The problem is not the issuance of a government ID, the problem is that businesses are allowed to ask for it and use it as a form of ID.
They would still do it, even if it the government passed laws against it. It is just too convenient and too many business are already doing it. For example, here in the United States the Privacy Act of 1974 technically makes it illegal for non government agencies to use the Social Security Number for tracking or any other purpose. Of course, this law has been conveniently ignored by big businesses almost since it was passed and they have essentially gotten away with it because they give a lot of money to politicians and nobody in the government wants to stir the pot with big business because, well, its bad for business.
More than likely all religion will cease to exist before "Islamists" control your world.
I disagree completely. I think that is extremely unlikely to occur.
There's around 2 billion Christians and 1 billion Hindi and 1 billion Buddists. The remaining 1 billion muslims are not going to crush those other groups any time soon.
As I said previously, this is a generational struggle for the Islamists. It may take centuries, but they are working towards a very clearly stated long term goal. IMHO, the evidence in Europe and to a lesser extent here in the United States demonstrates that substantial portions of our citizens are either ignorant of this threat or naive.
Radicals are radicals, and there are plenty of radical christians out there.
They have nowhere near the political influence of the Islamists, who enjoy the backing of wealthy middle eastern governments and individuals, and they are not generally as violent or willing to die for the cause. When was the last time you heard of a Christian suicide bomber? The Islamists are a real threat to history. The radical Christians aren't even a blip on the radar screen by way of comparison.
the U.S. thought it would be a good envelope to keep communism out of the middle east. So we armed them, trained them and gave them the policial support to become real entities rather than just fringe groups. Whoops!
So your point is that governments make stupid mistakes? This is not exactly a revelation for most of us.
How typical of the western attitude towards such things. Alright, suppose that we could enforce working conditions in every country on earth such that non-labor costs of doing business were substantially similar in just about every respect. What would be the result of that theoretical policy? Many of the people presently working in the aforementioned countries would not be able to compete with better educated and more productive workers in other more developed nations. In the absence of any useful work to perform the people who were before merely poor and working in poor conditions, or as you chose to put it "exploited", are now starving to death because you have removed from them the only job they could reasonably perform. Now of course, not all of them would starve to death, but there is a limit to the number of people that can be supported in subsistence agriculture and the present population in much of the world is already above that carrying capacity (i.e. in the absence of modern technology and the green revolution these people never would have been). The answer is not to render poor people unemployable by imposing first world style US or European regulations on them. Economic development must come first, even at the expense of better working conditions or standards; otherwise you are just kicking people off the bottom rung of the economic ladder and back into the dust. You aren't really helping them by doing this.
I would argue that it's not due to the government being involved that the quality lowers, but rather that the government decides to become involved without raising taxes to fully fund the projects
Obviously, you have never worked in government or you wouldn't be saying that or perhaps you have and you are simply being disingenuous. The only time that is actually effective is when the government, by miracle of chance, happens to hire the right private contractors, consultants or vendors; which does happen occasionally, but not very often. Otherwise, all of the money will be spent in such a way that little or nothing is actually produced. The problem is one of human motivation and nothing seems to get us going like the prospect of receiving rewards for success (something the government, with its pay grades and limited ability to reward outstanding achievements, does very poorly) and punishments for failure (which the government also does very poorly). The basic question boils down to this: Who spends your money the best? You or someone else who decides how you should be spending it; regardless of what you want or how you feel?
Thus the fairly false threat of terrorism. Sure, it's a minor fear, but nothing compared to total nuclear anihilation.
I will grant you that in the short run this is true. However, you must understand the long term goals of the Islamist terrorist organizations. They seek to supplant the existing governments and cultures of the west with a world wide Islamic caliphate. This is a generational goal for them which involves infiltrating western countries and having lots of children, the future citizens of those nations, while indoctrinating the community and preventing integration with the host nation until a critical mass of Islamists is reached and the country is transformed into an Islamic state. They are already experiencing this in Europe, where substantial minority groups are NOT integrating with their host countries, but rather attempting to supplant and subvert them with their own alien cultures. The Islamist view of the world does NOT value freedom or self-determination or any of the classical values of western civilization. It values only intolerance and submission to Islam. That is why the west must nip this in the bud before it is too late. Will you continue to ignore them or write them off as a "minor fear" while they continue to undermine your culture and values? The Islamists must be excised from the body politic like a cancer is excised from the human body, before it spreads and kills the host.
Many of the available antibiotics, with the exception of relatively new ones such as linezolid, are actually no longer protected by patents; so I doubt that substantial patent portfolios in antibiotic drugs and the desire to preserve "profitable" antibiotics have much, if any, effect on the pace of new development. Most drug companies would love to have a new antibiotic, provided that it could be developed for the right price and that, IMHO, is the real problem. Antibiotics, like all new drugs, are expensive to develop and are ultimately less profitable than the so called "lifestyle drugs" which people must take on a regular basis for the remainder of their lives. Given the choice between spending precious R&D dollars on "lifestyle drugs" or new antibiotics, most drug companies are probably going to choose the "lifestyle drugs". Now, this does not mean that there are zero efforts on new antibiotics by the drug companies, who are constantly testing new compounds anyway; they might even stumble upon a novel new antibiotic, in which case it will be developed and marketed. However, they probably are not focusing their research as much in that general direction which makes discovery of new antibiotics while researching new "lifestyle drugs" somewhat less probable IMHO.
You do realize that it is basically impossible for US Citizens to escape the IRS right? Even if you live overseas, you still owe taxes. The only way to become completely free of the IRS is to renounce citizenship at an overseas embassy which cannot be done without proof of alternative foreign citizenship because you cannot became a "stateless" person in this way. The benefits of American citizenship heavily outweigh the costs in taxes for most of us, besides the fact that many of us were born in United States (i.e. it's our home country), so this is basically a non-starter.
IANAL, but as I understand it one has 5 years in the US to show a profit or the IRS will deem the business to have been "declared in bad faith" (i.e. as a tax dodge) and you will owe back taxes and penalties for any write offs or other tax benefits derived from the illegitimate "business". This can happen even if you honestly were trying but just couldn't get the business off the ground. This sometimes happens to people who try to turn a hobby into a business for tax purposes.
the U.K. spends significantly less in terms of GDP and they don't have reduced life expectancy than the U.S.
This statistic is often thrown out there by supporters of NHS style socialized medicine, but in point of fact the life expectancy of the average citizen is a very crude measurement of the quality of the health care system. There are many other factors, including both personal choices and culture, that go into life expectancy completely separate from whatever the health system might be. For example, Americans like to eat lots of fatty and high calorie foods in large portions and don't much care for exercise. We also like to drink and smoke and nearly half of us are obese according to the medical definition. Those habits are going to have consequences no matter what the health care system looks like.
Yes, it will be gold (and other precious metals, but gold is best). It has always been gold wherever gold has been available in sufficient quantities (did you read the list in my op?) and it always will in the absence in the absence of organized centralized record keeping; nothing has been more useful as money than gold and other precious metals. Gold satisfies all of the necessary requirements for a "money" commodity better than any other potential substitute; hence the reason why gold always wins out in the end.
It doesn't matter why people think that gold has value. You are just not understanding the basic economics here. Bartering, which occurs in the absence of money, is an extremely inefficient way to conduct exchange in an economy. If you don't believe that then just ask the Zimbabweans (they have some recent experience in this matter). As I said previously, money is such a useful and efficient concept that it is bound to appear spontaneously wherever people get organized for long enough to form bartering and trading relationships. This has been the case throughout human history in all cultures (even those which had no contact with each other before developing money).
but claiming it has value and the dollar doesn't is idiotic.
I didn't say that. The dollar has value because it satisfies the same money requirements listed in the OP (or at least it does when governments don't print too much of it) and people have collectively agreed to use it as the money. If you concede that money is inevitable in any sufficiently organized society than whatever serves as the money commodity, whether that is gold and precious metals or bits in a computer system for advanced modern economies like ours, must satisfy the list of "moneyish" requirements in order to be useful as money. Gold works best as the money in lower tech societies because it retains the "moneyish" qualities without organized and centralized control. In the post-apocalyptic scenarios favored by some here on Slashdot, gold and other precious metals would probably regain their primacy as money.
I think you are looking at this all wrong. As others on this thread have pointed out, the real defense against any "cyber attack" (can we all stop using the cyber prefix already? The Internet has very little to do with cyborgs) will come from the private sector. This exercise, like many others conducted by biased parties within the government, is designed to drum up maximum fear and guarantee years of increased budgets and spending for those involved in the exercise. This is about money, plain and simple, and the private sector will be only too happy to supply the government with whatever gear, useful or otherwise, it is willing to pay for. When have you ever heard of a government exercise not resulting in the conclusion that lots more money must be spent and quickly to ensure that we "win" the game?
The value of gold lies in its inherent usefulness as a medium of exchange. The idea of a proxy for value in a barter based economy, obviating the need to satisfy the coincidence of wants problem, is so useful and efficient that just about every organized non-tribal society eventually hits upon the concept of money. The inherent value of gold stems from several desirable "moneyish" characteristics, namely:
It is easily recognizable to everyone.
It doesn't rot, spoil, corrode or otherwise deteriorate over time.
It is easily divisible into smaller pieces or fuse welded by hand hammering into larger ones.
It is practically impossible to pass off fake substitutes. There are no good substitutes.
It is rare enough to be useful as money.
For these reasons gold has always been the most logical choice for the money commodity in organized societies, even primitive ones, wherever it has been available in sufficient quantity to serve as such (which was just about everywhere). In places where gold was scarce other rare commodities, including salt (necessary for life and where we get the term salary) and even large rocks with holes bored in them (Rai Stones), have served as money but if people get organized for long enough then money inevitably appears eventually.
God people, how can you choose to do nothing about it?
Many polls consistently demonstrate that most Americans are not in favor of doing nothing. However, I often hear people, especially on the left, framing the debate as, "either you agree with our proposed solution 100% OR you are in favor of doing nothing". This is an obvious straw-man argument. It is more likely, IMHO, that most Americans favor health reform, but not the specific bill proposed by the Dems in Congress. They do not believe that the current bill, as proposed by Congress, will address the core issue which for most Americans is cost and not access. There have been some good suggestions from a variety of sources that, for various reasons (mostly political), have been ignored by the Dems in Congress. The winning solution must convince a majority of Americans that costs will be contained without causing serious damage to quality of care which is actually pretty good right now; albeit expensive.
would the treatment of technical contractors really be at the top of the list?
No, but if you were going to address the problems of the US tax code, why not solicit the best advice and opinions of a variety of economists and experts on broad array of tax issues while doing some research and having hearings or isn't that what Congress is supposed to be doing? Of course, they couldn't get health care reform passed either so maybe the system itself is just too broken to do the right things anymore.
Not to mention the fact that many libertarians find violence initiated against others who have not first done violence against them to be utterly repugnant and without excuse. There is probably no group more misunderstood here on Slashdot than the libertarians. People should take the time to actually read and understand what it means to be libertarian before they completely mischaracterize their positions and beliefs.
There were some interesting articles over the last few days that questioned exactly what is meant by "terrorist". Does it make sense to say that anyone who kills more than one other person in a single episode, for whatever reason, is a "terrorist"? If you answer that question, "no" then it means that the definition must be narrower. The best distinction that I have heard attributes the label "terrorist" to people whose:
intent is to achieve specific political goals or outcomes as a result of violent action AND
acts as part of a larger conspiracy or group working towards the aforementioned political goals.
The IRS suicide pilot appears, both from his own manifesto and accounts of his behavior by those who knew him, to be acting out of personal anger over his personal dispute with the IRS. He might of had access to tax protester literature or ideas, but it is not clear that he acted in concert with other tax protesters as part of a conspiracy to achieve any particular political outcome.
Now, you might bring up the Oklahoma City bomber as a similar case, but other than the fact that an attack was carried out they really aren't very similar. Timothy McVae was acting with an accomplice (Nichols) as part of a conspiracy to achieve a specific political outcome, namely the overthrow of the federal government, and his attack was conducted specifically in furtherance of that goal. Contrast this with the IRS suicide pilot who appears to have been motivated purely by anger over his personal situation; no more no less. IMHO, there is no double standard because there were clear differences in motivation for the attacks in both cases; one was clearly terrorism while the other clearly failed to satisfy the definition.
it strikes me as absurd to expect them to be able to fix it in any meaningful way.
They could start by either (a) dumping tax favored status for health insurance or (b) equalizing the tax treatment so that everyone, no matter how the insurance is purchased, receives a tax deduction up to a certain amount for the cost of their plan. The first step to real reform is modification of the present tax code, which unduly favors employer sponsored plans and creates a perverse incentive for health care to be purchased and consumed in wasteful and inefficient ways.
then they'll drop you when they find a reason to do so.
At which point you can go to your state insurance commissioner for relief or, if that doesn't work, you can file suit against the insurance company for breach of contract. IANAL, but it seems that if the policy was canceled because you "had a hangnail in the 8th grade", a good attorney would be able to persuade the insurance company to "reconsider" dropping your coverage.
I was an actual contractor, with multiple clients, self-employment taxes, and all.
According to TFA, this would not be enough. You might think that it is, and many independent contractors doing programming work apparently did until the IRS showed up for an audit, but it seems that programmers as a class of self employed workers are singled out for special attention. From TFA:
the so-called "safe haven" rule codified under Section 530. Under this rule, if a company has a "reasonable basis" to treat a worker as self-employed, has filed I.R.S. Form 1099 to report its payment to the worker, and has consistently treated similar workers the same way, then the company would not be required to pay more taxes or withhold taxes from the worker's paychecks.
but TFA goes on to say:
In passing Section 1706 in 1986, Congress singled out the programmers, engineers, analysts and many other technical workers by mandating that staffing firms no longer be protected by Section 530's safe haven. Soon enough, the I.R.S. began auditing staffing firms around the country, often subjecting their customers to questioning as well.
If I were you, I would take a second look at the tax code or maybe consult a tax attorney. You might not be as safe from an audit as you think.
To understand power in the United States, don't follow government. Follow the money.
and where does all of that money lead? It says "federal reserve note" right on each bill. The government ultimately controls the money supply and the fact that Wall Street went to Washington for their bailouts demonstrates that the government is still master of the money supply; the source from which all credit flows.
but based on my experience private companies hire lazy and incompnent employees as well.
This is true, but there is one key difference between private businesses and the government. If a private business hires bad employees and operates inefficiently it goes out of business (or at least it should, provided that the government doesn't bail them out). The government, on the other hand, cannot go out of business or disappear; it usually takes a very protracted period of bad performance for governments to be finally shown the door. Also, we can choose not to patronize bad businesses, but taxes are not optional. These are a few of the key differences between private businesses and government.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem is not the issuance of a government ID, the problem is that businesses are allowed to ask for it and use it as a form of ID.
They would still do it, even if it the government passed laws against it. It is just too convenient and too many business are already doing it. For example, here in the United States the Privacy Act of 1974 technically makes it illegal for non government agencies to use the Social Security Number for tracking or any other purpose. Of course, this law has been conveniently ignored by big businesses almost since it was passed and they have essentially gotten away with it because they give a lot of money to politicians and nobody in the government wants to stir the pot with big business because, well, its bad for business.
More than likely all religion will cease to exist before "Islamists" control your world.
I disagree completely. I think that is extremely unlikely to occur.
There's around 2 billion Christians and 1 billion Hindi and 1 billion Buddists. The remaining 1 billion muslims are not going to crush those other groups any time soon.
As I said previously, this is a generational struggle for the Islamists. It may take centuries, but they are working towards a very clearly stated long term goal. IMHO, the evidence in Europe and to a lesser extent here in the United States demonstrates that substantial portions of our citizens are either ignorant of this threat or naive.
Radicals are radicals, and there are plenty of radical christians out there.
They have nowhere near the political influence of the Islamists, who enjoy the backing of wealthy middle eastern governments and individuals, and they are not generally as violent or willing to die for the cause. When was the last time you heard of a Christian suicide bomber? The Islamists are a real threat to history. The radical Christians aren't even a blip on the radar screen by way of comparison.
the U.S. thought it would be a good envelope to keep communism out of the middle east. So we armed them, trained them and gave them the policial support to become real entities rather than just fringe groups. Whoops!
So your point is that governments make stupid mistakes? This is not exactly a revelation for most of us.
How typical of the western attitude towards such things. Alright, suppose that we could enforce working conditions in every country on earth such that non-labor costs of doing business were substantially similar in just about every respect. What would be the result of that theoretical policy? Many of the people presently working in the aforementioned countries would not be able to compete with better educated and more productive workers in other more developed nations. In the absence of any useful work to perform the people who were before merely poor and working in poor conditions, or as you chose to put it "exploited", are now starving to death because you have removed from them the only job they could reasonably perform. Now of course, not all of them would starve to death, but there is a limit to the number of people that can be supported in subsistence agriculture and the present population in much of the world is already above that carrying capacity (i.e. in the absence of modern technology and the green revolution these people never would have been). The answer is not to render poor people unemployable by imposing first world style US or European regulations on them. Economic development must come first, even at the expense of better working conditions or standards; otherwise you are just kicking people off the bottom rung of the economic ladder and back into the dust. You aren't really helping them by doing this.
I would argue that it's not due to the government being involved that the quality lowers, but rather that the government decides to become involved without raising taxes to fully fund the projects
Obviously, you have never worked in government or you wouldn't be saying that or perhaps you have and you are simply being disingenuous. The only time that is actually effective is when the government, by miracle of chance, happens to hire the right private contractors, consultants or vendors; which does happen occasionally, but not very often. Otherwise, all of the money will be spent in such a way that little or nothing is actually produced. The problem is one of human motivation and nothing seems to get us going like the prospect of receiving rewards for success (something the government, with its pay grades and limited ability to reward outstanding achievements, does very poorly) and punishments for failure (which the government also does very poorly). The basic question boils down to this: Who spends your money the best? You or someone else who decides how you should be spending it; regardless of what you want or how you feel?
Thus the fairly false threat of terrorism. Sure, it's a minor fear, but nothing compared to total nuclear anihilation.
I will grant you that in the short run this is true. However, you must understand the long term goals of the Islamist terrorist organizations. They seek to supplant the existing governments and cultures of the west with a world wide Islamic caliphate. This is a generational goal for them which involves infiltrating western countries and having lots of children, the future citizens of those nations, while indoctrinating the community and preventing integration with the host nation until a critical mass of Islamists is reached and the country is transformed into an Islamic state. They are already experiencing this in Europe, where substantial minority groups are NOT integrating with their host countries, but rather attempting to supplant and subvert them with their own alien cultures. The Islamist view of the world does NOT value freedom or self-determination or any of the classical values of western civilization. It values only intolerance and submission to Islam. That is why the west must nip this in the bud before it is too late. Will you continue to ignore them or write them off as a "minor fear" while they continue to undermine your culture and values? The Islamists must be excised from the body politic like a cancer is excised from the human body, before it spreads and kills the host.
Many of the available antibiotics, with the exception of relatively new ones such as linezolid, are actually no longer protected by patents; so I doubt that substantial patent portfolios in antibiotic drugs and the desire to preserve "profitable" antibiotics have much, if any, effect on the pace of new development. Most drug companies would love to have a new antibiotic, provided that it could be developed for the right price and that, IMHO, is the real problem. Antibiotics, like all new drugs, are expensive to develop and are ultimately less profitable than the so called "lifestyle drugs" which people must take on a regular basis for the remainder of their lives. Given the choice between spending precious R&D dollars on "lifestyle drugs" or new antibiotics, most drug companies are probably going to choose the "lifestyle drugs". Now, this does not mean that there are zero efforts on new antibiotics by the drug companies, who are constantly testing new compounds anyway; they might even stumble upon a novel new antibiotic, in which case it will be developed and marketed. However, they probably are not focusing their research as much in that general direction which makes discovery of new antibiotics while researching new "lifestyle drugs" somewhat less probable IMHO.
Alternatives like Linux aren't quite ready for the mainstream desktop user yet.
Yes, but 2010 will be the year of the Linux desktop; just you wait and see...
You do realize that it is basically impossible for US Citizens to escape the IRS right? Even if you live overseas, you still owe taxes. The only way to become completely free of the IRS is to renounce citizenship at an overseas embassy which cannot be done without proof of alternative foreign citizenship because you cannot became a "stateless" person in this way. The benefits of American citizenship heavily outweigh the costs in taxes for most of us, besides the fact that many of us were born in United States (i.e. it's our home country), so this is basically a non-starter.
IANAL, but as I understand it one has 5 years in the US to show a profit or the IRS will deem the business to have been "declared in bad faith" (i.e. as a tax dodge) and you will owe back taxes and penalties for any write offs or other tax benefits derived from the illegitimate "business". This can happen even if you honestly were trying but just couldn't get the business off the ground. This sometimes happens to people who try to turn a hobby into a business for tax purposes.
the U.K. spends significantly less in terms of GDP and they don't have reduced life expectancy than the U.S.
This statistic is often thrown out there by supporters of NHS style socialized medicine, but in point of fact the life expectancy of the average citizen is a very crude measurement of the quality of the health care system. There are many other factors, including both personal choices and culture, that go into life expectancy completely separate from whatever the health system might be. For example, Americans like to eat lots of fatty and high calorie foods in large portions and don't much care for exercise. We also like to drink and smoke and nearly half of us are obese according to the medical definition. Those habits are going to have consequences no matter what the health care system looks like.
There's just no reason to think it will be gold.
Yes, it will be gold (and other precious metals, but gold is best). It has always been gold wherever gold has been available in sufficient quantities (did you read the list in my op?) and it always will in the absence in the absence of organized centralized record keeping; nothing has been more useful as money than gold and other precious metals. Gold satisfies all of the necessary requirements for a "money" commodity better than any other potential substitute; hence the reason why gold always wins out in the end.
It doesn't matter why people think that gold has value. You are just not understanding the basic economics here. Bartering, which occurs in the absence of money, is an extremely inefficient way to conduct exchange in an economy. If you don't believe that then just ask the Zimbabweans (they have some recent experience in this matter). As I said previously, money is such a useful and efficient concept that it is bound to appear spontaneously wherever people get organized for long enough to form bartering and trading relationships. This has been the case throughout human history in all cultures (even those which had no contact with each other before developing money).
but claiming it has value and the dollar doesn't is idiotic.
I didn't say that. The dollar has value because it satisfies the same money requirements listed in the OP (or at least it does when governments don't print too much of it) and people have collectively agreed to use it as the money. If you concede that money is inevitable in any sufficiently organized society than whatever serves as the money commodity, whether that is gold and precious metals or bits in a computer system for advanced modern economies like ours, must satisfy the list of "moneyish" requirements in order to be useful as money. Gold works best as the money in lower tech societies because it retains the "moneyish" qualities without organized and centralized control. In the post-apocalyptic scenarios favored by some here on Slashdot, gold and other precious metals would probably regain their primacy as money.
I think you are looking at this all wrong. As others on this thread have pointed out, the real defense against any "cyber attack" (can we all stop using the cyber prefix already? The Internet has very little to do with cyborgs) will come from the private sector. This exercise, like many others conducted by biased parties within the government, is designed to drum up maximum fear and guarantee years of increased budgets and spending for those involved in the exercise. This is about money, plain and simple, and the private sector will be only too happy to supply the government with whatever gear, useful or otherwise, it is willing to pay for. When have you ever heard of a government exercise not resulting in the conclusion that lots more money must be spent and quickly to ensure that we "win" the game?
Why is a school buying laptops for every student?
They had a grant of federal money specifically for the laptops; your tax dollars at work. Next question.
For these reasons gold has always been the most logical choice for the money commodity in organized societies, even primitive ones, wherever it has been available in sufficient quantity to serve as such (which was just about everywhere). In places where gold was scarce other rare commodities, including salt (necessary for life and where we get the term salary) and even large rocks with holes bored in them (Rai Stones), have served as money but if people get organized for long enough then money inevitably appears eventually.
God people, how can you choose to do nothing about it?
Many polls consistently demonstrate that most Americans are not in favor of doing nothing. However, I often hear people, especially on the left, framing the debate as, "either you agree with our proposed solution 100% OR you are in favor of doing nothing". This is an obvious straw-man argument. It is more likely, IMHO, that most Americans favor health reform, but not the specific bill proposed by the Dems in Congress. They do not believe that the current bill, as proposed by Congress, will address the core issue which for most Americans is cost and not access . There have been some good suggestions from a variety of sources that, for various reasons (mostly political), have been ignored by the Dems in Congress. The winning solution must convince a majority of Americans that costs will be contained without causing serious damage to quality of care which is actually pretty good right now; albeit expensive.
would the treatment of technical contractors really be at the top of the list?
No, but if you were going to address the problems of the US tax code, why not solicit the best advice and opinions of a variety of economists and experts on broad array of tax issues while doing some research and having hearings or isn't that what Congress is supposed to be doing? Of course, they couldn't get health care reform passed either so maybe the system itself is just too broken to do the right things anymore.
Not to mention the fact that many libertarians find violence initiated against others who have not first done violence against them to be utterly repugnant and without excuse. There is probably no group more misunderstood here on Slashdot than the libertarians. People should take the time to actually read and understand what it means to be libertarian before they completely mischaracterize their positions and beliefs.
There were some interesting articles over the last few days that questioned exactly what is meant by "terrorist". Does it make sense to say that anyone who kills more than one other person in a single episode, for whatever reason, is a "terrorist"? If you answer that question, "no" then it means that the definition must be narrower. The best distinction that I have heard attributes the label "terrorist" to people whose:
The IRS suicide pilot appears, both from his own manifesto and accounts of his behavior by those who knew him, to be acting out of personal anger over his personal dispute with the IRS. He might of had access to tax protester literature or ideas, but it is not clear that he acted in concert with other tax protesters as part of a conspiracy to achieve any particular political outcome.
Now, you might bring up the Oklahoma City bomber as a similar case, but other than the fact that an attack was carried out they really aren't very similar. Timothy McVae was acting with an accomplice (Nichols) as part of a conspiracy to achieve a specific political outcome, namely the overthrow of the federal government, and his attack was conducted specifically in furtherance of that goal. Contrast this with the IRS suicide pilot who appears to have been motivated purely by anger over his personal situation; no more no less. IMHO, there is no double standard because there were clear differences in motivation for the attacks in both cases; one was clearly terrorism while the other clearly failed to satisfy the definition.
So why not become an investor? It is not as difficult as you might think to open a brokerage account and begin investing.
Why, after all was said and done, did you not sue your insurance company for breach of contract?
it strikes me as absurd to expect them to be able to fix it in any meaningful way.
They could start by either (a) dumping tax favored status for health insurance or (b) equalizing the tax treatment so that everyone, no matter how the insurance is purchased, receives a tax deduction up to a certain amount for the cost of their plan. The first step to real reform is modification of the present tax code, which unduly favors employer sponsored plans and creates a perverse incentive for health care to be purchased and consumed in wasteful and inefficient ways.
then they'll drop you when they find a reason to do so.
At which point you can go to your state insurance commissioner for relief or, if that doesn't work, you can file suit against the insurance company for breach of contract. IANAL, but it seems that if the policy was canceled because you "had a hangnail in the 8th grade", a good attorney would be able to persuade the insurance company to "reconsider" dropping your coverage.
I was an actual contractor, with multiple clients, self-employment taxes, and all.
According to TFA, this would not be enough. You might think that it is, and many independent contractors doing programming work apparently did until the IRS showed up for an audit, but it seems that programmers as a class of self employed workers are singled out for special attention. From TFA:
but TFA goes on to say:
If I were you, I would take a second look at the tax code or maybe consult a tax attorney. You might not be as safe from an audit as you think.
To understand power in the United States, don't follow government. Follow the money.
and where does all of that money lead? It says "federal reserve note" right on each bill. The government ultimately controls the money supply and the fact that Wall Street went to Washington for their bailouts demonstrates that the government is still master of the money supply; the source from which all credit flows.
but based on my experience private companies hire lazy and incompnent employees as well.
This is true, but there is one key difference between private businesses and the government. If a private business hires bad employees and operates inefficiently it goes out of business (or at least it should, provided that the government doesn't bail them out). The government, on the other hand, cannot go out of business or disappear; it usually takes a very protracted period of bad performance for governments to be finally shown the door. Also, we can choose not to patronize bad businesses, but taxes are not optional. These are a few of the key differences between private businesses and government.