By the way, the real game that needs to be hated is this:
the government sees you and your earnings as its own property. They are only asking themselves one question: how to maximise the government revenue, while the only question they should be allowed to ask is this: what is the bare minimum that gov't is allowed to do and how much should it cost.
People, your earnings are your property and it's your life time that you are spending on making that money. Gov't taxes are theft not only of your money, but of your LIFE, because you have to spend your life making that money.
It's forced labour, it is slave labour. The government is using you as slaves.
AFAIC Apple should fund an army and take the government down.
We are already starting to get our feet wet with this
- starting? The only obvious difference between what's been going on for about 100 years in USA now and what's been happening since 9/11 is that before the transgressions against individual rights only hit minorities (employers and investors mostly but also other individual property owners), while what's happening now is hitting the majority (everybody else).
The rights of individuals were been compromised in USA for a long time now and when I say that I include the right to pursuit of happiness, as in - get the fucking government out of people's way to do what they can as long as they are not hurting other individuals in the process and that's what State criminal courts and civil courts are for. Everything, from government backing unions, printing currency and income taxes to minimum wage to SS and Medicare to wars to regulating every aspect of property and ownership under the sun, all of this has been compromising the principles of individual freedom, it's just that the majority was in silent agreement with those transgressions. Well guess what, eventually they come after you as well.
Perhaps it's time the TSA realized that no planeload of passengers is ever again going to quietly allow anyone to take over an aircraft.
- and yet for some reason those very planeloads and planeloads of passengers and non-passengers have quietly allowed the TSA and other government agents to take over individual freedoms.
You are no longer in danger of a 4 year old suicide bomber trying to take over the plane with a pair of plastic scissors.
See? Everybody is complaining that the government is always trying to solve the last problem as opposed to thinking of the next one. Well, obviously the TSA have put some thought into this and they concluded that the next likely attempt at hijacking and blowing up a plane will be done by 4 year old religious fundamentalist girls.
Yeah, and if that same candidate also had a sound monetary and economic policy and a sound foreign policy, he would be the top choice of all of the voters regardless of their party denomination.
By the way, if a compound with such a property existed that it would start dissolving as if it hit water 1.12 seconds before it hit the water surface, it could have been used to solve any problem in constant time and it could have been used to pass information into the past from the future not just 1.12 seconds back, but any length of time back.
A large matrix of the compound granules could be set up and it could be used to encode a message even in binary, with the granules that dissolve being 1s and those that don't being 0s for example (though a more efficient compression should be used, something closer to analog than binary). Each granule of the compound in the matrix would be set to interrupt 2 spring contacts, so once the granule is removed, the contacts lock and send an electrical signal. There should be a lever that would loosen the spring contacts enough so that the granule falls out into a water container below it, that is located 1.12 seconds of fall time below.
This way 1.12 seconds before the granule is dropped, it dissolves and the spring contacts connect and send a signal. The signal would be connected to another lever, that loosens the spring contacts for another granule so it can fall out. The signal from this contact is connected to another lever, that loosens another contact, etc.
So there is a series of contacts, each holding a granule of this compound, each one controlling the fall of another piece of compound.
This way if the first in the series contacts is loosened (say contact A1), 1.12 seconds before it happens the piece of compound (Thiotimoline) liquefies, loosening another contact (A2), but 1.12 seconds before that happens, A2 also liquefies, forcing A3 to liquefy 1.12 seconds before that time.
You can see that a series of these elements can allow you to pass messages into the past and you are only limited by the number of elements at your disposal, each one pushing the message 1.12 seconds into the past. You can pass 1 bit messages this way 1 hour back into the past with 3214 contact elements and with 77142 of them you can pass messages 24 hours back.
Why can you build computers that calculate any problem in constant time? Well, it's a bit more complex, but basically you can devise a series of triggers that are set off once a particular portion of a problem is solved and you can then pass the solution back into the past and give it as input into another computer and set of time messaging elements. With enough ingenuity you can solve problem of any complexity in a second with devices like this.
There are already a million and one law about unauthorised computer access and there are already a million and one law about causing harm to people, and this situation falls under all of those provisions already.
This is just another way to raise the costs, increase government apparatus, increase government spending, lower the economic activity and probably this is going to end up costing a number of lives, as products are prevented from entering the market at all or soon enough at lower costs.
The problem is that business were abusing the concept of free speech to lie to potential customers, so things like truth in advertising laws etc. were passed.
- yeah, why are laws applied to businesses and not to government? Why is government allowed to call the most unpatriotic bill in the USA history 'The Patriot Act'?
Do you believe that businesses should be able to make any claims about their products or services they desire?
- yes. If their claims amount to fraud, there is CIVIL COURT for that, also there is contract law.
Just for clarification, the person does not lose any rights, but when acting as an agent of the business, then they are no longer simply a person sharing an opinion.
- of-course the person loses rights, because he is operating HIS MONEY under the corporate charter, and since a corporation is fiction, and it's really people behind business, once the corporation is no longer considered to be a person under the law, it takes away those same rights from the people who run the corporation with regards to the money invested in the corporation.
Same difference. No matter how you got the profits, it's all for personal benefit
1. Profits are not a measurement of increase of personal wealth, they are a measurement of health of business idea and implementation and willingness of the market to buy into the idea.
thus
2. Profits that are not received out of legitimate market activity cannot be used as a feedback mechanism to tell us whether this market activity is worthwhile or worthless. If the profits are not coming out of VOLUNTARY market transactions, then the don't tell us anything about viability of the business.
And that's all that matters. Only by acting for our own self interests can we achieve freedom.
- I know that you are hunting after my comments, trying to be a smart ass with plenty of nonsense responses, but you are actually completely off pretty much always. Our own self interest dictates that we do not allow some to gain from government stealing and divvying up the proceeds of the theft. Our own self interest requires that as people we set up a government structure that does not favour one individual over another based on government decree, only this allows for freedom for all, and thus only this allows maximum profits, maximum market efficiency.
You're only holding your own freedoms back when you refuse to do something because it's not "legitimate"
- you are completely confused.
I am not talking about any one particular person who can get into a position of power and abuse it for his benefit, if he can do it HE MUST. Well, there will be those who will.
I am talking about the 99.9% of all people, they will never be in these positions of power and it is in their best interest that these positions of power do not automatically grant ability to the politicians to abuse those positions.
By giving up our own freedoms and allowing politicians to above and beyond what the law states they can do in government, (the law, being the contract between the people), we create tyranny and destroy economy.
That's one of the huge reasons why Democracy leads to destruction of freedoms and many people here don't understand it and argue against that point. Democracy is a gateway towards tyranny.
Tyranny comes out of ignorance, greed and stupidity or short-sightedness of general public combined with democracy. It's when people can VOTE against freedoms in order to get some sort of a short term fix that tyranny is born and freedoms are destroyed.
How does opening a business mean that one loses his free speech rights?
This is the same kind of nonsense that Nancy Pelosi is trying to push right now in her attempt to amend the Constitution. The so called Peopleâ(TM)s Rights Amendment would deny people the right to free speech if those people incorporate.
Also, do you have evidence that "almost all" government projects go wrong?
- because there is no profit.
But people in the private sector expect profit on top of the actual expenses.
- profit is the only indicator that something is being done that is worth all of the time, money and resources that is spent on the project.
And so we're seeing news stories about outsourcing that ends up costing more for lower quality results than what we had before the outsourcing fad got started.
- really? iPads, iPhones, iPods and other electronics are getting better, not worse.
Cars are getting better, not worse. Same with everything. Quantity becomes quality at some point, because increase in production requires increase in quality of production lines, and increase in quality of production lines creates demand for more and more engineering and this in turn requires more and more basic science.
The profits that are made in production can be then used to pay for all the training of workers, engineers and scientists, and this eventually leads to better quality.
Quantity becomes quality eventually and lack of quantity destroys quality, and that's what is rotten in USA and Europe.
It is, after all, just a scam for putting you tax dollars in some rich man's pocket. All the crap about the free market is just propaganda to sell the bad deals to the suckers^w taxpayers.
- the bottom 50% of earners in USA only pay 3% of all income taxes. The top 20% pay over 80% of all income taxes.
The only scam you should be worried about is inflation - money counterfeiting by the Fed, that's the real tax on you as it destroys the economy and your purchasing power as it grows fake government spending (fake, because it's done with fake money).
Even the simple presence of information latency throws off the model's emergent behavior quite far from the ideals that such as the AMI would have us believe will magically happen if we just cut their taxes and let them dump chemicals wherever they see fit.
-
wait, so you have 'perfect knowledge' in your totalitarian paradise right now? And clearly there are no special interests that are part of the elite there, who are not even constrained by the system?
Before 1913 USA wasn't a 'perfect free market', but it sure had a much better economy, without income/corporate/payroll taxes, without EPA, FHA, FDA, HUD, FBI, FDIC, SS, Medicare, EI, dep't of education, energy, commerce, interior, agriculture, transportation, small business, without wage and price controls including the minimum wage and artificial interest rates, etc.etc.
US money was appreciating in value, prices were dropping, unemployment was minimal, conditions were constantly improving as there was more and more competition and profit made. US became largest exporter and creditor in the world. Almost all of that happened just between 1870 and 1913, and before 19 century USA was just an afterthought to Europe.
Today the closest approximation to free market is China with all its manufacturing, Switzerland with its culture of freedom and Somalia actually, after it was ruled by the British until just about 50 years ago and then by Communists that were removed from power in a huge bloody civil war 20 years ago, so it's a poor nation with lots of problems, but at least without one crippling totalitarian government structure and it's getting better there.
Serious economists have long known that you need both government intervention in the market and private ownership of the market, or the whole system falls to crap.
- of-course by 'serious economists' you do mean Keynesians, who are basically part of the totalitarian regime, as they provide the necessary academic backing to this insane idea that government can print money towards prosperity and buy whatever with fake money while diluting everybody's purchasing power.
USD lost about 98% of its value in gold since 1913. USD lost about 99% of its value in oil since 1913.
Same goes for most of other products, from bread to milk, etc.
That's purchasing power that is lost. The unemployment is always higher and higher since the Fed came to power and created one recession after another, and then the Fed and government turned every recession into a depression (except the one from 1921, which only lasted for about a year, because Harding cut gov't spending by 70% instead of doing what Hoover and FDR and Johnson and Nixon and Clinton and Bush and now Obama were doing together with their respective Feds.
Inflation has been in 11-15% range for about 20 years now, real rates of return are negative on all this insane debt, the currency is fake, the investments are destroyed and coupled with the highest effective taxes in US history and with regulations, this pushed almost all production and productivity out of the country.
So is the Fed and this insane government succeeding in anything? Sure, they are succeeding in destroying the US economy and society.
And what about those 'serious economists'? Well, they provide the necessary theoretical and academic base to support these policies. These economists are nothing more than shills and trolls for the government.
Again, we need to be getting angry at incompetence, corruption, and avarice in both the public and private sectors, and stop wasting times dealing with the handwaving from either set of wingnuts.
- more blame shifting.
The righteous anger should be directed inwards, because it's the people that allowed the government to consist of those, who destroyed the Constitution. At this point the system will be destroyed, there is nothing in the way of destruction. AFAIC the faster the better, this government cannot be removed from power peacefully and without destruction of currency and economy, so the faster that happens the faster it can be rebuilt, but already without the crippling enormous government.
If you live in USA, then you live in that 'anarchist paradise', except in that country in 1913 the freedoms of people were bought with a promise of bread an circuses.
Market doesn't need to be perfectly rational or even right all the time, market only needs to be not tempered with by government with a fake money printing press and a war and social programs agenda.
Government doesn't have ANY ability to know what is right and what is wrong in terms of project, and almost all government projects end up being wrong by the way, government has much worse track record in terms of some value returned per dollar spent than the market.
Worse - in the market you can opt out of any insanity that ensues.
With the government running an insanity you can't really opt out. You can't opt out of bombing Iraq and Afghanistan and being all over the world. You can't opt out of SS and Medicare and EI and minimum wage and price controls, and fake money and price control over the money (interest) and it's worse even.
With government you can't opt out even if you find a way for you personally not to participate, because 99% of people can't opt out, and because they can't, you are a victim of their suicidal herd behaviour. What I mean is that they won't stop destroying the economy and society and waging the wars even if you figure out how not to participate at all (say you are in the woods somewhere, gathering your own food, etc., when the society crashes because of gov't, you'll be subjected to all sorts of unpleasantness, say a civil war around you, you may get shot even if you didn't participate in the destruction process).
No "Free Market" would have created nuclear power, for example, as the initial investments were too much for any business ledger to survive.
- nonsense. Nonsense.
Without the government stealing money (production) from people through taxing productivity, the companies can create anything that any government can just fine.
It WILL take more time in some cases, but it must take more time, because things must become actually profitable so that nobody is required to be a SLAVE in order to fund whatever pet program that some government official is interested in.
This absolutely includes nuclear. There is nothing about nuclear that is more difficult than any other innovation and discovery that people have done on their own throughout history of humanity. From basic chemistry, to locomotives, to air flight, to electric motors, to telegraph, to radio, to TV, to freezers, to transistors and microprocessors, to cruise ships.
How much does it cost Intel to build a new Fab site? A few billion. It's private money.
Certain types of progress absolutely require levels of effort beyond what the corporate sector is able muster. If we want top make these kinds of progress we have to pool resources.
- nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
1. There is nothing that tells the government that it is doing anything worthwhile at all. They are not price sensitive, they are not profit sensitive, they are not asking the market: Am I doing the right thing when I am investing my resources for the last 5-10 years into this project, are you willing to buy?
There is NOTHING that really can stop a government short of complete bankruptcy (it happens much faster with governments that don't issue 'reserve currency').
2. There is absolutely nothing standing in the way of investment capital to be pooled WITHOUT any government involvement at all.
In fact, the more government there is the harder it is to have legitimate savings that can be used as an investment capital pool.
Government destroys savings via inflation, it prevents innovation via regulations and taxation schemes, it prevents all sorts of real viable economic activity while insisting on running its own insane projects. How expensive is that new F22 exactly and WHEN will it stop? How much did the entire 'space shuttle' program cost and what has it actually accomplished that couldn't be accomplished with non-reusable rockets much cheaper?
During the cold war, the government gave businesses a ton of money to do R&D. The government prospered because they got new technology that can help expand our countries influenced, the business prospered because they got new technology which they have rights too.
- so the government prospered because it STOLE money from LEGITIMATE market needs and instead funnelled it into what it perceived to be the priority: standing armies, weapons programs, social programs, all this requires massive amount of executive power, new departments, programs, all this requires huge amounts of people as well.
So all of this money, that could have been spent by the market itself on products that market voted for.
All of these people, who could have been employed by the market not to develop WORTHLESS WEAPONS to increase the size of government and grow political power, but instead these people would be employed in the market with that same money (just not removed from the market via government taxes and inflation) to produce products that the market wanted.
Yes, the market always wants more products. The demand always grows. There is always space for more and more new products and services, things we can't even imagine today become reality tomorrow.
But instead of going that route, people are looking at the government and telling it: sure, here is our money we'd rather spend on things we want, take it and waste it on more wars.
My point is this: there is no legitimate reason for government pushing economic agenda.
Government does not know what jobs should exist.
Government does not know what products should exist.
Government does not know what prices should be set.
Government does not know what the wages should be.
Government does not know what interest rates should be.
More than that - government is explicitly prohibited from any of this activity, because it is unauthorised to it by the Constitution. Unfortunately the people have spoken, the politicians have heard them and the courts turned into politicians, and without rewriting a word in the Constitution the system simply abandoned it and the government became what it is - a dictator in terms of what money is, what prices are, what wages are (same as prices, just prices for labour), what money price is (interest rates), how much can government AND people through government spend on things WITHOUT producing anything (fake interest rates, debt, deficit).
There is no wealth production in anything that government does or ever did. That's right, I discount the TCP/IP just as well, it's not worth destruction of economy to have a few success stories even as significant as ONE of many possible Internet protocols.
It's not true actually, that 'the world does not need the US to fund big science', the world could use more of the science that people call 'big', however no nation that does not have manufacturing and production can fund big science, because no nation that has manufacturing and production needs big science. When I say 'needs', I am talking about the market of-course. On/. we can say whatever we like, we can say that US 'needs' big science, but this means absolutely nothing. The only question is: does the USA have enough production capacity for companies to invest in science or does it not?
The answer: USA does not have enough manufacturing and production capacity either to justify or actually to pay for any of this science.
Contrary to a popular belief, money does not grow on trees, money is production capacity. Contrary to another popular belief, government does not create wealth, it does not create anything that the market wants and needs and is willing to pay for properly and thus the government does not have any money. Money that government has comes from productivity of the population of the nation, and if the nation is unproductive, the government can have no money.
USA has been using productivity of other people for decades now, printing dollars and importing products made elsewhere with these fake money, of-course there is debt and deficit and there is inflation, but there is no productivity to pay for any of the consumption, and thus everything that USA is consuming today is borrowed. USA is living on a borrowed time, it can't afford to pay for anything, including ANY science, never mind 'big' science. USA is broke and it needs to cut government spending by a ridiculous amount (I am talking about something nearing a 100% of real government spending). Only this will decrease the government and allow the private individuals to start producing, save and invest again and create enough wealth in order to pay for science.
AFAIC every problem with economics, wars, politics can be traced directly to the policies of the millionaire, former POTUS, Theodore Roosevelt.
That is the guy who started the entire 'bread and circuses' pitch while in reality preparing the country to completely get off the right track, free the government from the chains of the law above it - the Constitution, allow the government to grow by making sure that enough of the bread and circuses agenda is created that people forget about the only thing that matters - individual liberty.
Every new cabinet position, every new regulation and law pushed by the executive branch, the taking over the SCOTUS with political agenda and complete divergence from the only principle that the Court must abide by, the cancerous growth of government thanks to every new type of income tax (from personal to payroll and corporate, there are at least 4 types of personal income taxes today in USA and losses from one cannot be subtracted from gains in another), to the successful re-introduction of the Fed, (which initially was NOT allowed to monetise US Treasury debt, but that changed quickly enough and the fake idea of 'debt ceiling' was introduced).
Theodore Roosevelt set the stage for the destruction of USA.
Slashdot Mirror
By the way, the real game that needs to be hated is this:
the government sees you and your earnings as its own property. They are only asking themselves one question: how to maximise the government revenue, while the only question they should be allowed to ask is this: what is the bare minimum that gov't is allowed to do and how much should it cost.
People, your earnings are your property and it's your life time that you are spending on making that money. Gov't taxes are theft not only of your money, but of your LIFE, because you have to spend your life making that money.
It's forced labour, it is slave labour. The government is using you as slaves.
AFAIC Apple should fund an army and take the government down.
We are already starting to get our feet wet with this
- starting? The only obvious difference between what's been going on for about 100 years in USA now and what's been happening since 9/11 is that before the transgressions against individual rights only hit minorities (employers and investors mostly but also other individual property owners), while what's happening now is hitting the majority (everybody else).
The rights of individuals were been compromised in USA for a long time now and when I say that I include the right to pursuit of happiness, as in - get the fucking government out of people's way to do what they can as long as they are not hurting other individuals in the process and that's what State criminal courts and civil courts are for. Everything, from government backing unions, printing currency and income taxes to minimum wage to SS and Medicare to wars to regulating every aspect of property and ownership under the sun, all of this has been compromising the principles of individual freedom, it's just that the majority was in silent agreement with those transgressions. Well guess what, eventually they come after you as well.
If Ron Paul was running as an independent, he wouldn't get even the meagre MSM coverage that he is getting now.
They can limit his time to 89 SECONDS in a 'debate', but at least he is on camera.
Perhaps it's time the TSA realized that no planeload of passengers is ever again going to quietly allow anyone to take over an aircraft.
- and yet for some reason those very planeloads and planeloads of passengers and non-passengers have quietly allowed the TSA and other government agents to take over individual freedoms.
You are no longer in danger of a 4 year old suicide bomber trying to take over the plane with a pair of plastic scissors.
See? Everybody is complaining that the government is always trying to solve the last problem as opposed to thinking of the next one. Well, obviously the TSA have put some thought into this and they concluded that the next likely attempt at hijacking and blowing up a plane will be done by 4 year old religious fundamentalist girls.
Yeah, and if that same candidate also had a sound monetary and economic policy and a sound foreign policy, he would be the top choice of all of the voters regardless of their party denomination.
Oh wait.
If it is mandated by the government agencies, enforced by government violence and inflated and fake money, then yes.
WHO'S WITH ME!?
- you are 3 steps behind. How about having AC and heating and humidifiers and dehumidifiers running all the time at the same time?
Oh yeah, colours? My rule of thumb is not to use anything, the name of which I cannot pronounce without doubting myself.
Also I actually USE a COMPUTER as opposed to a netblet tablet bablet , so if it's unity then it's DOA for me.
By the way, if a compound with such a property existed that it would start dissolving as if it hit water 1.12 seconds before it hit the water surface, it could have been used to solve any problem in constant time and it could have been used to pass information into the past from the future not just 1.12 seconds back, but any length of time back.
A large matrix of the compound granules could be set up and it could be used to encode a message even in binary, with the granules that dissolve being 1s and those that don't being 0s for example (though a more efficient compression should be used, something closer to analog than binary). Each granule of the compound in the matrix would be set to interrupt 2 spring contacts, so once the granule is removed, the contacts lock and send an electrical signal. There should be a lever that would loosen the spring contacts enough so that the granule falls out into a water container below it, that is located 1.12 seconds of fall time below.
This way 1.12 seconds before the granule is dropped, it dissolves and the spring contacts connect and send a signal. The signal would be connected to another lever, that loosens the spring contacts for another granule so it can fall out. The signal from this contact is connected to another lever, that loosens another contact, etc.
So there is a series of contacts, each holding a granule of this compound, each one controlling the fall of another piece of compound.
This way if the first in the series contacts is loosened (say contact A1), 1.12 seconds before it happens the piece of compound (Thiotimoline) liquefies, loosening another contact (A2), but 1.12 seconds before that happens, A2 also liquefies, forcing A3 to liquefy 1.12 seconds before that time.
You can see that a series of these elements can allow you to pass messages into the past and you are only limited by the number of elements at your disposal, each one pushing the message 1.12 seconds into the past. You can pass 1 bit messages this way 1 hour back into the past with 3214 contact elements and with 77142 of them you can pass messages 24 hours back.
Why can you build computers that calculate any problem in constant time? Well, it's a bit more complex, but basically you can devise a series of triggers that are set off once a particular portion of a problem is solved and you can then pass the solution back into the past and give it as input into another computer and set of time messaging elements. With enough ingenuity you can solve problem of any complexity in a second with devices like this.
More ridiculous government nonsense.
There are already a million and one law about unauthorised computer access and there are already a million and one law about causing harm to people, and this situation falls under all of those provisions already.
This is just another way to raise the costs, increase government apparatus, increase government spending, lower the economic activity and probably this is going to end up costing a number of lives, as products are prevented from entering the market at all or soon enough at lower costs.
The problem is that business were abusing the concept of free speech to lie to potential customers, so things like truth in advertising laws etc. were passed.
- yeah, why are laws applied to businesses and not to government? Why is government allowed to call the most unpatriotic bill in the USA history 'The Patriot Act'?
Do you believe that businesses should be able to make any claims about their products or services they desire?
- yes. If their claims amount to fraud, there is CIVIL COURT for that, also there is contract law.
Just for clarification, the person does not lose any rights, but when acting as an agent of the business, then they are no longer simply a person sharing an opinion.
- of-course the person loses rights, because he is operating HIS MONEY under the corporate charter, and since a corporation is fiction, and it's really people behind business, once the corporation is no longer considered to be a person under the law, it takes away those same rights from the people who run the corporation with regards to the money invested in the corporation.
Same difference. No matter how you got the profits, it's all for personal benefit
1. Profits are not a measurement of increase of personal wealth, they are a measurement of health of business idea and implementation and willingness of the market to buy into the idea.
thus
2. Profits that are not received out of legitimate market activity cannot be used as a feedback mechanism to tell us whether this market activity is worthwhile or worthless. If the profits are not coming out of VOLUNTARY market transactions, then the don't tell us anything about viability of the business.
And that's all that matters. Only by acting for our own self interests can we achieve freedom.
- I know that you are hunting after my comments, trying to be a smart ass with plenty of nonsense responses, but you are actually completely off pretty much always. Our own self interest dictates that we do not allow some to gain from government stealing and divvying up the proceeds of the theft. Our own self interest requires that as people we set up a government structure that does not favour one individual over another based on government decree, only this allows for freedom for all, and thus only this allows maximum profits, maximum market efficiency.
You're only holding your own freedoms back when you refuse to do something because it's not "legitimate"
- you are completely confused.
I am not talking about any one particular person who can get into a position of power and abuse it for his benefit, if he can do it HE MUST. Well, there will be those who will.
I am talking about the 99.9% of all people, they will never be in these positions of power and it is in their best interest that these positions of power do not automatically grant ability to the politicians to abuse those positions.
By giving up our own freedoms and allowing politicians to above and beyond what the law states they can do in government, (the law, being the contract between the people), we create tyranny and destroy economy.
That's one of the huge reasons why Democracy leads to destruction of freedoms and many people here don't understand it and argue against that point. Democracy is a gateway towards tyranny.
Tyranny comes out of ignorance, greed and stupidity or short-sightedness of general public combined with democracy. It's when people can VOTE against freedoms in order to get some sort of a short term fix that tyranny is born and freedoms are destroyed.
How does opening a business mean that one loses his free speech rights?
This is the same kind of nonsense that Nancy Pelosi is trying to push right now in her attempt to amend the Constitution. The so called Peopleâ(TM)s Rights Amendment would deny people the right to free speech if those people incorporate.
Nah, there's TONS of profit... for the politicians and their friends who are in on the racket
- profit from government theft and profit from legitimate business activity are different things, and I am not talking about government theft.
Also, do you have evidence that "almost all" government projects go wrong?
- because there is no profit.
But people in the private sector expect profit on top of the actual expenses.
- profit is the only indicator that something is being done that is worth all of the time, money and resources that is spent on the project.
And so we're seeing news stories about outsourcing that ends up costing more for lower quality results than what we had before the outsourcing fad got started.
- really? iPads, iPhones, iPods and other electronics are getting better, not worse.
Cars are getting better, not worse. Same with everything. Quantity becomes quality at some point, because increase in production requires increase in quality of production lines, and increase in quality of production lines creates demand for more and more engineering and this in turn requires more and more basic science.
The profits that are made in production can be then used to pay for all the training of workers, engineers and scientists, and this eventually leads to better quality.
Quantity becomes quality eventually and lack of quantity destroys quality, and that's what is rotten in USA and Europe.
It is, after all, just a scam for putting you tax dollars in some rich man's pocket. All the crap about the free market is just propaganda to sell the bad deals to the suckers^w taxpayers.
- the bottom 50% of earners in USA only pay 3% of all income taxes. The top 20% pay over 80% of all income taxes.
The only scam you should be worried about is inflation - money counterfeiting by the Fed, that's the real tax on you as it destroys the economy and your purchasing power as it grows fake government spending (fake, because it's done with fake money).
Free markets exist now outside of USA, that's where the prosperity is. USA used to have it, I explained more in this same thread.
Even the simple presence of information latency throws off the model's emergent behavior quite far from the ideals that such as the AMI would have us believe will magically happen if we just cut their taxes and let them dump chemicals wherever they see fit.
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wait, so you have 'perfect knowledge' in your totalitarian paradise right now? And clearly there are no special interests that are part of the elite there, who are not even constrained by the system?
Before 1913 USA wasn't a 'perfect free market', but it sure had a much better economy, without income/corporate/payroll taxes, without EPA, FHA, FDA, HUD, FBI, FDIC, SS, Medicare, EI, dep't of education, energy, commerce, interior, agriculture, transportation, small business, without wage and price controls including the minimum wage and artificial interest rates, etc.etc.
US money was appreciating in value, prices were dropping, unemployment was minimal, conditions were constantly improving as there was more and more competition and profit made. US became largest exporter and creditor in the world. Almost all of that happened just between 1870 and 1913, and before 19 century USA was just an afterthought to Europe.
Today the closest approximation to free market is China with all its manufacturing, Switzerland with its culture of freedom and Somalia actually, after it was ruled by the British until just about 50 years ago and then by Communists that were removed from power in a huge bloody civil war 20 years ago, so it's a poor nation with lots of problems, but at least without one crippling totalitarian government structure and it's getting better there.
Serious economists have long known that you need both government intervention in the market and private ownership of the market, or the whole system falls to crap.
- of-course by 'serious economists' you do mean Keynesians, who are basically part of the totalitarian regime, as they provide the necessary academic backing to this insane idea that government can print money towards prosperity and buy whatever with fake money while diluting everybody's purchasing power.
USD lost about 98% of its value in gold since 1913.
USD lost about 99% of its value in oil since 1913.
Same goes for most of other products, from bread to milk, etc.
That's purchasing power that is lost. The unemployment is always higher and higher since the Fed came to power and created one recession after another, and then the Fed and government turned every recession into a depression (except the one from 1921, which only lasted for about a year, because Harding cut gov't spending by 70% instead of doing what Hoover and FDR and Johnson and Nixon and Clinton and Bush and now Obama were doing together with their respective Feds.
Inflation has been in 11-15% range for about 20 years now, real rates of return are negative on all this insane debt, the currency is fake, the investments are destroyed and coupled with the highest effective taxes in US history and with regulations, this pushed almost all production and productivity out of the country.
So is the Fed and this insane government succeeding in anything? Sure, they are succeeding in destroying the US economy and society.
And what about those 'serious economists'? Well, they provide the necessary theoretical and academic base to support these policies. These economists are nothing more than shills and trolls for the government.
Again, we need to be getting angry at incompetence, corruption, and avarice in both the public and private sectors, and stop wasting times dealing with the handwaving from either set of wingnuts.
- more blame shifting.
The righteous anger should be directed inwards, because it's the people that allowed the government to consist of those, who destroyed the Constitution. At this point the system will be destroyed, there is nothing in the way of destruction. AFAIC the faster the better, this government cannot be removed from power peacefully and without destruction of currency and economy, so the faster that happens the faster it can be rebuilt, but already without the crippling enormous government.
If you live in USA, then you live in that 'anarchist paradise', except in that country in 1913 the freedoms of people were bought with a promise of bread an circuses.
Market doesn't need to be perfectly rational or even right all the time, market only needs to be not tempered with by government with a fake money printing press and a war and social programs agenda.
Government doesn't have ANY ability to know what is right and what is wrong in terms of project, and almost all government projects end up being wrong by the way, government has much worse track record in terms of some value returned per dollar spent than the market.
Worse - in the market you can opt out of any insanity that ensues.
With the government running an insanity you can't really opt out. You can't opt out of bombing Iraq and Afghanistan and being all over the world. You can't opt out of SS and Medicare and EI and minimum wage and price controls, and fake money and price control over the money (interest) and it's worse even.
With government you can't opt out even if you find a way for you personally not to participate, because 99% of people can't opt out, and because they can't, you are a victim of their suicidal herd behaviour. What I mean is that they won't stop destroying the economy and society and waging the wars even if you figure out how not to participate at all (say you are in the woods somewhere, gathering your own food, etc., when the society crashes because of gov't, you'll be subjected to all sorts of unpleasantness, say a civil war around you, you may get shot even if you didn't participate in the destruction process).
No "Free Market" would have created nuclear power, for example, as the initial investments were too much for any business ledger to survive.
- nonsense. Nonsense.
Without the government stealing money (production) from people through taxing productivity, the companies can create anything that any government can just fine.
It WILL take more time in some cases, but it must take more time, because things must become actually profitable so that nobody is required to be a SLAVE in order to fund whatever pet program that some government official is interested in.
This absolutely includes nuclear. There is nothing about nuclear that is more difficult than any other innovation and discovery that people have done on their own throughout history of humanity. From basic chemistry, to locomotives, to air flight, to electric motors, to telegraph, to radio, to TV, to freezers, to transistors and microprocessors, to cruise ships.
How much does it cost Intel to build a new Fab site? A few billion. It's private money.
Certain types of progress absolutely require levels of effort beyond what the corporate sector is able muster. If we want top make these kinds of progress we have to pool resources.
- nonsense. Absolute nonsense.
1. There is nothing that tells the government that it is doing anything worthwhile at all. They are not price sensitive, they are not profit sensitive, they are not asking the market: Am I doing the right thing when I am investing my resources for the last 5-10 years into this project, are you willing to buy?
There is NOTHING that really can stop a government short of complete bankruptcy (it happens much faster with governments that don't issue 'reserve currency').
2. There is absolutely nothing standing in the way of investment capital to be pooled WITHOUT any government involvement at all.
In fact, the more government there is the harder it is to have legitimate savings that can be used as an investment capital pool.
Government destroys savings via inflation, it prevents innovation via regulations and taxation schemes, it prevents all sorts of real viable economic activity while insisting on running its own insane projects. How expensive is that new F22 exactly and WHEN will it stop? How much did the entire 'space shuttle' program cost and what has it actually accomplished that couldn't be accomplished with non-reusable rockets much cheaper?
Etc.etc.etc.
During the cold war, the government gave businesses a ton of money to do R&D. The government prospered because they got new technology that can help expand our countries influenced, the business prospered because they got new technology which they have rights too.
- so the government prospered because it STOLE money from LEGITIMATE market needs and instead funnelled it into what it perceived to be the priority: standing armies, weapons programs, social programs, all this requires massive amount of executive power, new departments, programs, all this requires huge amounts of people as well.
So all of this money, that could have been spent by the market itself on products that market voted for.
All of these people, who could have been employed by the market not to develop WORTHLESS WEAPONS to increase the size of government and grow political power, but instead these people would be employed in the market with that same money (just not removed from the market via government taxes and inflation) to produce products that the market wanted.
Yes, the market always wants more products. The demand always grows. There is always space for more and more new products and services, things we can't even imagine today become reality tomorrow.
But instead of going that route, people are looking at the government and telling it: sure, here is our money we'd rather spend on things we want, take it and waste it on more wars.
My point is this: there is no legitimate reason for government pushing economic agenda.
Government does not know what jobs should exist.
Government does not know what products should exist.
Government does not know what prices should be set.
Government does not know what the wages should be.
Government does not know what interest rates should be.
More than that - government is explicitly prohibited from any of this activity, because it is unauthorised to it by the Constitution. Unfortunately the people have spoken, the politicians have heard them and the courts turned into politicians, and without rewriting a word in the Constitution the system simply abandoned it and the government became what it is - a dictator in terms of what money is, what prices are, what wages are (same as prices, just prices for labour), what money price is (interest rates), how much can government AND people through government spend on things WITHOUT producing anything (fake interest rates, debt, deficit).
There is no wealth production in anything that government does or ever did. That's right, I discount the TCP/IP just as well, it's not worth destruction of economy to have a few success stories even as significant as ONE of many possible Internet protocols.
It's not true actually, that 'the world does not need the US to fund big science', the world could use more of the science that people call 'big', however no nation that does not have manufacturing and production can fund big science, because no nation that has manufacturing and production needs big science. When I say 'needs', I am talking about the market of-course. On /. we can say whatever we like, we can say that US 'needs' big science, but this means absolutely nothing. The only question is: does the USA have enough production capacity for companies to invest in science or does it not?
The answer: USA does not have enough manufacturing and production capacity either to justify or actually to pay for any of this science.
Contrary to a popular belief, money does not grow on trees, money is production capacity. Contrary to another popular belief, government does not create wealth, it does not create anything that the market wants and needs and is willing to pay for properly and thus the government does not have any money. Money that government has comes from productivity of the population of the nation, and if the nation is unproductive, the government can have no money.
USA has been using productivity of other people for decades now, printing dollars and importing products made elsewhere with these fake money, of-course there is debt and deficit and there is inflation, but there is no productivity to pay for any of the consumption, and thus everything that USA is consuming today is borrowed. USA is living on a borrowed time, it can't afford to pay for anything, including ANY science, never mind 'big' science. USA is broke and it needs to cut government spending by a ridiculous amount (I am talking about something nearing a 100% of real government spending). Only this will decrease the government and allow the private individuals to start producing, save and invest again and create enough wealth in order to pay for science.
In about 12 years of being registered here my /. 'friends' list has grown very very slowly.
AFAIC every problem with economics, wars, politics can be traced directly to the policies of the millionaire, former POTUS, Theodore Roosevelt.
That is the guy who started the entire 'bread and circuses' pitch while in reality preparing the country to completely get off the right track, free the government from the chains of the law above it - the Constitution, allow the government to grow by making sure that enough of the bread and circuses agenda is created that people forget about the only thing that matters - individual liberty.
Every new cabinet position, every new regulation and law pushed by the executive branch, the taking over the SCOTUS with political agenda and complete divergence from the only principle that the Court must abide by, the cancerous growth of government thanks to every new type of income tax (from personal to payroll and corporate, there are at least 4 types of personal income taxes today in USA and losses from one cannot be subtracted from gains in another), to the successful re-introduction of the Fed, (which initially was NOT allowed to monetise US Treasury debt, but that changed quickly enough and the fake idea of 'debt ceiling' was introduced).
Theodore Roosevelt set the stage for the destruction of USA.