SSN's are guaranteed to only be assigned to one living person at a time
The Social Security Administration makes that promise, but they don't always meet it. There have been several cases of blocks of SSNs being issued to multiple people.
The long and short of it is, if you want a unique key in a database, it's a mistake to rely on some outside agency to generate it.
That's about the level of discourse I've come to expect from opponents of liberty. Thanks for letting me know right off the bat that you need not be taken seriously.
I have studied the depression, and that's why I know that the best thing a government can do in a financial crisis it to get the hell out of the way, and let the necessary liquidations and repricing take place. By bailing out failed organizations, the government allows them to continue to do the wrong things.
While this alone did not cause the economic crisis, it was a contributing factor.
It was a minor factor. The chief driver of the insane levels of leverage was the belief that the Fed would keep anyone from going belly-up as long as they were big enough. Google for "Greenspan put" for the details.
Yeah, the repeal of Glass-Steagal is a figment of your imagination.
Its effects were trivial. Banking is still about the most regulated industry we have outside of manufacturing pharmaceuticals or operating nuclear power plants. The Fed was inflating the money like crazy, and that's where the ability to leverage up came from.
The fucking dickwads on Wall Street are already circle jerking the shit out of themselves with bonuses
As it happens, the market was canceling those bonuses, and eliminating the incompetent organizations you're bitching about, until some geniuses in the legislature decided (over the objections of a majority of their constituents) to hand them hundreds of billions of newly-inflated dollars to let them continue business as usual.
Don't blame the market for paying out those undeserved bonuses.
A few years from now, they'll be back exactly where they were a few months ago and we'll be a few hundred billion dollars poorer.
That's only the direct expenses. Besides the hundreds of billions that go down the GM rathole, we lose out on everything that could have been done with that money by competent people and organizations.
Look at the bigger picture before you sound off...
The bigger picture is that by keeping these zombies alive, the government makes us all poorer by allowing failed organizations to continue to squander resources. If the people wanted GM to keep doing what they were doing, we'd have been buying their products. The market is a profit and loss system. Losses in business serve a vital function, just like pain does to a living being. It says "quit doing that".
Both of these add up to the tired right wing line that the market is always greater than the government.
I would state that somewhat differently: I would prefer to buy what I choose, than to have my earnings taken from me to buy what you choose. Whether my decisions meet your approval or not, they're mine to make if I'm a free man.
Only so long as we remain a viable market (meaning: we have disposable income to spend on cars) and a viable country for heavy industry to operate (and we're rapidly and foolishly dismantling what we have left of that.
I agree that our tax and regulatory regime makes it far more sensible to build cars outside the USA, but there are some states where it's still worth it to run a factory. Michigan is not one of them, of course.
How, exactly, is dropping union contracts (screwing workers) the right thing?
The contracts weren't economically feasible, and that's one of the things you do in a bankruptcy: you either liquidate the business (chapter 7 or 13), or you restructure it (chapter 11) to make it a viable operation going forward.
The worst part of the bailouts and the bankruptcy is the terrible precedent it sets: the president decided to override the existing body of law that we have to deal with failed businesses. The upshot is that you'd have to be fucking nuts to invest in or loan money to any company with a union, because of the danger of the union getting the government to change the rules on the fly.
There exists even Employment Contract Agreements that are basically slavery, and companies can easily get away with them and treat employees as slaves.
What a load of crap. You can quit any job, any time. Slaves couldn't.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, I'm aware of their claim. Do you know the difference between a claim and a fact?
-jcr
What would keep the elevator from instantly vaporizing due to electrical arcing the moment it's installed?
you can't discharge the entire ionosphere by running a wire into it. It's not a big metal-foil plate, it's a very diffuse plasma.
-jcr
it's -all- Obama's fault, right?
It is now. If he'd made any moves towards correcting instead of compounding Bush's mistakes, then it wouldn't be.
-jcr
the fact that SSNs are indeed unique.
That is not a fact. It is a widely-held misconception.
-jcr
SSN's are guaranteed to only be assigned to one living person at a time
The Social Security Administration makes that promise, but they don't always meet it. There have been several cases of blocks of SSNs being issued to multiple people.
The long and short of it is, if you want a unique key in a database, it's a mistake to rely on some outside agency to generate it.
-jcr
I'm programmer with several works published in open-source from encryption to network programming, so I can hardly be considered a fan-boy.
Sure you can. Plenty of Real Programmers are fan-boys, too. You say that like being a fan is a bad thing.
-jcr
A _real_ Windows machine,
What, an IBM PC-AT? Nope, can't say I have.
You didn't seriously try to use the "no true Scotsman" fallacy to defend Microsoft, did you?
-jcr
that guy is a fucking psychotic nutbag.
That's about the level of discourse I've come to expect from opponents of liberty. Thanks for letting me know right off the bat that you need not be taken seriously.
-jcr
Should be enough time for us to move to the asteroids, and move them to whatever distance from the sun is optimal.
-jcr
Perhaps you never studied the depression
I have studied the depression, and that's why I know that the best thing a government can do in a financial crisis it to get the hell out of the way, and let the necessary liquidations and repricing take place. By bailing out failed organizations, the government allows them to continue to do the wrong things.
Watch and learn.
-jcr
The FED created the bubble to reduce misery
The fed exists to enrich its owners by inflating the currency. Any other ostensible purpose of the fed is nothing but propaganda.
-jcr
He didn't exactly see the financial meltdown coming in advance
It's worse than that. He actually advocated a housing bubble as a remedy for the crashing dot com bubble.
-jcr
this is just idealogically inspired wishful thinking
I'm talking about companies that were going out of business. That's how the market pulls the plug on incompetence.
-jcr
Remember how another Enron was going to be prevented by SarBox?
Yeah, and I remember how Sarbanes ignored the fact that what Enron did was already illegal. We already had statutes against fraud.
I conclude Government is incapable of effectively regulating the financial markets.
If anything, the federal government is an enabler of poor financial decisions.
-jcr
While this alone did not cause the economic crisis, it was a contributing factor.
It was a minor factor. The chief driver of the insane levels of leverage was the belief that the Fed would keep anyone from going belly-up as long as they were big enough. Google for "Greenspan put" for the details.
-jcr
Yeah, the repeal of Glass-Steagal is a figment of your imagination.
Its effects were trivial. Banking is still about the most regulated industry we have outside of manufacturing pharmaceuticals or operating nuclear power plants. The Fed was inflating the money like crazy, and that's where the ability to leverage up came from.
-jcr
who was in office deregulating the financial sector
Nobody deregulated the financial sector. That's one of the myths being used to compound the damage.
-jcr
The fucking dickwads on Wall Street are already circle jerking the shit out of themselves with bonuses
As it happens, the market was canceling those bonuses, and eliminating the incompetent organizations you're bitching about, until some geniuses in the legislature decided (over the objections of a majority of their constituents) to hand them hundreds of billions of newly-inflated dollars to let them continue business as usual.
Don't blame the market for paying out those undeserved bonuses.
-jcr
A few years from now, they'll be back exactly where they were a few months ago and we'll be a few hundred billion dollars poorer.
That's only the direct expenses. Besides the hundreds of billions that go down the GM rathole, we lose out on everything that could have been done with that money by competent people and organizations.
-jcr
Look at the bigger picture before you sound off...
The bigger picture is that by keeping these zombies alive, the government makes us all poorer by allowing failed organizations to continue to squander resources. If the people wanted GM to keep doing what they were doing, we'd have been buying their products. The market is a profit and loss system. Losses in business serve a vital function, just like pain does to a living being. It says "quit doing that".
-jcr
Both of these add up to the tired right wing line that the market is always greater than the government.
I would state that somewhat differently: I would prefer to buy what I choose, than to have my earnings taken from me to buy what you choose. Whether my decisions meet your approval or not, they're mine to make if I'm a free man.
Scratch a liberal, find an autocrat.
-jcr
Only so long as we remain a viable market (meaning: we have disposable income to spend on cars) and a viable country for heavy industry to operate (and we're rapidly and foolishly dismantling what we have left of that.
I agree that our tax and regulatory regime makes it far more sensible to build cars outside the USA, but there are some states where it's still worth it to run a factory. Michigan is not one of them, of course.
-jcr
How, exactly, is dropping union contracts (screwing workers) the right thing?
The contracts weren't economically feasible, and that's one of the things you do in a bankruptcy: you either liquidate the business (chapter 7 or 13), or you restructure it (chapter 11) to make it a viable operation going forward.
The worst part of the bailouts and the bankruptcy is the terrible precedent it sets: the president decided to override the existing body of law that we have to deal with failed businesses. The upshot is that you'd have to be fucking nuts to invest in or loan money to any company with a union, because of the danger of the union getting the government to change the rules on the fly.
-jcr
Was there any lasting damage to your sense of taste?
-jcr
There exists even Employment Contract Agreements that are basically slavery, and companies can easily get away with them and treat employees as slaves.
What a load of crap. You can quit any job, any time. Slaves couldn't.
-jcr