Sure beats the "look at me I can punch people in the face because I'm tougher/bigger", which we as a society should have grown out of by now. But judging from your comment about "gun nuts are like tweeny boys", it seems we are still a primal "might makes right" society. Violence is either warranted or it isn't. A gun equalizes the playing field, and also escalates it, so people need to understand that and temper their reasoning about the situation before resorting to it. With enough piss ant brutes like you out there being shot, perhaps you'll collectively learn that physical violence of any sort is NOT allowed, even if you're stronger than the "tweeny boys waiting for their bits to grow". If anything, such talk makes you sound like a juvenile.
Punching on the other hand is a very cowardly thing to do. If someone knew the other person had a gun and was willing to use it, they would never initiate a physical unarmed assault against them. The only reason someone would punch someone in that case, is if they were reasonably sure that the other person didn't have a means to escalate the situation with a gun and because they thought they were physically superior.
On a side note, it sounds like you've obviously never been assaulted by someone physically bigger/stronger than you. In your world, you would expect an individual to just sit there and get pummeled. Perhaps afterwards he can call the police to file a police report after calling his mommy? Yeah, how about no. An individual has rights, just like your hypothetical assailant. And if they choose to violate MY rights and MY safety, then they forfeit ownership of their life. Don't like that? Go cry to mommy about it, tough guy.
Whilst I understand the dilemma, this is a defeatist attitude & not in the heart of democracy.
If enough people act, change CAN happen.
Bullshit, and double bullshit. But at least you've proven why democracy is bad by your defense of it. It's ultimately geared to cater for the majority opinion, even if that opinion is detrimental to some. And intellectuals have the nerve to call that "freedom". One day we will look upon this system of governance we have come up with the same way we now look at flat-earthism.
The political system was always the tool used by the rich and powerful. It's just that now they've found the perfect combination of freedom and profit to placate people with. They're told that democracy is an ethical imperative, and that it is an ideal that we should strive for and hold in the highest regard. Whoever calls bullshit on this get's labelled evil and "anti-freedom". The state is the exact antithesis of freedom, and we all need to wake up and realize that.
The question of who is in charge is irrelevant. The truth of the matter is that we have to dismantle this immoral system before it ruins all the good we've done despite it. I guarantee you, with this intellectual/connected society we have now, the end result will be beautiful.
Do you vote? Did you vote in the last election? If so, then you have already given your moral support to the government, and can not give it to any other cause/entity until the next election. Sorry, citizen, now move along...
It has no value because there is so much supply of it. Just wait until the day when clean oxygen is rare due to pollution/radiation, then come back and tell me how "it has no value because it is a necessary condition to sustain human life".
People used to say the same thing about water. Until they had water shortages, then suddenly it had value.
the power to say no then the boss wants stuff rushed or things like QA passed over.
Just because you don't have the balls to say NO to your boss. People who whine about not having worker rights are the lazy ones that don't provide any benefit to a company, and they KNOW that they will get fired if they speak their mind. Make yourself valuable, and then your voice will be heard. Until then, work harder.
Ah yes... I should have known better than to expect a reasonable discussion on the matter. However, you jumped at the first sentence you could latch on to, just so you could dismiss everything that your brain is uncomfortable dealing with. Good for you, buddy. Just stay the fuck out of my life with your silly laws and lack of morals.
Of course, letting the government print/create debt whenever they need money is such a great idea. +1 cookie for you. You do realize that means they're taxing your children's as-yet unearned productivity? Btw, on a side note, the only reason banks have such power is because of the government in the first place. Government creates money and causes inflation. Government allows banks to fraudulently lend out money they don't have. Government doesn't prosecute banks for negligence/fraud. Government skews the market and forces people to get into debt, it forces people to invest in funds and retirement funds. It allows any entity out there to skew the public in their favor, and your solution is to give them MORE power? As if power is going to fix the problem, power is the problem.
A lot of the questions you ask are very centered around your statist thinking. You came up with them, and phrased them as such so that the only answer you could possibly come up with in your head is "MORE GOVERNMENT".
What's the libertarian solution to global warming?
Wouldn't be a problem. You pollute my property = you damage my property = you infringe on my property rights = you owe me money in damages. Everything else is fair game. You can pollute your own property as much as you want. Just don't come crying to me when after a decade of destroying it, it is worthless and unusable to you.
What's the libertarian solution to child labor?
I'm actually not sure about this one just yet. You would first have to solve the ethical question of whether child labor is wrong. You need to define the problem first, and draw the boundaries. But you, you're coming at it purely from a state-imposed solution to the problem you see as "child labor". If you were hard pressed, you couldn't even come up with a full-proof definition of child labor. Child doing paper route for extra money? Child being given money for good grades? Child being thrown into a sweat shop so they can feed their younger siblings? Orphan being put to work at an orphanage so that they can afford to help kids in the first place?
What's the libertarian solution to the lopsided inequalities of those with wealth versus those who don't? How do you solve a problem like scrip? or problems like exhaustion from forced 10-12 hour days with no days off?
That's not a problem. In a free society, free from intervention and coercion, inequality is merely an indicator of who worked hard/smart, and who didn't. You only see this is as some sort of problem because you've been told by the socialist/nationalist state that it is a problem that begs solving. Just work harder, and if you're not getting what you think you deserve, then move or get a new job or fucking realize that maybe what you have to offer society just isn't worth as much as you hoped/expected. Simple, buddy.
Education?
Education was fine before the government stepped in, thanks. I will pay for my own child's education, you pay for yours, and the orphans will get it through charity.
Food and product safety?
Independent safety rating agencies. Heck, when we have a free society, I plan on starting one. I'm looking for partners in this venture, are you game?
Healthcare costs?
Lol, what? I pay for my healthcare, you pay for yours. Simple.
And at the end of this long fucking "answer" to your silly questions. I want you to answer them for me as well, and replace "libertarian" with "democratic" or "statist".
Everyone has to pay for trash disposal. You have no choice. You can't burn it, you can't pile it on your property.
You either haul it to a private landfill and pay them. Or you pay a private hauler to take it away. Or you pay taxes that pay a private hauler with a government contract to haul it away.
Anything else is illegal.
Ah yes, the old "voluntary" part about taxes. You're not paying diddly to government. They're taking it from you, whether you need trash disposal or not.
And no, if you really think about it. Those people can't choose to hire a private company, because they would be screwing themselves over. In essence, those that choose to do things privately are DOUBLE taxed by virtue of not getting the benefit they already "paid" for.
We most certainly are serious, thank you very much. Not only that, but we pride ourselves on the consistent morals that back our ideology. We may not have the best solution in the world, but it most certainly is the only moral and workable solution to have a cooperative society. Meanwhile, statists like you find it perfectly reasonable to include theft, imprisonment, torture and kidnapping as part of your utilitarian ideology to solve problems. How about no thank you. I'll take my supposedly "failing libertarianism" over your "working" piece of shit state any day.
i hope i win the lottery because i would use the money to leave the USA quicker than you can say Jackie Robinson
Sorry buddy, I'm with you on this one, but it's not going to fix anything. Not unless you plan to live on the ocean, one of the poles, or in some remote desert as a hermit. Governments have taken over ALL useable land (plus they're talking about claiming shit in space), and they're restricting immigration between the different countries. Think about that for a moment, and let it sink in. Your comment about winning the lottery illustrates the problem quite well. You have to be wealthy to move around and remove the shackles placed on your feet that prevent you from picking the country you most agree with; whether it's on ideological, political or safety grounds. Not only that, but every single country is now putting even extra barriers to prevent too many individuals from flooding their job market.
I've long thought about this. Until people realize what true freedom is, they will never stop being slaves to their governments. Currently they seem to be under the impression that if you get to pick your leader once every X years, and you can kinda say anything in public, then you're "free". Bullshit. Until the day we're allowed to freely own property, have freedom of movement (except on other peoples' property), and to own all the fruits of our labor, we're not truly free. But, if you can use the media to manipulate the definition of freedom, then you can say all the sheep are free: as long as they stay within the farm they were born in.
Have you seen how much hollywood "pro-cop" scenes/stories there are? It's incredible... Most of the time, the cops are good, honest, and trying to use the "system" as best they can in order to be heroes and catch the bad guy. The system apparently being something that was put in place by evil Internal Affairs and lawyers just to prevent good cops from catching the bad guys, because bad guys can hire expensive lawyers to manipulate the system. Apparently the system is something they can loophole through, and walk a line on... Just to get "that bad guy".
Not to mention how many times Internal Affairs is portrayed as some sort of scummy internal organization that's just out to "beat down on the good cops trying to catch bad guys who happened to break one tiny minor regulation". The details vary and sometimes they mix it up, but the overarching themes are almost always the same. Just keep inserting cheesy lines about "good cop" and "bad guy" and you can easily make a good cop movie/show.
Sigh, I can't believe I typed so much "bad guy" and "good guy" nonsense into that description. But the cheesiness shows the absurdity of it, and why most people are completely deluded into thinking that most/all cops are good.
Not sure I understand your point? Guantanamo is set up by the state, and run outside the border in order to evade the legal system of even the country that set it up. It's statist hypocrisy at it's finest.
Are you insane? This is leaps and bounds better than the stuff you find in streetview. They extract common objects out of images and move them out of a 2D plane and into the 3D space. If anything, this would be amazing if added to streetview.
I was going through some of the new synths, and I truly felt like I was walking through a 3d environment.
Obviously having society fall apart is bad. I'm not saying that we should let society burn just to satisfy our morals. But then again, you can't entirely claim that we have such a black/white scenario. Just because we up and decide one day to start being moral about things, doesn't mean that society will start crumbling. We obviously need an implementation and transitioning plan. Which definitely needs to be gradual, otherwise we'll end up being another Somalia. With a gradual change in the world, new social ideas, groups and support structures spring up to replace what the state currently provides, in a more moral manner.
See, we may very well be unrealistic and naive when it comes to human nature. But that's the beauty of having a truly free society, the statists are more than welcome to create a state while leaving the free individuals alone. But as soon as you rid the world of the state's monopoly privelage over land, free movement will start solving all problems. War torn countries will soon realize that the resource they need most are humans, and no one wants to live in a warring state.
If anything, that is the only thing that needs to be gotten rid of. Borders and barriers to immigration and free-trade. The state will crumble soon after that.
We're not captains of industry, we're captains of freedom. And the disabled are not douchebags, they disabled. That's where charity comes in to play.
Statists are the biggest captains of industry, they're the enablers, the socialist drug pushers, and the violent thugs. Since you like using names for people.
Libertarians and anarchists are on a far better plane than people like you. We value morals and ethics over utilitarianism which is all too easy to misuse by tyrants.
You know why you don't make "$42,754,109 per HOUR"? Because you do a whole lot less than that giant corporation. And in a way you are right that, yes, $100 dollars off that amount is pretty much nothing and won't even dent their profits in a minute scale. What you fail to realize is that you are not the only individual they serve, or employ. In that hour, they probably serve millions of customers.
Let's break it down for you. I just looked up the stats, and the net profit for walmart in tax year 2013 was 17 billion, which comes out to approximately 5.8million per hour (assuming an 8 hour workday). First of all, a far cry from the 42 million you claimed. Next up... Walmart employs 2.2 million people. You divide those two, and all of a sudden, the hourly profit per employee comes down to $2.64. This is net profit, so it's after expenses and all that.
Imagine that, for every person walmart employs, it makes $2.64/hour. That includes all the expenses, salaries and benefits of said employees, whatever. Not only that, but the stats I found show that they service 1.8million customers per hour, across the country. You're the one that brought up scale, so don't complain now that you see why they make that much money per hour compared to what you make in an hour. You're one individual, you're not 2 million individuals working together for a common goal.
That $100 you said is peanuts for such a large entity. It takes about 38 walmart employee hours to make up that loss. That is the real scale of difference we're talking about. Just because you think it's okay to steal from a large entity, doesn't mean you're not screwing over employees. And it also doesn't mean that everything will be dandy if all walmart customers did what you say is okay to do.
However, I will agree with you on what part. In this current economic environment, stimulated by populist government intervention, large and consolidated sums of capital only lead to more of it, and very easily. You start off small, and you will always be small unless you're very lucky. You can take from that what you like. However, don't derive your notion of fairness from it, because that will take you down a very dirty and jealousy-ridden road.
Given all that, I care little for their ~540 euros loss. Had it been a smaller store, I would certainly have pointed the mistake (but even then, I might not have sent the product back, unless it was a very small shop).
See, there's your problem right there. Just because they have lots of money, doesn't mean it's okay for you to defraud them. I blame a basic misunderstanding of Robin Hood and the lessons it tried to put forward that a lot of people completely miss. You need to address your own internal biases. How would you feel if you accidentally gave a homeless man a hundred dollar bill instead of a dollar bill, and he decided to keep it because "he cares little for your $100 loss" due to him thinking you make more money than him. What if you had dropped it by accident, and he picked it up without telling you about it? These are all questions you need to ask yourself if you want to be a moral human being. Stealing is wrong, no matter how much you think the other guy deserves his possessions or not. If you can't have an absolute set of morals, then you're just an opportunistic jack ass, and what little morals you do have are worth nothing.
So the workers lose their job. If they were indeed worth what they were earning before, then they'll quickly get on their feet. What's that you say, they didn't have savings/buffer? Well, how is that MY problem if they don't have the foresight to plan for a few months of no income. But really, that's not even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that these workers that accumulated pensions, benefits and wage-increases over the years are probably the reason why GM is so monolithic, slow to adapt, and ended up failing so bad. Instead of allowing such an inept mammoth to cease and for things to easily take it's place, you're constantly propping it up with more weight. And then finally, you complain when these giant mammoths are "Too big to fail"... because, think of the workers! And, erm, their children. Right.
All you're doing is fear mongering... Fear mongering by risk-averse individuals is a big reason why we can't have nice things and get stuck with the old cruft that drags the rest of us down. Ideally, such individuals would be relegated to not being able to influence the overally society, but alas our current system panders to them and so we get what we have here.
Note, I use the word "you" quite expansively. Please do ignore particular usages if they don't refer to your opinion:)
We supposedly have freedom through democracy. But if we ever choose to exercise that freedom by not picking democracy, we're denied. The political system in place is not free in that sense. It's only free up to the point that people are comfortable with at the moment. And currently, people are uncomfortable giving others the freedom to choose how they're governed, or not governed.
"'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.' Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie, as wisdom and warning. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged." - From the TNG episode 'The Drumhead'
Logic classes belong in the first quarter/semester of your first year of college, and not before.
In the meantime, these poor kids have been bombarded by not only the good facts, but the bullshit ones. By the time they get to college, they've already built up a huge social and emotional investment in those lies. This investment is a barrier that protects them from being wrong in their mind and from requiring of themselves to judge the truthfulness of what they accept as facts.
The sooner you give children the defensive mechanisms to call elders out on their bullshit, the sooner they will be able to defend themselves from those that only seek to taint their worldview while they are young and vulnerable. The fact that they then use this mechanism to doubt the world around them, even the one you KNOW is true and want to be taught as facts, is a good thing. A very very good thing, that is to the child's benefit in the long run, more so than it is society's.
I look forward to the day that my spawn calls me out on my bullshit assumptions and misconceptions, and asks me to back them up with some logical arguments or references.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure beats the "look at me I can punch people in the face because I'm tougher/bigger", which we as a society should have grown out of by now. But judging from your comment about "gun nuts are like tweeny boys", it seems we are still a primal "might makes right" society. Violence is either warranted or it isn't. A gun equalizes the playing field, and also escalates it, so people need to understand that and temper their reasoning about the situation before resorting to it. With enough piss ant brutes like you out there being shot, perhaps you'll collectively learn that physical violence of any sort is NOT allowed, even if you're stronger than the "tweeny boys waiting for their bits to grow". If anything, such talk makes you sound like a juvenile.
Punching on the other hand is a very cowardly thing to do. If someone knew the other person had a gun and was willing to use it, they would never initiate a physical unarmed assault against them. The only reason someone would punch someone in that case, is if they were reasonably sure that the other person didn't have a means to escalate the situation with a gun and because they thought they were physically superior.
On a side note, it sounds like you've obviously never been assaulted by someone physically bigger/stronger than you. In your world, you would expect an individual to just sit there and get pummeled. Perhaps afterwards he can call the police to file a police report after calling his mommy? Yeah, how about no. An individual has rights, just like your hypothetical assailant. And if they choose to violate MY rights and MY safety, then they forfeit ownership of their life. Don't like that? Go cry to mommy about it, tough guy.
Whilst I understand the dilemma, this is a defeatist attitude & not in the heart of democracy.
If enough people act, change CAN happen.
Bullshit, and double bullshit. But at least you've proven why democracy is bad by your defense of it. It's ultimately geared to cater for the majority opinion, even if that opinion is detrimental to some. And intellectuals have the nerve to call that "freedom". One day we will look upon this system of governance we have come up with the same way we now look at flat-earthism.
The political system was always the tool used by the rich and powerful. It's just that now they've found the perfect combination of freedom and profit to placate people with. They're told that democracy is an ethical imperative, and that it is an ideal that we should strive for and hold in the highest regard. Whoever calls bullshit on this get's labelled evil and "anti-freedom". The state is the exact antithesis of freedom, and we all need to wake up and realize that.
The question of who is in charge is irrelevant. The truth of the matter is that we have to dismantle this immoral system before it ruins all the good we've done despite it. I guarantee you, with this intellectual/connected society we have now, the end result will be beautiful.
Do you vote? Did you vote in the last election? If so, then you have already given your moral support to the government, and can not give it to any other cause/entity until the next election. Sorry, citizen, now move along...
It has no value because there is so much supply of it. Just wait until the day when clean oxygen is rare due to pollution/radiation, then come back and tell me how "it has no value because it is a necessary condition to sustain human life".
People used to say the same thing about water. Until they had water shortages, then suddenly it had value.
Do you have any tips/advice on how to get into the self-employed part of the IT/Programming profession? How did you start off?
the power to say no then the boss wants stuff rushed or things like QA passed over.
Just because you don't have the balls to say NO to your boss. People who whine about not having worker rights are the lazy ones that don't provide any benefit to a company, and they KNOW that they will get fired if they speak their mind. Make yourself valuable, and then your voice will be heard. Until then, work harder.
Ah yes... I should have known better than to expect a reasonable discussion on the matter. However, you jumped at the first sentence you could latch on to, just so you could dismiss everything that your brain is uncomfortable dealing with. Good for you, buddy. Just stay the fuck out of my life with your silly laws and lack of morals.
Of course, letting the government print/create debt whenever they need money is such a great idea. +1 cookie for you. You do realize that means they're taxing your children's as-yet unearned productivity? Btw, on a side note, the only reason banks have such power is because of the government in the first place. Government creates money and causes inflation. Government allows banks to fraudulently lend out money they don't have. Government doesn't prosecute banks for negligence/fraud. Government skews the market and forces people to get into debt, it forces people to invest in funds and retirement funds. It allows any entity out there to skew the public in their favor, and your solution is to give them MORE power? As if power is going to fix the problem, power is the problem.
What's the libertarian solution to global warming?
Wouldn't be a problem. You pollute my property = you damage my property = you infringe on my property rights = you owe me money in damages. Everything else is fair game. You can pollute your own property as much as you want. Just don't come crying to me when after a decade of destroying it, it is worthless and unusable to you.
What's the libertarian solution to child labor?
I'm actually not sure about this one just yet. You would first have to solve the ethical question of whether child labor is wrong. You need to define the problem first, and draw the boundaries. But you, you're coming at it purely from a state-imposed solution to the problem you see as "child labor". If you were hard pressed, you couldn't even come up with a full-proof definition of child labor. Child doing paper route for extra money? Child being given money for good grades? Child being thrown into a sweat shop so they can feed their younger siblings? Orphan being put to work at an orphanage so that they can afford to help kids in the first place?
What's the libertarian solution to the lopsided inequalities of those with wealth versus those who don't? How do you solve a problem like scrip? or problems like exhaustion from forced 10-12 hour days with no days off?
That's not a problem. In a free society, free from intervention and coercion, inequality is merely an indicator of who worked hard/smart, and who didn't. You only see this is as some sort of problem because you've been told by the socialist/nationalist state that it is a problem that begs solving. Just work harder, and if you're not getting what you think you deserve, then move or get a new job or fucking realize that maybe what you have to offer society just isn't worth as much as you hoped/expected. Simple, buddy.
Education?
Education was fine before the government stepped in, thanks. I will pay for my own child's education, you pay for yours, and the orphans will get it through charity.
Food and product safety?
Independent safety rating agencies. Heck, when we have a free society, I plan on starting one. I'm looking for partners in this venture, are you game?
Healthcare costs?
Lol, what? I pay for my healthcare, you pay for yours. Simple.
And at the end of this long fucking "answer" to your silly questions. I want you to answer them for me as well, and replace "libertarian" with "democratic" or "statist".
Everyone has to pay for trash disposal. You have no choice. You can't burn it, you can't pile it on your property.
You either haul it to a private landfill and pay them. Or you pay a private hauler to take it away. Or you pay taxes that pay a private hauler with a government contract to haul it away.
Anything else is illegal.
Ah yes, the old "voluntary" part about taxes. You're not paying diddly to government. They're taking it from you, whether you need trash disposal or not.
And no, if you really think about it. Those people can't choose to hire a private company, because they would be screwing themselves over. In essence, those that choose to do things privately are DOUBLE taxed by virtue of not getting the benefit they already "paid" for.
Simply put, libertarians aren't serious. They're ideological.
We most certainly are serious, thank you very much. Not only that, but we pride ourselves on the consistent morals that back our ideology. We may not have the best solution in the world, but it most certainly is the only moral and workable solution to have a cooperative society. Meanwhile, statists like you find it perfectly reasonable to include theft, imprisonment, torture and kidnapping as part of your utilitarian ideology to solve problems. How about no thank you. I'll take my supposedly "failing libertarianism" over your "working" piece of shit state any day.
i hope i win the lottery because i would use the money to leave the USA quicker than you can say Jackie Robinson
Sorry buddy, I'm with you on this one, but it's not going to fix anything. Not unless you plan to live on the ocean, one of the poles, or in some remote desert as a hermit. Governments have taken over ALL useable land (plus they're talking about claiming shit in space), and they're restricting immigration between the different countries. Think about that for a moment, and let it sink in. Your comment about winning the lottery illustrates the problem quite well. You have to be wealthy to move around and remove the shackles placed on your feet that prevent you from picking the country you most agree with; whether it's on ideological, political or safety grounds. Not only that, but every single country is now putting even extra barriers to prevent too many individuals from flooding their job market.
I've long thought about this. Until people realize what true freedom is, they will never stop being slaves to their governments. Currently they seem to be under the impression that if you get to pick your leader once every X years, and you can kinda say anything in public, then you're "free". Bullshit. Until the day we're allowed to freely own property, have freedom of movement (except on other peoples' property), and to own all the fruits of our labor, we're not truly free. But, if you can use the media to manipulate the definition of freedom, then you can say all the sheep are free: as long as they stay within the farm they were born in.
Have you seen how much hollywood "pro-cop" scenes/stories there are? It's incredible... Most of the time, the cops are good, honest, and trying to use the "system" as best they can in order to be heroes and catch the bad guy. The system apparently being something that was put in place by evil Internal Affairs and lawyers just to prevent good cops from catching the bad guys, because bad guys can hire expensive lawyers to manipulate the system. Apparently the system is something they can loophole through, and walk a line on... Just to get "that bad guy".
Not to mention how many times Internal Affairs is portrayed as some sort of scummy internal organization that's just out to "beat down on the good cops trying to catch bad guys who happened to break one tiny minor regulation". The details vary and sometimes they mix it up, but the overarching themes are almost always the same. Just keep inserting cheesy lines about "good cop" and "bad guy" and you can easily make a good cop movie/show.
Sigh, I can't believe I typed so much "bad guy" and "good guy" nonsense into that description. But the cheesiness shows the absurdity of it, and why most people are completely deluded into thinking that most/all cops are good.
Not sure I understand your point? Guantanamo is set up by the state, and run outside the border in order to evade the legal system of even the country that set it up. It's statist hypocrisy at it's finest.
Are you insane? This is leaps and bounds better than the stuff you find in streetview. They extract common objects out of images and move them out of a 2D plane and into the 3D space. If anything, this would be amazing if added to streetview.
I was going through some of the new synths, and I truly felt like I was walking through a 3d environment.
Obviously having society fall apart is bad. I'm not saying that we should let society burn just to satisfy our morals. But then again, you can't entirely claim that we have such a black/white scenario. Just because we up and decide one day to start being moral about things, doesn't mean that society will start crumbling. We obviously need an implementation and transitioning plan. Which definitely needs to be gradual, otherwise we'll end up being another Somalia. With a gradual change in the world, new social ideas, groups and support structures spring up to replace what the state currently provides, in a more moral manner.
See, we may very well be unrealistic and naive when it comes to human nature. But that's the beauty of having a truly free society, the statists are more than welcome to create a state while leaving the free individuals alone. But as soon as you rid the world of the state's monopoly privelage over land, free movement will start solving all problems. War torn countries will soon realize that the resource they need most are humans, and no one wants to live in a warring state.
If anything, that is the only thing that needs to be gotten rid of. Borders and barriers to immigration and free-trade. The state will crumble soon after that.
9: Statists: douchebags
We're not captains of industry, we're captains of freedom. And the disabled are not douchebags, they disabled. That's where charity comes in to play.
Statists are the biggest captains of industry, they're the enablers, the socialist drug pushers, and the violent thugs. Since you like using names for people.
Libertarians and anarchists are on a far better plane than people like you. We value morals and ethics over utilitarianism which is all too easy to misuse by tyrants.
This supports thousands and thousands of rent-seeking monopolists. The holy grail of capitalism.
The dirty little secret is rolling these networks out isn't hard. It's all legislation and poltics stopping.
There, I put those two together for you. Otherwise you might not see the damn connection.
Good, now that we have that cleared up. Stop bashing capitalism for something solely created by the truest monopoly there is, government.
You know why you don't make "$42,754,109 per HOUR"? Because you do a whole lot less than that giant corporation. And in a way you are right that, yes, $100 dollars off that amount is pretty much nothing and won't even dent their profits in a minute scale. What you fail to realize is that you are not the only individual they serve, or employ. In that hour, they probably serve millions of customers.
Let's break it down for you. I just looked up the stats, and the net profit for walmart in tax year 2013 was 17 billion, which comes out to approximately 5.8million per hour (assuming an 8 hour workday). First of all, a far cry from the 42 million you claimed. Next up... Walmart employs 2.2 million people. You divide those two, and all of a sudden, the hourly profit per employee comes down to $2.64. This is net profit, so it's after expenses and all that.
Imagine that, for every person walmart employs, it makes $2.64/hour. That includes all the expenses, salaries and benefits of said employees, whatever. Not only that, but the stats I found show that they service 1.8million customers per hour, across the country. You're the one that brought up scale, so don't complain now that you see why they make that much money per hour compared to what you make in an hour. You're one individual, you're not 2 million individuals working together for a common goal.
That $100 you said is peanuts for such a large entity. It takes about 38 walmart employee hours to make up that loss. That is the real scale of difference we're talking about. Just because you think it's okay to steal from a large entity, doesn't mean you're not screwing over employees. And it also doesn't mean that everything will be dandy if all walmart customers did what you say is okay to do.
However, I will agree with you on what part. In this current economic environment, stimulated by populist government intervention, large and consolidated sums of capital only lead to more of it, and very easily. You start off small, and you will always be small unless you're very lucky. You can take from that what you like. However, don't derive your notion of fairness from it, because that will take you down a very dirty and jealousy-ridden road.
Given all that, I care little for their ~540 euros loss. Had it been a smaller store, I would certainly have pointed the mistake (but even then, I might not have sent the product back, unless it was a very small shop).
See, there's your problem right there. Just because they have lots of money, doesn't mean it's okay for you to defraud them. I blame a basic misunderstanding of Robin Hood and the lessons it tried to put forward that a lot of people completely miss. You need to address your own internal biases. How would you feel if you accidentally gave a homeless man a hundred dollar bill instead of a dollar bill, and he decided to keep it because "he cares little for your $100 loss" due to him thinking you make more money than him. What if you had dropped it by accident, and he picked it up without telling you about it? These are all questions you need to ask yourself if you want to be a moral human being. Stealing is wrong, no matter how much you think the other guy deserves his possessions or not. If you can't have an absolute set of morals, then you're just an opportunistic jack ass, and what little morals you do have are worth nothing.
So the workers lose their job. If they were indeed worth what they were earning before, then they'll quickly get on their feet. What's that you say, they didn't have savings/buffer? Well, how is that MY problem if they don't have the foresight to plan for a few months of no income. But really, that's not even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is that these workers that accumulated pensions, benefits and wage-increases over the years are probably the reason why GM is so monolithic, slow to adapt, and ended up failing so bad. Instead of allowing such an inept mammoth to cease and for things to easily take it's place, you're constantly propping it up with more weight. And then finally, you complain when these giant mammoths are "Too big to fail"... because, think of the workers! And, erm, their children. Right.
:)
All you're doing is fear mongering... Fear mongering by risk-averse individuals is a big reason why we can't have nice things and get stuck with the old cruft that drags the rest of us down. Ideally, such individuals would be relegated to not being able to influence the overally society, but alas our current system panders to them and so we get what we have here.
Note, I use the word "you" quite expansively. Please do ignore particular usages if they don't refer to your opinion
Ironic coming from a hipster Twitter user.
We supposedly have freedom through democracy. But if we ever choose to exercise that freedom by not picking democracy, we're denied. The political system in place is not free in that sense. It's only free up to the point that people are comfortable with at the moment. And currently, people are uncomfortable giving others the freedom to choose how they're governed, or not governed.
"'With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably.' Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie, as wisdom and warning. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged." - From the TNG episode 'The Drumhead'
Logic classes belong in the first quarter/semester of your first year of college, and not before.
In the meantime, these poor kids have been bombarded by not only the good facts, but the bullshit ones. By the time they get to college, they've already built up a huge social and emotional investment in those lies. This investment is a barrier that protects them from being wrong in their mind and from requiring of themselves to judge the truthfulness of what they accept as facts.
The sooner you give children the defensive mechanisms to call elders out on their bullshit, the sooner they will be able to defend themselves from those that only seek to taint their worldview while they are young and vulnerable. The fact that they then use this mechanism to doubt the world around them, even the one you KNOW is true and want to be taught as facts, is a good thing. A very very good thing, that is to the child's benefit in the long run, more so than it is society's.
I look forward to the day that my spawn calls me out on my bullshit assumptions and misconceptions, and asks me to back them up with some logical arguments or references.