The police do not protect people, they investigate crimes after the fact. They are not objective, they are agents of the prosecution (and so are judges these days- ever seen the ads "I sent more guys to death row last year than any other judge, reelect me!")
In a competitive environment the police would not be competing against each other, but for your business.
The only reason robocop was like that was because they were a state granted monopoly-- robocop is the ultimate expression of the current system. You think the cops don't have the same 4th directive? They commit crime all the time to protect each other in every city in the country.
I think legislators need a salary initially. make it the same as the current one, and then lower it over time (make this part of the constitution)
After all, it WILL be a full time job assembling bills to remove all the cruft from the books. We need to clear out the garbage before we're ready to consider a regular state of affairs.
Think there should also be a rule about for every word added to the state code, three words have to be deleted somewhere else, until the state code is brought down to a reasonable size.
Don't forget that those 20k represent a small fraction of libertarians in the US. When they move there and start enacting change, their numbers will quickly swell as others move to join them... they will be 200k within a decade, if they are successful.
Yes, nothing will save social security when the democrats ane republicans raid it regularly.
The very sad thing is that the marxists (read democracts) go on and on about Enron when the fraud committed by enron was a small amount over a couple years and was quickly cautght.
The fraud that is the social security system has been going on for 50 years, and is ignored by these same people!
And what's even more unacceptable is that nobody lost money in enron who didn't voluntarily take on the risk.
You refuse to pay into the social security pyramid scheme and you go to jail or get shot.
Personally, when compared to the wholesale fraud that is the Federal government, the "dishonesty" of CEOs pales. At least with companies there are checks and balances-- and anyone who loses money was taking a risk to begin with.
When the feds come knocking, they are forcing you to "invest" at gunpoint.
You don't think all the bankrupt morons will tax the hell out of you when you finally retire
No they won't.
They already take half of everyone's income. But they can't do much more because already the wealthy are leaving the country, and as they leave they take the future economic growth with them.
Thus there will always be political pressure keeping taxes "reasonable"...
And if they become unreasonable, land is cheap in belize and they will sell you citizenship for $40,000. Everyone speaks english, the country is politically stable and the climate is not too bad. And the belizian dollar is tied to the US dollar.
That's what a million dollars 40 years from now is worth in todays dollars.
Or put another way, thats what you'll have to retire on-- which is plenty enough to retire on.
This is for all the math challenged liberals who will post decrying your retirement plan claiming that a million dollars won't be worth nothing in 40 years.
Course, those who want to be poor will be.
Personally, if I had $452,890 right now, I could stop work today and retire. Travel the world and in 40 years my net worth would be at least $6,768,454.94.
People just don't do the math much-- as you pointed out, you can retire on only $150 a month in 40 years.
Imagine how much sooner if you invested the money in stocks returning %15+ and put in $400 a month?
But people would rather lease a car for $400 a month than retire in 10 years or so.
Re:This has nothing to do with making money...
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Does a CEO *really* have skills that are 1000 times harder to obtain than an engineer, justifying a 1000x pay ratio to the engineer?
A pointless question since CEOs are not paid 100 times what an engineer makes, let alone 1000.
I doubt you could really make a case for much more than 10 times.
And yes, the CEO is earning that money. That is simple economics.
Never mind that Joseph Lieberman, VP Candidate for the Marxist party, wanted to cut it to ZERO and threatened to do so if the SEC passed accountability rules that he opposed--- rules that would have uncovered ENRON much sooner.
This little bit of hypocrisy is completely lost on the bedwetting liberals in this country...
Savings bonds. I am going to retire a million in 40 years at the age of 61. It doesn't take much: $150 a month or so.
Seriously, you can do a lot better than that. The choices aren't bonds OR dotcom stocks! There's a lot of other investment types out there.
Go read Buffettology or any of the good books on Warren Buffett (or just read his writing on the berkshire hathaway website.) You won't find a more conservative investor than him, and you can do a lot better return, and a lot earlier retirement with prudent common stock buying.
And the great thing is-- in a bear market like this one there are some great deals out there. We've gone from "screw this insurance company, I'm buying fiber optics" to "screw this insurance company, I'm buying cash". Which means that in 1998 there were great deals on insurance companies, and in 2002 there are also great deals on insurance companies.... and hell, an insurance company is about as reliable as a government bond. (Once you understand how they work.)
Go read the typical employee non-disclosure agreements and contracts: it is little more than thinly veiled modern day indentured servitude.
That's funny. I have worked for microsoft and there was nothing there that took away my rights. Yeah, sometimes they are a bit broad with the IP definitions, but usually they are reasonable and if they aren't go work for someone else.
Seriously people, the U.S. is rife with corruption and apathy.
Yes, its called Liberalism. People too apathetic and to lazy to realize thier advocating Marxism. Not that the idiot christians in the republican party are any better.
Of course, they'll never teach Ayn Rand in schools. That would be too dangerous!
Re:It's unfortunate that it's no longer legal...
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Yet another way that liberal "tax them to hell, they're all too rich anyway" bigots have killed people.
Its time to eliminate progressive taxation-- its institutionalized bigotry.
This is why the free market always fixes problems-- it took care of Enron, Global Crossing and Tyco rather fast, and exerted its maximum penalty- death, on the companies.
While congress is a bunch of jack asses that do more harm than good and never get anything done that actually helps people.
Its time for a constitutional ammendment that for every line of law added to the US Code, two lines of previous law must be removed, until the US code is no more than 5,000 pages in total (or some character count that's a better representation.)
This country was supposed to have a revolution every so often , and people were supposed to be the ones running it. Now we have a government out of control, trying to eliminate any participation of the people and eliminate our human rights.
WAKE UP!
Where are the americans? It seems the majority have lost sight of liberty, libertarianism and the idea that america was supposed to be.
Its worth pointing out that the guys threatening to eliminate the SECs funding were non other than Billy Tauzin and Joseph Lieberman.
Yep, our local Enron crusader and the last Dem VP candidate came down FIRMLY on the side of eliminating the SEC.
And now they are shock-- SHOCKED!-- that fraud has gone on.
Funny how liberals seem to just ignore this (And republicans too, but republicans see that the free market actually worked and corrected the problem swiftly and effectively, unlike government.)
Re:we're talking CEOs of large corporations (Re:ju
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If you think an apartment in NY is absurd compensation for the job Jack Welch did, then...
IF you think Jack Welch didn't work damn hard at GE then you are ignorant.
Hell, his efforts there are well known.
There's no excuse for you commenting on something such as that-- he well earned his compensation.
In fact, the whole reason he got the compensation plan he did was it benefitted the company to defer the compensation until after he retired.
That liberal idiots have managed to convince him to give back that money is a shame.
I'm slamming him because he thinks he deserves a lot of money for effort alone.
He never said that. He said he deserves the rewards of his effort-- the profits of the company he created.
And he's right.
Its the whiners about high CEO pay who think they deserve the same amount of reward for the same amount of effort-- except that their effort is unskilled!
Sheesh.
Oh, and your definition of fraud is, well, fradulent.
You should buy a book on valuing companies ( there are lots of them, "Buffettology" is a good one) before you make absurd claims about what a company is worth.
There are a dozen CEOs better than you out there who would work for 1/4 your salary.
Spoken like someone who has no clue what a CEO does.
Granted, across the whole nation there proabably are a dozen that will do that for that one position-- but not for every CEO position.
The number of people qualified to be CEO who will do the job for a pittance are rather small.
Hell, Ben & Jerries tried to hire just such a CEO.
They only needed one not a dozen. For a year they couldn't find someone to take the job. And the guy they did find I think was retired and doing it as a lark.
No, this is another one of those silly ideas that people who think CEOs don't actually earn their money foster. DO you realize that you're fostering marxism? Or do you think there's a difference between liberalism and marxism in this country?
Its quite interesting how the liberal movement has been coopted, but I digress.
Really this all amounts to arguing about marxist propaganda-- the working class is oppressed! management does no real work and exploits your labors! Look at the loans management gets! Don't you feel cheated???
Yes, they earn it. At least every one of the dozen or so CEOs I've known personally, or known people who knew personally do. Including Bill Gates.
Wether you're an entrepreneur or Mr. Gates, you work hard. I'm sure Gates doesn't work as hard now that he's not CEO, but it is not a 9-5 job.
Maybe there are some companies where the guy works 9-5 and takes every weekend off- but those are not going to be companies that are growing, or they are situations where the guy put in years and years of hard work to get the place running well enough that he could work normal hours.
Certainly some guy who inherits a company may inherit one that the prior guy built into a well running ship and he can get away with slacking off for a couple years before it falls apart. But he'll either have to start working hard, or he'll be an ex-CEO. At the minimum, its a 60 hour week for any company... and the guys who play golf on wednesdays (except doctors) are actually probably putting 60 hours in cause they work weekends and really are actually doing business during those trips and lunches.
There are people who struggle all their lives working two and three jobs trying to feed their families who never rise above poverty. What about them?
They deserve what they get. These people chose to have a family, they chose to have a new car, credit card debt and a house too big for them.
Anyone with more than one kid is just blowing money out without responsibility. Kids are really expensive.
You choose to spend all your money, then you don't get to complain about not having any money.
Anyone who is prudent with their money will be able to retire early.
By the way, what makes you think that everyone who works hard should be compensated the same? What possible system of wealth redistribution could do that-- other than a brutal oppressive one like the USSR tried?
If our entreprenuer friend goes bust, I'll be upset. But you won't hear him saying that we owe him something because he worked hard.
Ha!
You have a bunch of kids and poor spending habits-- you DESERVE to have to work hard. That's the choice you made. I got no problem with it, but come to me and say I owe you something and you'll get nothing but contempt from me.
The High-level execs who were the recipients of these corporate "gifts" ARE Junior!
That's your form of bigotry. We already knew that.
It seems silly that you can't tell that an entrepreneur and someone who works at microsoft are not that different of an animal. Nobody at microsoft got a silvers spoon-- they all earn it. (I know, I've worked there.)
Slashdot Mirror
This is because you're ignorant of the facts.
The police do not protect people, they investigate crimes after the fact. They are not objective, they are agents of the prosecution (and so are judges these days- ever seen the ads "I sent more guys to death row last year than any other judge, reelect me!")
In a competitive environment the police would not be competing against each other, but for your business.
The only reason robocop was like that was because they were a state granted monopoly-- robocop is the ultimate expression of the current system. You think the cops don't have the same 4th directive? They commit crime all the time to protect each other in every city in the country.
And you want to KEEP them dishonest?
I think legislators need a salary initially. make it the same as the current one, and then lower it over time (make this part of the constitution)
After all, it WILL be a full time job assembling bills to remove all the cruft from the books. We need to clear out the garbage before we're ready to consider a regular state of affairs.
Think there should also be a rule about for every word added to the state code, three words have to be deleted somewhere else, until the state code is brought down to a reasonable size.
Nothing balanced about that.
Mike Huban is a raving marxist idiot who redefines words to fit his agenda, willy nilly.
Might as well have posted a link to the Chrisitan Bible as disproof of libertarianism.
Don't forget that those 20k represent a small fraction of libertarians in the US. When they move there and start enacting change, their numbers will quickly swell as others move to join them... they will be 200k within a decade, if they are successful.
Nobody's advocating sedition. Secession might be necessary, but that would only be if the federal government engages in, effectively, sedition.
Yes, nothing will save social security when the democrats ane republicans raid it regularly.
The very sad thing is that the marxists (read democracts) go on and on about Enron when the fraud committed by enron was a small amount over a couple years and was quickly cautght.
The fraud that is the social security system has been going on for 50 years, and is ignored by these same people!
And what's even more unacceptable is that nobody lost money in enron who didn't voluntarily take on the risk.
You refuse to pay into the social security pyramid scheme and you go to jail or get shot.
Personally, when compared to the wholesale fraud that is the Federal government, the "dishonesty" of CEOs pales. At least with companies there are checks and balances-- and anyone who loses money was taking a risk to begin with.
When the feds come knocking, they are forcing you to "invest" at gunpoint.
You don't think all the bankrupt morons will tax the hell out of you when you finally retire
No they won't.
They already take half of everyone's income. But they can't do much more because already the wealthy are leaving the country, and as they leave they take the future economic growth with them.
Thus there will always be political pressure keeping taxes "reasonable"...
And if they become unreasonable, land is cheap in belize and they will sell you citizenship for $40,000. Everyone speaks english, the country is politically stable and the climate is not too bad. And the belizian dollar is tied to the US dollar.
$452,890.
That's what a million dollars 40 years from now is worth in todays dollars.
Or put another way, thats what you'll have to retire on-- which is plenty enough to retire on.
This is for all the math challenged liberals who will post decrying your retirement plan claiming that a million dollars won't be worth nothing in 40 years.
Course, those who want to be poor will be.
Personally, if I had $452,890 right now, I could stop work today and retire. Travel the world and in 40 years my net worth would be at least $6,768,454.94.
People just don't do the math much-- as you pointed out, you can retire on only $150 a month in 40 years.
Imagine how much sooner if you invested the money in stocks returning %15+ and put in $400 a month?
But people would rather lease a car for $400 a month than retire in 10 years or so.
Does a CEO *really* have skills that are 1000 times harder to obtain than an engineer, justifying a 1000x pay ratio to the engineer?
A pointless question since CEOs are not paid 100 times what an engineer makes, let alone 1000.
I doubt you could really make a case for much more than 10 times.
And yes, the CEO is earning that money. That is simple economics.
I meant to say, if our entrepreneur friend goes bust, "He'll be upset" not "I'll be upset". Doh.
Also, I often type to fast and say "care" when I mean "car".
Never mind that Joseph Lieberman, VP Candidate for the Marxist party, wanted to cut it to ZERO and threatened to do so if the SEC passed accountability rules that he opposed--- rules that would have uncovered ENRON much sooner.
This little bit of hypocrisy is completely lost on the bedwetting liberals in this country...
lets face it people, we'll never see such a drunken orgy again, while we're still young enough to enjoy it!
That depends. Clinton was smart enough to keep greenspan. And then Bush did as well.
As long as we can continue to cut taxes and have a rational fed chairman, we'll see that party rather soon.
Look at historical bear markets over the last 100 years-- they are getting shorter and shorter in duration.
In other words, he'll be able to afford to go to a hospital when he has a stroke, verses the alternative of getting on a 4 year waiting list?
I don't see how actually getting medical treatment is so bad.
(YEs, people in canada wait decades for heart work after a stroke.)
Savings bonds. I am going to retire a million in 40 years at the age of 61. It doesn't take much: $150 a month or so.
Seriously, you can do a lot better than that. The choices aren't bonds OR dotcom stocks! There's a lot of other investment types out there.
Go read Buffettology or any of the good books on Warren Buffett (or just read his writing on the berkshire hathaway website.) You won't find a more conservative investor than him, and you can do a lot better return, and a lot earlier retirement with prudent common stock buying.
And the great thing is-- in a bear market like this one there are some great deals out there. We've gone from "screw this insurance company, I'm buying fiber optics" to "screw this insurance company, I'm buying cash". Which means that in 1998 there were great deals on insurance companies, and in 2002 there are also great deals on insurance companies.... and hell, an insurance company is about as reliable as a government bond. (Once you understand how they work.)
And of course, if you don't like the anti-competition clause, you don't have to sign it!
Somehow these people think that they HAVE to take the job offered to them and that if they don't like the terms, but sign anyway, they are oppressed.
Sheesh, what sheep.
Go read the typical employee non-disclosure agreements and contracts: it is little more than thinly veiled modern day indentured servitude.
That's funny. I have worked for microsoft and there was nothing there that took away my rights. Yeah, sometimes they are a bit broad with the IP definitions, but usually they are reasonable and if they aren't go work for someone else.
Seriously people, the U.S. is rife with corruption and apathy.
Yes, its called Liberalism. People too apathetic and to lazy to realize thier advocating Marxism. Not that the idiot christians in the republican party are any better.
Of course, they'll never teach Ayn Rand in schools. That would be too dangerous!
Yet another way that liberal "tax them to hell, they're all too rich anyway" bigots have killed people.
Its time to eliminate progressive taxation-- its institutionalized bigotry.
This is why the free market always fixes problems-- it took care of Enron, Global Crossing and Tyco rather fast, and exerted its maximum penalty- death, on the companies.
While congress is a bunch of jack asses that do more harm than good and never get anything done that actually helps people.
Its time for a constitutional ammendment that for every line of law added to the US Code, two lines of previous law must be removed, until the US code is no more than 5,000 pages in total (or some character count that's a better representation.)
This country was supposed to have a revolution every so often , and people were supposed to be the ones running it. Now we have a government out of control, trying to eliminate any participation of the people and eliminate our human rights.
WAKE UP!
Where are the americans? It seems the majority have lost sight of liberty, libertarianism and the idea that america was supposed to be.
Its worth pointing out that the guys threatening to eliminate the SECs funding were non other than Billy Tauzin and Joseph Lieberman.
Yep, our local Enron crusader and the last Dem VP candidate came down FIRMLY on the side of eliminating the SEC.
And now they are shock-- SHOCKED!-- that fraud has gone on.
Funny how liberals seem to just ignore this (And republicans too, but republicans see that the free market actually worked and corrected the problem swiftly and effectively, unlike government.)
If you think an apartment in NY is absurd compensation for the job Jack Welch did, then...
IF you think Jack Welch didn't work damn hard at GE then you are ignorant.
Hell, his efforts there are well known.
There's no excuse for you commenting on something such as that-- he well earned his compensation.
In fact, the whole reason he got the compensation plan he did was it benefitted the company to defer the compensation until after he retired.
That liberal idiots have managed to convince him to give back that money is a shame.
But he did nothing wrong. He earned what he got.
Sheesh.
What is this, russia?
I'm slamming him because he thinks he deserves a lot of money for effort alone.
He never said that. He said he deserves the rewards of his effort-- the profits of the company he created.
And he's right.
Its the whiners about high CEO pay who think they deserve the same amount of reward for the same amount of effort-- except that their effort is unskilled!
Sheesh.
Oh, and your definition of fraud is, well, fradulent.
You should buy a book on valuing companies ( there are lots of them, "Buffettology" is a good one) before you make absurd claims about what a company is worth.
There are a dozen CEOs better than you out there who would work for 1/4 your salary.
Spoken like someone who has no clue what a CEO does.
Granted, across the whole nation there proabably are a dozen that will do that for that one position-- but not for every CEO position.
The number of people qualified to be CEO who will do the job for a pittance are rather small.
Hell, Ben & Jerries tried to hire just such a CEO.
They only needed one not a dozen. For a year they couldn't find someone to take the job. And the guy they did find I think was retired and doing it as a lark.
No, this is another one of those silly ideas that people who think CEOs don't actually earn their money foster. DO you realize that you're fostering marxism? Or do you think there's a difference between liberalism and marxism in this country?
Its quite interesting how the liberal movement has been coopted, but I digress.
Really this all amounts to arguing about marxist propaganda-- the working class is oppressed! management does no real work and exploits your labors! Look at the loans management gets! Don't you feel cheated???
Yes, they earn it. At least every one of the dozen or so CEOs I've known personally, or known people who knew personally do. Including Bill Gates.
Wether you're an entrepreneur or Mr. Gates, you work hard. I'm sure Gates doesn't work as hard now that he's not CEO, but it is not a 9-5 job.
Maybe there are some companies where the guy works 9-5 and takes every weekend off- but those are not going to be companies that are growing, or they are situations where the guy put in years and years of hard work to get the place running well enough that he could work normal hours.
Certainly some guy who inherits a company may inherit one that the prior guy built into a well running ship and he can get away with slacking off for a couple years before it falls apart. But he'll either have to start working hard, or he'll be an ex-CEO. At the minimum, its a 60 hour week for any company... and the guys who play golf on wednesdays (except doctors) are actually probably putting 60 hours in cause they work weekends and really are actually doing business during those trips and lunches.
There are people who struggle all their lives working two and three jobs trying to feed their families who never rise above poverty. What about them?
They deserve what they get. These people chose to have a family, they chose to have a new car, credit card debt and a house too big for them.
Anyone with more than one kid is just blowing money out without responsibility. Kids are really expensive.
You choose to spend all your money, then you don't get to complain about not having any money.
Anyone who is prudent with their money will be able to retire early.
By the way, what makes you think that everyone who works hard should be compensated the same? What possible system of wealth redistribution could do that-- other than a brutal oppressive one like the USSR tried?
If our entreprenuer friend goes bust, I'll be upset. But you won't hear him saying that we owe him something because he worked hard.
Ha!
You have a bunch of kids and poor spending habits-- you DESERVE to have to work hard. That's the choice you made. I got no problem with it, but come to me and say I owe you something and you'll get nothing but contempt from me.
The High-level execs who were the recipients of these corporate "gifts" ARE Junior!
That's your form of bigotry. We already knew that.
It seems silly that you can't tell that an entrepreneur and someone who works at microsoft are not that different of an animal. Nobody at microsoft got a silvers spoon-- they all earn it. (I know, I've worked there.)