Well what would you have us do? You want me to buy useless stuff now to promote the overall economy? I don't _want_ those things, and that is something people can't grasp. What I, and a lot of other people want is future security of our accumulated wealth. And if hoarding our capital is the only way to do it, then fine. However, the government won't even allow us to have that, what with all the print inflation. By doing that they're actively _forcing_ us to put money into the stock market and/or spend it in the here and now.
I plan on leaving wealth to my offspring, thank you very much. Stuff I will have worked for and accumulated over my lifespan. And I couldn't care less if that is something that Keynesian followers don't like.
Not paying for something you NEVER ASKED FOR is not being a leech.You can take your damn social contract and shove it you know where. While you leeches are busy thinking up new and creative ways to suck up more money under the pretense of "social good", the rest of us are busy actually doing something to better the people we care for.
It's in the initial road-builders and owner's best interest to rent out use or allow connections to his road. I think you're taking a too-literal interpretation of the word "competition". Even though they may be adversaries, they don't work in isolation.
I don't have all the answers to these questions, I can only posit what sort of solution to this problem the free-market will come up with. So your example is that someone owns all the roads in my neighbourhood. Ok, they've got a defacto monopoly and what do they do, they charge us a fee. Sooner or later they realize that they can exploit this because we as residents of this neighbourhood are dependent on usage of their infrastructure. So what do they do? Of course they up the fee, up and up, and up. So naturally, as a consequence, the residents cost of living increases, their competitiveness in business decreases due to costs. Those things we can all agree on. Now, the beauty of it is that sooner or later, the costs will not be worth it for businesses to stay in business there. They move, or they fail. Both of those are bad for the road owner because the end result is he no longer gets fees. These two things lead to a natural equilibrium between the two.
Another thing that can arise from that is that at some point if the road usage fees keep going up, it will become economically more efficient for a resident to implement [insert radical solution here]. Cranes, flying transport ships, baloons, underground railroads, whatever. Necessity is the mother of all invention, they always say. Naturally, it will never come to such an extreme situation, because the road-owner will very quickly realize that raising the fees past the equilibrium point is detrimental to him.
I'd be curious to hear your thoughts? Perhaps you're reasonable and will admit merit in these scenarios/solutions, instead of dismissing them like the other guy in this thread did. I'm open to being proven wrong, or shown the error of my ways.
Lol, you're a funny one. I came here giving your reasonable arguments and trying to debate. And what do you do? Take two specific sentences out of context, chop one up to turn one from question to statement, and then proceed to call me a "sick son of a bitch".
To everyone else reading this. This is a classic example of cognitive dissonance. And anger/lashing out is this person's way of dealing with the conflict within their own mind on the topic, instead of accepting it.
Or perhaps cusco is angry that I suggested that his family members should go live on a farm and provide for themselves that way instead of living in filthy slums. Either way, I'm sorely disappointed that I wasted my time with someone so far gone, that they will grasp at the tiniest of things in order to defend their own internal viewpoints against my genuine criticisms. As opposed to having reasonable, rational debate. Very typical of statists.
That's not a failing of the free market. You can't expect people to give you shit for free; that's not the free market. That's charity. And if the countrymen of wealth around your niece and nephew aren't generous enough to help those around them, then that's what happened. Instead, you want the government to steal from those of wealth so that the poor can have shit for free, a la socialism. That's all find and dandy, but you have to admit that perhaps there is a reason that those wealthy aren't giving to the poor. Perhaps the poor aren't meant to have easy access to water. Perhaps the poor don't belong in the slums of Lima. As far as I'm concerned the poor are suffering of their own doings. Are they being restricted from leaving and going into the forest/farm land? No, then the solution is obvious. But the poor don't want that. They want the benefits of city living and civilization, and they want it subsidized by the rich/well off.
Either way, I'm getting off-topic with that rant. The point is that government uses the threat of violence and imprisonment to force people to "give to charity", as if they wouldn't do that by themselves. I bet you the reason that the countrymen around where your niece/nephew live aren't giving to charity is because they're already being taxed as a matter of "socialism" or "charity". And that is exactly the way I would see it. If I pay the government taxes, they had better well help the poor with those taxes, because don't expect me to go out of pocket to help the needy after you've already taxed me.
If there is a market for potable water and sewerage, telephone and electrical systems/infrastructure, then you can be damned well sure that someone will want to invest in it in order to rent/sell it. And yes, I've lived in countries where the government was incapable of doing those things. And guess what, we paid private companies to do what the government was not doing. That includes water, internet via wireless radio, and fixing of roads in our community. Small, not fully-fledged examples, but examples that were only made possible in a slightly extreme situation of government. This was Zimbabwe in the last 15years, if you're curious and want to look it up.
Ordinarily, government doesn't allow such competition to crop up. E.g. you need licenses to provide telephone/internet access where I currently live. Good luck getting building approval from government to construct water/sewerage access in a city. Roads? You'd need to first invest in multi-million dollar "feasibility" studies first. These are all impediments set up by government to restrict competition, and to raise the barrier for entry into the infrastructure markets. Things that naturally lead to monopolies and oligopolies forming, if not downright preventing anyone except the state from providing that service.
Also, you do realize that education via schools and universities has existed way before governments tried to get involved? It's only once government started the war on "non-education" that public schools have started popping up. Usually with the end goal of just perpetuating the fears and propaganda to make us think we require the state, and can't live without it. Once you look for alternatives, you'll be surprised at what you find. But you just have to be a little open to the idea.
Ok, so I built a road between two adjacent communities. What stops someone else from doing the same with a slightly different route, or heck, right alongside my road? I'm genuinely curious.
Unless you want to come up with contrived examples such as the one that most statists bring up about some private company building a road to blockade entry into an area in order to gain a monopoly. But that's a contrived scenario that's completely on the opposite side of the spectrum and has completely different solutions.
Arguing with statists is rarely easy, or pleasant.
Funny how the guy you responded to claims that capitalism is an infantile response, and yet he wants daddy government to come protect him from the "evil corporations".
And the government doesn't control/own everything now? Tell me, how much taxes do you have to pay to own land? Own land, you say? What happens if you don't pay your property taxes? How about inheritance tax? Still think you're free? What about gift taxes? No? You think you can gift your entire earnings to your family? Think again. Bunch of crap, and every single government has it slightly different and completely confusing in order to have us walking around like headless chickens arguing with one another about "democrat" vs "republican" vs "tea party" vs "gay" vs "religious".
Sooner or later, the government will make sure you can't accumulate wealth.
Sigh, rant over. Sometimes daft comments like yours make my blood boil.
You have no idea how difficult it is to get a work permit in South Africa. Both me, and my employer had to jump through such hoops to get it, it's not funny. This all after my parent's spent year bringing money into the country to both pay for my education, and to pay for my living there. Such nonsense... Oh, and if you really want to go into ridiculous territory, I'll have you know that only about a fifth of your population actually pays taxes due to the lower income tax bracket. Lovely, isn't it?
I don't get it... "Natural monopolies"? Dude, private ownership is the cornerstone of freedom. Let's forget for a moment that your term is nonsensical. What you're saying is that this company has an automatic "monopoly" over something they built and paid for. Kind of like how I, as an individual, am supposed to have an automatic and complete monopoly over my body and all the utility arising from it. No one gets to use it without my approval, and no I won't share it. You can rent it from me, though, which is basically what employment is.
In reality, you're just baffled as to how such a thing could exist. That's the first thing statists ask when encountered with an alternative to government. "But who will build the roads.". You went one step further and complained that competition is somehow not possible for infrastructure because of some fairy-tale term you invented, "natural monopoly".
And yes, I will damned well pick the fastest road I can get, for the cheapest price, with the least amount of restrictions. That's how competition works. Government by its very nature causes monopolies and oligopolies to form. To say otherwise is just sugar-coating the gun in the room that is the government.
You used the word "teabagger". Yet in one of your later replies you use the word "teaparty", after you were called out on your derogatory use of the term "teabaggers". If you really wanted to refer to a member of the tea party, you would have found another way to do it. "teaparty member", "tea person", whatever. Instead you chose to use the word "teabagger". No doubt because you want to mock them, and that was your little jab at them, conveniently not using their name, but something similar sounding that also happens to be a term referring to "(slang, vulgar) A person who practices teabagging, the insertion of the scrotum into someone's mouth."
The icing on the cake, is that further down you try to justify your "disagreement" with them. Too late, buddy, you've made your contemptful biases painfully obvious already.
Except, they pay almost all of the income taxes. You do understand that, right? Half the "taxpayers" pay no income taxes at all. Of the other half, a very small minority of them (the richest ones) pay almost all of it.
You have to seriously be deluded on this one. Sure the rich pay a lot, but not all of it. But that depends on your definition of rich. And if you think the middle class is "rich", then you must be a very poor person indeed. That, or seriously deluded.
Not everything we do in life is meant to have a direct and tangible benefit. Sometimes we just do shit for fun. Just because you feel that gaming is pointless doesn't mean that the rest of us feel that way too, nor does it mean you're right. I'm sure you waste your time on something that we don't see the point of doing.
With that in mind. You have to understand that some of us do get benefit out of gaming, even though you don't.
Have you considered a more direct democracy rather than the representational one we have now? A word of caution, though. If you "love" democracy, don't go down that path, because it will inevitably lead you to the realization that democracy is inherently immoral and violent. That is, if you don't lie to yourself about it.
Do you really think that we are isolated islands that decide on our own to spend money on stuff?
We are tightly interwoven with the society that we both make and get influenced by at the same time. To respond to your singular comment about no one forcing us, I'll say that we are forced by the society we grew up in, which molded us and which we then proceed to adapt and propagate.
The simple fact that they are using taxpayer money on silly victim-less crimes like this instead of more serious ones such as rape/murder. That fact says that they are "putting overt effort into enforcing one law and neglecting others".
But let's face it... They aren't really putting overt effort. They're just focusing on what they think is low-hanging fruit, like traffic offenses.
Oh yeah, let's throw money at the problem. That's a brilliant idea, except for the fact that we already throw more than enough money at them. The problem is that it get's wasted way before it gets to the low level peons you call LEOs.
And you're an anti-MS "shill" yourself... See how that "accusation" works both ways? Just admit it, you've got a deep-seated hatred of MS. Just let.it.go. and wallow in your own hatred.
Slashdot Mirror
And you calling them "truthers" is any better? Yeah, right.
Well what would you have us do? You want me to buy useless stuff now to promote the overall economy? I don't _want_ those things, and that is something people can't grasp. What I, and a lot of other people want is future security of our accumulated wealth. And if hoarding our capital is the only way to do it, then fine. However, the government won't even allow us to have that, what with all the print inflation. By doing that they're actively _forcing_ us to put money into the stock market and/or spend it in the here and now.
I plan on leaving wealth to my offspring, thank you very much. Stuff I will have worked for and accumulated over my lifespan. And I couldn't care less if that is something that Keynesian followers don't like.
Not paying for something you NEVER ASKED FOR is not being a leech.You can take your damn social contract and shove it you know where. While you leeches are busy thinking up new and creative ways to suck up more money under the pretense of "social good", the rest of us are busy actually doing something to better the people we care for.
It's in the initial road-builders and owner's best interest to rent out use or allow connections to his road. I think you're taking a too-literal interpretation of the word "competition". Even though they may be adversaries, they don't work in isolation.
I don't have all the answers to these questions, I can only posit what sort of solution to this problem the free-market will come up with. So your example is that someone owns all the roads in my neighbourhood. Ok, they've got a defacto monopoly and what do they do, they charge us a fee. Sooner or later they realize that they can exploit this because we as residents of this neighbourhood are dependent on usage of their infrastructure. So what do they do? Of course they up the fee, up and up, and up. So naturally, as a consequence, the residents cost of living increases, their competitiveness in business decreases due to costs. Those things we can all agree on. Now, the beauty of it is that sooner or later, the costs will not be worth it for businesses to stay in business there. They move, or they fail. Both of those are bad for the road owner because the end result is he no longer gets fees. These two things lead to a natural equilibrium between the two.
Another thing that can arise from that is that at some point if the road usage fees keep going up, it will become economically more efficient for a resident to implement [insert radical solution here]. Cranes, flying transport ships, baloons, underground railroads, whatever. Necessity is the mother of all invention, they always say. Naturally, it will never come to such an extreme situation, because the road-owner will very quickly realize that raising the fees past the equilibrium point is detrimental to him.
I'd be curious to hear your thoughts? Perhaps you're reasonable and will admit merit in these scenarios/solutions, instead of dismissing them like the other guy in this thread did. I'm open to being proven wrong, or shown the error of my ways.
Lol, you're a funny one. I came here giving your reasonable arguments and trying to debate. And what do you do? Take two specific sentences out of context, chop one up to turn one from question to statement, and then proceed to call me a "sick son of a bitch".
To everyone else reading this. This is a classic example of cognitive dissonance. And anger/lashing out is this person's way of dealing with the conflict within their own mind on the topic, instead of accepting it.
Or perhaps cusco is angry that I suggested that his family members should go live on a farm and provide for themselves that way instead of living in filthy slums. Either way, I'm sorely disappointed that I wasted my time with someone so far gone, that they will grasp at the tiniest of things in order to defend their own internal viewpoints against my genuine criticisms. As opposed to having reasonable, rational debate. Very typical of statists.
Good day, sir, you've wasted both our times.
That's not a failing of the free market. You can't expect people to give you shit for free; that's not the free market. That's charity. And if the countrymen of wealth around your niece and nephew aren't generous enough to help those around them, then that's what happened. Instead, you want the government to steal from those of wealth so that the poor can have shit for free, a la socialism. That's all find and dandy, but you have to admit that perhaps there is a reason that those wealthy aren't giving to the poor. Perhaps the poor aren't meant to have easy access to water. Perhaps the poor don't belong in the slums of Lima. As far as I'm concerned the poor are suffering of their own doings. Are they being restricted from leaving and going into the forest/farm land? No, then the solution is obvious. But the poor don't want that. They want the benefits of city living and civilization, and they want it subsidized by the rich/well off.
Either way, I'm getting off-topic with that rant. The point is that government uses the threat of violence and imprisonment to force people to "give to charity", as if they wouldn't do that by themselves. I bet you the reason that the countrymen around where your niece/nephew live aren't giving to charity is because they're already being taxed as a matter of "socialism" or "charity". And that is exactly the way I would see it. If I pay the government taxes, they had better well help the poor with those taxes, because don't expect me to go out of pocket to help the needy after you've already taxed me.
Dude, you have GOT to not post that as AC. Posts like yours are why I come to Slashdot to discuss things.
If there is a market for potable water and sewerage, telephone and electrical systems/infrastructure, then you can be damned well sure that someone will want to invest in it in order to rent/sell it. And yes, I've lived in countries where the government was incapable of doing those things. And guess what, we paid private companies to do what the government was not doing. That includes water, internet via wireless radio, and fixing of roads in our community. Small, not fully-fledged examples, but examples that were only made possible in a slightly extreme situation of government. This was Zimbabwe in the last 15years, if you're curious and want to look it up.
Ordinarily, government doesn't allow such competition to crop up. E.g. you need licenses to provide telephone/internet access where I currently live. Good luck getting building approval from government to construct water/sewerage access in a city. Roads? You'd need to first invest in multi-million dollar "feasibility" studies first. These are all impediments set up by government to restrict competition, and to raise the barrier for entry into the infrastructure markets. Things that naturally lead to monopolies and oligopolies forming, if not downright preventing anyone except the state from providing that service.
Also, you do realize that education via schools and universities has existed way before governments tried to get involved? It's only once government started the war on "non-education" that public schools have started popping up. Usually with the end goal of just perpetuating the fears and propaganda to make us think we require the state, and can't live without it. Once you look for alternatives, you'll be surprised at what you find. But you just have to be a little open to the idea.
Ok, so I built a road between two adjacent communities. What stops someone else from doing the same with a slightly different route, or heck, right alongside my road? I'm genuinely curious.
Unless you want to come up with contrived examples such as the one that most statists bring up about some private company building a road to blockade entry into an area in order to gain a monopoly. But that's a contrived scenario that's completely on the opposite side of the spectrum and has completely different solutions.
Arguing with statists is rarely easy, or pleasant.
Funny how the guy you responded to claims that capitalism is an infantile response, and yet he wants daddy government to come protect him from the "evil corporations".
And the government doesn't control/own everything now? Tell me, how much taxes do you have to pay to own land? Own land, you say? What happens if you don't pay your property taxes? How about inheritance tax? Still think you're free? What about gift taxes? No? You think you can gift your entire earnings to your family? Think again. Bunch of crap, and every single government has it slightly different and completely confusing in order to have us walking around like headless chickens arguing with one another about "democrat" vs "republican" vs "tea party" vs "gay" vs "religious".
Sooner or later, the government will make sure you can't accumulate wealth.
Sigh, rant over. Sometimes daft comments like yours make my blood boil.
You have no idea how difficult it is to get a work permit in South Africa. Both me, and my employer had to jump through such hoops to get it, it's not funny. This all after my parent's spent year bringing money into the country to both pay for my education, and to pay for my living there. Such nonsense... Oh, and if you really want to go into ridiculous territory, I'll have you know that only about a fifth of your population actually pays taxes due to the lower income tax bracket. Lovely, isn't it?
I don't get it... "Natural monopolies"? Dude, private ownership is the cornerstone of freedom. Let's forget for a moment that your term is nonsensical. What you're saying is that this company has an automatic "monopoly" over something they built and paid for. Kind of like how I, as an individual, am supposed to have an automatic and complete monopoly over my body and all the utility arising from it. No one gets to use it without my approval, and no I won't share it. You can rent it from me, though, which is basically what employment is.
In reality, you're just baffled as to how such a thing could exist. That's the first thing statists ask when encountered with an alternative to government. "But who will build the roads.". You went one step further and complained that competition is somehow not possible for infrastructure because of some fairy-tale term you invented, "natural monopoly".
And yes, I will damned well pick the fastest road I can get, for the cheapest price, with the least amount of restrictions. That's how competition works. Government by its very nature causes monopolies and oligopolies to form. To say otherwise is just sugar-coating the gun in the room that is the government.
You used the word "teabagger". Yet in one of your later replies you use the word "teaparty", after you were called out on your derogatory use of the term "teabaggers". If you really wanted to refer to a member of the tea party, you would have found another way to do it. "teaparty member", "tea person", whatever. Instead you chose to use the word "teabagger". No doubt because you want to mock them, and that was your little jab at them, conveniently not using their name, but something similar sounding that also happens to be a term referring to "(slang, vulgar) A person who practices teabagging, the insertion of the scrotum into someone's mouth."
The icing on the cake, is that further down you try to justify your "disagreement" with them. Too late, buddy, you've made your contemptful biases painfully obvious already.
it rather have candidates saying the things how they are, but that won't get them elected.
And that's why we can't have nice things.
Except, they pay almost all of the income taxes. You do understand that, right? Half the "taxpayers" pay no income taxes at all. Of the other half, a very small minority of them (the richest ones) pay almost all of it.
You have to seriously be deluded on this one. Sure the rich pay a lot, but not all of it. But that depends on your definition of rich. And if you think the middle class is "rich", then you must be a very poor person indeed. That, or seriously deluded.
Not everything we do in life is meant to have a direct and tangible benefit. Sometimes we just do shit for fun. Just because you feel that gaming is pointless doesn't mean that the rest of us feel that way too, nor does it mean you're right. I'm sure you waste your time on something that we don't see the point of doing.
With that in mind. You have to understand that some of us do get benefit out of gaming, even though you don't.
It's kind of funny how you almost entirely proved his point by deferring your argument to an authority. Oh, the irony.
Have you considered a more direct democracy rather than the representational one we have now? A word of caution, though. If you "love" democracy, don't go down that path, because it will inevitably lead you to the realization that democracy is inherently immoral and violent. That is, if you don't lie to yourself about it.
It's funny how you both think voting third-party will do anything, even with sufficient votes.
Do you really think that we are isolated islands that decide on our own to spend money on stuff?
We are tightly interwoven with the society that we both make and get influenced by at the same time. To respond to your singular comment about no one forcing us, I'll say that we are forced by the society we grew up in, which molded us and which we then proceed to adapt and propagate.
The simple fact that they are using taxpayer money on silly victim-less crimes like this instead of more serious ones such as rape/murder. That fact says that they are "putting overt effort into enforcing one law and neglecting others".
But let's face it... They aren't really putting overt effort. They're just focusing on what they think is low-hanging fruit, like traffic offenses.
Oh yeah, let's throw money at the problem. That's a brilliant idea, except for the fact that we already throw more than enough money at them. The problem is that it get's wasted way before it gets to the low level peons you call LEOs.
Not everyone wants to use linux. You do realize that, right? I'm all for unix, and use it at work every day, but come on.
And you're an anti-MS "shill" yourself... See how that "accusation" works both ways? Just admit it, you've got a deep-seated hatred of MS. Just let.it.go. and wallow in your own hatred.