Sounds to me like the guy doesn't want plurality, he just doesn't want competition.
Nobody wants to deal with competition — not even yourself, such as when you are courting a girl or applying for a new job. The guy is willing to compete, obviously, and is well positioned to do so, but not against a taxpayer-funded entity...
This, BTW, is similar to what people dislike about "public option" in the proposed healthcare overhaul — that it will either suck rocks (and money) as the US Post Office, or suppress private sector competition as BBC does. Or both...
And I'll say to you again, there is no such law in the UK and yet the banks were quite happy to engage in similar stupid practices
UK banks bought plenty of "toxic" financial paper from the US banks. Also, the America's real estate bubble fueled similar exuberance elsewhere — simply by example. I'm not saying, they are faultless, just that they aren't the main culprits here — they were doing, what they were supposed to, and it would've worked, had it not been for the government's meddling.
At least, UK's Barkleys survived well enough to take over America's Lehman Brothers and remain solvent without the government's support (and all of the attached strings)...
We need to pay back for two irresponsible wars on foreign soil. Is that what you are trying to say?
Those both cost peanuts compared even to the already existing entitlements — less then one third of the budget is spent on military every year by the US. Adding Obamacare to the budget will make our military spending even smaller relative to everything else.
So, no, what I, and others, who know facts and can count, are trying to say, is that if a totalitarian government is ever imposed on the US, it will be by the Democrats, not Republicans... And the National-Socialist health care would be a big step in that direction.
Also, we've spent the last decade building a lot of big, really expensive mobile hardware, training staff to use it
Neah. Military budget is dwarfed by the spending on "social services" like Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, etcaetera. Department of Defense's entire 2008-spending was $741 billion — or only about 30% of the total tax receipts... Adding Obamacare to the Federal spending will shrink the share of military spending even further...
The joke, that our government is a big insurance company with defense business on the side, is quite old...
After all, damaging though it must have been to the US economy, it wouldn't have had such a dramatic global effect without those toxic financial instruments, and, as far as I understand it, those were a completely private sector invention that decent oversight would have prevented.
This is, what I was referring to with my "car analogy". There is nothing any more wrong with those private sector inventions, then with a 300 HP engine. Using the fast engine is only a problem, when the road is bad — the faster you go, the harder it is to stop.
Those inventions were all predicated on (almost all) mortgages being solid — just as you would expect the read to be clear of obstacles, when you enter a turn at 45MPh. The artificially high rate of people unable to keep up with their payments was unexpected...
Sure enough, both parties and multiple people are/were at fault. But the primary culprits are the Congressional Democrats of the 1999. The Republicans' fault is in not recognizing the problem as fatally flawed and to fight it more. McCain, for example, did try to raise an alarm in 2005, but no one was payed attention and he failed to sound grave enough and attract enough attention.
Both parties agree, that high rates of home ownership is good for the country — sentiment derived straight from Cato The Elder's "tillers of the soil are the best citizens and the bravest soldiers". But it takes a Democrat to simply give a house to the poor, regardless of whether they can afford it, as if that immediately transforms them into a responsible home-owner, that makes a good citizen.
It started with attempts to give mortgages with no money down (the poor, went the argument, are solvent, they just can't afford the down-payment). This devastated entire communities (some of them hitherto well off), when the poor moved in, then defaulted and walked away from the properties, in which they had no equity.
That was, I think, 70ies-80ies. In the 90ies, that folly was avoided, but still — the people, who could not afford them were given mortgages... They usually did have some money invested (down-payments, however small), which delayed the bubble-bursting.
In the end, to expand on my off-topicness further, it all comes down to whether the Government can help people — without hurting them (or others) more — even if everybody's intentions are perfectly clean and noble. And I — and the rest of the Libertarians — say, it can not. Nor is it legally allowed to despite multiple precedents:
I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution, which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.
James Madison — the co-writer of the Constitution
FDR had to reshuffle the Supreme Court, before he was able to push his "New Deal" agenda, that is today the law of the land, through... But legality aside, it is simply a stupid thing to do...
By the same logic you can't blame the bankers who ruined the world economy
You can't blame them, but for a different reason. The seeds of the devastation were planted in 1999, when the congressional Democrats forced Fannie Mae and Freddi Mac to lower their lending standards — suddenly, millions of people, who hitherto would not qualify for mortgage, were able to obtain one. The same supply of the real estate now faced a spiked demand, which in our highly efficient capitalist economy resulted in spike of both prices and building activity to meet the demand.
Unfortunately, helping the poor qualify for mortgage does not help them pay it off. That the Democrats were able to blame Republicans (whose only fault was in not fighting against it hard enough) for this is a spectacular feat of mind-manipulation...
What about the much-maligned easing of banking regulations? Nope, that's not, what caused the problem — even if it exacerbated it. Would you blame a powerful engine for an accident, when the car slams into a log lying across the highway? Sure, if it weren't running at high speed, the driver could've stopped safely without hitting the obstruction. But the blame is solidly on those, who placed the log across the road, not on the car-maker, that gave you the speedy vehicle...
Too bad, they don't seem to find any time for the majorinvasion of privacy by the government, that may well become law, if efforts to derail "Obamacare" fail...
One can simply not sign-up with Facebook, but "opting out" of national-socialist health care will be impossible... And yet, the ACLU and EFF are silent — are they, perhaps, being partisan and rooting for the proposal to succeed, privacy be damned? Well, ACLU are busy helping America's enemies identify Americans, who fought them. But EFF? The threat I'm talking about — sharing of income and medical data electronically between State and Federal government agencies — is right up their valley...
Any sufficiently far-left philosophy is indistinguishable from a far-right philosophy.
No, darling. This is not going to cut it... A catchy sound-bite still requires substantiation... Where is yours? Which "far-right" regime do you find "indistinguishable" from or even really similar to from Chavez' far left, for example?
Who is, in your opinion, the far right philosopher, who advocates ideas "indistinguishable" from Chavez'?
Ever think the high ways for collectors are because it IS a tedius mindnumbing job that they'd have a hard time filling and keeping filled without such high pay?
It is not any more mind-numbing, than, say, a store cashier's job. My wife used to work as one — in a very busy New York department store — while in high school. She was making just above the minimum wage... And graduated valedictorian. I bet, she was nicer to the customers, than most of the "professional" toll-collectors are, too...
Temporary employees are not great, turnover costs more than having steady employees.
Sure. That's true about all jobs. But a small-office secretary, for another example, still makes about $10-15/hour and her pay is linked to her performance, rather than to how long she held the job (which is the deal with union-jobs nation-wide). Only a monopoly can so freely push their costs to the customers. The money wasted by this mismanagement (and outright corruption) would've been enough to finance another bridge or tunnel between New York and New Jersey...
Yes, it takes government money, but more in the way that Blackwater takes government money than the way the US Army takes government money.
Except Blackwater faces real competition (from similar outfits world-wide), while MTA is enjoying government-like monopoly power over millions of people.
In a parallel sub-thread I argue, that benefits of having a single outfit run the "natural monopoly" is dwarfed by the losses from stupidity, complacency, and outright corruption, that inevitably befall such outfits.
One only needs to recall AT&T, and what it did with its monopoly on "long-distance" phone service... But, at least, AT&T was profitable...
The bridge and tunnel authority, which is actually now owned by the MTA, has always been profitable
Their ability to raise tolls at whim surely helps. In Massachusetts, the toll-collector's salary can reach $90K. In New York it is very good money as well — for a job, that requires nothing, but high school diploma. Why does it have to be a cushy union-backed position, rather than something like burger-flipping, that a youngster (or someone down on their luck temporarily) can always count on? It does not have to be this way, of course, but it is, because MTA need not compete with anybody (unlike burger-chains)...
The problem isn't that it's government-run. It's that it's a monopoly, and you can't go elsewhere.
You are absolutely right. But the two things are closely related — when a private company grows into a monopoly (like Microsoft), it gets more and more scrutiny and additional rules are imposed on it. But government-created monopolies (like AT&T of the past, E-ZPass and Post Office of the present, single-payer health system of the future) get a free pass and enjoy the worst (for the rest of us) of both worlds: government-like monopoly and private business-like mandate to maximize profit.
But you can't go installing 2 sets of train-tracks everywhere, so the monopoly is a necessary evil.
Actually, I don't buy this argument. You don't need train-tracks "everywhere" — you just need it "in some places". For example, I'm moving to NJ, with the house being nearly equidistant from train stations of two different branches of the railroad. If those belonged to different (and competing!) owners, the service/price would've been a lot better on both of them.
The "natural monopoly" argument has run its course — history of Capitalism in the US shows, that the "waste" eliminated by granting someone a monopoly is dwarfed by the losses resulting from the complacency, corruption, and inefficiency of the "lucky" winner. (Stemming, I might add, in no small part, from the corruption and stupidity of the monopoly-granting politicians.)
Yes, it may seem stupid to tear up asphalt to run a parallel set of gas-pipes along the street, but once you realize, that there is no way to force the utility company to up the gas pressure (high-efficiency tankless boilers and heaters, for example, require high pressure to be able to deliver heat on demand), being able to switch to a competitor (without spending years petitioning "Public Utilities Commission") may seem like very good idea...
Not only did this guy get no jail or even a fine, but he kept his job?
Actually, this is, how things are supposed to be. No conviction — no punishment (of any kind), just ask the folks arguing for the release of Guantanamo detainees, for a flame-baiting example...
Our understanding of this story is purely one-sided...
you ever thought of what would happen without government? Lessee...
Oh, wow, a straw-man!.. Let's see...
There are a few things the Federal Government ought to be running, but it was already running all of them before the Federal Income Tax was (re-)introduced in 1913 — the highest rate being 7% on incomes above $500,000 ($10 million 2007 dollars).
The beast has been growing ever since and has reached scary dimensions by now. It is even trying to consume our health care now — whether it succeeds at that or not, that it is even trying is bad enough. It simply defies all comprehension, that — after the decades of mediocrity, outright failures, and spectacular cost over-runs of highways, Postal Service, Public Schools, MediCare — anybody still holds the opinion, that a Government taking over a part of life from private sector will improve it...
A music boombox is very much a luxury good. TV couldn't be since even my grandparents had 2 TV sets.
TV-sets, being more complicated, are more of a "luxury", than a boombox. So, right there you contradict yourself. It seems, your definition of "luxury" boils down to: "what you did not have access to as a child". Sorry, that's non-sense. There is nothing "luxury" about clothes that fit, furniture that does not creak.
Heck, there is nothing luxurious about a car even, and yet a Soviet delegation to the US in the 1960ies did not believe, that a parking lot next to a local university somewhere was intended for the student's cars — whom are they kidding, students can't afford cars!
That is very much anything goes capitalism. Everything is at the market and has its price, from bandits to the government.
False. That may be your definition of laissez-faire, but it is wrong. Any and all proponents of free markets not only leave law enforcement to the Government (including enforcement of intellectual property rights), but insist, it should do a better job (and not get distracted by providing, say, welfare, roads, or public schools).
Also a thing of a free market.
Yes, yes. Wouldn't it be terrific, if all your opponents were the straw-men erected by your Illiberal professors and yourself? So easy to knock-off, aren't they?
Meat was more difficult to get and there was an extreme shortage of luxury goods
Meat was nearly impossible to find — unless one lived in a capital (preferably Moscow, but regional capitals were Ok too). This is not a lie, this is the truth. "Luxury goods"? What's that? A music boombox? A TV? A decent-looking dress or a pair of slacks? Medicine, that works? None of that is "luxury" by any stretch of imagination, but getting any of it was very difficult, involved multiple trips to various stores, having to personally know the salesperson, etc.
Russia in the nineties is a perfect example of laissez-faire capitalism.
Not at all. The foundation and corner-stone of Capitalism — laissez-faire or not quite — is a functional legal system, that defends all participants from coercion and enforces contracts. None of that true in the 90ies Russia — still is not true today. Businessmen were forced to hire "roofs" (protection racketeers) and those closest to the government officials were able to take over the public assets. That's not capitalism at all, much less "laissez-faire". Do you have any other false "examples"?
Marx' observations weren't entirely bogus, and those may be studied in Business Schools, indeed. His conclusions tended to be bogus if not outright immoral, though...
And this is why I would *NEVER* give the MTA or any other similar organization free will to...
You are getting off-topic. The reason I posted this example was to preemptively counter inevitable lamentations, how "unfettered capitalism" (of AT&T) is bad, and how "public policy needs to protect private business from its own excesses" (quote from Barney Frank — "my" congressman).
This uncontested absurdity of yesterday is already an acceptable slogan of today. Accepted "by degrees, by precedent, by implication, by erosion, by default, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other — until the day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology," — to continue Ayn's Rand's quotation.
So, here was the example of the government agency being the worst offender — by far... And yet, people want to keep trying — be it health-care (woa-woa, flamebait!), car-making, or cellular service provision, why do the idiots think, that getting the government take over an industry is going to improve anything?
How exactly is that outrageous? The MTA might change their terms, and they will make an effort to let people know about it in various ways
"The ways" — if any — will be determined by them. The changes will go in effect in 7 days. You could drive to airport, leave for a week-long vacation, come back and drive home under a completely new contract — without knowing it... And, unlike with the wireless companies, you can not switch to competition in MTA's case...
Most corporate terms of services have similar clauses
Citation needed. I'm yet to see anything so bad and blatant...
It's not so much about keeping GM alive, as keeping people in a job.
Sorry, this oft-heard argument is, actually, quite retarded. "Keeping people employed" is not the goal. "Keeping people doing something useful" is what we ought to aim for... There is a fine distinction here, which is not well-known to people, because it only appears, when the government begins to meddle with capitalism — we are blessed with such situations being fairly rare. Private businesses are unlikely to keep employing useless workers, which is why we tend to think, "employed" and "productive" are equivalent — they aren't...
In this case, even the most famous example of the government paying one person to fill up holes dug by another person paid to dig them would've been less useless (and less damaging to all, including environment), than keeping GM alive.
clause that allows them to skull fuck you and charge for the privilege. Such is the blessing of unfettered capitalism.
After the governmental "scull-fucking" of the tobacco companies, I'm, actually, rooting for the "corporations" and remain surprised, the Atlas has not really shrugged just yet... But such is the curse of Fascist "capitalism", where the government tells businesses and people, what they can do... Yes, people too — what consenting adults are doing in the privacy of their home, is no one's business. Unless they decide to renovate the home, in which case, the Fire, the Zoning, and the Building Inspectors have to approve and the Tax Assessor becomes very interested too...
Sorry, I prefer the "unfettered capitalism" of the past — at least, it was efficient and the same rules, however difficult, applied to everyone.
While private companies' contracts may seem outrageous, nothing beats the government agencies at this game:
a) The MTA may change the "FAST LANE Program Terms and Conditions" at any time by giving customers notice thereof. The terms and conditions shall become effective seven (7) days after such notice has been given. No written notice is required, and you hereby waive any requirement that written notice be provided. Such notice may be given through any means, including, but not limited to, advertising such notice in the media, posting such notice on message boards along the MTA's toll roadways, or otherwise, as determined by the MTA. If you have provided an electronic mailing address to the MTA with your application, you authorize that such notice may be provided by sending such notice to that electronic mail address, in the MTA's discretion.
Slashdot Mirror
Nobody wants to deal with competition — not even yourself, such as when you are courting a girl or applying for a new job. The guy is willing to compete, obviously, and is well positioned to do so, but not against a taxpayer-funded entity...
This, BTW, is similar to what people dislike about "public option" in the proposed healthcare overhaul — that it will either suck rocks (and money) as the US Post Office, or suppress private sector competition as BBC does. Or both...
UK banks bought plenty of "toxic" financial paper from the US banks. Also, the America's real estate bubble fueled similar exuberance elsewhere — simply by example. I'm not saying, they are faultless, just that they aren't the main culprits here — they were doing, what they were supposed to, and it would've worked, had it not been for the government's meddling.
At least, UK's Barkleys survived well enough to take over America's Lehman Brothers and remain solvent without the government's support (and all of the attached strings)...
Ares was a nasty god of bloodlust and slaughter. Why would anyone name a, supposedly, peaceful civilian program after him?
Those both cost peanuts compared even to the already existing entitlements — less then one third of the budget is spent on military every year by the US. Adding Obamacare to the budget will make our military spending even smaller relative to everything else.
So, no, what I, and others, who know facts and can count, are trying to say, is that if a totalitarian government is ever imposed on the US, it will be by the Democrats, not Republicans... And the National-Socialist health care would be a big step in that direction.
Neah. Military budget is dwarfed by the spending on "social services" like Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, etcaetera. Department of Defense's entire 2008-spending was $741 billion — or only about 30% of the total tax receipts... Adding Obamacare to the Federal spending will shrink the share of military spending even further...
The joke, that our government is a big insurance company with defense business on the side, is quite old...
This is, what I was referring to with my "car analogy". There is nothing any more wrong with those private sector inventions, then with a 300 HP engine. Using the fast engine is only a problem, when the road is bad — the faster you go, the harder it is to stop.
Those inventions were all predicated on (almost all) mortgages being solid — just as you would expect the read to be clear of obstacles, when you enter a turn at 45MPh. The artificially high rate of people unable to keep up with their payments was unexpected...
Sure enough, both parties and multiple people are/were at fault. But the primary culprits are the Congressional Democrats of the 1999. The Republicans' fault is in not recognizing the problem as fatally flawed and to fight it more. McCain, for example, did try to raise an alarm in 2005, but no one was payed attention and he failed to sound grave enough and attract enough attention.
Both parties agree, that high rates of home ownership is good for the country — sentiment derived straight from Cato The Elder's "tillers of the soil are the best citizens and the bravest soldiers". But it takes a Democrat to simply give a house to the poor, regardless of whether they can afford it, as if that immediately transforms them into a responsible home-owner, that makes a good citizen.
It started with attempts to give mortgages with no money down (the poor, went the argument, are solvent, they just can't afford the down-payment). This devastated entire communities (some of them hitherto well off), when the poor moved in, then defaulted and walked away from the properties, in which they had no equity.
That was, I think, 70ies-80ies. In the 90ies, that folly was avoided, but still — the people, who could not afford them were given mortgages... They usually did have some money invested (down-payments, however small), which delayed the bubble-bursting.
In the end, to expand on my off-topicness further, it all comes down to whether the Government can help people — without hurting them (or others) more — even if everybody's intentions are perfectly clean and noble. And I — and the rest of the Libertarians — say, it can not. Nor is it legally allowed to despite multiple precedents:
FDR had to reshuffle the Supreme Court, before he was able to push his "New Deal" agenda, that is today the law of the land, through... But legality aside, it is simply a stupid thing to do...
We need it to pay for health-care for you and the millions of uninsured... Is that, what you were trying to say?
You can't blame them, but for a different reason. The seeds of the devastation were planted in 1999, when the congressional Democrats forced Fannie Mae and Freddi Mac to lower their lending standards — suddenly, millions of people, who hitherto would not qualify for mortgage, were able to obtain one. The same supply of the real estate now faced a spiked demand, which in our highly efficient capitalist economy resulted in spike of both prices and building activity to meet the demand.
Unfortunately, helping the poor qualify for mortgage does not help them pay it off. That the Democrats were able to blame Republicans (whose only fault was in not fighting against it hard enough) for this is a spectacular feat of mind-manipulation...
What about the much-maligned easing of banking regulations? Nope, that's not, what caused the problem — even if it exacerbated it. Would you blame a powerful engine for an accident, when the car slams into a log lying across the highway? Sure, if it weren't running at high speed, the driver could've stopped safely without hitting the obstruction. But the blame is solidly on those, who placed the log across the road, not on the car-maker, that gave you the speedy vehicle...
Too bad, they don't seem to find any time for the major invasion of privacy by the government, that may well become law, if efforts to derail "Obamacare" fail...
One can simply not sign-up with Facebook, but "opting out" of national-socialist health care will be impossible... And yet, the ACLU and EFF are silent — are they, perhaps, being partisan and rooting for the proposal to succeed, privacy be damned? Well, ACLU are busy helping America's enemies identify Americans, who fought them. But EFF? The threat I'm talking about — sharing of income and medical data electronically between State and Federal government agencies — is right up their valley...
No, darling. This is not going to cut it... A catchy sound-bite still requires substantiation... Where is yours? Which "far-right" regime do you find "indistinguishable" from or even really similar to from Chavez' far left, for example?
Who is, in your opinion, the far right philosopher, who advocates ideas "indistinguishable" from Chavez'?
Try mentioning Bill Ayers on Obama's page...
It is not any more mind-numbing, than, say, a store cashier's job. My wife used to work as one — in a very busy New York department store — while in high school. She was making just above the minimum wage... And graduated valedictorian. I bet, she was nicer to the customers, than most of the "professional" toll-collectors are, too...
Sure. That's true about all jobs. But a small-office secretary, for another example, still makes about $10-15/hour and her pay is linked to her performance, rather than to how long she held the job (which is the deal with union-jobs nation-wide). Only a monopoly can so freely push their costs to the customers. The money wasted by this mismanagement (and outright corruption) would've been enough to finance another bridge or tunnel between New York and New Jersey...
Except Blackwater faces real competition (from similar outfits world-wide), while MTA is enjoying government-like monopoly power over millions of people.
In a parallel sub-thread I argue, that benefits of having a single outfit run the "natural monopoly" is dwarfed by the losses from stupidity, complacency, and outright corruption, that inevitably befall such outfits.
One only needs to recall AT&T, and what it did with its monopoly on "long-distance" phone service... But, at least, AT&T was profitable...
Their ability to raise tolls at whim surely helps. In Massachusetts, the toll-collector's salary can reach $90K. In New York it is very good money as well — for a job, that requires nothing, but high school diploma. Why does it have to be a cushy union-backed position, rather than something like burger-flipping, that a youngster (or someone down on their luck temporarily) can always count on? It does not have to be this way, of course, but it is, because MTA need not compete with anybody (unlike burger-chains)...
You are absolutely right. But the two things are closely related — when a private company grows into a monopoly (like Microsoft), it gets more and more scrutiny and additional rules are imposed on it. But government-created monopolies (like AT&T of the past, E-ZPass and Post Office of the present, single-payer health system of the future) get a free pass and enjoy the worst (for the rest of us) of both worlds: government-like monopoly and private business-like mandate to maximize profit.
Actually, I don't buy this argument. You don't need train-tracks "everywhere" — you just need it "in some places". For example, I'm moving to NJ, with the house being nearly equidistant from train stations of two different branches of the railroad. If those belonged to different (and competing!) owners, the service/price would've been a lot better on both of them.
The "natural monopoly" argument has run its course — history of Capitalism in the US shows, that the "waste" eliminated by granting someone a monopoly is dwarfed by the losses resulting from the complacency, corruption, and inefficiency of the "lucky" winner. (Stemming, I might add, in no small part, from the corruption and stupidity of the monopoly-granting politicians.)
Yes, it may seem stupid to tear up asphalt to run a parallel set of gas-pipes along the street, but once you realize, that there is no way to force the utility company to up the gas pressure (high-efficiency tankless boilers and heaters, for example, require high pressure to be able to deliver heat on demand), being able to switch to a competitor (without spending years petitioning "Public Utilities Commission") may seem like very good idea...
This is where one could say, once again, that government-run activities suck.
Watch, how pointing at this giant elephant in the room will sink this post's moderation into oblivion...
Actually, this is, how things are supposed to be. No conviction — no punishment (of any kind), just ask the folks arguing for the release of Guantanamo detainees, for a flame-baiting example...
Our understanding of this story is purely one-sided...
Oh, wow, a straw-man!.. Let's see...
There are a few things the Federal Government ought to be running, but it was already running all of them before the Federal Income Tax was (re-)introduced in 1913 — the highest rate being 7% on incomes above $500,000 ($10 million 2007 dollars).
The beast has been growing ever since and has reached scary dimensions by now. It is even trying to consume our health care now — whether it succeeds at that or not, that it is even trying is bad enough. It simply defies all comprehension, that — after the decades of mediocrity, outright failures, and spectacular cost over-runs of highways, Postal Service, Public Schools, MediCare — anybody still holds the opinion, that a Government taking over a part of life from private sector will improve it...
If we can't starve the beast of money, starve it of the talent. Your own...
TV-sets, being more complicated, are more of a "luxury", than a boombox. So, right there you contradict yourself. It seems, your definition of "luxury" boils down to: "what you did not have access to as a child". Sorry, that's non-sense. There is nothing "luxury" about clothes that fit, furniture that does not creak.
Heck, there is nothing luxurious about a car even, and yet a Soviet delegation to the US in the 1960ies did not believe, that a parking lot next to a local university somewhere was intended for the student's cars — whom are they kidding, students can't afford cars!
False. That may be your definition of laissez-faire, but it is wrong. Any and all proponents of free markets not only leave law enforcement to the Government (including enforcement of intellectual property rights), but insist, it should do a better job (and not get distracted by providing, say, welfare, roads, or public schools).
Yes, yes. Wouldn't it be terrific, if all your opponents were the straw-men erected by your Illiberal professors and yourself? So easy to knock-off, aren't they?
Meat was nearly impossible to find — unless one lived in a capital (preferably Moscow, but regional capitals were Ok too). This is not a lie, this is the truth. "Luxury goods"? What's that? A music boombox? A TV? A decent-looking dress or a pair of slacks? Medicine, that works? None of that is "luxury" by any stretch of imagination, but getting any of it was very difficult, involved multiple trips to various stores, having to personally know the salesperson, etc.
Not at all. The foundation and corner-stone of Capitalism — laissez-faire or not quite — is a functional legal system, that defends all participants from coercion and enforces contracts. None of that true in the 90ies Russia — still is not true today. Businessmen were forced to hire "roofs" (protection racketeers) and those closest to the government officials were able to take over the public assets. That's not capitalism at all, much less "laissez-faire". Do you have any other false "examples"?
Marx' observations weren't entirely bogus, and those may be studied in Business Schools, indeed. His conclusions tended to be bogus if not outright immoral, though...
You are getting off-topic. The reason I posted this example was to preemptively counter inevitable lamentations, how "unfettered capitalism" (of AT&T) is bad, and how "public policy needs to protect private business from its own excesses" (quote from Barney Frank — "my" congressman).
This uncontested absurdity of yesterday is already an acceptable slogan of today. Accepted "by degrees, by precedent, by implication, by erosion, by default, by dint of constant pressure on one side and constant retreat on the other — until the day when they are suddenly declared to be the country's official ideology," — to continue Ayn's Rand's quotation.
So, here was the example of the government agency being the worst offender — by far... And yet, people want to keep trying — be it health-care (woa-woa, flamebait!), car-making, or cellular service provision, why do the idiots think, that getting the government take over an industry is going to improve anything?
"The ways" — if any — will be determined by them. The changes will go in effect in 7 days. You could drive to airport, leave for a week-long vacation, come back and drive home under a completely new contract — without knowing it... And, unlike with the wireless companies, you can not switch to competition in MTA's case...
Citation needed. I'm yet to see anything so bad and blatant...
Sorry, this oft-heard argument is, actually, quite retarded. "Keeping people employed" is not the goal. "Keeping people doing something useful" is what we ought to aim for... There is a fine distinction here, which is not well-known to people, because it only appears, when the government begins to meddle with capitalism — we are blessed with such situations being fairly rare. Private businesses are unlikely to keep employing useless workers, which is why we tend to think, "employed" and "productive" are equivalent — they aren't...
In this case, even the most famous example of the government paying one person to fill up holes dug by another person paid to dig them would've been less useless (and less damaging to all, including environment), than keeping GM alive.
After the governmental "scull-fucking" of the tobacco companies, I'm, actually, rooting for the "corporations" and remain surprised, the Atlas has not really shrugged just yet... But such is the curse of Fascist "capitalism", where the government tells businesses and people, what they can do... Yes, people too — what consenting adults are doing in the privacy of their home, is no one's business. Unless they decide to renovate the home, in which case, the Fire, the Zoning, and the Building Inspectors have to approve and the Tax Assessor becomes very interested too...
Sorry, I prefer the "unfettered capitalism" of the past — at least, it was efficient and the same rules, however difficult, applied to everyone.
While private companies' contracts may seem outrageous, nothing beats the government agencies at this game: