What a complete waste of money. I have to say that I really DID feel awe when I saw those color pictures, but then I realized that I wanted to buy a new truck battery today, and I was short about $20. I wonder how much of last year's paycheck went to wasted government programs such as NASA.
Why couldn't some Hollywood group go to Mars? Maybe the entertainment value would have covered the huge costs. How much of NASA's costs are bureaucratic red tape?
Some great articles about the troubles with NASA, from a free market perspective:
http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?contr ol =434&sortorder=articledate http://www.lewrockwell .com/orig/davis5.html http://www.lp.org/lpnews/00 05/libsolutions.html
You decided to become a device driver developer and handle client/server systems. Why should I (or any part of society) be held responsible for your choice? I'm sure when you went to school for it, you thought you'd make money, pay the bills, etc. You made a bad decision, but yet I'll have to pay out of my paycheck to keep you fed. Ludicrous.
As for trying to scrape up cash to become an HVAC tech, did you work 2 jobs? How about 3? I've worked 3 jobs before in order to save up money to start a business. I didn't spend much money on wasted items. I saved. It took years, but I did it.
And as for the government licensing, that is another thing I am against. Why do you have to be licensed? The government is preventing you from offering services that others want.
I won't be quiet. Liberals (both democrat and republican) have destroyed any hope for freedom in this country, and it is my job to make sure people learn that the lies many preach are just that -- lies.
People with legitimately long resumes will not have problems finding jobs. They may have problems finding jobs paying what they used to pay, but such is the market. Things change. What used to be coveted is no longer wanted. What do horseshoers to today? What do streetlamp lighters do? Jobs come, jobs go. If you're ill prepared and spend a fortune on a skill that may not be able to pay for the debt of education, you should not tax me to pay for your mistakes!
Minimum wage laws did nothing to raise the minimum wages of the poor. What they did is basically create a law saying that you can't hire someone worth less than $x per hour. If you have to pay a person $5 minimum, why would you hire someone that is only worth $3 per hour and has no skills? People never work at the minimum wage long -- once they have gained skills, their worth goes up. If you don't pay them more, your competition will.
The funny fact is that the average wage of unskilled workers has always been higher than the minimum wage. The minimum wage laws basically make it hard for the youth and the minorities to get jobs. Restaurants would love to hire 2 busboys at $3 an hour (a job that you don't stay at long once you have proven your ability to show up on time and work hard), but with minimum wage laws, they can only afford one worker at $6.
If you believe what Svartalf says, you've fallen victim to the Keynesian / Welfarists who believe that you have to help the poor instead of allowing the best of the poor to rise above the masses of people who care not to work, but only care to live on the backs of others.
Unemployment is made worse by minimum wage laws, as well as by excessive regulation caused by tariffs, taxes, and other hidden costs to running a business. We need to get government out of the economy and the labor market, and allow businesses to run more efficiently. Tossing the minimum wage laws out will allow more unskilled workers to get entry level jobs and work hard to get the skills they need to move up.
As for the 6% unemployment rate, if any of the unemployed people I know are in that figure, they are unemployed because they're asking for more money than they are worth. I see "Help Wanted" signs all over even my small town in the boonies -- I'm sure that big cities have numerous jobs available for those who are too proud to get real jobs.
On top of that, welfare and mandatory unemployment insurance make it even harder to rehire these people or give them incentive to find work.
I don't think it is wrong to assume that the long term price of goods is connected to manufacturing cost. Short term, you want to make your product visible and desired through marketing and distribution, as well as R&D. Once your product is picked up by the resellers and retailers, you will hope to recoup the initial costs you spent to produce and market the product.
Should your competition provide the product cheaper to retail, the stores will love to sell the cheaper product for near the same price as your more expensive initial one. Consumers will decide what they want to pay for each product (supply and demand). If consumers are willing to pay a little less for the cheaper one, your more expensive product will not be rebought by retail stores. If various stores sell your product, competition will bring the profit margins down, and supply and demand will once again dictate how much the product should cost to produce.
I don't see how manufacturing costs can not be related to price in the long run. When we're discussing jobs moving to other countries, of course it starts with profit margin, but in the long run it is producing similar product quality for a cheaper price.
There is no reason to be unemployed in any economy. If you can not make ends meet because your tech job was moved overseas, you can bide the time by working one or two jobs at a restaurant or a retail store. Intelligent hard working people will not stay unemployed long. I have friends who were techs during the dot com boom, and after they lost their jobs they moved back home with their parents. Some got jobs right away (working retail or even a new tech job). Others continued to try to live the lavish lifestyle they used to, much to the ruin of their credit and financial future.
There is no reason to be unemployed today. If your skills are no longer paying the bills, it is time to find new skills.
Unless your unemployed, what good is cheap stuff if you can't buy it!
Ok, so you are telling me that if you could purchase a light bulb from Taiwan for $1, or an identical American one for $6, you would pick the American one? How about the TV you own? Or the CD player?
You pay as much as you think an item is worth. If you make CD players, and someone says they can make them cheaper in another country, you may end up being un-employed in the CD player manufacturing job you had. Making sure you are prepared to change jobs is not something you should fear -- if you did a good job making CD players, it means you are intelligent enough to find another job in a similar field, or move to one of the fields where consumers can now spend more money on since they are spending less on CD players.
You have no right to earn a living worth more than another. I have no desire to spend more money just to keep you happy, I'd rather focus my spending on me.
Why is the average Joe not working harder? If they are average, they should expect the average pay as the average people in other countries do. Why is average Joe American worth more than average Joe Indian?
Here's a simple explanation of it all:
Gene Callahan, author of Economics for Real People has written a great story explaining the realities of how government is at fault for job losses, not foreign competition. It is a really easy read, and puts in simple terms why we shouldn't shun job losses to other nations, but support them.
With the ability to get cheaper labor off short in the tech world, the prices for certain tech consumer goods (from software to DVDs to car computer brains) will fall, allowing prices to fall as well.
This will allow the average consumer to spend more of their money on other items, including entertainment, debt reduction, maybe even more money towards a mortgage or a new car. Jobs moving to other countries is only good news -- I can only hope we see more of it as it will allow people here in the States to find new things to do with their overpriced labor.
Maybe we'll even see that we don't deserve as much as we earn, and that we're not so special.
Tibor Machan has a great article on Job Security and why this phrase is false. If you can not produce a desired product at a price that the buyers are willing to pay, you are not really producing anything but waste. American techs are paid way too much for what really has become a blue collar job in many cases.
Just like tariffs on imported steel and imported sugar have destroyed jobs in this country (by making cars here too expensive, and even Fannie Mae chocolates has closed down today because sugar is too expensive), putting tariffs on imported tech software will do the same. Allow consumers of technology to decide what they are willing to pay. U.S. firms can even promote a "Buy American" program if people really care.
I know I don't. I want to see prices fall on technology so I can focus my spending on other areas -- more dinners are local restaurants, maybe more concerts or theatre.
Are you kidding? The entire group of slashdot seems to be Greens with no grasp of why economies grow (capitalism) or fall (mercantilism/socialism). It is very important that people start to realize that the bad parts of the economy are due to mercantilism, and the good parts are do to profit-"greedy" people who are trying to better their own lives...
Why did you say something so untrue? How is corporate American becoming America? I own corporations, yet I have very little control over other citizens. If they don't want my products, they don't buy them from me.
The average citizen has far more control over my corporation than I have over them. They can refuse to buy. They can open their own competitive business. They can vote in the town I am in to ban my product or my business. They can zone me out of their neighborhoods. They tax my sales and use that money in ways I disagree with. They tax my property. They tax the money I pay my employees. They tax my profits, too.
How is Corporate America a bad thing? Corporations that are friendly with the government are given benefits (cheap loans, tariffs against competition, and even regulating competition out of the business) is NOT a free market, but a mercantilist one. America was never supposed to be mercantilist, it was supposed to be capitalist. Capitalism allows no monopoly, but mercantilism does.
And mercantilism can only happen from government getting involved in economic planning -- ruin from the start.
Everyone should have equal rights which are based almost exclusively on the right to private property and the right to protect it.
The physical music medium is something owned by someone else. You have been loaned that medium in order to listen to that music. How is this so difficult?
Laws are not needed to "protect" consumers or businesses. Natural law says that if I own a lawnmower and loan it to you under a contract, you have to return it to me.
If you don't like my contract, don't use my lawnmower. The same is true about music.
The "norm" definition meaning how Marxists and Keynesian economics tell it? I'd rather go with how mercantilism has always been defined before socialists changed it: the use of government to subsidize their friends to perform projects that others are restricted form performing.
As for direct returns, what is the return that NASA brings to the table? Why do you want to take money from me by coercion and spend it on something that has no real return of any kind, other than false patriotism?
As for how a few private companies are trying to do the much smaller step of edge of space travel, that is how the market works. Companies take baby steps, creating new products and services. After these have been perfected to a certain extent, they take bigger steps. This is how we should achieve space travel -- eventually we'll find a way to find a profit.
You're confused. We haven't had a free market until the tyrant trait Abe Lincoln destroyed capitalism and swapped us to a mercantilist society. Every great thing we've accomplished has happened out of someone's desire to better themselves. Mercantilism (the system you preach and support) is coercion to help the few. Capitalism doesn't work without the support of the many.
Go read "The Real Lincoln" by Thomas Dilorenzo, you'll learn alot about how capitalism has been muddied ever since Lincoln destroyed it, and future Presidents have perverted the term since.
If there isn't a profit in it, it is not worth doing. Profit does not necessarily mean a fiscal profit -- but some worth to someone.
If there was value in it, the private market would accomplish said goal. With excessive government regulations, restrictions, and other negative aspects, no one really has the ability to overcome those costs.
Let's be real -- why do you want us to go to the moon? Just to clap ourselves on the back and say we did it? What a waste of my money. I can do so much more for myself, my family, my friends, and my charities that I sponsor with the cash that you want to take from me and waste on a bureaucratic monstrosity that does nothing for me.
I'm sick of wasted tax dollars
on
Dreams of the Moon
·
· Score: 2, Flamebait
When are we going to learn that these tax dollars are not being spent wisely? The private market, if left uninhibited by tariffs, regulations, and restrictions, could do a better job of getting us to the moon. NASA is just a government stamping agency that shovels money to the protected few -- mercantilism at its "finest."
I'd like to see other reasons to get into space. Scientific altruism is not in my pocketbook, so I'm sick of my dollars being forced from me through coercion and wasted on NASA.
Here's a useless law. Government is not needed in this case (as in most new laws, they are not relevant).
If a theater wants to show new movies, they should already have rules about this. Because a theater is private property, they should be able to ban anything they want (free speech, weapons, anything). If they want to ban recording cameras, they're free to.
Maybe a theater may want to ALLOW cameras. In this case, the major movie production companies will probably decide not to show movies there. Smaller companies may want the cult-like home recorded movies and may possibly allow it. The free market has provided this solution already, and government now will mandate one more way for private movie theater owners to run their business.
We are no longer free, we are no longer capitalist. We live in a mercantilist system of oppressive regulation, taxes, and tariffs. None of this system helps the average citizen.
The free market has provided a better solution than what government proposes (as it always has). It is called insurance.
If you drive faster than you should, you may notice your insurance rates go way up (or entirely lose insurance). This is what protects the general public from crazed drivers overall -- fear of long term problems if they should crash too often and see their rates go up.
Fast driving isn't the problem, it is fast driving in circumstances that warrant caution. Law will never be the solution -- and in many cases the speed law is only there to provide incentives to the friends of government, not to protect the overall public. Speeding laws came out of mercantilism; capitalism provides for a much better solution.
Public transportation in the city of Chicago costs more per person than taking a cab. The $1.50 rate is reduced by excessive gas taxes as well as tons of other hidden ways to get regular drives. Buses clog up the streets, and all the bureacrats who work for the department burn air conditioning and heat bills higher than the average private office.
Public transportation is more of a waste than anything. Highways should not be funded by government, but by private businesses who own them and build them and maintain them. Roads will always be a scam for free money to the priviledged few.
Heavy taxation is the best thing for helping the free market or the Austrian-libertarian/anarchocapitalist idealism. When you tax an item, overregulate it, or even criminalize the use of said item, you create a black market. The black market has no taxes, and is generally cheaper to use than the white market -- in some cases its the only way to get said item or service.
When an item is taxed, it forces people to pay more. If people think they are paying too much, they will find a way around it.
I say lets raise all taxes on every item 100%. Then find your way around it. I know people in Canada who find numerous ways around the CD tax, and while its illegal and I don't recommend breaking local laws or avoiding taxes, its good to see that taxes almost always have negative effects on production and sales.
As a retail store owner of a punk rock music shop, I really want to open a section (and eventually make it my only section) of "Non RIAA Punk Rock music." It should be bands of national scale, doesn't have to be popular bands, and definitely shouldn't be radio or MTV bands.
Does anyone have a link or knowledge of which labels are not RIAA linked? The distributors have no idea...
Re:The First Church of Environmentalism
on
Global Dimming
·
· Score: 1
I wasn't planning on replying, as I knew I'd get "troll" moderated. I actually was +3 for about 20 seconds, heh.
The reality is I could have tried to type enough information to refute the environmentalists, but in the twenty minutes it would take to write that post, all the greenies would have 10 word replies that would end up being moderated as "Interesting" or whatever at +5. I had precious little time to get my word in, and all I would have said would have mimicked the links.
The First Church of Environmentalism
on
Global Dimming
·
· Score: -1, Troll
I'm getting sick of greenies who skew numbers and facts to scare everyone. If you listen to what they've been saying for decades, you'll see that they change their minds more than almost any other "science" which is why I refute environmentalism as a science.
Here are some great articles about the "science" of environmentalists:
Slashdot Mirror
What a complete waste of money. I have to say that I really DID feel awe when I saw those color pictures, but then I realized that I wanted to buy a new truck battery today, and I was short about $20. I wonder how much of last year's paycheck went to wasted government programs such as NASA.
r ol =434&sortorder=articledatel .com/orig/davis5.html0 05/libsolutions.html
Why couldn't some Hollywood group go to Mars? Maybe the entertainment value would have covered the huge costs. How much of NASA's costs are bureaucratic red tape?
Some great articles about the troubles with NASA, from a free market perspective:
http://www.mises.org/freemarket_detail.asp?cont
http://www.lewrockwel
http://www.lp.org/lpnews/0
You decided to become a device driver developer and handle client/server systems. Why should I (or any part of society) be held responsible for your choice? I'm sure when you went to school for it, you thought you'd make money, pay the bills, etc. You made a bad decision, but yet I'll have to pay out of my paycheck to keep you fed. Ludicrous.
As for trying to scrape up cash to become an HVAC tech, did you work 2 jobs? How about 3? I've worked 3 jobs before in order to save up money to start a business. I didn't spend much money on wasted items. I saved. It took years, but I did it.
And as for the government licensing, that is another thing I am against. Why do you have to be licensed? The government is preventing you from offering services that others want.
I won't be quiet. Liberals (both democrat and republican) have destroyed any hope for freedom in this country, and it is my job to make sure people learn that the lies many preach are just that -- lies.
People with legitimately long resumes will not have problems finding jobs. They may have problems finding jobs paying what they used to pay, but such is the market. Things change. What used to be coveted is no longer wanted. What do horseshoers to today? What do streetlamp lighters do? Jobs come, jobs go. If you're ill prepared and spend a fortune on a skill that may not be able to pay for the debt of education, you should not tax me to pay for your mistakes!
Life is a gamble. You have no right to happiness.
Minimum wage laws did nothing to raise the minimum wages of the poor. What they did is basically create a law saying that you can't hire someone worth less than $x per hour. If you have to pay a person $5 minimum, why would you hire someone that is only worth $3 per hour and has no skills? People never work at the minimum wage long -- once they have gained skills, their worth goes up. If you don't pay them more, your competition will.
/ www.mises.org/efandi/ch13.aspr g/freemarket_detail.asp?control =174&sortorder=title
The funny fact is that the average wage of unskilled workers has always been higher than the minimum wage. The minimum wage laws basically make it hard for the youth and the minorities to get jobs. Restaurants would love to hire 2 busboys at $3 an hour (a job that you don't stay at long once you have proven your ability to show up on time and work hard), but with minimum wage laws, they can only afford one worker at $6.
Here are some great links to minimum wage ideas:
http://www.mises.org/econsense/ch36.asp
http:/
http://www.mises.o
If you believe what Svartalf says, you've fallen victim to the Keynesian / Welfarists who believe that you have to help the poor instead of allowing the best of the poor to rise above the masses of people who care not to work, but only care to live on the backs of others.
Unemployment is made worse by minimum wage laws, as well as by excessive regulation caused by tariffs, taxes, and other hidden costs to running a business. We need to get government out of the economy and the labor market, and allow businesses to run more efficiently. Tossing the minimum wage laws out will allow more unskilled workers to get entry level jobs and work hard to get the skills they need to move up.
As for the 6% unemployment rate, if any of the unemployed people I know are in that figure, they are unemployed because they're asking for more money than they are worth. I see "Help Wanted" signs all over even my small town in the boonies -- I'm sure that big cities have numerous jobs available for those who are too proud to get real jobs.
On top of that, welfare and mandatory unemployment insurance make it even harder to rehire these people or give them incentive to find work.
I don't think it is wrong to assume that the long term price of goods is connected to manufacturing cost. Short term, you want to make your product visible and desired through marketing and distribution, as well as R&D. Once your product is picked up by the resellers and retailers, you will hope to recoup the initial costs you spent to produce and market the product.
Should your competition provide the product cheaper to retail, the stores will love to sell the cheaper product for near the same price as your more expensive initial one. Consumers will decide what they want to pay for each product (supply and demand). If consumers are willing to pay a little less for the cheaper one, your more expensive product will not be rebought by retail stores. If various stores sell your product, competition will bring the profit margins down, and supply and demand will once again dictate how much the product should cost to produce.
I don't see how manufacturing costs can not be related to price in the long run. When we're discussing jobs moving to other countries, of course it starts with profit margin, but in the long run it is producing similar product quality for a cheaper price.
There is no reason to be unemployed in any economy. If you can not make ends meet because your tech job was moved overseas, you can bide the time by working one or two jobs at a restaurant or a retail store. Intelligent hard working people will not stay unemployed long. I have friends who were techs during the dot com boom, and after they lost their jobs they moved back home with their parents. Some got jobs right away (working retail or even a new tech job). Others continued to try to live the lavish lifestyle they used to, much to the ruin of their credit and financial future.
There is no reason to be unemployed today. If your skills are no longer paying the bills, it is time to find new skills.
Unless your unemployed, what good is cheap stuff if you can't buy it!
Ok, so you are telling me that if you could purchase a light bulb from Taiwan for $1, or an identical American one for $6, you would pick the American one? How about the TV you own? Or the CD player?
You pay as much as you think an item is worth. If you make CD players, and someone says they can make them cheaper in another country, you may end up being un-employed in the CD player manufacturing job you had. Making sure you are prepared to change jobs is not something you should fear -- if you did a good job making CD players, it means you are intelligent enough to find another job in a similar field, or move to one of the fields where consumers can now spend more money on since they are spending less on CD players.
You have no right to earn a living worth more than another. I have no desire to spend more money just to keep you happy, I'd rather focus my spending on me.
Why is the average Joe not working harder? If they are average, they should expect the average pay as the average people in other countries do. Why is average Joe American worth more than average Joe Indian?
Here's a simple explanation of it all:
Gene Callahan, author of Economics for Real People has written a great story explaining the realities of how government is at fault for job losses, not foreign competition. It is a really easy read, and puts in simple terms why we shouldn't shun job losses to other nations, but support them.
With the ability to get cheaper labor off short in the tech world, the prices for certain tech consumer goods (from software to DVDs to car computer brains) will fall, allowing prices to fall as well.
This will allow the average consumer to spend more of their money on other items, including entertainment, debt reduction, maybe even more money towards a mortgage or a new car. Jobs moving to other countries is only good news -- I can only hope we see more of it as it will allow people here in the States to find new things to do with their overpriced labor.
Maybe we'll even see that we don't deserve as much as we earn, and that we're not so special.
Tibor Machan has a great article on Job Security and why this phrase is false. If you can not produce a desired product at a price that the buyers are willing to pay, you are not really producing anything but waste. American techs are paid way too much for what really has become a blue collar job in many cases.
Just like tariffs on imported steel and imported sugar have destroyed jobs in this country (by making cars here too expensive, and even Fannie Mae chocolates has closed down today because sugar is too expensive), putting tariffs on imported tech software will do the same. Allow consumers of technology to decide what they are willing to pay. U.S. firms can even promote a "Buy American" program if people really care.
I know I don't. I want to see prices fall on technology so I can focus my spending on other areas -- more dinners are local restaurants, maybe more concerts or theatre.
Remember, the Living Wage is a MYTH.
Are you kidding? The entire group of slashdot seems to be Greens with no grasp of why economies grow (capitalism) or fall (mercantilism/socialism). It is very important that people start to realize that the bad parts of the economy are due to mercantilism, and the good parts are do to profit-"greedy" people who are trying to better their own lives...
Why did you say something so untrue? How is corporate American becoming America? I own corporations, yet I have very little control over other citizens. If they don't want my products, they don't buy them from me.
The average citizen has far more control over my corporation than I have over them. They can refuse to buy. They can open their own competitive business. They can vote in the town I am in to ban my product or my business. They can zone me out of their neighborhoods. They tax my sales and use that money in ways I disagree with. They tax my property. They tax the money I pay my employees. They tax my profits, too.
How is Corporate America a bad thing? Corporations that are friendly with the government are given benefits (cheap loans, tariffs against competition, and even regulating competition out of the business) is NOT a free market, but a mercantilist one. America was never supposed to be mercantilist, it was supposed to be capitalist. Capitalism allows no monopoly, but mercantilism does.
And mercantilism can only happen from government getting involved in economic planning -- ruin from the start.
You didn't necessarily steal a product that the store owns, you stole the profit the store makes from providing the licensed product.
You're not buying a CD, you're buying the rights to listen to the CD in a certain way.
Everyone should have equal rights which are based almost exclusively on the right to private property and the right to protect it.
The physical music medium is something owned by someone else. You have been loaned that medium in order to listen to that music. How is this so difficult?
Laws are not needed to "protect" consumers or businesses. Natural law says that if I own a lawnmower and loan it to you under a contract, you have to return it to me.
If you don't like my contract, don't use my lawnmower. The same is true about music.
The "norm" definition meaning how Marxists and Keynesian economics tell it? I'd rather go with how mercantilism has always been defined before socialists changed it: the use of government to subsidize their friends to perform projects that others are restricted form performing.
As for direct returns, what is the return that NASA brings to the table? Why do you want to take money from me by coercion and spend it on something that has no real return of any kind, other than false patriotism?
As for how a few private companies are trying to do the much smaller step of edge of space travel, that is how the market works. Companies take baby steps, creating new products and services. After these have been perfected to a certain extent, they take bigger steps. This is how we should achieve space travel -- eventually we'll find a way to find a profit.
You're confused. We haven't had a free market until the tyrant trait Abe Lincoln destroyed capitalism and swapped us to a mercantilist society. Every great thing we've accomplished has happened out of someone's desire to better themselves. Mercantilism (the system you preach and support) is coercion to help the few. Capitalism doesn't work without the support of the many.
Go read "The Real Lincoln" by Thomas Dilorenzo, you'll learn alot about how capitalism has been muddied ever since Lincoln destroyed it, and future Presidents have perverted the term since.
If there isn't a profit in it, it is not worth doing. Profit does not necessarily mean a fiscal profit -- but some worth to someone.
If there was value in it, the private market would accomplish said goal. With excessive government regulations, restrictions, and other negative aspects, no one really has the ability to overcome those costs.
Let's be real -- why do you want us to go to the moon? Just to clap ourselves on the back and say we did it? What a waste of my money. I can do so much more for myself, my family, my friends, and my charities that I sponsor with the cash that you want to take from me and waste on a bureaucratic monstrosity that does nothing for me.
When are we going to learn that these tax dollars are not being spent wisely? The private market, if left uninhibited by tariffs, regulations, and restrictions, could do a better job of getting us to the moon. NASA is just a government stamping agency that shovels money to the protected few -- mercantilism at its "finest."
I'd like to see other reasons to get into space. Scientific altruism is not in my pocketbook, so I'm sick of my dollars being forced from me through coercion and wasted on NASA.
Here's a useless law. Government is not needed in this case (as in most new laws, they are not relevant).
If a theater wants to show new movies, they should already have rules about this. Because a theater is private property, they should be able to ban anything they want (free speech, weapons, anything). If they want to ban recording cameras, they're free to.
Maybe a theater may want to ALLOW cameras. In this case, the major movie production companies will probably decide not to show movies there. Smaller companies may want the cult-like home recorded movies and may possibly allow it. The free market has provided this solution already, and government now will mandate one more way for private movie theater owners to run their business.
We are no longer free, we are no longer capitalist. We live in a mercantilist system of oppressive regulation, taxes, and tariffs. None of this system helps the average citizen.
The free market has provided a better solution than what government proposes (as it always has). It is called insurance.
If you drive faster than you should, you may notice your insurance rates go way up (or entirely lose insurance). This is what protects the general public from crazed drivers overall -- fear of long term problems if they should crash too often and see their rates go up.
Fast driving isn't the problem, it is fast driving in circumstances that warrant caution. Law will never be the solution -- and in many cases the speed law is only there to provide incentives to the friends of government, not to protect the overall public. Speeding laws came out of mercantilism; capitalism provides for a much better solution.
Public transportation in the city of Chicago costs more per person than taking a cab. The $1.50 rate is reduced by excessive gas taxes as well as tons of other hidden ways to get regular drives. Buses clog up the streets, and all the bureacrats who work for the department burn air conditioning and heat bills higher than the average private office.
Public transportation is more of a waste than anything. Highways should not be funded by government, but by private businesses who own them and build them and maintain them. Roads will always be a scam for free money to the priviledged few.
Heavy taxation is the best thing for helping the free market or the Austrian-libertarian/anarchocapitalist idealism. When you tax an item, overregulate it, or even criminalize the use of said item, you create a black market. The black market has no taxes, and is generally cheaper to use than the white market -- in some cases its the only way to get said item or service.
When an item is taxed, it forces people to pay more. If people think they are paying too much, they will find a way around it.
I say lets raise all taxes on every item 100%. Then find your way around it. I know people in Canada who find numerous ways around the CD tax, and while its illegal and I don't recommend breaking local laws or avoiding taxes, its good to see that taxes almost always have negative effects on production and sales.
This is obviously off topic, but I need help...
As a retail store owner of a punk rock music shop, I really want to open a section (and eventually make it my only section) of "Non RIAA Punk Rock music." It should be bands of national scale, doesn't have to be popular bands, and definitely shouldn't be radio or MTV bands.
Does anyone have a link or knowledge of which labels are not RIAA linked? The distributors have no idea...
I wasn't planning on replying, as I knew I'd get "troll" moderated. I actually was +3 for about 20 seconds, heh.
The reality is I could have tried to type enough information to refute the environmentalists, but in the twenty minutes it would take to write that post, all the greenies would have 10 word replies that would end up being moderated as "Interesting" or whatever at +5. I had precious little time to get my word in, and all I would have said would have mimicked the links.
I'm getting sick of greenies who skew numbers and facts to scare everyone. If you listen to what they've been saying for decades, you'll see that they change their minds more than almost any other "science" which is why I refute environmentalism as a science.
Here are some great articles about the "science" of environmentalists:
More Religion than Science
Eco-Detectives Literature
Enviro-Capitalists