government that is not only wholly disfunctional but utterly incapable and uninterested in ever doing anything for the people that elected them - as long as you promise to fuck the liberals over, your seat will be safe after all.
So yes, this is a terribly bad situation and one-of-a-kind one that America has never seen before. It is absolutely crucial for the survival of America that Washington be taught that this is not behavior the electorate will tolerate or reward, that democrats win by a fucking landslide in 2018 - to teach republicans that this approach to governance is bad for their own careers.
Yes, a major victory by the other side WILL fix the single biggest problem in American politics today - which has fuckall to do with corruption. Sure corruption is bad - but it's teenaged acne next to the cancer of "the opposition are the enemy" that republicans embrace today.
You DO have a war by now, to prove Trump is not weak.
Just because the other guys didn't fight back after he bombed them doesn't mean it wasn't an act of war, committing an act of war is a declaration of war.
You can't get around that.
Hell, you had a war less than 3 months into his presidency. The other guys just weren't willing to strike back. So one may call it a very short war...except there are still a bunch of US soldiers there, ready for the next time, so it's really not over.
If there are US soldiers in a country, and they haven't been invited by the government of that country, you are at war with that country - technicalities be damned, if a US weapon is used on a foreign nation by order of the commander in chief, you ARE at war with that nation, technicalities be damned.
The real difference is, if Hillary was president, we wouldn't have an ACTUAL worry that nuclear armageddon might happen because the president was feeling insecure about his dick size one morning. That is actually a thing that could happen now. It hasn't been a thing that was likely to happen since the end of the cold war... Trump brought it back.
When republicans wanted the 1950s back - did they REALLY want the threat of nuclear armageddon back with it?
There has never in history been a time when private charity could achieve the full needs of all those who, through no fault of their own, need help (and that's without even counting things where "fault of their own" is up for debate - like addiction).
It has always and consistently fallen massively short - including long before welfare states existed.
And yet somehow, magically, you believe it would get big enough if we take the welfare state away ? Even though it has never, ever happened before- in history.
That's a massively extraordinary claim and it requires massively extraordinary evidence to convince me - your blind faith doesn't suffice.
Private charity tried to deal with the phossy jaw problem. The market tried to address it through competition. Unions tried to address it through collective bargaining. Thousands of poor, desperate women kept dying every year in one of the most brutal deaths imaginable so matches could cost a little bit less for 4 decades.
Nothing worked to even reduce, let alone end, that atrocity until government regulation forced it's end in 1910.
You fear being a slave for the government. But having to take a job that will probably kill you in 2 years to avoid starving today. is a much more clearcut form of slavery - and it's what ACTUALLY happens when you don't have regulations and welfare. It's the doom of 99% of people when those things aren't there to constrain the 1% that were born lucky. Every libertarian must either not know this (which means they've not read enough history - or been to blinkered in whose accounts they read and who they excluded), or they are convinced they will be part of the 1%. Since libertarians make up about 10% of the US population - it means that even if the entire 1% were libertarians - 90% of you are still wrong.
There is a 90% chance that, in your utopia - you're (yes, talking to you personally) only choices would be "starve today or die a brutal, torturous death in 2 years".
I've never yet met a liberal who defended any of those things. In fact, we tend to be MORE opposed to them than the right.
Exactly because we do NOT see government as an authority but as our servant, and actions like that are not what we WANT our servant doing. So we try to force it to stop and the righwingers constantly undermine us.
But then again I have never MET a statist. It's amazing how libertarians see them everywhere and I've never encountered a single one. What you seem to think I want you call statism but I sure as hell don't want the government ruling my life. On the contrary- I want the government subject to MY control.
I don't care what SIZE it is, I want it to be whatever size it needs to be to perform the services I told it to perform - nothing more, nothing less.
Are governments really so inefficient ? Or are you seeing the difference between "serving only those who want the service and can afford it" versus "serving everybody who wants the service".
The workload of a government service is in inevitably far higher than that of a private company doing the same service for profit - since the private company only deals with those who can pay what it charges (and all the many complicated things that go into determining an optimum price point and all the many factors that interfere with markets actually reaching optimum price points even when government isn't involved). Lets take an example: you are selling a product X in a highly unequal society where some 10% of people who'd want it could easily afford to pay 1000 dollars for it, but the other 90 percent cannot possibly pay more than 10 dollars for it (unless they want to starve to get it). We'll assume the cost of production is 5 dollars. Is it better to sell a few 1000 dollar versions, or a lot of 10 dollar versions ? Well that depends entirely on the size of the population - in many instances it will actually be better to sell the 1000 dollar versions - you may sell fewer but since you're making fewer you also need to higher less people to make them - and the 10 dollar sales may not even add up to match the 1000 dollar version. An even better ideal is if you can manage to buy up damn near all the competition, and even better, own the retail stores for the product, then you can take the exact same product - change the label and sell it at both 10 dollar and 1000 dollar version - and make sales on both. Sound unlikely ? It's exactly the situation that currently exists in the eye-glass market. One company (Luxotica) owns more than 80% of all eye-glass and sunglass brands as well as owning almost 100% of the eyeglass retail market. So whether you buy a 1000 dollar pair of glasses at a high-end store or a 10 dollar pair at sunglass hut - not only are you buying from the same company, you're buying the exact same product made in the exact same factory by the same people. It's literally only the label that differs and you only have an illusion of choice and competition. And of course, a near monopoly on the retail side makes competition virtually impossible on the manufacturing side. Oakley's used to go for the low-end market, making cheap but decent glasses. Luxotica starting selling them very expensively in their stores. Oakley's complained saying they were losing sales due to Luxotica's overpricing. So Luxotica completely dropped the brand from all their retail stores - Oakley's share price collapsed - and Luxotica bought them out for pennies on the dollar.
And this is not a market where there's much of any regulation, the only bit that exists is on prescription glasses and even that is quite limited (it's not like badly made prescription glasses are likely to kill you after all, nor do they have an addiction risk or any of the other things existing medical regulations are designed to curb). It's not a result of government action - it's just what the free market did, it doesn't always achieve optimum outcomes. A monopoly can survive perfectly well, unassailable by competition and all that's required is that it manages to maintain an illusion of choice so customers don't realize it's a monopoly.
Now on the other hand - a government service cannot choose whether to sell high or low, it cannot choose to turn customers away when serving them wouldn't be profitable. Does this make it cost more ? Sure. Does it equate to a reduced inefficiency ? Probably. Is the loss worth it ? That's debateable - and very much context specific. In many cases it is entirely worth it and it's better to have a government service than not to have it. In many other cases it's not worth it at all and it's best to have the service provided by the free market only. Both have their flaws and their benefits - and whether the pros or the cons are bigger depends entirely on the specific circumstances of the specific service at
Actually the penny is not printed at a loss either. Sure the labor and materials to mint a penny cost more than one penny, but the value of a penny is not 1p. That's its value to you. But to the economy its value is the sum of every transaction it will ever be part off. And to the government its value us the tax on every person who receives it as income. Even for the penny that value is way more than the manufacturing cost
Nope. That's unlikely. Coal was a result of the circumstances during the carboniferous period - when wood was a pretty new evolution and nothing had evolved that could eat it yet. All that carbon that got trapped under ground instead of becoming CO2 again had some pretty weird results - one of which was that the O2 level of the atmosphere reached it's all-time high at over 40%. In that environment insects and arachnids could grow way bigger than they can in our 21% oxygen atmosphere (book lungs are not very effective - so the size of insects and arachnids depend directly on how much oxygen the atmosphere holds). Hence the famous 1m long dragonfly and other giant invertebrates of the age.
Eventually, bacteria, fungi and insects evolved that could digest wood. Carbon stopped being trapped and, gradually, the atmosphere reverted to it's normal 21% oxygen level.
But new coal is extremely unlikely, even from mulch which isn't fully converted. The trees that became coal were just about 100% unconverted only the leaves got eaten. Mulch is nowhere near that resilient.
The end result of libertarianism (if it can somehow avoid degenerating into feudalism as it always has before) is one corporation (or possibly even -just one single man) owning literally every square inch of land on earth, and every resource within it - and all of humanity effectiely enslaved to the one true owner of all, and since property rights are absolutely sacrosanct in libertarian thinking - absolutely no way to ever change that situation.
Coincidentally - it also provides the perfect thought experiment to the question of whether it's good to limit levels of economic inequality. Not unless the idea of living in a world where one person owns everything that exists sounds like a bad idea to you. After all if THAT level of inequality is not tolerable - then you've conceded that there IS an intolerable level of inequality - and now we're only arguing about where that level is, you can no longer argue that it doesn't exist.
Regulation is literally the ONLY thing that has ever protected people from harm by the rich. It is also, the only viable option that has ever been PRPOSED to do so.
It's possible there is another thing that can, it's possible it's better than regulation - but since, in all of human history, nobody has yet managed to think of - let alone implement- this hypothetical thing, I'll accept the downsides of regulation in the meantime rather than the uncountable deathtoll that all deregulation inevitably produce.
I'm sorry, am I supposed to forgive their idiotic decision because it was made for an emotional reason that had exactly FUCK ALL to do with the decision being made ?
If you're choosing a president of the ENTIRE COUNTRY based on "how pissed of you are at some of your fellow citizens" you are guaranteed to make an idiotic decision. No matter whether I agree with your being pissed off or not - I will STILL consider it an idiotic decision, resulting from an idiotic way to MAKE a decision.
And you will be a complete fucking idiot for making it.
It doesn't make me feel sorry for you. It doesn't make me feel your decision was justified or understandable. It doesn't even make me feel complicit in your idiotic decision. If you based your presidential vote on how you feel about my opinions, rather than on actual policy considerations - then you're a fucking idiot and deserve to be called a fucking idiot and feel like a fucking idiot and hopefully LEARN something and make a smarter choice next time.
If you're still blaming me and mine for your idiotic decision- then clearly we haven't called you a fucking idiot ENOUGH yet.
The one thing you will not achieve with that claim - is convincing me that it's MY fault you acted like a fucking idiot. You may have done it because of me - but it's STILL your fucking idiotic decision, not mine. I'm not responsible for your actions, not even the ones you do in response to me. Trump is your responsibility alone, not mine. His your fuckup. Not mine. The consequence of your idiocy, not mine. And when eventually you get bitten by the ass by the same mean laws you want him to pass on the people you don't like, as inevitably happens when people vote for this particular idiotic reason, don't come crying to me - there is only ONE thing you can do - vote SMARTER next time. Learn about the issues, learn about the candidates records and policies. And realize that voting is not just a right but a grave responsibility, you aren't voting for the chairman of your own home, you aren't voting for your own self-interest only - you're electing a president of the country, the whole country, including the people you don't like - hell even including the people you wish were not IN the country, EVEN the people you think aren't "real" Americans, you have a responsibility to all of them to make the smartest choice you can.
If you're basing your choice on emotions, like hate or anger or annoyance at me, you're a fucking idiot who has neglected your single greatest responsibility as a citizen. If there is such a thing as being "un-American" - this is the ONLY definition it could have. There can be nothing more un-American than electing a president on anything but the MOST rational basis you are capable off.
And if this was, indeed, the most rational you can be - then I'm sorry, the reason you can't get a job isn't because of immigrants or affirmative action or liberals or political correctness - it's because you're too fucking stupid to be employable. So maybe vote democrat next time so we can protect the social safety nett and at least you will be able to eat. Voting for a fellow idiot won't get you off foodstamps, voting with the liberals may at least make sure there are still foodstamps next month.
I'm pretty sure celebrating a murder, promissing to commit more, and adding such lines as "If they start calling us terrorists we'll just go right back being Trump supporters" is not just beyond the pale of what private companies would allow - it's actually well beyond the pale of what the government is required to allow under the first amendment.
It could certainly be argued that the speech which, after years of being left alone, got stormfronters dissed was criminal incitement to violence. That's always a bit of judgement call and juries (or panels of judges) could disagree on whether a particular situation meets that criteria by a reasonable standard, but the possibility is actually strong enough that, at least potentially, they could be criminally charged - and have to try and convince a jury that they didn't meet this standard while a prosecutor tries to convince the jury they did.
Now it's possible that, if the current president and head of the justice department were not practically members (or at least, happy to suck off the membership) that you could actually see such a case. It's unlikely because in the post-world-war-2 era governments have tended towards being rather hands-off with such cases lest they look like they are pushing the boundaries of the constitution too far and unleash a popular revolt (or risk a major smackdown by the supreme court). It's hardly a unique situation. There is no end of laws in the United States which are never enforced because the government knows full-well that if they ever actually charge somebody the supremes will smack that law right out of the books - but as long as nobody gets charged the court has no power to strike it, and they get to subtly remind people that "this is illegal you know" - which will stop a lot of people doing it anyway out of respect for the law (even if there's no fear whatsoever of prosecution). The federal anti-communism laws for example are all blatantly unconstitutional, the last time anybody got charged under them the Arkansas state supreme court slapped it down (so this is actually legally in that state) and the federal government quickly dropped the charges - because if they had pursued them the federal supreme court would almost certainly have struck down the law nationwide.
To be fair, if sniffing farts, rocks your boat - go right on ahead, it's your free right to sniff the farts of any adult, consenting partner. I will champion your right to do so, I will only call you out for it, if you start claiming that doing so astronomy and you are now the world's greatest expert on the gas giant planets.
Sex is a protected class, Nazis are not. Gay is something you are. Nazi is something you choose to be.
The two situations should, indeed, not be treated the same because they fundamentally aren't the same.
The gay person has no way to stop you mistreating him - he cannot change the reason you are doing so.
The Nazi can easily win back everybody's respect and equal treatment: just stop being a Nazi.
It's perfectly acceptable to discriminate against people for choosing to be something you deem immoral. It's not at all acceptable (or legal) to discriminate against people for being BORN something you deem immoral.
These two situations are not, in fact, similar - they have slightly less in common than a fart has in common with the planet Neptune. Sure they are both made of gas, but that doesn't mean you can learn anything useful about Neptune from sniffing farts.
There are actual laws against monopolies - which ought to be enforced (rather more urgently in fact than immigration laws do). The left isn't opposed to build you own -we just want a fair shot at doing so.
If monopolies are preventing you from building your own in this case - then you're a victim of your own right-wing policies of not enforcing anti-monopoly laws.
You don't get to vote for the "leopards eating people's faces" party for decades and then, when a leopard eats your face, complain "but it wasn't only supposed to be people I don't like whose faces would get eaten by leopards".
To claim that oppressors and the oppressed are morally equivalent, that neo-Nazis and ANTIFA are morally equivalent for example, is as stupid as arguing that because chemotherapy and cancer both take a toll on the body - they are basically the same.
Your plan only works as long as the signal-to-noise ratio is low enough that you can FIND the posts worth reading/replying to among the trolls.
Without some kind of filter, sooner or later, the adult conversations are simply drowned out by the shitposters. And the more that happens, the more the adults simply don't bother showing up because finding a good conversation now takes more effort than adults have time or energy to provide.
Very soon, the trolls are all that's left.
The reason to ban trolls, all else besides, is because if you fail to do so you have, de facto, banned all the non-trolls.
Ah of course, because being told "please don't be such a big asshole to people who have never done anything to you" is the worst tyranny anybody can ever experience right ?
And that is teh TOTALITY of what PC and social justice consists off. If you consider that tyranny - then you must be an asshole of such irredeemable proportions that failing to act like one and spread shit all over innocent people would literally cause you to die.
What a wonderful life you must lead, if the worst oppression you've ever experienced is decent people telling you to stop acting like a douchebag.
No, you actually HAVE a defense in the judicial area if you use a license and assert copyright. If you explicitely put it "in the public domain" -you have no defense whatsoever. Even against straight up plagiarism your defenses are limited. Disney gets to claim THEY made "Snow white" - and all they have to do to get away with it is include "Based on the novel by Hans Christian Anderson" in fine print somewhere in the end credits.
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Really. I remember the democrats having meetings with Trump repeatedly to achieve things in this year. As horrible as he is they were willing to negotiate and make compromises on things that could be compromised on to achieve something genuinely important to the people. Hurricane relief.
And even if you had been right it would just have been a response to what the Republicans began 6 years ago. Either way it can't be fixed until neither party controls the whole government alone.
Let's say you're right. That doesn't change that on this issue at least a democratic wave would be a win for society. Now you can argue that this is only because dems are corrupted out to corporations whose interests in this regard happen to allign with our own - you may even be right, but you're STILL wrong to claim changing the majority party can't fix this issue completely.
Even all that aside, if you believe that both parties are equally corrupt - you really, really WANT a system where the opposition party controls at least one house on the hill, the best way to stem corruption (especially in this hyperpartisan era) is to make it so it's absolutely impossible to pass any law without a significant number of opposition politicians actually agreeing with it.
That was how Washington used to work - in fact as recently as 2010 it's how things worked. Reagan passed his tax reform as a bipartisan effort that took two years of cross-party negotiation.
Obamacare took two years of negotiation with loads of input and ammendments, public hearings, things added and removed by republicans - and quite a few republican votes in the end.
Then came the "lets make him a one-term president by actively blocking ANYTHING he wants to do - even if it's something we wanted to do ourselves for years" thing (it had sort of begun with Obama's election but only really picked up steam after the republicans 2010 midterm gains allowed them actually behave that way).
Now I chose those two examples quite deliberately. They came from opposite sides of the spectrum, based on completely opposite ideas of how things should be done - but in both cases they were done slowly, deliberately, in a negotiation process that ultimately got most of the opposition on-board.
Thus far this year, both those topics have been up again. Healthcare and taxes. In both cases republicans have tried to fly-by-night the legislation, keep it secret until the last possible moment, done all in their power to avoid any public debate or any chance for even their OWN politicians to know what's in the law before the vote. This is what happens when a party has full control of the government and no longer gives a damn.
What's worse - their approach seems to be that they think they'll be forgiven any horrible thing they do, just so long as they "fuck the liberals". No need to govern the COUNTRY, no need to try and make decisions that benefit their districts, their voters or even their base - their base will be happy as long as they fuck those annoying liberals over.
Somehow, since 2010 - being willing to negotiate a decent compromise bill and acknowledge you're there to serve the ENTIRE country went from "how the good politicians do things" to "an act of treason we will not tolerate in a republican", somehow liberals, democrats, progressives and whatever else you want to lump in there on the left went from "fellow Americans I disagree with" to "an enemy that must be destroyed by any means necessary" , somehow they aren't "real Americans" anymore, and any negotiation with them, any attempt to consider their views is seen as giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
That's a recipe for a government that is not only wholly disfunctional but utterly incapable and uninterested in ever doing anything for the people that elected them - as long as you promise to fuck the liberals over, your seat will be safe after all.
So yes, this is a terribly bad situation and one-of-a-kind one that America has never seen before. It is absolutely crucial for the survival of America that Washington be taught that this is not behavior the electorate will tolerate or reward, that democrats win by a fucking landslide in 2018 - to teach republicans that this approach to governance is bad for their own careers.
Yes, a major victory by the other side WILL fix the single biggest problem in American politics today - which has fuckall to do with corruption. Sure corruption is bad - but it's teenaged acne next to the cancer of "the opposition are the enemy" that republicans embrace today.
You DO have a war by now, to prove Trump is not weak.
Just because the other guys didn't fight back after he bombed them doesn't mean it wasn't an act of war, committing an act of war is a declaration of war.
You can't get around that.
Hell, you had a war less than 3 months into his presidency. The other guys just weren't willing to strike back. So one may call it a very short war...except there are still a bunch of US soldiers there, ready for the next time, so it's really not over.
If there are US soldiers in a country, and they haven't been invited by the government of that country, you are at war with that country - technicalities be damned, if a US weapon is used on a foreign nation by order of the commander in chief, you ARE at war with that nation, technicalities be damned.
The real difference is, if Hillary was president, we wouldn't have an ACTUAL worry that nuclear armageddon might happen because the president was feeling insecure about his dick size one morning.
That is actually a thing that could happen now. It hasn't been a thing that was likely to happen since the end of the cold war... Trump brought it back.
When republicans wanted the 1950s back - did they REALLY want the threat of nuclear armageddon back with it?
I want to know why he kept watching after blowing his load, the other 29 minutes and 55 seconds were just wasting money.
There has never in history been a time when private charity could achieve the full needs of all those who, through no fault of their own, need help (and that's without even counting things where "fault of their own" is up for debate - like addiction).
It has always and consistently fallen massively short - including long before welfare states existed.
And yet somehow, magically, you believe it would get big enough if we take the welfare state away ? Even though it has never, ever happened before- in history.
That's a massively extraordinary claim and it requires massively extraordinary evidence to convince me - your blind faith doesn't suffice.
Private charity tried to deal with the phossy jaw problem.
The market tried to address it through competition.
Unions tried to address it through collective bargaining.
Thousands of poor, desperate women kept dying every year in one of the most brutal deaths imaginable so matches could cost a little bit less for 4 decades.
Nothing worked to even reduce, let alone end, that atrocity until government regulation forced it's end in 1910.
You fear being a slave for the government. But having to take a job that will probably kill you in 2 years to avoid starving today. is a much more clearcut form of slavery - and it's what ACTUALLY happens when you don't have regulations and welfare. It's the doom of 99% of people when those things aren't there to constrain the 1% that were born lucky.
Every libertarian must either not know this (which means they've not read enough history - or been to blinkered in whose accounts they read and who they excluded), or they are convinced they will be part of the 1%.
Since libertarians make up about 10% of the US population - it means that even if the entire 1% were libertarians - 90% of you are still wrong.
There is a 90% chance that, in your utopia - you're (yes, talking to you personally) only choices would be "starve today or die a brutal, torturous death in 2 years".
I've never yet met a liberal who defended any of those things.
In fact, we tend to be MORE opposed to them than the right.
Exactly because we do NOT see government as an authority but as our servant, and actions like that are not what we WANT our servant doing. So we try to force it to stop and the righwingers constantly undermine us.
But then again I have never MET a statist. It's amazing how libertarians see them everywhere and I've never encountered a single one. What you seem to think I want you call statism but I sure as hell don't want the government ruling my life.
On the contrary- I want the government subject to MY control.
I don't care what SIZE it is, I want it to be whatever size it needs to be to perform the services I told it to perform - nothing more, nothing less.
Are governments really so inefficient ?
Or are you seeing the difference between "serving only those who want the service and can afford it" versus "serving everybody who wants the service".
The workload of a government service is in inevitably far higher than that of a private company doing the same service for profit - since the private company only deals with those who can pay what it charges (and all the many complicated things that go into determining an optimum price point and all the many factors that interfere with markets actually reaching optimum price points even when government isn't involved).
Lets take an example: you are selling a product X in a highly unequal society where some 10% of people who'd want it could easily afford to pay 1000 dollars for it, but the other 90 percent cannot possibly pay more than 10 dollars for it (unless they want to starve to get it). We'll assume the cost of production is 5 dollars. Is it better to sell a few 1000 dollar versions, or a lot of 10 dollar versions ? Well that depends entirely on the size of the population - in many instances it will actually be better to sell the 1000 dollar versions - you may sell fewer but since you're making fewer you also need to higher less people to make them - and the 10 dollar sales may not even add up to match the 1000 dollar version.
An even better ideal is if you can manage to buy up damn near all the competition, and even better, own the retail stores for the product, then you can take the exact same product - change the label and sell it at both 10 dollar and 1000 dollar version - and make sales on both. Sound unlikely ? It's exactly the situation that currently exists in the eye-glass market. One company (Luxotica) owns more than 80% of all eye-glass and sunglass brands as well as owning almost 100% of the eyeglass retail market. So whether you buy a 1000 dollar pair of glasses at a high-end store or a 10 dollar pair at sunglass hut - not only are you buying from the same company, you're buying the exact same product made in the exact same factory by the same people. It's literally only the label that differs and you only have an illusion of choice and competition.
And of course, a near monopoly on the retail side makes competition virtually impossible on the manufacturing side. Oakley's used to go for the low-end market, making cheap but decent glasses. Luxotica starting selling them very expensively in their stores. Oakley's complained saying they were losing sales due to Luxotica's overpricing.
So Luxotica completely dropped the brand from all their retail stores - Oakley's share price collapsed - and Luxotica bought them out for pennies on the dollar.
And this is not a market where there's much of any regulation, the only bit that exists is on prescription glasses and even that is quite limited (it's not like badly made prescription glasses are likely to kill you after all, nor do they have an addiction risk or any of the other things existing medical regulations are designed to curb). It's not a result of government action - it's just what the free market did, it doesn't always achieve optimum outcomes. A monopoly can survive perfectly well, unassailable by competition and all that's required is that it manages to maintain an illusion of choice so customers don't realize it's a monopoly.
Now on the other hand - a government service cannot choose whether to sell high or low, it cannot choose to turn customers away when serving them wouldn't be profitable. Does this make it cost more ? Sure. Does it equate to a reduced inefficiency ? Probably.
Is the loss worth it ? That's debateable - and very much context specific. In many cases it is entirely worth it and it's better to have a government service than not to have it. In many other cases it's not worth it at all and it's best to have the service provided by the free market only. Both have their flaws and their benefits - and whether the pros or the cons are bigger depends entirely on the specific circumstances of the specific service at
Yes. Libertarians in a nutshell. Every country is north Korea. *rolls eyes *
Actually the penny is not printed at a loss either. Sure the labor and materials to mint a penny cost more than one penny, but the value of a penny is not 1p. That's its value to you. But to the economy its value is the sum of every transaction it will ever be part off. And to the government its value us the tax on every person who receives it as income. Even for the penny that value is way more than the manufacturing cost
Makes sense, though peat bogs usually aren't found under forests?
Nope. That's unlikely.
Coal was a result of the circumstances during the carboniferous period - when wood was a pretty new evolution and nothing had evolved that could eat it yet.
All that carbon that got trapped under ground instead of becoming CO2 again had some pretty weird results - one of which was that the O2 level of the atmosphere reached it's all-time high at over 40%.
In that environment insects and arachnids could grow way bigger than they can in our 21% oxygen atmosphere (book lungs are not very effective - so the size of insects and arachnids depend directly on how much oxygen the atmosphere holds). Hence the famous 1m long dragonfly and other giant invertebrates of the age.
Eventually, bacteria, fungi and insects evolved that could digest wood. Carbon stopped being trapped and, gradually, the atmosphere reverted to it's normal 21% oxygen level.
But new coal is extremely unlikely, even from mulch which isn't fully converted. The trees that became coal were just about 100% unconverted only the leaves got eaten. Mulch is nowhere near that resilient.
The end result of libertarianism (if it can somehow avoid degenerating into feudalism as it always has before) is one corporation (or possibly even -just one single man) owning literally every square inch of land on earth, and every resource within it - and all of humanity effectiely enslaved to the one true owner of all, and since property rights are absolutely sacrosanct in libertarian thinking - absolutely no way to ever change that situation.
Coincidentally - it also provides the perfect thought experiment to the question of whether it's good to limit levels of economic inequality. Not unless the idea of living in a world where one person owns everything that exists sounds like a bad idea to you. After all if THAT level of inequality is not tolerable - then you've conceded that there IS an intolerable level of inequality - and now we're only arguing about where that level is, you can no longer argue that it doesn't exist.
Regulation is literally the ONLY thing that has ever protected people from harm by the rich.
It is also, the only viable option that has ever been PRPOSED to do so.
It's possible there is another thing that can, it's possible it's better than regulation - but since, in all of human history, nobody has yet managed to think of - let alone implement- this hypothetical thing, I'll accept the downsides of regulation in the meantime rather than the uncountable deathtoll that all deregulation inevitably produce.
Not liking something doesn't make it tyranny. Besides do you know what people like even less than being told what to do? Assholes!
I'm sorry, am I supposed to forgive their idiotic decision because it was made for an emotional reason that had exactly FUCK ALL to do with the decision being made ?
If you're choosing a president of the ENTIRE COUNTRY based on "how pissed of you are at some of your fellow citizens" you are guaranteed to make an idiotic decision. No matter whether I agree with your being pissed off or not - I will STILL consider it an idiotic decision, resulting from an idiotic way to MAKE a decision.
And you will be a complete fucking idiot for making it.
It doesn't make me feel sorry for you. It doesn't make me feel your decision was justified or understandable. It doesn't even make me feel complicit in your idiotic decision. If you based your presidential vote on how you feel about my opinions, rather than on actual policy considerations - then you're a fucking idiot and deserve to be called a fucking idiot and feel like a fucking idiot and hopefully LEARN something and make a smarter choice next time.
If you're still blaming me and mine for your idiotic decision- then clearly we haven't called you a fucking idiot ENOUGH yet.
The one thing you will not achieve with that claim - is convincing me that it's MY fault you acted like a fucking idiot. You may have done it because of me - but it's STILL your fucking idiotic decision, not mine. I'm not responsible for your actions, not even the ones you do in response to me. Trump is your responsibility alone, not mine. His your fuckup. Not mine. The consequence of your idiocy, not mine. And when eventually you get bitten by the ass by the same mean laws you want him to pass on the people you don't like, as inevitably happens when people vote for this particular idiotic reason, don't come crying to me - there is only ONE thing you can do - vote SMARTER next time. Learn about the issues, learn about the candidates records and policies. And realize that voting is not just a right but a grave responsibility, you aren't voting for the chairman of your own home, you aren't voting for your own self-interest only - you're electing a president of the country, the whole country, including the people you don't like - hell even including the people you wish were not IN the country, EVEN the people you think aren't "real" Americans, you have a responsibility to all of them to make the smartest choice you can.
If you're basing your choice on emotions, like hate or anger or annoyance at me, you're a fucking idiot who has neglected your single greatest responsibility as a citizen. If there is such a thing as being "un-American" - this is the ONLY definition it could have. There can be nothing more un-American than electing a president on anything but the MOST rational basis you are capable off.
And if this was, indeed, the most rational you can be - then I'm sorry, the reason you can't get a job isn't because of immigrants or affirmative action or liberals or political correctness - it's because you're too fucking stupid to be employable. So maybe vote democrat next time so we can protect the social safety nett and at least you will be able to eat. Voting for a fellow idiot won't get you off foodstamps, voting with the liberals may at least make sure there are still foodstamps next month.
Dicking A Manboy Now.
I'm pretty sure celebrating a murder, promissing to commit more, and adding such lines as "If they start calling us terrorists we'll just go right back being Trump supporters" is not just beyond the pale of what private companies would allow - it's actually well beyond the pale of what the government is required to allow under the first amendment.
It could certainly be argued that the speech which, after years of being left alone, got stormfronters dissed was criminal incitement to violence. That's always a bit of judgement call and juries (or panels of judges) could disagree on whether a particular situation meets that criteria by a reasonable standard, but the possibility is actually strong enough that, at least potentially, they could be criminally charged - and have to try and convince a jury that they didn't meet this standard while a prosecutor tries to convince the jury they did.
Now it's possible that, if the current president and head of the justice department were not practically members (or at least, happy to suck off the membership) that you could actually see such a case. It's unlikely because in the post-world-war-2 era governments have tended towards being rather hands-off with such cases lest they look like they are pushing the boundaries of the constitution too far and unleash a popular revolt (or risk a major smackdown by the supreme court). It's hardly a unique situation. There is no end of laws in the United States which are never enforced because the government knows full-well that if they ever actually charge somebody the supremes will smack that law right out of the books - but as long as nobody gets charged the court has no power to strike it, and they get to subtly remind people that "this is illegal you know" - which will stop a lot of people doing it anyway out of respect for the law (even if there's no fear whatsoever of prosecution). The federal anti-communism laws for example are all blatantly unconstitutional, the last time anybody got charged under them the Arkansas state supreme court slapped it down (so this is actually legally in that state) and the federal government quickly dropped the charges - because if they had pursued them the federal supreme court would almost certainly have struck down the law nationwide.
To be fair, if sniffing farts, rocks your boat - go right on ahead, it's your free right to sniff the farts of any adult, consenting partner. I will champion your right to do so, I will only call you out for it, if you start claiming that doing so astronomy and you are now the world's greatest expert on the gas giant planets.
Sex is a protected class, Nazis are not.
Gay is something you are. Nazi is something you choose to be.
The two situations should, indeed, not be treated the same because they fundamentally aren't the same.
The gay person has no way to stop you mistreating him - he cannot change the reason you are doing so.
The Nazi can easily win back everybody's respect and equal treatment: just stop being a Nazi.
It's perfectly acceptable to discriminate against people for choosing to be something you deem immoral.
It's not at all acceptable (or legal) to discriminate against people for being BORN something you deem immoral.
These two situations are not, in fact, similar - they have slightly less in common than a fart has in common with the planet Neptune. Sure they are both made of gas, but that doesn't mean you can learn anything useful about Neptune from sniffing farts.
There are actual laws against monopolies - which ought to be enforced (rather more urgently in fact than immigration laws do). The left isn't opposed to build you own -we just want a fair shot at doing so.
If monopolies are preventing you from building your own in this case - then you're a victim of your own right-wing policies of not enforcing anti-monopoly laws.
You don't get to vote for the "leopards eating people's faces" party for decades and then, when a leopard eats your face, complain "but it wasn't only supposed to be people I don't like whose faces would get eaten by leopards".
No, the internet was mostly built by acid-high hippies about a million times more left-wing than those companies are.
To claim that oppressors and the oppressed are morally equivalent, that neo-Nazis and ANTIFA are morally equivalent for example, is as stupid as arguing that because chemotherapy and cancer both take a toll on the body - they are basically the same.
Your plan only works as long as the signal-to-noise ratio is low enough that you can FIND the posts worth reading/replying to among the trolls.
Without some kind of filter, sooner or later, the adult conversations are simply drowned out by the shitposters. And the more that happens, the more the adults simply don't bother showing up because finding a good conversation now takes more effort than adults have time or energy to provide.
Very soon, the trolls are all that's left.
The reason to ban trolls, all else besides, is because if you fail to do so you have, de facto, banned all the non-trolls.
Ah of course, because being told "please don't be such a big asshole to people who have never done anything to you" is the worst tyranny anybody can ever experience right ?
And that is teh TOTALITY of what PC and social justice consists off. If you consider that tyranny - then you must be an asshole of such irredeemable proportions that failing to act like one and spread shit all over innocent people would literally cause you to die.
What a wonderful life you must lead, if the worst oppression you've ever experienced is decent people telling you to stop acting like a douchebag.
No, you actually HAVE a defense in the judicial area if you use a license and assert copyright.
If you explicitely put it "in the public domain" -you have no defense whatsoever. Even against straight up plagiarism your defenses are limited. Disney gets to claim THEY made "Snow white" - and all they have to do to get away with it is include "Based on the novel by Hans Christian Anderson" in fine print somewhere in the end credits.