If you don't think Big Oil is running this game (hint: practically everyone at or near the top of the Bush administration profited directly from investment in Big Oil) then you're not paying attention, plain and simple.
One thing I've learned from my time on the internet is that whenever anybody ends their argument with "plain and simple", the truth is rarely plain, and never simple.
That money was created out of thin air by the government. So if the government hadn't done this and gone into two trillion of debt, it wouldn't have "stayed" in the private sector, since it didn't exist before that. Some of that money probably went to the private sector through contracts etc, so if anything jobs would've been created or sustained, not destroyed.
Either that money gets taken away from taxpayers directly to compensate, or massive inflation robs us all of purchasing power, thus causing us all to be poorer anyway. Nothing comes without a price, not even "free money printed by the government". You better believe that pound of flesh comes from we taxpayers eventually, one way or the other.
No, where he was wrong (or rather, not wrong, but perhaps too optimistic) was in assuming that businesses could adequately put a value on long-term things, and not just assume that "making more today means making more tomorrow!"
Any company that does what you outline above is being short-term greedy and completely missing the long-term ramifications. Thus, they're not really acting in their own enlightened self interest, but against it. Act against your own self interest, and don't be surprised when you fail.
The big problem with modern corporations isn't that greed is bad--it's that short-term greed does not make long-term profits. But, the market handles that--by forcing them out of business, like what happened to CC.
Well first, let me just state I'm only repeating what I've heard from Protestant friends. So if they got Mormon doctrine wrong... well, hey, not surprising. I do have several Mormon friends, but contrary to popular belief, when they're not out specifically looking for "recruits", they're not pushy about their faith like a lot of more "mainstream" Christians are, so I've not learned a whole lot about Mormon doctrine straight from the horses mouth, as it were.
But one thing my Protestant friends always stress is that belief in the trinity is a core tenent of Christianity, and if you don't believe it, you're not a Christian. To them, Jesus is fully God *and* was fully man when he was on Earth. He never sinned, but being fully man, *was* capable of it. But rejecting the full divinity of Christ (and in fact, rejecting that he was around at the creation of the Universe, and in fact *is* the creator, as most Protestants do) makes you "not Christian" in their eyes.
Anyway, I'm not personally making any of these arguments. But the thread touched on "what Protestants think of Mormons" so I'd chime in with what I've heard about Mormons from several Protestants.:-)
The thing with Mormons is that they don't actually believe in the divinity of Jesus. Jesus being both "God" and the "Son of God" is a central tenent of Christianity. Mormons believe Jesus was a man who became divine--mainstream Protestant Christianity completely rejects that idea. To them Jesus was fully divine and fully human during his time on Earth (yeah, I know, it's a bunch of crazy mutually exclusive crap, but I'm just telling you what Christians actually believe or at least are "supposed" to believe). And Mormons see Jesus as kind of a super-angel now, not the Son of God or God incarnate like mainstream Christians.
So yeah, to a lot of Christians, Mormons can't be Christians, because they don't believe in several of the core tenents of the faith.
Similarly, Catholics have this weird Mary fetish. They pray to Mary to intercede with Jesus on their behalf. This is also against what mainstream Protestantism preaches, which is that Mary was just a woman, who happened to be chosen by God to bear His child. Her significance beyond that is minimal. Catholics, however, believe she was born without original sin and was "clean" her whole life, therefore being worthy of some kind of holy reverence. In fact, the term "Immaculate Conception", which most people think refers to the conception of Jesus by a virgin, actually is Catholic dogma concerning the conception of *Mary*. She was born without original sin, and was therefore "clean" and a proper vessel for the conception of Jesus.
Protestants reject all this--the Bible states in many places that nobody but God is without sin, so they reject the idea that Mary was born without the taint of original sin. They also tend to argue that even if she somehow *was* born without original sin, it is impossible for any human (who doesn't also happen to be God incarnate, anyway!) to live a life totally free from sin, so even if she had been born "clean", she didn't die that way, and so isn't really worthy of the special importance Catholics think she has.
On the copyright issue, a lot of US Libertarians are also huge fans of the Constitution (and strict interpretation of what it says to put strict limits on what the Feds can do) and think the Founders got it mostly right. The original 14+14 copyright (not strictly in the Constitution, but keeping with the spirit of what it says about "securing for a limited time") would be just fine with many Libertarians.
Cheaper for who? Certainly not for me, if I'm required to pay for his care at any point. Cheaper for him, maybe, but then again, that goes back to the fact that he should already have a vested interest in keeping himself healthy.
Wow, you seriously want all the jobs to go overseas? Ok then. At least at that point there wouldn't be any need for fixing roads, since they'd be empty.
Your posts just make you sound like you're jealous of what other people have and want daddy gubmint to take it all from them so you can feel better about yourself.
All a higher marginal tax rate does is kill the incentive for people to earn more money. Why bother to work hard and earn more if your tax burden will just take all that away anyway?
Kennedy started the tax cuts. Don't blame it all on those nasty Republicans.
And those people... were they forced to work in factories? Did their standard of living go up once they took a job in the factory? The thing you're missing is that the people who work in the sweat shops of the world *today* do so because it's fucking better than dieing out on the farm. They want jobs, and they want to work.
Show me one example where an economic system other than capitalism has pulled a nation or a people out of crushing poverty.
That's part of the point. The astronauts would be "pinned down"--by a force equivalent to gravity here on earth. Thus... artificial gravity, for "free"*!
*ignoring the complete implausibility (with any currently understood or feasible technology) of actually accelerating a mass at 1 g for any length of time even approaching "years".
Actually, it's more like "one is one, two is many". Until we have some kind of proof of life beyond this planet, the reasonable assumption is that life is peculiar to this planet. Sure, from what we know of how life on this planet developed, it seems reasonable that we're not special. However, we don't even see it in other "reasonable" places in our own solar system. It's not evident on Mars, even though certain earth-like bacteria could probably thrive there. It's not evident on Venus, which despite having a crushing, corrosive atmosphere, appears to have pockets (floating in the high clouds, on high mountains or plateaus) where earth-like life could grab a foothold. The one thing we know about life is that it spreads to fill all niches. There's almost literally no place you can look on the surface or immediately under the surface of this planet where you won't find it.
I'm not saying we shouldn't look. We should. Finding non-terrestrial life would be the biggest discovery in the history of everything as far as we are concerned. I'm just saying our default position shouldn't be "We exist so others must!" That's not really a reasonable assumption, even though it would appear to be so to many people on the face of it. A zit on your nose doesn't imply a zit on your ass. Two or three or four zits on your face may well lead a person to believe you're just a zitty bastard, though.
This depends on which set of Lagrange points you're talking about. The Earth-Moon L4 and L5 points are indeed in the same orbit as the moon. The Sun-Earth L4 and L5 points, which I thought the original poster was talking about, are considerably farther away than the moon.
They might as well be, as they're completely in bed with AT&T on the iPhone contract deal. Why sell one iTouch once, when you can sell an iPhone once, then also collect monthly kick-backs from AT&T on the contract?
That's all fine and dandy. But if that's what they want, then they need to go about it correctly.
If I can by a used paperback for $3, why would I spend $15 for the book in e-book format on my Kindle? Well, convenience maybe, that's one reason. I don't have to drive to the used book store and look around and see if they have what I want. I can just fire up the Kindle and download it.
But that's not going to sway a lot of people. Hell, I *love* spending an afternoon in a used bookstore. I consider it something fun to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon. So in that case, how do you convince me to buy the book on my Kindle?
Well, the only way is to compete on price. $15 for a trade paperback may be a realistic price, considering the cost of materials, binding, distributing, marketing, and author royalties. But you cut a great hunk of that cost out when you go electronic. Now you're really only looking at the author's cut, how much you spend on marketing, and your cut as the publisher. So why can't they sell me that book for the same $3 I'd spend at the used bookstore?
That's what they have to do if they want to "kill" the second hand market. "Convenience" alone isn't going to do it. They have to compete on price too, and so far, they haven't even come close. If it's roughly the same price for me to buy "new" on my Kindle as it is to buy a used paperback, then maybe we're in business. Until then... well, I guess just keep crying about piracy or whatever.
Your laissez-faire utopias put us all in an economical crisis with consequences not yet predictable.
Actually, it was pretty much your boys forcing banks to lend to people who everybody knew couldn't afford it, then allowing them to package up all that worthless debt and sell it as a security that got us into this. No sane lending institution acting in its own rational self interest would have made those loans in the first place if the government hadn't essentially said "It's cool, we'll cover it if things go south."
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If you don't think Big Oil is running this game (hint: practically everyone at or near the top of the Bush administration profited directly from investment in Big Oil) then you're not paying attention, plain and simple.
One thing I've learned from my time on the internet is that whenever anybody ends their argument with "plain and simple", the truth is rarely plain, and never simple.
I think it has more to do with the fact that most people think Pittsburgh is a hole.
Why have medecine at all, then? We should all just die of gangrene and dysentery. Only the tough deserve to survive!
That money was created out of thin air by the government. So if the government hadn't done this and gone into two trillion of debt, it wouldn't have "stayed" in the private sector, since it didn't exist before that. Some of that money probably went to the private sector through contracts etc, so if anything jobs would've been created or sustained, not destroyed.
Either that money gets taken away from taxpayers directly to compensate, or massive inflation robs us all of purchasing power, thus causing us all to be poorer anyway. Nothing comes without a price, not even "free money printed by the government". You better believe that pound of flesh comes from we taxpayers eventually, one way or the other.
Gordon Gecko was wrong - greed is bad.
No, where he was wrong (or rather, not wrong, but perhaps too optimistic) was in assuming that businesses could adequately put a value on long-term things, and not just assume that "making more today means making more tomorrow!"
Any company that does what you outline above is being short-term greedy and completely missing the long-term ramifications. Thus, they're not really acting in their own enlightened self interest, but against it. Act against your own self interest, and don't be surprised when you fail.
The big problem with modern corporations isn't that greed is bad--it's that short-term greed does not make long-term profits. But, the market handles that--by forcing them out of business, like what happened to CC.
Even in a completely free market (which the US obviously is not) there are still such things as natural monopolies
Well first, let me just state I'm only repeating what I've heard from Protestant friends. So if they got Mormon doctrine wrong... well, hey, not surprising. I do have several Mormon friends, but contrary to popular belief, when they're not out specifically looking for "recruits", they're not pushy about their faith like a lot of more "mainstream" Christians are, so I've not learned a whole lot about Mormon doctrine straight from the horses mouth, as it were.
But one thing my Protestant friends always stress is that belief in the trinity is a core tenent of Christianity, and if you don't believe it, you're not a Christian. To them, Jesus is fully God *and* was fully man when he was on Earth. He never sinned, but being fully man, *was* capable of it. But rejecting the full divinity of Christ (and in fact, rejecting that he was around at the creation of the Universe, and in fact *is* the creator, as most Protestants do) makes you "not Christian" in their eyes.
Anyway, I'm not personally making any of these arguments. But the thread touched on "what Protestants think of Mormons" so I'd chime in with what I've heard about Mormons from several Protestants. :-)
The thing with Mormons is that they don't actually believe in the divinity of Jesus. Jesus being both "God" and the "Son of God" is a central tenent of Christianity. Mormons believe Jesus was a man who became divine--mainstream Protestant Christianity completely rejects that idea. To them Jesus was fully divine and fully human during his time on Earth (yeah, I know, it's a bunch of crazy mutually exclusive crap, but I'm just telling you what Christians actually believe or at least are "supposed" to believe). And Mormons see Jesus as kind of a super-angel now, not the Son of God or God incarnate like mainstream Christians.
So yeah, to a lot of Christians, Mormons can't be Christians, because they don't believe in several of the core tenents of the faith.
Similarly, Catholics have this weird Mary fetish. They pray to Mary to intercede with Jesus on their behalf. This is also against what mainstream Protestantism preaches, which is that Mary was just a woman, who happened to be chosen by God to bear His child. Her significance beyond that is minimal. Catholics, however, believe she was born without original sin and was "clean" her whole life, therefore being worthy of some kind of holy reverence. In fact, the term "Immaculate Conception", which most people think refers to the conception of Jesus by a virgin, actually is Catholic dogma concerning the conception of *Mary*. She was born without original sin, and was therefore "clean" and a proper vessel for the conception of Jesus.
Protestants reject all this--the Bible states in many places that nobody but God is without sin, so they reject the idea that Mary was born without the taint of original sin. They also tend to argue that even if she somehow *was* born without original sin, it is impossible for any human (who doesn't also happen to be God incarnate, anyway!) to live a life totally free from sin, so even if she had been born "clean", she didn't die that way, and so isn't really worthy of the special importance Catholics think she has.
Because I believe the EU has rules against rampant deficit spending. We'd never qualify for admission.
On the copyright issue, a lot of US Libertarians are also huge fans of the Constitution (and strict interpretation of what it says to put strict limits on what the Feds can do) and think the Founders got it mostly right. The original 14+14 copyright (not strictly in the Constitution, but keeping with the spirit of what it says about "securing for a limited time") would be just fine with many Libertarians.
Cheaper for who? Certainly not for me, if I'm required to pay for his care at any point. Cheaper for him, maybe, but then again, that goes back to the fact that he should already have a vested interest in keeping himself healthy.
Wow, you seriously want all the jobs to go overseas? Ok then. At least at that point there wouldn't be any need for fixing roads, since they'd be empty.
Your posts just make you sound like you're jealous of what other people have and want daddy gubmint to take it all from them so you can feel better about yourself.
All a higher marginal tax rate does is kill the incentive for people to earn more money. Why bother to work hard and earn more if your tax burden will just take all that away anyway?
Kennedy started the tax cuts. Don't blame it all on those nasty Republicans.
And those people... were they forced to work in factories? Did their standard of living go up once they took a job in the factory? The thing you're missing is that the people who work in the sweat shops of the world *today* do so because it's fucking better than dieing out on the farm. They want jobs, and they want to work.
Show me one example where an economic system other than capitalism has pulled a nation or a people out of crushing poverty.
That's part of the point. The astronauts would be "pinned down"--by a force equivalent to gravity here on earth. Thus... artificial gravity, for "free"*!
*ignoring the complete implausibility (with any currently understood or feasible technology) of actually accelerating a mass at 1 g for any length of time even approaching "years".
Actually, it's more like "one is one, two is many". Until we have some kind of proof of life beyond this planet, the reasonable assumption is that life is peculiar to this planet. Sure, from what we know of how life on this planet developed, it seems reasonable that we're not special. However, we don't even see it in other "reasonable" places in our own solar system. It's not evident on Mars, even though certain earth-like bacteria could probably thrive there. It's not evident on Venus, which despite having a crushing, corrosive atmosphere, appears to have pockets (floating in the high clouds, on high mountains or plateaus) where earth-like life could grab a foothold. The one thing we know about life is that it spreads to fill all niches. There's almost literally no place you can look on the surface or immediately under the surface of this planet where you won't find it.
I'm not saying we shouldn't look. We should. Finding non-terrestrial life would be the biggest discovery in the history of everything as far as we are concerned. I'm just saying our default position shouldn't be "We exist so others must!" That's not really a reasonable assumption, even though it would appear to be so to many people on the face of it. A zit on your nose doesn't imply a zit on your ass. Two or three or four zits on your face may well lead a person to believe you're just a zitty bastard, though.
Wait, now we're using that made-up plural form of virus as the SINGULAR form? Great.
You forgot: "The dinosaurs went extinct because they didn't have a space program." -- Larry Niven.
This depends on which set of Lagrange points you're talking about. The Earth-Moon L4 and L5 points are indeed in the same orbit as the moon. The Sun-Earth L4 and L5 points, which I thought the original poster was talking about, are considerably farther away than the moon.
Exactly what use would a Space Station at any of the Lagrange points be for missions to Jupiter or Saturn?
They might as well be, as they're completely in bed with AT&T on the iPhone contract deal. Why sell one iTouch once, when you can sell an iPhone once, then also collect monthly kick-backs from AT&T on the contract?
I'm sorry, but you're not entitled to your business plan in perpetuity any more than the RIAA is.
That's all fine and dandy. But if that's what they want, then they need to go about it correctly.
If I can by a used paperback for $3, why would I spend $15 for the book in e-book format on my Kindle? Well, convenience maybe, that's one reason. I don't have to drive to the used book store and look around and see if they have what I want. I can just fire up the Kindle and download it.
But that's not going to sway a lot of people. Hell, I *love* spending an afternoon in a used bookstore. I consider it something fun to do on a lazy Sunday afternoon. So in that case, how do you convince me to buy the book on my Kindle?
Well, the only way is to compete on price. $15 for a trade paperback may be a realistic price, considering the cost of materials, binding, distributing, marketing, and author royalties. But you cut a great hunk of that cost out when you go electronic. Now you're really only looking at the author's cut, how much you spend on marketing, and your cut as the publisher. So why can't they sell me that book for the same $3 I'd spend at the used bookstore?
That's what they have to do if they want to "kill" the second hand market. "Convenience" alone isn't going to do it. They have to compete on price too, and so far, they haven't even come close. If it's roughly the same price for me to buy "new" on my Kindle as it is to buy a used paperback, then maybe we're in business. Until then... well, I guess just keep crying about piracy or whatever.
When their interests are against the Constitution, for one. You're supposed to amend it first, although nobody bothers anymore.
Your laissez-faire utopias put us all in an economical crisis with consequences not yet predictable.
Actually, it was pretty much your boys forcing banks to lend to people who everybody knew couldn't afford it, then allowing them to package up all that worthless debt and sell it as a security that got us into this. No sane lending institution acting in its own rational self interest would have made those loans in the first place if the government hadn't essentially said "It's cool, we'll cover it if things go south."