Have you considered that your idealized vision of humans may be skewed by you buying into your own propaganda? Most people will not work if they can get away with it, so most people on the dole will not work. Idle hands are the tool of the devil though, my prediction is the opposite of that of your collectivist cohorts. I think if everybody had their life paid for, most people would spend their lives in search of entertainment but because basic income is 'basic', they wouldn't have too much cash to play with, but plenty of entertainment can be had by setting up a gang, an underground casino, where the UBI would be gambled away cheapest drugs, cheapest booze, cheapest everything, that is not bad in itself, I am not moralizing. My point is:give people free food and free shelter and they will entertain themselves and I think in most cases this entertainment will not be pretty, it will be underground, violent, it will gamble with the money and with lives. Not that those lives would be worth much more than the monthly check... I expect racketeering, turf wars, people trafficking, slavery actually. That would be poetic justice though, wouldn't it? Turn the productive population into your slaves to satisfy your claim to their productivity but then become a slave in the system you set up to enslave others. As you can see I am of a very low impression of the population in general (and of you as its fairly accurate representative specifically).
I think you are salivating at the mouth at the prospect of ruling those who can produce to gain the power through those, who are hoping to allow the system to enslave the productive population. Statistically speaking you are unlikely to be the slave owner in your new paradise though that means you as will be a slave. A slave who wants to enslave, the most dispeakable slave.
Just a couple of days ago I bought something on eBay and had to pay 520USD. To my surprise the system demanded that I had to contact PayPal customer support. Amazingly enough I was able to get through the maze of call answering menus and eventually had a human on the phone. She asked me to confirm the visa number (interestingly enough it seems they have the access to the unencrypted visa numbers) and eventually said I had to log out, log back in and try again. This time the transaction went through. I asked her what this was all about, she replied that they have to confirm large transactions ?????????? (520usd is a 'large transaction'???????) to avoid fraud. Immediately I thought that PayPal is in trouble. If they have to confirm transactions of that type and amount by hand, it seems to me their transaction costs have to grow significantly and they will become uncompetitive compared to visa and such. Seems to me PayPal is dying.
Closed shows are anti-employee. Unions are racketeering. Collectivism is oppression.
It's interesting to observe the USA go down the drain due to all of the collectivization it engaged in since the Sherman's act was first used to destroy individual rights. Everything that came after that was pre-ordained, the wars, the depressions, the dollar destruction, all of the business and labour regulations, theft of property and of income, anti-individualism (thus anti-humanism), all of the self destruction started with theft.
Eliminating the need to have 1000 trucks is not the same as eliminating 1000 trucks, now that you eliminated the need for 1000 trucks what you have done is lowered your costs thus allowing more business to come your way by lowering prices to your end customers, thus getting more business and making more money by running more transactions. Lowering your costs, lowering the costs to your clients while still keeping the same margins allows you to do more business with the same resources and get more profit. Being able to make money in a competitive environment is the best thing that society learned how to do, this way it can deliver more products to more people at lower costs while still being profitable. Being more profitable allows you to sell more of your services and become even wealthier in the process while serving more people at lower prices....
It's not just the fact of unionization that killed all auto manufacturing in California, it's the weight that the unions hold with the government as a voting and financing block, it's the push by the unions of the governments towards more collectivist ideology and policy that killed all auto manufacturing and also propagated throughout the rest of the productive manufacturing sectors.
That's why I am expanding my operations in the Ukraine rather than in the 'western paradise'. Because I should be able to hire and fire anybody at any time I want for any reason I want, just like you are free to purchase your food from any store you want for any reason you want at any time you want and nobody can stop you (nor should they be able to stop you).
Gresham's law can be read both ways, bad money drives good money *out of circulation* because people collect good money and let go of bad, but my point is that good money drives out bad money *out of real trade*, which means that in trade people will not want to take bad money and will expect good money. Also while Gresham's law deals with the most obvious cases of counterfeiting my point is that collectivist theft and redistribution is also counterfeiting because the people who have the money redistributed to them have not done anything productive and thus cannot actually give anything back for the cash that can be presented to them. They can only consume, they are unproductive, they cannot produce, they have nothing to trade, nothing to pay for the money that can be presented to them. The money will lose its value because theft and redistribution is counterfeiting, it counterfeits the value of the currency.
Gresham's law: good money will displace bad money. Money that is stolen and redistributed to the unproductive is bad money and will become worthless regardless of the amounts
The workers in the USA are not allowed to accept jobs at salary levels of their choice or capability. The USA workers are limited by their government to a minimum wage level that exceeds the market rate for that worker with that skill set and/or for that position.
Of-course the actual problem is not the high wage, the hourly wages are only a part of the business cost, wages are an important but not the main part of it. The income and wealth taxes on all levels, regulation, which are also taxes (since they increase costs and reduce profits), various liabilities imposed by the government (which are also taxes) are the reasons for businesses moving out.
Labour costs are fixed, a salary is a component of a business cost that does not eat into the profits. The salaries of all employees are not increasing with the increased profits, so as the company gains efficiencies the salaries being the fixed cost do not eat into the profits. Profit is the money that the investors are making from business and the government taxes (especially progressive higher taxes on higher profits) is what causes businesses to retreat elsewhere.
In my company I know that my costs are fixed to the salary levels of all of my employees, my rent and utility fees, some maintenance fees, hosting fees, insurance costs, things like that. If I find a way to increase my profits by doing something in a more efficient manner the fixed costs that I have do not eat into my profits (profits being what I make as the business owner, the money that I use to live on after paying everybody else, after paying debts and taxes as well).
However regulation and taxes are not fixed costs, if I make more money the taxes go up and regulations can hit me unexpectedly with hidden costs (never mind the obvious costs of regulations that I have to incur). So of-course I make sure to run my business in such a way that minimises my exposure to the government that wants to oppress me this way.
Based on that former misunderstanding you further build other forms of misunderstanding, you believe that USA had productivity growth when the reality is that USA productivity has plummeted, for the last 20-30 years USA has been so unproductive that it generally runs 500 *BILLION* USD/year in trade deficits. That shows bankruptcy, not productivity. That shows complete lack of productivity to justify the consumption of those extra 500 Billion USD worth of goods, which is only possible due to the subsidy (thus Communism) by the rest of the world to the USA consumer.
Trump says that he is going to fight against China in the market place but the reality is that if China fights back and stops subsidising the US consumption in form of debt purchasing, USD absorption and generally supply of goods that are coming from that country, it would be the death of American quality of life as you know it.
This happened because of socialism, this happened because of collectivism, this happened because of Marxism, this happened because of Communist ideology and the sense of entitlement of the mob, who provided the government with these powers starting effectively with the Sherman's act over 100 years back and then allowing further erosion of individual liberties during the era of Hoover and FDR, then Kennedy and so on. The reality is that USA is unproductive, there is no productive output to justify the borrowing and spending, borrowing for consumption, not for production that USA is involved in.
USA businesses that are still in the country are much more productive as long as they can do it *without* the work force (or with as little work force as possible) to avoid the high costs of entitlements and generally of government involvement, but even those businesses cannot last forever under collectivist conditions.
MMmm, no. The lack of legitimate investment opportunities is due to the lack of legitimately productive businesses. The legitimately productive businesses left the Western world (and are still leaving) because of the regulations, taxes, collusion in money and interest rate manipulation by the government and pseudo 'private' entities like the Federal reserve bank.
Investment opportunities come in form of productive assets, productive assets are productive lands, plants, equipment and services that can generate a return on investment. USA does not lack consumers but USA consumers do lack purchasing power because they are not working in productive businesses.
Businesses generate products, people working for businesses earn purchasing power from the work that they put into product creation. Your purchasing power is directly tied to your productivity. You cannot have money without working in something that produces what others want.
It is when everybody is unemployed and not producing anything that there is no legitimate way for consumers to have purchasing power, however the reason for the people being unemployed and generally unproductive is in Communism (whatever form it has taken in the USA).
When I say Communism I really mean that: from those who can and do, to those who apparently want and possibly need. But the real world is ant-Communist, the real world is capitalist: from those who produce to those who produce.
Lack of manufacturing and of other forms of production due to artificial costs added by government regulations of business and of labour, income and wealth taxation and money and interest rate manipulation.
Lack of legitimate investments opportunities due to the above mentioned lack of productivity, chase for the ever shrinking yield pie.
Risky and questionable 'investments' due to artificial money sloshing around the banks/funds/investors. The money that is created by government and its puppets in the Federal reserve.
Regulations designed to promote inflation growth and pumping of the artificial GDP numbers while underplaying the actual inflation numbers with inflation calculation formulas that are engineered to produce low numbers in an actual high inflationary environment.
Complacency of the entire population lulled by the promise of entitlements at the expense of productivity (combined with misguided 'occupy 1%' movements, where the '1%' is seen as the barriers that stands in the way of the promised entitlements).
Good, describe in sufficient detail and show where it's actually been tested.
- maybe you should apply the same standard to your ideology before asking others to give you 'description in a sufficient detail'? However I can point at Singapore, Switzerland, 19th century USA, whatever China is trying to be today and state that the freer the people the better the economic outcomes.
The rules and regulations of the Internet haven't been dreamed of and yet here we are, on the Internet, following a number of protocols that people decided to follow on their free will, without anybody actually forcing them to.
The problem is that the solutions are complex and a lot of people are conditioned to be automatically hostile to them
- no, the problem is that in your ideology a 'solution' is something that requires hostility towards an individual in the first place. You want to overpower, dominate, rule, subjugate, oppress, violate, incapacitate, destroy individual rights and freedoms because in your head that's the solution. If that is the 'solution' then you are trying to 'solve' an incorrect problem and you are trying to solve it in an incorrect manner.
The solution must not be in ruling, overpowering, fighting people, it should be in allowing the people to help themselves and while helping themselves they will help others by creating actual solutions that do not rely on the armed power of the State.
Today the companies can price products knowing exactly how much they can push you individually not as part of a large collective mass. The implications should frighten people.
- on the contrary, this is the best thing that came out of the information gathering, people paying for the product/service what they are willing to pay, thus allowing those, who are looking for a much cheaper alternative actually to negotiate that.
If you could walk into a grocery store today and walk out with a bag of products and pay for that bag something that is closer to what you are capable of / comfortable with paying, you and the store have just achieved the market efficiency that is not normally available to people in the so called 'developed' countries in most stores.
The way I see it I need a woman who can more or less satisfy my wants. Once I found that I figured out the rest of the relationship. I know that I need a particular type of a girl, a woman's woman, somebody who takes care of herself, respects me and has a good figure, which helps to maintain the desire for multiple daily encounters. That's all I need or care for in a girl.
Well I don't know why I came here tonight, I got the feeling that something ain't right, I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair, And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs,
Clowns to the left of me, Jokers to the right, here I am, Stuck in the middle with you
Yes I'm stuck in the middle with you, And I'm wondering what it is I should do, It's so hard to keep this smile from my face, Losing control, yeah, I'm all over the place,
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right, Here I am, stuck in the middle with you
I think the people silly enough to get in on this know what they are doing, they are playing a game of musical chairs.
Of-course anybody can take half a billion dollars in investment capital, burn it 1/5 of it in a year to give out a bunch of freebies, which on paper may be made to look as if there was an actual revenue of 4/5 of the original investment capital. Soooo, *some* of the people who are buying into this may believe that all that SNAP has to do is to grow its revenue above its expense.... except that it is very likely that it is completely impossible to do that. It is quite possible that we are looking at a simple scam here: give me a dollar, I will make it look as if I spent the entire dollar over the year and got 80% return on it but in reality I used the 20% to run the company and to buy free advertising, all while setting up the necessary pieces on the game board to return the 80% back to the company, while actually providing advertising that is free to the supposedly paying clients.
This is an elaborate hoax most likely, but the people trading this stock are also very likely to know exactly why they are gambling this way.
It's about as 'right' as having your slave working in your field, collecting your cotton.
I want to use this quote here now
"What do you...want...Ellsworth?" "Power, Petey." There were steps in the apartment above, someone skipping gaily, a few sounds on the ceiling as of four or five tap beats. The light fixture jingled and Keating's head moved up in obedience. Then it came back to Toohey. Toohey was smiling, almost indifferently. "You...always said..." Keating began thickly, and stopped. "I've always said just that. Clearly, precisely and openly. It's not my fault if you couldn't hear. You could, of course. You didn't want to. Which was safer than deafness--for me. I said I intended to rule. Like all my spiritual predecessors. But I'm luckier than they were. I inherited the fruit of their efforts and I shall be the one who'll see the great dream made real. I see it all around me today. I recognize it. I don't like it. I didn't expect to like it. Enjoyment is not my destiny. I shall find such satisfaction as my capacity permits. I shall rule." "Whom...?" "You. The world. It's only a matter of discovering the lever. If you learn how to rule one single man's soul, you can get the rest of mankind. It's the soul, Peter, the soul. Not whips or swords or fire or guns. That's why the Caesars, the Attilas, the Napoleons were fools and did not last. We will. The soul, Peter, is that which can't be ruled. It must be broken. Drive a wedge in, get your fingers on it--and the man is yours. You won't need a whip--he'll bring it to you and ask to be whipped. Set him in reverse--and his own mechanism will do your work for you. Use him against himself. Want to know how it's done? See if I ever lied to you. See if you haven't heard all this for years, but didn't want to hear, and the fault is yours, not mine. There are many ways. Here's one. Make man feel small. Make him feel guilty. Kill his aspiration and his integrity. That's difficult. The worst among you gropes for an ideal in his own twisted way. Kill integrity by internal corruption. Use it against itself. Direct it toward a goal destructive of all integrity. Preach selflessness. Tell man that he must live for others. Tell men that altruism is the ideal. Not a single one of them has ever achieved it and not a single one ever will. His every living instinct screams against it. But don't you see what you accomplish? Man realizes that he's incapable of what he's accepted as the noblest virtue--and it gives
him a sense of guilt, of sin, of his own basic unworthiness. Since the supreme ideal is beyond his grasp, he gives up eventually all ideals, all aspiration, all sense of his personal value. He feels himself obliged to preach what he can't practice. But one can't be good halfway or honest approximately. To preserve one's integrity is a hard battle. Why preserve that which one knows to be corrupt already? His soul gives up its self-respect. You've got him. He'll obey. He'll be glad to obey--because he can't trust himself, he feels uncertain, he feels unclean. That's one way. Here's another. Kill man's sense of values. Kill his capacity to recognize greatness or to achieve it. Great men can't be ruled. We don't want any great men. Don't deny the conception of greatness. Destroy it from within. The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional. Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most inept--and you stop the impetus to effort in all men, great or small. You stop all incentive to improvement, to excellence, to perfection. Laugh at Roark and hold Peter Keating as a great architect. You've destroyed architecture. Build up Lois Cook and you've destroyed literature. Hail Ike and you've destroyed the theater. Glorify Lancelot Clokey and you've destroyed the press. Don't set out to raze all shrines--you'll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity--and the shrines are razed.
Slashdot Mirror
Have you considered that your idealized vision of humans may be skewed by you buying into your own propaganda? Most people will not work if they can get away with it, so most people on the dole will not work. Idle hands are the tool of the devil though, my prediction is the opposite of that of your collectivist cohorts. I think if everybody had their life paid for, most people would spend their lives in search of entertainment but because basic income is 'basic', they wouldn't have too much cash to play with, but plenty of entertainment can be had by setting up a gang, an underground casino, where the UBI would be gambled away cheapest drugs, cheapest booze, cheapest everything, that is not bad in itself, I am not moralizing. My point is:give people free food and free shelter and they will entertain themselves and I think in most cases this entertainment will not be pretty, it will be underground, violent, it will gamble with the money and with lives. Not that those lives would be worth much more than the monthly check... I expect racketeering, turf wars, people trafficking, slavery actually. That would be poetic justice though, wouldn't it? Turn the productive population into your slaves to satisfy your claim to their productivity but then become a slave in the system you set up to enslave others. As you can see I am of a very low impression of the population in general (and of you as its fairly accurate representative specifically).
I think you are salivating at the mouth at the prospect of ruling those who can produce to gain the power through those, who are hoping to allow the system to enslave the productive population. Statistically speaking you are unlikely to be the slave owner in your new paradise though that means you as will be a slave. A slave who wants to enslave, the most dispeakable slave.
Yes but if people become indifferent to being productive for the purposes of others, wouldn't they have no reason to exist?
Just a couple of days ago I bought something on eBay and had to pay 520USD. To my surprise the system demanded that I had to contact PayPal customer support. Amazingly enough I was able to get through the maze of call answering menus and eventually had a human on the phone. She asked me to confirm the visa number (interestingly enough it seems they have the access to the unencrypted visa numbers) and eventually said I had to log out, log back in and try again. This time the transaction went through. I asked her what this was all about, she replied that they have to confirm large transactions ?????????? (520usd is a 'large transaction'???????) to avoid fraud. Immediately I thought that PayPal is in trouble. If they have to confirm transactions of that type and amount by hand, it seems to me their transaction costs have to grow significantly and they will become uncompetitive compared to visa and such. Seems to me PayPal is dying.
See, I run my business based on sound technologies, NodeJS *is* a firing offense in my company.
I guess too bad I am running a company and have more important things to do than waste my own time without any meaningful outcome.
Closed shows are anti-employee. Unions are racketeering. Collectivism is oppression.
It's interesting to observe the USA go down the drain due to all of the collectivization it engaged in since the Sherman's act was first used to destroy individual rights. Everything that came after that was pre-ordained, the wars, the depressions, the dollar destruction, all of the business and labour regulations, theft of property and of income, anti-individualism (thus anti-humanism), all of the self destruction started with theft.
Eliminating the need to have 1000 trucks is not the same as eliminating 1000 trucks, now that you eliminated the need for 1000 trucks what you have done is lowered your costs thus allowing more business to come your way by lowering prices to your end customers, thus getting more business and making more money by running more transactions. Lowering your costs, lowering the costs to your clients while still keeping the same margins allows you to do more business with the same resources and get more profit. Being able to make money in a competitive environment is the best thing that society learned how to do, this way it can deliver more products to more people at lower costs while still being profitable. Being more profitable allows you to sell more of your services and become even wealthier in the process while serving more people at lower prices....
It's not just the fact of unionization that killed all auto manufacturing in California, it's the weight that the unions hold with the government as a voting and financing block, it's the push by the unions of the governments towards more collectivist ideology and policy that killed all auto manufacturing and also propagated throughout the rest of the productive manufacturing sectors.
That's why I am expanding my operations in the Ukraine rather than in the 'western paradise'. Because I should be able to hire and fire anybody at any time I want for any reason I want, just like you are free to purchase your food from any store you want for any reason you want at any time you want and nobody can stop you (nor should they be able to stop you).
A man has the right to the left...
- this literally translates from Russian as: every man has the right to cheat...
Gresham's law can be read both ways, bad money drives good money *out of circulation* because people collect good money and let go of bad, but my point is that good money drives out bad money *out of real trade*, which means that in trade people will not want to take bad money and will expect good money. Also while Gresham's law deals with the most obvious cases of counterfeiting my point is that collectivist theft and redistribution is also counterfeiting because the people who have the money redistributed to them have not done anything productive and thus cannot actually give anything back for the cash that can be presented to them. They can only consume, they are unproductive, they cannot produce, they have nothing to trade, nothing to pay for the money that can be presented to them. The money will lose its value because theft and redistribution is counterfeiting, it counterfeits the value of the currency.
Gresham's law: good money will displace bad money. Money that is stolen and redistributed to the unproductive is bad money and will become worthless regardless of the amounts
The workers in the USA are not allowed to accept jobs at salary levels of their choice or capability. The USA workers are limited by their government to a minimum wage level that exceeds the market rate for that worker with that skill set and/or for that position.
Of-course the actual problem is not the high wage, the hourly wages are only a part of the business cost, wages are an important but not the main part of it. The income and wealth taxes on all levels, regulation, which are also taxes (since they increase costs and reduce profits), various liabilities imposed by the government (which are also taxes) are the reasons for businesses moving out.
Labour costs are fixed, a salary is a component of a business cost that does not eat into the profits. The salaries of all employees are not increasing with the increased profits, so as the company gains efficiencies the salaries being the fixed cost do not eat into the profits. Profit is the money that the investors are making from business and the government taxes (especially progressive higher taxes on higher profits) is what causes businesses to retreat elsewhere.
In my company I know that my costs are fixed to the salary levels of all of my employees, my rent and utility fees, some maintenance fees, hosting fees, insurance costs, things like that. If I find a way to increase my profits by doing something in a more efficient manner the fixed costs that I have do not eat into my profits (profits being what I make as the business owner, the money that I use to live on after paying everybody else, after paying debts and taxes as well).
However regulation and taxes are not fixed costs, if I make more money the taxes go up and regulations can hit me unexpectedly with hidden costs (never mind the obvious costs of regulations that I have to incur). So of-course I make sure to run my business in such a way that minimises my exposure to the government that wants to oppress me this way.
Wages and productivity became decoupled in 1973
- you misunderstand what happened at that time. In 1971 USD was defaulted upon when Nixon decoupled it from any form of backing, namely from gold.
Based on that former misunderstanding you further build other forms of misunderstanding, you believe that USA had productivity growth when the reality is that USA productivity has plummeted, for the last 20-30 years USA has been so unproductive that it generally runs 500 *BILLION* USD/year in trade deficits. That shows bankruptcy, not productivity. That shows complete lack of productivity to justify the consumption of those extra 500 Billion USD worth of goods, which is only possible due to the subsidy (thus Communism) by the rest of the world to the USA consumer.
Trump says that he is going to fight against China in the market place but the reality is that if China fights back and stops subsidising the US consumption in form of debt purchasing, USD absorption and generally supply of goods that are coming from that country, it would be the death of American quality of life as you know it.
This happened because of socialism, this happened because of collectivism, this happened because of Marxism, this happened because of Communist ideology and the sense of entitlement of the mob, who provided the government with these powers starting effectively with the Sherman's act over 100 years back and then allowing further erosion of individual liberties during the era of Hoover and FDR, then Kennedy and so on. The reality is that USA is unproductive, there is no productive output to justify the borrowing and spending, borrowing for consumption, not for production that USA is involved in.
USA businesses that are still in the country are much more productive as long as they can do it *without* the work force (or with as little work force as possible) to avoid the high costs of entitlements and generally of government involvement, but even those businesses cannot last forever under collectivist conditions.
MMmm, no. The lack of legitimate investment opportunities is due to the lack of legitimately productive businesses. The legitimately productive businesses left the Western world (and are still leaving) because of the regulations, taxes, collusion in money and interest rate manipulation by the government and pseudo 'private' entities like the Federal reserve bank.
Investment opportunities come in form of productive assets, productive assets are productive lands, plants, equipment and services that can generate a return on investment. USA does not lack consumers but USA consumers do lack purchasing power because they are not working in productive businesses.
Businesses generate products, people working for businesses earn purchasing power from the work that they put into product creation. Your purchasing power is directly tied to your productivity. You cannot have money without working in something that produces what others want.
It is when everybody is unemployed and not producing anything that there is no legitimate way for consumers to have purchasing power, however the reason for the people being unemployed and generally unproductive is in Communism (whatever form it has taken in the USA).
When I say Communism I really mean that: from those who can and do, to those who apparently want and possibly need. But the real world is ant-Communist, the real world is capitalist: from those who produce to those who produce.
Lack of manufacturing and of other forms of production due to artificial costs added by government regulations of business and of labour, income and wealth taxation and money and interest rate manipulation.
Lack of legitimate investments opportunities due to the above mentioned lack of productivity, chase for the ever shrinking yield pie.
Risky and questionable 'investments' due to artificial money sloshing around the banks/funds/investors. The money that is created by government and its puppets in the Federal reserve.
Regulations designed to promote inflation growth and pumping of the artificial GDP numbers while underplaying the actual inflation numbers with inflation calculation formulas that are engineered to produce low numbers in an actual high inflationary environment.
Complacency of the entire population lulled by the promise of entitlements at the expense of productivity (combined with misguided 'occupy 1%' movements, where the '1%' is seen as the barriers that stands in the way of the promised entitlements).
All of this does sound like Communism to me.
Good, describe in sufficient detail and show where it's actually been tested.
- maybe you should apply the same standard to your ideology before asking others to give you 'description in a sufficient detail'? However I can point at Singapore, Switzerland, 19th century USA, whatever China is trying to be today and state that the freer the people the better the economic outcomes.
The rules and regulations of the Internet haven't been dreamed of and yet here we are, on the Internet, following a number of protocols that people decided to follow on their free will, without anybody actually forcing them to.
The problem is that the solutions are complex and a lot of people are conditioned to be automatically hostile to them
- no, the problem is that in your ideology a 'solution' is something that requires hostility towards an individual in the first place. You want to overpower, dominate, rule, subjugate, oppress, violate, incapacitate, destroy individual rights and freedoms because in your head that's the solution. If that is the 'solution' then you are trying to 'solve' an incorrect problem and you are trying to solve it in an incorrect manner.
The solution must not be in ruling, overpowering, fighting people, it should be in allowing the people to help themselves and while helping themselves they will help others by creating actual solutions that do not rely on the armed power of the State.
Today the companies can price products knowing exactly how much they can push you individually not as part of a large collective mass. The implications should frighten people.
- on the contrary, this is the best thing that came out of the information gathering, people paying for the product/service what they are willing to pay, thus allowing those, who are looking for a much cheaper alternative actually to negotiate that.
If you could walk into a grocery store today and walk out with a bag of products and pay for that bag something that is closer to what you are capable of / comfortable with paying, you and the store have just achieved the market efficiency that is not normally available to people in the so called 'developed' countries in most stores.
The way I see it I need a woman who can more or less satisfy my wants. Once I found that I figured out the rest of the relationship. I know that I need a particular type of a girl, a woman's woman, somebody who takes care of herself, respects me and has a good figure, which helps to maintain the desire for multiple daily encounters. That's all I need or care for in a girl.
Courage? I think you misspelled desperation.
Well I don't know why I came here tonight,
I got the feeling that something ain't right,
I'm so scared in case I fall off my chair,
And I'm wondering how I'll get down the stairs,
Clowns to the left of me,
Jokers to the right, here I am,
Stuck in the middle with you
Yes I'm stuck in the middle with you,
And I'm wondering what it is I should do,
It's so hard to keep this smile from my face,
Losing control, yeah, I'm all over the place,
Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right,
Here I am, stuck in the middle with you
I think the people silly enough to get in on this know what they are doing, they are playing a game of musical chairs.
Of-course anybody can take half a billion dollars in investment capital, burn it 1/5 of it in a year to give out a bunch of freebies, which on paper may be made to look as if there was an actual revenue of 4/5 of the original investment capital. Soooo, *some* of the people who are buying into this may believe that all that SNAP has to do is to grow its revenue above its expense.... except that it is very likely that it is completely impossible to do that. It is quite possible that we are looking at a simple scam here: give me a dollar, I will make it look as if I spent the entire dollar over the year and got 80% return on it but in reality I used the 20% to run the company and to buy free advertising, all while setting up the necessary pieces on the game board to return the 80% back to the company, while actually providing advertising that is free to the supposedly paying clients.
This is an elaborate hoax most likely, but the people trading this stock are also very likely to know exactly why they are gambling this way.
It's about as 'right' as having your slave working in your field, collecting your cotton.
I want to use this quote here now
"What do you...want...Ellsworth?"
"Power, Petey."
There were steps in the apartment above, someone skipping gaily, a few sounds on
the ceiling as of four or five tap beats. The light fixture jingled and
Keating's head moved up in obedience. Then it came back to Toohey. Toohey was
smiling, almost indifferently.
"You...always said..." Keating began thickly, and stopped.
"I've always said just that. Clearly, precisely and openly. It's not my fault if
you couldn't hear. You could, of course. You didn't want to. Which was safer
than deafness--for me. I said I intended to rule. Like all my spiritual
predecessors. But I'm luckier than they were. I inherited the fruit of their
efforts and I shall be the one who'll see the great dream made real. I see it
all around me today. I recognize it. I don't like it. I didn't expect to like
it. Enjoyment is not my destiny. I shall find such satisfaction as my capacity
permits. I shall rule."
"Whom...?"
"You. The world. It's only a matter of discovering the lever. If you learn how
to rule one single man's soul, you can get the rest of mankind. It's the soul,
Peter, the soul. Not whips or swords or fire or guns. That's why the Caesars,
the Attilas, the Napoleons were fools and did not last. We will. The soul,
Peter, is that which can't be ruled. It must be broken. Drive a wedge in, get
your fingers on it--and the man is yours. You won't need a whip--he'll bring it
to you and ask to be whipped. Set him in reverse--and his own mechanism will do
your work for you. Use him against himself. Want to know how it's done? See if I
ever lied to you. See if you haven't heard all this for years, but didn't want
to hear, and the fault is yours, not mine. There are many ways. Here's one. Make
man feel small. Make him feel guilty. Kill his aspiration and his integrity.
That's difficult. The worst among you gropes for an ideal in his own twisted
way. Kill integrity by internal corruption. Use it against itself. Direct it
toward a goal destructive of all integrity. Preach selflessness. Tell man that
he must live for others. Tell men that altruism is the ideal. Not a single one
of them has ever achieved it and not a single one ever will. His every living
instinct screams against it. But don't you see what you accomplish? Man realizes
that he's incapable of what he's accepted as the noblest virtue--and it gives
him a sense of guilt, of sin, of his own basic unworthiness. Since the supreme
ideal is beyond his grasp, he gives up eventually all ideals, all aspiration,
all sense of his personal value. He feels himself obliged to preach what he
can't practice. But one can't be good halfway or honest approximately. To
preserve one's integrity is a hard battle. Why preserve that which one knows to
be corrupt already? His soul gives up its self-respect. You've got him. He'll
obey. He'll be glad to obey--because he can't trust himself, he feels uncertain,
he feels unclean. That's one way. Here's another. Kill man's sense of values.
Kill his capacity to recognize greatness or to achieve it. Great men can't be
ruled. We don't want any great men. Don't deny the conception of greatness.
Destroy it from within. The great is the rare, the difficult, the exceptional.
Set up standards of achievement open to all, to the least, to the most
inept--and you stop the impetus to effort in all men, great or small. You stop
all incentive to improvement, to excellence, to perfection. Laugh at Roark and
hold Peter Keating as a great architect. You've destroyed architecture. Build up
Lois Cook and you've destroyed literature. Hail Ike and you've destroyed the
theater. Glorify Lancelot Clokey and you've destroyed the press. Don't set out
to raze all shrines--you'll frighten men. Enshrine mediocrity--and the shrines
are razed.