Wrong. Apple is not hurting anybody and this is a power grub by government. AFAIC the only people that actually hurt consumers reside in government and the central banks. By the way, governments like to tout inflation as the means to a good economy, for them destruction of money value is never enough, they 'care' about your prices? No, this is socialism/fascism out of control and in a decent society such governments that usurped power to meddle in markets would be summarily dismissed. The fact that it is not happening shows complete disregard to individual rights by the society that is not actually decent.
I don't own a single Apple product could not care less. There is no such thing as being 'guilty' of something that is an illegal and an immoral power grab by the government.
AFAIC this is no different than government throwing people to jail for drug use or sale, prohibition, concentration and labour camps and any other violence governments perpetrate upon people.
Total unadulterated nonsense. Apple comes to an agreement with some publishers to prevent Amazon from lowering prices, (or so the case says and I do not have a tendency to trust anything I hear, but lets assume that is thecase here). People still were buying through Apple but there is no monopoly on books, books can be bought in many formats. Apparently the market gave Apple enough profits as a reward for what they do to allow Apple to play hard, you know what? Amazon could easily raise enough money to fight this in the same market. They can find a publisher to work with them, nobody repealed the natural laws of competition yet. And maybe Apple has it right - people that buy their phones can buy books from them at Apple prices and also without having all the facts I am not at all convinced that Amazon was 'in the right' and Apple 'in the wrong', but what I do know is that the governments and the courts usurped this illegal authority with socialist / fascist nonsense like the Sherman act.
A fascist? Since you don't know the meaning of the word, maybe you should learn it before trying to apply. Fascism is a socialist system of government allows some operation of private property but introduces huge controls over it in order to gain most of the reward from that operation. Fascism requires business and government to work together.
What happened with the individuals taking over land they saw as unclaimed had nothing to do with governments and companies working together, so your ad hominem fallacy noted.
You are not the only person around and not the only person who helped other and no, we should not have 'support systems' if they are based on initiating of violence by government against an individual. It is immoral because it relies on violence against people and bad economic policy as well, because it leads to growth of government power and of the welfare state that eats itself to death.
There is no such thing as 'regulated free market'. Regulated means not a free market and what we have today across the globe is failure socialist/fascist policies that presents itself in the increasing economic downturn, reduction of standard of living for all people, you are pulling everybody down with your edge case based policies. Somalia has nothing to do with free market capitalism, it is a country that had to fight one war after another against the occupying forces.
There can be no compromise, income taxation, business regulation and money printing (inflation) are immoral and are leading towards economic disaster in countries that practice it, while those who are reducing the government pressure are building up their capital and wealth as a result (China as an example).
History has shown us exactly what happens when role of government is reduced - people become free and build the strongest economies in the world. We also know what happens when governments grow in power regardless of the reasons (and they always promise a free lunch for the majority), everybody becomes a slave and a poor slave at that.
You are not talking about a free market capitalist economy, you are talking about a monarchy with the aristocrats ruling not based on their utility to the market (profit motive, the most moral way to run an economy) but on their ability to put together enough military to subjugate the population.
So you helped somebody when they were down, you provided charity. Most people are not born into a vast empty space, they have a family or somebody taking care of them until they are of such age that they can take care of themselves. Parents / relatives / charity / adopted parents.
Again, using edge case scenarios to create policy that destroys freedoms of individuals is setting the society on the path to destruction, to welfare, to fiat currency, to government largess and government pyramid schemes, which are unsustainable by definition. In the long run you end up hurting everybody while pretending that you are moral by using government initiation of violence against individuals and destroying individual freedoms, destroying free market capitalism.
The solutions for edge case scenarios do not need to be provided, they emerge and if they do not it is too bad for a very tiny number of people. Your ideas lead to destruction for vast majority of people and thus they are immoral and dangerous but the mob cannot see beyond its nose, so it loves them.
In Seattle the average work day for a man is also 13% longer, much fewer men take maternity leave and many more men actually do work long hours at the day's end.
A woman with the same dedication to work as a man in the same exact position with the same experience will make same or more money, since apparently women have more education then men do.
Compensation for 2012 Salary $377,240 Bonus $1,500,000 Restricted stock awards $14,047,995 All other compensation $21,164 Option awards $8,333,084 Total Compensation $24,279,483 Stock Ownership for 2012 Number of shares owned 757,788
Mayer's pay from Yahoo has totaled an estimated $214 million.
As a result of the rise in the stock price, Equilar calculates, Ms. Mayerâ(TM)s $56 million package had grown to be worth about $186 million as of the end of last year, after Ms. Mayer forfeited some of the stock for failure to meet some performance requirements. In addition, Ms. Mayer was awarded $12.47 million worth of restricted stock in early 2013 that had grown to $23.7 million by year-end. Add in $4.3 million in cash paid to Ms. Mayer, and the figure rises to about $214 million for 15 months of work.
The entire 'article' reeks of class envy and jealousy nothing more than that. It's sounds like a socialist cry to arms more than anything else.
Women are not paid less if they are doing the same jobs and spending the same time doing them as men do, otherwise businesses would only hire women if they could actually pay them less to do the same exact shit.
Amazon is a company, it's not its job 'to create diversity' in any way, it already does more than any socialist ever could to grow the economy by hiring people, by paying them wages, by offering cheap products to everybody, including those very women and minorities that this garbage 'article' is yapping about.
The women who use Amazon likely already save more than 25% on their purchases compared to what they would have to pay if there was no Amazon at all. If 'investing in public transit' made Amazon money and was actually fucking legal in the fucking socialist/fascist ran cities, Amazon could certainly get into that business, but it's not clear that it could profit a retailer to get into transportation business. Should a chip manufacturer get into sewer business? Should a pastry chef get into electronics repair business?
Just because more white qualified males apply to Amazon than minorities or women do doesn't mean that this somehow is Amazon's problem to fix and that it is even a problem in the first place. I am sure there are jobs that minorities and women apply for in overwhelming numbers compared to white males.
If Amazon is not retaining people at the same rate as Microsoft for example (mentioned in this garbage 'article'), it doesn't mean Amazon is mistreating anybody, it means that Amazon gives people an opportunity to find a low level job that others wouldn't provide to those very people. Can the people that are hired by Amazon be hired by Microsoft? I doubt it very much. However once they worked for Amazon maybe their chances of being hired by other companies increase quite a bit, after all, if a year later people quit it means they can now find better jobs that they couldn't a year before, so Amazon is doing a fine job training people, giving them the lower run of the ladder to step on.
If it was up to the author of this garbage 'article', Amazon maybe would have the same hiring practices as Microsoft, but then where would all the people that Amazon hires right now find their first jobs?
Philanthropy has nothing on running a successful business and providing products/services that people are willing to pay for. It's easy to give away money to people, it's hard making money. Making money requires providing enough customer satisfaction to offset your costs, giving money away requires nothing of the sort. Everybody likes getting free lunch, but paying for lunch means that the people paying value it enough to give their money in exchange for that lunch and it's much harder to provide that type of satisfaction than to provide free money. Philanthropy destroys capital that otherwise can be used to increase real customer satisfaction and that's a crime as far as I am concerned. Africa will not get better with hand outs, it will get better with real business growth and opportunities provided by business growth.
As to the fucking ridiculous advices from this garbage 'article', they stink socialism so high, it's should be embarrassing even to most socialists. 'Advocate for an appropriate tax system in Seattle and Washington state'. WTF is an 'appropriate tax system'? AFAIC the only appropriate tax system is 0 tax, all other tax systems are inappropriate. I hope Amazon advocates for that. 'Lead in diversity both in Seattle and worldwide'? What? How about lead in customer satisfaction. 'Lead on supporting economic programs that make it easier for lower income, lower skilled Seattleites to stay in the city'? Fucking hell, how about save more money and build more business so that all the lower income folks can save even more by buying at Amazon and some of them work there anyway.
This 'article' is what is wrong with America and the Western world today, total, uninhibited socialist crapola that needs to die in fire, but instead it's spreading like worst type of cancer.
No, slavery is your main point. As to 'westward expansion' - what is the problem again? People with guns killed off people without guns as to be expected. The market rewarded those who had higher levels of technology and who utilised the resources more efficiently to provide more people with more goods than the native population ever could.
There is no need for any centralised government to enforce contracts, a system of private competing courts and private competing security forces does that just fine. As to you 'rubbing one while watching teenage girls if you keep your distance' - where is the problem? You are correct, it is not hurting anybody. If you are doing it in a way that everybody has to observe you do it, then there may be a problem with the rules set up within the private property boundaries you are in (and no, there shouldn't be any 'public property', all property has to be private, even if it means that property is owned by a corporation that runs the city for example, and yes, most if not all cities are corporations).
I was born in the USSR and worked my way out of poverty in the last couple of decades. Edge cases are exactly that: a low percentage of people that fall behind regardless what. The entire population shouldn't be punished unfairly by having policy that is aimed to steal to provide something for those edge cases.
As to your last statement: you are against people having power if you are against the freedom of an individual from the oppression of the collective. If you stand on the side of a government being able to initiate violence against an individual to steal from the individual, to enslave him, then you are not for people having power, you are for a system that breeds powerless slaves.
I am obviously talking about the free market capitalism, which excludes the slavery, I am talking about free trade and the industrial revolution. In USA the industrial revolution happened in the North, so you may want to refresh your history books, factories weren't built or operated by slaves. Sure, people were poor, but that's the normal state of affairs where farmers were offered jobs in factories, they had no experience or knowledge, so their market value to the production lines was low, but it increased with time, as capital was accrued and experience was built up. It was the industrial revolution that showed that slavery was not an efficient way to run a business, free people work better, have real incentives to do a better job because it means better pay. Industrial revolution within the free market capitalist economy settings built the economy that USA became (and that it destroyed), not slavery. Slavery barely registered on the wealth generation. As an example Standard Oil production was done with only free people working for a wage, not slaves.
So "Me and my friends" don't feel charitible enough this year. So they go under funded.
- your suggestion is to steal and to use violence to take from those who have wealth to subsidise those who do not and you do not see a problem with that? You and your friends are not the only game in town, under what scenario have people actually left children to starve? What people are we talking about and in case where there isn't enough food for people that they would leave children to starve, what government could do anything about any of it?
You can't simply wave your hands around and stipulate that from somewhere magical charitible unicorns will show up and provide the needy exactly just enough for what they need. Its ridiculous.
- what is ridiculous is to expect that you can steal your way into prosperity.
It's not unicorns that are charitable, there no unicorns, it's people that are not stolen from. In any case, you are again talking about complete edge cases, cases where a child is born into nothingness apparently, no parents, no siblings, no grandparents, no uncles or ants to take care of them. What are they born somewhere in the woods? Well, no amount of government will help them there. Children that born in hospitals are not thrown out into the dirt, there are actual charitable organisations that make money (yes they make, evil profits) by collecting money for such cases and they can manage their collections much better than any government and in a free market capitalist environment charitable organizations are also competing with each other for dollars, so they have to be transparent and efficient otherwise they may lose to their competition. Governments do not have to be anything, transparency, efficiency, those are against government mode of operation, because it works against the main goal of government: accretion of power. You don't accrue power by reducing itself by finding efficiencies and reducing costs, you accrue power by increasing your army and in case of bureaucrats their staff members are their army and the more of those a government office has, the more powerful it is, the more it can steal from people via taxes and inflation. Governments do not solve problems, it is against their mode of operation, governments increase problems because solving a problem means that there is no more need for that agency or at least not for an agency of that size. In free market capitalist economy a company that no longer provides a marketable product has to change or disappear, government does not do such a thing, it uses its power to make the problem bigger and deeper, not solve it. A solved problem is against government principle of increasing its own power.
Because you never turn anyone down right? You never run into someone you wouldn't hire? If someone shows up willing to work, well you just sign them up and they can start earning so they can eat and pay rent.
- free markets discover prices that allow them to clear. Obviously you don't understand it.
Oh... so you provide them work, but its up to them to what, exactly? Do they need to get a second job that actually pays actual money if they'd like to eat and not live in a ditch while they learn from you? Because presumably if they show up to your place of work dizzy from lack of nourishment and smelling of ditch living you'd probably ask them to leave.
- a person without skills is of 0 use to me.
A person with skills is worth money.
A person without skills has these options: go make some money and go study somewhere and pay for that privilege or go on welfare apparently or find a position that could be used to start their career.
Making money to give it away to a college is dumb unless you are talking about a doctor maybe (even then I would argue you can learn on your own and by working for doctors for free for some time). At least in an apprenticeship position you don't have to
There you go, believing that you have some form of higher moral authority while denying the simple fact that all of your positions require that violence is initiated against individuals to support your system of governance by creating a system of wealth transfer to buy votes.
Yes, people are being oppressed in this system and no, there will be no reasonable solution based on rational behaviour of a majority in this situation, the majority wants their free lunch whatever the cost.
But I am not looking for help from anybody, I build my life in a way that specifically routes around the type of economic and societal damage that you advocate by choosing not to participate in many of these structures, specifically by building a business in a way that mitigates some of this damage. A business can be built that way, it's just more expensive to build it, it requires more energy, more preparation.
There is no problem with a monopoly that is created in a free market economy because such a monopoly actually cannot buy favours from a government because there are no favours to buy because the government is not involved.
Once a government is involved, favours can certainly be bought, but that's the destruction of the free market and that's what we have here now.
It is actually wrong for you to think that your approach has 'fewer moving parts', your approach is the exact opposite: your government approach requires a benevolent government that acts in the best interest of the economy regardless of what the populous says and believes it wants and the mob wants free stuff, so the politicians promise it and eventually destroy the economy because the only way to deliver this 'free stuff' is to steal from those who produce through taxes, licenses, regulations and inflation.
It is the exact opposite of what you believe, free market capitalist economy has 'less moving parts' to have system function because it doesn't mandate that there are any parts at all. Any moving parts in a free market capitalist economy are emerging properties of the economy where people are trying to make their own lives better by satisfying desires of others.
Of-course there are crooks and there will be crooks always, most people don't operate that way simply because it's actually less safe and more stressful to operate as a crook and it gives less satisfaction of an accomplishment at the end of the day.
But what would you know about it without actually building a business on your own first from nothing?
I don't believe you can create a just society when you leave people to starve in the streets and die of illness.
- and I am not looking for a 'just' society where the idea of 'justice' is theft and initiation of government violence.
I don't believe you can create anything other than new lords and serfs through unfettered capitalism, because power accumulates and corrupts.
- and you are wrong, free market capitalist society is what created the wealthy economies of 19th century that were destroyed in the 20th-21st centuries, however an approximation of free market capitalism also gave birth to a new gigantic wealth generating machine in China.
I don't believe you can have a utopian society in which everybody has everything they could ever hope for.
- and I never said people will have absolutely everything they would ever hope to have under free market capitalist society, you still have to earn things you want to possess, however under that system it is much more likely that you will have much more based on the competitive pressures on the market participants, who are after your money not in the dark valleys and government prison industrial complex backed by the government's ability to initiate violence against an individual but they are after your mind and desire, which they are aiming to satisfy with their offerings. A company providing products and services to the market participants is a much more sound business model than a company trying to steal. Providing good products is a way to build a sustainable wealth generating business, stealing money is the path that governments and crooks take (no difference between the two, I actually consider private sector crooks to be much more respectable people than government officials, at least the crooks have to convince you to give them the money, government doesn't, it takes because it has the guns).
I don't believe you can have a functioning society if the only thing your government does is enforce contracts and property rights for people who have the money to benefit from them -- while saying that everything else is a private matter, because then you're just enforcing law to benefit people who own stuff.
- the laws have to apply equally to all people, but government initiating force is your idea of 'justice', so there is very little discussion to be had here.
And I don't believe you can have a stable society unless you realize you're going to have to pay for its upkeep.
- society upkeeps itself, no collectivist violence is necessary for that in fact collectivist violence doesn't build stable systems that can withstand the test of time, as all subsidies, governments eventually fail at all tasks that you supposedly want them to run.
I believe all categorical statements are wrong, or incomplete (including this one).
- that's your prerogative, I state categorically that power corrupts and governments are eventually corrupted absolutely because nothing can stop their grab of power, there is no competition to stop them, there is no legal framework to stop them because they redefine what is legal to prevent any loss of power and to increase the power government holds.
So, believe me when I say this... my rejection of your position as overly simplistic, naive, and one which you ascribe outcomes I don't believe it can achieve... that's based on a considered investigation of it, and finding it immensely lacking and unable to achieve what you claim.
- actually I am not trying to achieve anything, my position is that there is no need to try to achieve something, government doesn't exist to give us any form of direction and when governments try all we have is violence and bankruptcy. There is no need for government directing the society, society can direct itself just fi
Free market capitalism is not what you have and you cannot base your understanding of what you believe capitalism is on your experience because you haven't experienced it yourself. Being sold into sex slavery under free market capitalism is not in any way different than being sold into sex slavery under communism or fascism or socialism or any other dictatorial system.
Actually I don't ask or demand anything from anybody, I observe and make my own choices and base my investments on my own understanding of what is going on and one thing is for sure, I am not with the crowd on any of it. I don't expect anybody to change anything based on any actual understanding, I expect things to fail in the way that I predict, that's all. As to my employees, they are paid fair market wages in the currency of their choice, in fact I have people that are paid in bullion.
My 'beloved' free market created the USA economy of 19th century that the socialist/fascist policies of 20th and the 21st century have successfully destroyed.
Violence happens whether there is free market or whether there is socialism of fascism. However a socialist / fascist / dictatorial system is violent by definition, its violence is delegated to the government structure, which means that it can only grow unchallenged by any internal competitive forces.
Free market will also have violence, there is not even a slightest question about it. The difference is very important: in a free market capitalist economy violence remains in the hands of private individuals, who can and will create systems, that will occupy the space that the violence wants to occupy. This space is left to the people that are unproductive but desire life that they did not earn, so they will attack the productive individuals and there will be Mafias created, not government bandits but private sector bandits.
They will compete with each other for turf and as with every competitive system the prices that the market has to bear will go lower, the prices that people will have to pay to the competitive Mafia market will be pushed down by the same competitive forces that push down prices for cell phones and MRI scans (and the only reason that health care prices go up is government counterfeit money and regulations, not technology, technology is progress that pushes prices lower, not higher).
My position is that organised crime in a free market capitalist society costs society much less than organised government. I never in my wildest dreams assume anything about people beyond the actual desire to benefit from every situation in some way.
There is no ideal society and I don't assume anything about human nature beyond desire to survive. People like you think that people like me assume something 'good' about the market participants, you couldn't be further from the truth. I assume that everybody who can take advantage of you will try to do it for their own gain and benefit. However in a free market capitalist economy you stand to gain more by working for the market than against it.
You stand more to gain by capturing hearts and minds of individuals the way largest companies of today capture them, Apple, Google, Tesla, whatever. Those are the actual free market players, not Haliburton, not Boeing, not General Motors, not F&F.
The reality is that you allowed yourself to be placed into a very tiny box by your government propaganda 'education' system.
Correct, all modern currencies are counterfeit, including the bitcoins. The countries that have high productive output, like China have currencies that are as counterfeit as the largest welfare recipients, like the USA.
Fake money is created all over the world to steal productivity of the individuals to subsidise the powerful government Mafia structures. The people are hurt, the wealth is stolen. The difference is that while the Chinese government is stealing from the Chinese people with inflation, USA government is stealing from the Chinese as well, such is the property of being 'world reserve currency'. You get to steal from other nations with your inflation while the rest can only steal from their own.
There is a sure way to tell if paper money is counterfeit and it doen't require blowing. Is it fiat printed by a government controlled agency and it has no savings behind it, as in there are no gold reserves that the paper came be used to redeem? It is counterfeit.
Real money is not created by a government but by voluntary market decisions. If a government controls issuing of currency and it removes free market regulations from the process then the government is counterfeiting the money.
We are all born naked and with nothing. And everything in the world is owned by others.... So there you are still naked and penniless.
- the care for orphaned children is provided by private charities without any questions. As a child, your entire existence depends on others for some time, and yes, your parents brought you to this world it is their responsibility. If they don't want you plenty of charity orphanages exist around the world and in a free market environment adoption is much easier than what it is today. Plenty of people want to adopt children.
Its usually out of a womb via one of a couple routes.
- and presumably you are a wanted child, if you are not, again, there are adoption and orphanage routes. Worst case scenario you get tossed into a trash bin, but those cases exist under any social/economic systems, the point of children has no merit in these discussions.
In fact the SS was originally set up in the states for 'widows and orphans', well it was an obvious welfare scam from the very beginning and should never have started, but it was because of the wrong idea that the market is unable somehow to deal with edge case scenarios that you want base the policy upon and cram it down everybody's throats.
And its not just infants that appear "out of nowhere" countless children grow up and move out with minimal or no assets (the clothes on their back). And nobody has to look after them. One mistep and their meager fortunes eliminated. And they too get to live at the whim of me and my friends.
- profit driven free market capitalist society is a wealthiest society that can possibly be built without violence against individuals, thus it is the most moral society and in such a society there are enough resources for every form of private care to exist, from charities and orphanages simply to adoption where it concerns children.
Nobody is required to take me as an apprentice. Nobody is required to hire me.
- nobody is and nobody should be. Forcing people is immoral however it is done.
However without government rules on hiring/firing practices there are no issues for people to find apprenticeship positions. I run a business and I have people that start working here for free just to learn the skills. Governments stand in the way of apprenticeship positions, many people would not refuse free / cheap labour and help in exchange for letting a person to work and learn on the job.
But your capitalism fails just as hard, nobody is required to hire you. Nobody is required to need your labor. Being willing and able to work doesn't mean anyone
- wrong, capitalism is private ownership and operation of property and in a free market settings (absent government meddling) there is no need to force anybody to start businesses and to hire at market clearing prices.
Clearly you have a huge problem understanding what a market clearing mechanism absent government intervention is. You apparently want to force people to hire others or to force people to feed others for some unbelievable insane reasons that you interpret as 'morality', while what you are actually doing is engaging in the most immoral act of all: initiating act of violence against individuals.
Consider "me and my friends" to be any population. Collectively we do own everything.
- wrong, collectively you own absolutely nothing. Every time one can in such a 'collective ownership', one pulls the blanket to himself, stealing, cheating, doing whatever he can to take that 'collective' possession (a contradiction in terms) and make it his or her own individual possession.
Most everyone (aside from immigrants bring external wealth) added to the population comes at it with NOTHING and only has what the rest GIVE them. If they don't choose to give them anyth
Slashdot Mirror
Wrong. Apple is not hurting anybody and this is a power grub by government. AFAIC the only people that actually hurt consumers reside in government and the central banks. By the way, governments like to tout inflation as the means to a good economy, for them destruction of money value is never enough, they 'care' about your prices? No, this is socialism/fascism out of control and in a decent society such governments that usurped power to meddle in markets would be summarily dismissed. The fact that it is not happening shows complete disregard to individual rights by the society that is not actually decent.
I don't own a single Apple product could not care less. There is no such thing as being 'guilty' of something that is an illegal and an immoral power grab by the government.
AFAIC this is no different than government throwing people to jail for drug use or sale, prohibition, concentration and labour camps and any other violence governments perpetrate upon people.
Total unadulterated nonsense. Apple comes to an agreement with some publishers to prevent Amazon from lowering prices, (or so the case says and I do not have a tendency to trust anything I hear, but lets assume that is thecase here). People still were buying through Apple but there is no monopoly on books, books can be bought in many formats. Apparently the market gave Apple enough profits as a reward for what they do to allow Apple to play hard, you know what? Amazon could easily raise enough money to fight this in the same market. They can find a publisher to work with them, nobody repealed the natural laws of competition yet. And maybe Apple has it right - people that buy their phones can buy books from them at Apple prices and also without having all the facts I am not at all convinced that Amazon was 'in the right' and Apple 'in the wrong', but what I do know is that the governments and the courts usurped this illegal authority with socialist / fascist nonsense like the Sherman act.
A fascist? Since you don't know the meaning of the word, maybe you should learn it before trying to apply. Fascism is a socialist system of government allows some operation of private property but introduces huge controls over it in order to gain most of the reward from that operation. Fascism requires business and government to work together.
What happened with the individuals taking over land they saw as unclaimed had nothing to do with governments and companies working together, so your ad hominem fallacy noted.
You are not the only person around and not the only person who helped other and no, we should not have 'support systems' if they are based on initiating of violence by government against an individual. It is immoral because it relies on violence against people and bad economic policy as well, because it leads to growth of government power and of the welfare state that eats itself to death.
There is no such thing as 'regulated free market'. Regulated means not a free market and what we have today across the globe is failure socialist/fascist policies that presents itself in the increasing economic downturn, reduction of standard of living for all people, you are pulling everybody down with your edge case based policies. Somalia has nothing to do with free market capitalism, it is a country that had to fight one war after another against the occupying forces.
There can be no compromise, income taxation, business regulation and money printing (inflation) are immoral and are leading towards economic disaster in countries that practice it, while those who are reducing the government pressure are building up their capital and wealth as a result (China as an example).
History has shown us exactly what happens when role of government is reduced - people become free and build the strongest economies in the world. We also know what happens when governments grow in power regardless of the reasons (and they always promise a free lunch for the majority), everybody becomes a slave and a poor slave at that.
You are not talking about a free market capitalist economy, you are talking about a monarchy with the aristocrats ruling not based on their utility to the market (profit motive, the most moral way to run an economy) but on their ability to put together enough military to subjugate the population.
So you helped somebody when they were down, you provided charity. Most people are not born into a vast empty space, they have a family or somebody taking care of them until they are of such age that they can take care of themselves. Parents / relatives / charity / adopted parents.
Again, using edge case scenarios to create policy that destroys freedoms of individuals is setting the society on the path to destruction, to welfare, to fiat currency, to government largess and government pyramid schemes, which are unsustainable by definition. In the long run you end up hurting everybody while pretending that you are moral by using government initiation of violence against individuals and destroying individual freedoms, destroying free market capitalism.
The solutions for edge case scenarios do not need to be provided, they emerge and if they do not it is too bad for a very tiny number of people. Your ideas lead to destruction for vast majority of people and thus they are immoral and dangerous but the mob cannot see beyond its nose, so it loves them.
In Seattle the average work day for a man is also 13% longer, much fewer men take maternity leave and many more men actually do work long hours at the day's end.
A woman with the same dedication to work as a man in the same exact position with the same experience will make same or more money, since apparently women have more education then men do.
Yahoo! CEOs:
Scott Thompson
Compensation for 2012
Salary $377,240
Bonus $1,500,000
Restricted stock awards $14,047,995
All other compensation $21,164
Option awards $8,333,084
Total Compensation $24,279,483
Stock Ownership for 2012
Number of shares owned 757,788
Marissa Mayers
Mayer's pay from Yahoo has totaled an estimated $214 million.
As a result of the rise in the stock price, Equilar calculates, Ms. Mayerâ(TM)s $56 million package had grown to be worth about $186 million as of the end of last year, after Ms. Mayer forfeited some of the stock for failure to meet some performance requirements. In addition, Ms. Mayer was awarded $12.47 million worth of restricted stock in early 2013 that had grown to $23.7 million by year-end. Add in $4.3 million in cash paid to Ms. Mayer, and the figure rises to about $214 million for 15 months of work.
I run a business, if I could get work done for 10-30% less by hiring only women, you bet I would only hire women.
The entire 'article' reeks of class envy and jealousy nothing more than that. It's sounds like a socialist cry to arms more than anything else.
Women are not paid less if they are doing the same jobs and spending the same time doing them as men do, otherwise businesses would only hire women if they could actually pay them less to do the same exact shit.
Amazon is a company, it's not its job 'to create diversity' in any way, it already does more than any socialist ever could to grow the economy by hiring people, by paying them wages, by offering cheap products to everybody, including those very women and minorities that this garbage 'article' is yapping about.
The women who use Amazon likely already save more than 25% on their purchases compared to what they would have to pay if there was no Amazon at all. If 'investing in public transit' made Amazon money and was actually fucking legal in the fucking socialist/fascist ran cities, Amazon could certainly get into that business, but it's not clear that it could profit a retailer to get into transportation business. Should a chip manufacturer get into sewer business? Should a pastry chef get into electronics repair business?
Just because more white qualified males apply to Amazon than minorities or women do doesn't mean that this somehow is Amazon's problem to fix and that it is even a problem in the first place. I am sure there are jobs that minorities and women apply for in overwhelming numbers compared to white males.
If Amazon is not retaining people at the same rate as Microsoft for example (mentioned in this garbage 'article'), it doesn't mean Amazon is mistreating anybody, it means that Amazon gives people an opportunity to find a low level job that others wouldn't provide to those very people. Can the people that are hired by Amazon be hired by Microsoft? I doubt it very much. However once they worked for Amazon maybe their chances of being hired by other companies increase quite a bit, after all, if a year later people quit it means they can now find better jobs that they couldn't a year before, so Amazon is doing a fine job training people, giving them the lower run of the ladder to step on.
If it was up to the author of this garbage 'article', Amazon maybe would have the same hiring practices as Microsoft, but then where would all the people that Amazon hires right now find their first jobs?
Philanthropy has nothing on running a successful business and providing products/services that people are willing to pay for. It's easy to give away money to people, it's hard making money. Making money requires providing enough customer satisfaction to offset your costs, giving money away requires nothing of the sort. Everybody likes getting free lunch, but paying for lunch means that the people paying value it enough to give their money in exchange for that lunch and it's much harder to provide that type of satisfaction than to provide free money. Philanthropy destroys capital that otherwise can be used to increase real customer satisfaction and that's a crime as far as I am concerned. Africa will not get better with hand outs, it will get better with real business growth and opportunities provided by business growth.
As to the fucking ridiculous advices from this garbage 'article', they stink socialism so high, it's should be embarrassing even to most socialists. 'Advocate for an appropriate tax system in Seattle and Washington state'. WTF is an 'appropriate tax system'? AFAIC the only appropriate tax system is 0 tax, all other tax systems are inappropriate. I hope Amazon advocates for that. 'Lead in diversity both in Seattle and worldwide'? What? How about lead in customer satisfaction. 'Lead on supporting economic programs that make it easier for lower income, lower skilled Seattleites to stay in the city'? Fucking hell, how about save more money and build more business so that all the lower income folks can save even more by buying at Amazon and some of them work there anyway.
This 'article' is what is wrong with America and the Western world today, total, uninhibited socialist crapola that needs to die in fire, but instead it's spreading like worst type of cancer.
No, slavery is your main point. As to 'westward expansion' - what is the problem again? People with guns killed off people without guns as to be expected. The market rewarded those who had higher levels of technology and who utilised the resources more efficiently to provide more people with more goods than the native population ever could.
There is no need for any centralised government to enforce contracts, a system of private competing courts and private competing security forces does that just fine. As to you 'rubbing one while watching teenage girls if you keep your distance' - where is the problem? You are correct, it is not hurting anybody. If you are doing it in a way that everybody has to observe you do it, then there may be a problem with the rules set up within the private property boundaries you are in (and no, there shouldn't be any 'public property', all property has to be private, even if it means that property is owned by a corporation that runs the city for example, and yes, most if not all cities are corporations).
I was born in the USSR and worked my way out of poverty in the last couple of decades. Edge cases are exactly that: a low percentage of people that fall behind regardless what. The entire population shouldn't be punished unfairly by having policy that is aimed to steal to provide something for those edge cases.
As to your last statement: you are against people having power if you are against the freedom of an individual from the oppression of the collective. If you stand on the side of a government being able to initiate violence against an individual to steal from the individual, to enslave him, then you are not for people having power, you are for a system that breeds powerless slaves.
I am obviously talking about the free market capitalism, which excludes the slavery, I am talking about free trade and the industrial revolution. In USA the industrial revolution happened in the North, so you may want to refresh your history books, factories weren't built or operated by slaves. Sure, people were poor, but that's the normal state of affairs where farmers were offered jobs in factories, they had no experience or knowledge, so their market value to the production lines was low, but it increased with time, as capital was accrued and experience was built up. It was the industrial revolution that showed that slavery was not an efficient way to run a business, free people work better, have real incentives to do a better job because it means better pay. Industrial revolution within the free market capitalist economy settings built the economy that USA became (and that it destroyed), not slavery. Slavery barely registered on the wealth generation. As an example Standard Oil production was done with only free people working for a wage, not slaves.
So "Me and my friends" don't feel charitible enough this year. So they go under funded.
- your suggestion is to steal and to use violence to take from those who have wealth to subsidise those who do not and you do not see a problem with that? You and your friends are not the only game in town, under what scenario have people actually left children to starve? What people are we talking about and in case where there isn't enough food for people that they would leave children to starve, what government could do anything about any of it?
You can't simply wave your hands around and stipulate that from somewhere magical charitible unicorns will show up and provide the needy exactly just enough for what they need. Its ridiculous.
- what is ridiculous is to expect that you can steal your way into prosperity.
It's not unicorns that are charitable, there no unicorns, it's people that are not stolen from. In any case, you are again talking about complete edge cases, cases where a child is born into nothingness apparently, no parents, no siblings, no grandparents, no uncles or ants to take care of them. What are they born somewhere in the woods? Well, no amount of government will help them there. Children that born in hospitals are not thrown out into the dirt, there are actual charitable organisations that make money (yes they make, evil profits) by collecting money for such cases and they can manage their collections much better than any government and in a free market capitalist environment charitable organizations are also competing with each other for dollars, so they have to be transparent and efficient otherwise they may lose to their competition. Governments do not have to be anything, transparency, efficiency, those are against government mode of operation, because it works against the main goal of government: accretion of power. You don't accrue power by reducing itself by finding efficiencies and reducing costs, you accrue power by increasing your army and in case of bureaucrats their staff members are their army and the more of those a government office has, the more powerful it is, the more it can steal from people via taxes and inflation. Governments do not solve problems, it is against their mode of operation, governments increase problems because solving a problem means that there is no more need for that agency or at least not for an agency of that size. In free market capitalist economy a company that no longer provides a marketable product has to change or disappear, government does not do such a thing, it uses its power to make the problem bigger and deeper, not solve it. A solved problem is against government principle of increasing its own power.
Because you never turn anyone down right? You never run into someone you wouldn't hire? If someone shows up willing to work, well you just sign them up and they can start earning so they can eat and pay rent.
- free markets discover prices that allow them to clear. Obviously you don't understand it.
Oh... so you provide them work, but its up to them to what, exactly? Do they need to get a second job that actually pays actual money if they'd like to eat and not live in a ditch while they learn from you? Because presumably if they show up to your place of work dizzy from lack of nourishment and smelling of ditch living you'd probably ask them to leave.
- a person without skills is of 0 use to me.
A person with skills is worth money.
A person without skills has these options: go make some money and go study somewhere and pay for that privilege or go on welfare apparently or find a position that could be used to start their career.
Making money to give it away to a college is dumb unless you are talking about a doctor maybe (even then I would argue you can learn on your own and by working for doctors for free for some time). At least in an apprenticeship position you don't have to
There you go, believing that you have some form of higher moral authority while denying the simple fact that all of your positions require that violence is initiated against individuals to support your system of governance by creating a system of wealth transfer to buy votes.
Yes, people are being oppressed in this system and no, there will be no reasonable solution based on rational behaviour of a majority in this situation, the majority wants their free lunch whatever the cost.
But I am not looking for help from anybody, I build my life in a way that specifically routes around the type of economic and societal damage that you advocate by choosing not to participate in many of these structures, specifically by building a business in a way that mitigates some of this damage. A business can be built that way, it's just more expensive to build it, it requires more energy, more preparation.
There is no problem with a monopoly that is created in a free market economy because such a monopoly actually cannot buy favours from a government because there are no favours to buy because the government is not involved.
Once a government is involved, favours can certainly be bought, but that's the destruction of the free market and that's what we have here now.
It is actually wrong for you to think that your approach has 'fewer moving parts', your approach is the exact opposite: your government approach requires a benevolent government that acts in the best interest of the economy regardless of what the populous says and believes it wants and the mob wants free stuff, so the politicians promise it and eventually destroy the economy because the only way to deliver this 'free stuff' is to steal from those who produce through taxes, licenses, regulations and inflation.
It is the exact opposite of what you believe, free market capitalist economy has 'less moving parts' to have system function because it doesn't mandate that there are any parts at all. Any moving parts in a free market capitalist economy are emerging properties of the economy where people are trying to make their own lives better by satisfying desires of others.
Of-course there are crooks and there will be crooks always, most people don't operate that way simply because it's actually less safe and more stressful to operate as a crook and it gives less satisfaction of an accomplishment at the end of the day.
But what would you know about it without actually building a business on your own first from nothing?
I don't believe you can create a just society when you leave people to starve in the streets and die of illness.
- and I am not looking for a 'just' society where the idea of 'justice' is theft and initiation of government violence.
I don't believe you can create anything other than new lords and serfs through unfettered capitalism, because power accumulates and corrupts.
- and you are wrong, free market capitalist society is what created the wealthy economies of 19th century that were destroyed in the 20th-21st centuries, however an approximation of free market capitalism also gave birth to a new gigantic wealth generating machine in China.
I don't believe you can have a utopian society in which everybody has everything they could ever hope for.
- and I never said people will have absolutely everything they would ever hope to have under free market capitalist society, you still have to earn things you want to possess, however under that system it is much more likely that you will have much more based on the competitive pressures on the market participants, who are after your money not in the dark valleys and government prison industrial complex backed by the government's ability to initiate violence against an individual but they are after your mind and desire, which they are aiming to satisfy with their offerings. A company providing products and services to the market participants is a much more sound business model than a company trying to steal. Providing good products is a way to build a sustainable wealth generating business, stealing money is the path that governments and crooks take (no difference between the two, I actually consider private sector crooks to be much more respectable people than government officials, at least the crooks have to convince you to give them the money, government doesn't, it takes because it has the guns).
I don't believe you can have a functioning society if the only thing your government does is enforce contracts and property rights for people who have the money to benefit from them -- while saying that everything else is a private matter, because then you're just enforcing law to benefit people who own stuff.
- the laws have to apply equally to all people, but government initiating force is your idea of 'justice', so there is very little discussion to be had here.
And I don't believe you can have a stable society unless you realize you're going to have to pay for its upkeep.
- society upkeeps itself, no collectivist violence is necessary for that in fact collectivist violence doesn't build stable systems that can withstand the test of time, as all subsidies, governments eventually fail at all tasks that you supposedly want them to run.
I believe all categorical statements are wrong, or incomplete (including this one).
- that's your prerogative, I state categorically that power corrupts and governments are eventually corrupted absolutely because nothing can stop their grab of power, there is no competition to stop them, there is no legal framework to stop them because they redefine what is legal to prevent any loss of power and to increase the power government holds.
So, believe me when I say this ... my rejection of your position as overly simplistic, naive, and one which you ascribe outcomes I don't believe it can achieve ... that's based on a considered investigation of it, and finding it immensely lacking and unable to achieve what you claim.
- actually I am not trying to achieve anything, my position is that there is no need to try to achieve something, government doesn't exist to give us any form of direction and when governments try all we have is violence and bankruptcy. There is no need for government directing the society, society can direct itself just fi
Free market capitalism is not what you have and you cannot base your understanding of what you believe capitalism is on your experience because you haven't experienced it yourself. Being sold into sex slavery under free market capitalism is not in any way different than being sold into sex slavery under communism or fascism or socialism or any other dictatorial system.
Actually I don't ask or demand anything from anybody, I observe and make my own choices and base my investments on my own understanding of what is going on and one thing is for sure, I am not with the crowd on any of it. I don't expect anybody to change anything based on any actual understanding, I expect things to fail in the way that I predict, that's all. As to my employees, they are paid fair market wages in the currency of their choice, in fact I have people that are paid in bullion.
My 'beloved' free market created the USA economy of 19th century that the socialist/fascist policies of 20th and the 21st century have successfully destroyed.
Violence happens whether there is free market or whether there is socialism of fascism. However a socialist / fascist / dictatorial system is violent by definition, its violence is delegated to the government structure, which means that it can only grow unchallenged by any internal competitive forces.
Free market will also have violence, there is not even a slightest question about it. The difference is very important: in a free market capitalist economy violence remains in the hands of private individuals, who can and will create systems, that will occupy the space that the violence wants to occupy. This space is left to the people that are unproductive but desire life that they did not earn, so they will attack the productive individuals and there will be Mafias created, not government bandits but private sector bandits.
They will compete with each other for turf and as with every competitive system the prices that the market has to bear will go lower, the prices that people will have to pay to the competitive Mafia market will be pushed down by the same competitive forces that push down prices for cell phones and MRI scans (and the only reason that health care prices go up is government counterfeit money and regulations, not technology, technology is progress that pushes prices lower, not higher).
My position is that organised crime in a free market capitalist society costs society much less than organised government. I never in my wildest dreams assume anything about people beyond the actual desire to benefit from every situation in some way.
There is no ideal society and I don't assume anything about human nature beyond desire to survive. People like you think that people like me assume something 'good' about the market participants, you couldn't be further from the truth. I assume that everybody who can take advantage of you will try to do it for their own gain and benefit. However in a free market capitalist economy you stand to gain more by working for the market than against it.
You stand more to gain by capturing hearts and minds of individuals the way largest companies of today capture them, Apple, Google, Tesla, whatever. Those are the actual free market players, not Haliburton, not Boeing, not General Motors, not F&F.
The reality is that you allowed yourself to be placed into a very tiny box by your government propaganda 'education' system.
Correct, all modern currencies are counterfeit, including the bitcoins. The countries that have high productive output, like China have currencies that are as counterfeit as the largest welfare recipients, like the USA.
Fake money is created all over the world to steal productivity of the individuals to subsidise the powerful government Mafia structures. The people are hurt, the wealth is stolen. The difference is that while the Chinese government is stealing from the Chinese people with inflation, USA government is stealing from the Chinese as well, such is the property of being 'world reserve currency'. You get to steal from other nations with your inflation while the rest can only steal from their own.
There is a sure way to tell if paper money is counterfeit and it doen't require blowing. Is it fiat printed by a government controlled agency and it has no savings behind it, as in there are no gold reserves that the paper came be used to redeem? It is counterfeit.
Real money is not created by a government but by voluntary market decisions. If a government controls issuing of currency and it removes free market regulations from the process then the government is counterfeiting the money.
Are your kidneys theft? You have kidneys, that's theft. Also your eyes and all other body parts, it's complete theft.
We are all born naked and with nothing. And everything in the world is owned by others ....
So there you are still naked and penniless.
- the care for orphaned children is provided by private charities without any questions. As a child, your entire existence depends on others for some time, and yes, your parents brought you to this world it is their responsibility. If they don't want you plenty of charity orphanages exist around the world and in a free market environment adoption is much easier than what it is today. Plenty of people want to adopt children.
Its usually out of a womb via one of a couple routes.
- and presumably you are a wanted child, if you are not, again, there are adoption and orphanage routes. Worst case scenario you get tossed into a trash bin, but those cases exist under any social/economic systems, the point of children has no merit in these discussions.
In fact the SS was originally set up in the states for 'widows and orphans', well it was an obvious welfare scam from the very beginning and should never have started, but it was because of the wrong idea that the market is unable somehow to deal with edge case scenarios that you want base the policy upon and cram it down everybody's throats.
And its not just infants that appear "out of nowhere" countless children grow up and move out with minimal or no assets (the clothes on their back). And nobody has to look after them. One mistep and their meager fortunes eliminated. And they too get to live at the whim of me and my friends.
- profit driven free market capitalist society is a wealthiest society that can possibly be built without violence against individuals, thus it is the most moral society and in such a society there are enough resources for every form of private care to exist, from charities and orphanages simply to adoption where it concerns children.
Nobody is required to take me as an apprentice. Nobody is required to hire me.
- nobody is and nobody should be. Forcing people is immoral however it is done.
However without government rules on hiring/firing practices there are no issues for people to find apprenticeship positions. I run a business and I have people that start working here for free just to learn the skills. Governments stand in the way of apprenticeship positions, many people would not refuse free / cheap labour and help in exchange for letting a person to work and learn on the job.
But your capitalism fails just as hard, nobody is required to hire you. Nobody is required to need your labor. Being willing and able to work doesn't mean anyone
- wrong, capitalism is private ownership and operation of property and in a free market settings (absent government meddling) there is no need to force anybody to start businesses and to hire at market clearing prices.
Clearly you have a huge problem understanding what a market clearing mechanism absent government intervention is. You apparently want to force people to hire others or to force people to feed others for some unbelievable insane reasons that you interpret as 'morality', while what you are actually doing is engaging in the most immoral act of all: initiating act of violence against individuals.
Consider "me and my friends" to be any population. Collectively we do own everything.
- wrong, collectively you own absolutely nothing. Every time one can in such a 'collective ownership', one pulls the blanket to himself, stealing, cheating, doing whatever he can to take that 'collective' possession (a contradiction in terms) and make it his or her own individual possession.
Most everyone (aside from immigrants bring external wealth) added to the population comes at it with NOTHING and only has what the rest GIVE them. If they don't choose to give them anyth