The courts disagree with you, especially when the "corporate veil" protects employees, not just investors.
You make these assertions. Where's the evidence? I read that the corporate veil protects shareholders not employees, but only those who aren't taking an active role in operation of the company.
Many individuals contributed to a corporate decision, but no human actually made the final decision in an actioable manner.
It's still a bunch of decisions by a bunch of people not a decision by a corporation. The corporation is not the group. It is merely a legally recognized structure by which the group is organized.
and I've spent more hours in Rogue or it's variants than any other game in history
A lot of hours you say? Grind is not a well-defined term. But for me, I usually consider grind in a computer game to be a repetitive activity that you have to do at a computer just to play the game. For Rogue, that activity is clearing out a level. For a lot of modern MMO games, grind is clobbering mobs, harvesting resources, making things, and running quests - in the corresponding semantics of the game.
While I can see a case for programs implementing such algorithms as making decisions, you still have the problem that those things aren't corporations either. And someone bears responsibility, if the program implementing the algorithm is used improperly. Since all such use is in a sandbox where it is near impossible to commit an illegal act, it makes a poor case.
People "representing" a corporation make decision, but not for themselves, and not necessarily the decision they would make if it were their choice to make.
Ok. So you're saying that people make the decisions. Just because they have obligations is irrelevant. Everyone has obligations, including contractual ones like the above. We don't say the source of the obligation makes the decisions in those other cases.
That is because under law, the corporation made the decision and did the crime.
No, it's because the US Department of Justice decided not to enforce the law. That sort of corruption doesn't have anything to do with the business being a corporation.
Or, not understand, and think your comment makes no sense.
I have to agree. You don't seem to understand. Maybe you should fix that before doing that straw man thing again.
I guess this is the same sort of thing that is said about any political label. Maybe I should be pleased that people are discussing libertarianism with the same lack of seriousness that they'd give to any other major ideology.
and instead simply have stolen money from unconnected, largely unmonied Libertarians
Stealing money from the "unmonied"? I see a huge, gaping flaw in your plan. Might as well steal half a billion from your pet cat. I'm sure he's good for it.
As was already noted, the problem isn't stealing from monied or unmonied, it's stealing from people with access to illegal recourse. Those people have means for getting back which are worse than anything "monied" people can do legally.
Since there is no society, these types would have little means of coming back at him.
And of course, we have to finish with a two minute hate. Libertarianism is basically about minimal government necessary for society not minimal society. But I guess you don't care.
Even in Eve Online, the best modules drop from rare spawns in low-security space, and although players can now research Tech 2 blueprints, the cartels that control the never-ending ones that were given out in the first couple years of the game have such a price advantage that crafting isn't all that satisfying in the game.
And the obvious rebuttal is that these modules are only the "best", if you don't mind losing them over and over. Aside from awesome, status signalling killmails (notices that detail what an enemy loses when you blow them up), player-made is superior because it doesn't bankrupt you when your internet spaceship goes boom.
Second, Tech 2 "original" blueprints (which have two advantages - considerably more efficient use of materials for the single item that they make and they aren't capped as to the amount of the thing which can be produced) are basically collectors' items with some decent economic benefits. They're priced well over their manufacturing value.
Having played Eve Online as an industrialist and actually run the numbers on production with these things, I don't consider them at all that significant. It's more flash than substance.
Now, UO was a very innovative game for the CRPG genre, but created new problems. It basically invented the 'Grind'.
Grind was around well before UO. Rogue did it in 1980. And grind long predates computer games since it's a common component of many loyalty marketing programs offered by private commerce. From the Wikipedia webpage on loyalty marketing:
Trading stamps
The first trading stamps were introduced in 1891, the Blue Stamp Trading System, where stamps affixed to booklets could be redeemed for store products. The Sperry and Hutchinson Company, started in 1896 in Jackson, Michigan, was the first third-party provider of trading stamps for various companies, including dry goods dealers, gas stations and later supermarkets. S&H Green Stamps, as the company was commonly called, opened its first redemption center in 1897. Customers could take their filled booklets of "green stamps" and redeem them for household products, kitchen items, and personal items. When the G.I.s returned from World War II the trading stamps business took off when numerous third-party companies created their own trading stamp programs to offer to supermarkets and other retailers.
So it's takes a modest amount of effort to do something here? I don't at all consider the president's hands to be "tied" just because he has to exert himself.
It's a troll. I wouldn't be surprised if the original poster actually gets pouty about "Americans" too and wrote that in some attempt at sarcasm or humor.
You included Social Security in the expenses, and divide the time range up in 'before SS' and 'after SS'
The first thing is because Social Security is part of the expenses. Due to the games played and depending on whether it's running a surplus or deficit that year, money from Social Security is dumped into or taken out of the general fund.
As to the second observation, Social Security was implemented by President Franklin Roosevelt who also was the first president to really cut loose with federal level spending in peace time.
Also, look at health and life expectancy before 1930. Now realize that huge amounts of the federal budget is SS & Medical (Medicare & Medicaid). If we didn't care about the indigent old, or the fact that national health insurance is more efficient (see what we spend on medical vs other advanced countries and the outcomes), and we didn't feel the need to be the world's police and paid down our debt, we could probably get back to ~4-5%...
Even if we did "care about the indigent old", the opinion "that national health insurance is more efficient" or a Cold War level national defence, the budget cuts would still leave the US in pretty good shape to deal with these issues.
There's this magic thinking that spending money on something is the same as getting results. I'd say the current state of the US government's functioning indicates this need not be the case.
That's a very simplistic view. And obviously flawed. It neglects to consider that the government gives as well as takes.
I was arguing with someone over a similar issue when I decided to just look at US federal level government spending - including off budget things like Social Security. For about half the life of the US (140 years from 1790 through to 1930), the federal government was able to provide all these things for about 2-3% of estimated GDP with the exceptions of three major wars that happened over that period.
Now that is a bit over 20% of GDP. We're just speaking of the federal level, state and local governments do their own thing too.
So what is that spending providing now that is so much better than what they were providing before?
It's not like the Mexicans wouldn't have gotten their hands on guns some other way.
US law doesn't actually work that way. If you knowingly assist in a murder, even if it would have happened anyway without your help, you are an accessory to murder. That's a felony. They also were engaging in criminal negligence.
One of the key aspects of the Fast and Furious case is that they reviewed the case, about a year in, and determined that a lot of these weapons ended up at crime scenes, including murders (20-30% of the weapons which had been transported into Mexico to that point, if I recall correctly). Yet they chose to continue the program.
At that point, they became accessories to the crimes committed with these weapons including a number of murders. And these firearms still occasionally show up at crime scenes.
Toss in that a US law enforcement officer died in a firefight which had two of these weapons involved (which incidentally was what finally shut down the program), and there probably should be some ATF agents getting put away for a long time.
The problem here is not that they were doing what normally would have been a fairly standard sting operation under difficult conditions (crossing a country border with some portion of the police on the other side coopted by large drug cartels), but rather the vile and callous disregard for the consequences of allowing high quality weapons, which they knew would mostly be used for criminal purposes, to be smuggled across the border without either notifying the Mexican authorities or keeping track of the weapons.
I expected him to welch on the promise, of course. But if he were serious about closing that prison rather than merely staking an easily retractable position, then he had plenty of time to get it done. A US president doesn't need to be all powerful in order to shut down an illegal prison.
Getting stuff merely because you're better connected politically is the essence of cronyism
Again, I'm just using the same defense as corporations. If unions are crony, so are corporations, and so are may other people. That would validate my other point that the "Good Old Days" of earning your way through hard work is long gone. Somewhere along the way, most people resort to cronyism. Pick your poison.
Seriously, you're rationalizing this on the basis that everyone does it? This is how corruption becomes endemic - enough people rationalize that it's ok because others are doing it too. Similarly, it dies when most of society doesn't accept it.
One of the few virtues of cronyism is that it tends to destroy those who get too greedy. They make too many enemies and get carved up the next time there is a regime change. I think that will happen in this case.
Let us recall that even now the wealthy pay most of US taxes.
No, you're the one wrongly characterizing middle class people as wealthy. The upper class are the top 1%, at best top 5%. The middle class doesn't start after the top 10% who pays 55% of federal taxes or 72% of income taxes They start in it, and before it.
You go ahead and move those goalposts. I see no actual rebuttal here of my observation.
It still isn't an illusion. I think it's sad how so many people can look at hundreds of millions of people bettering their lives right now and just say "That isn't actually happening". It's one of the mass hysterias of our day.
It is an illusion. What you call bettering their lives is bread and circuses. You said it yourself there's huge government welfare spending. The things people are getting are paid by welfare, and credit. They only have the APPEARANCE (illusion) of bettering their lives.
Well, if it actually is an illusion, I trust you will eventually be able to make an argument to that effect. Not merely say "Is not!"
The opportunities might not be as good now as they were a few decades ago, but people can still live their lives and do the things they want to do. I see plenty of people raising families, bettering themselves, and improving their circumstances.
While my rebuttal was oriented on the modern era, you originally claimed that the idea that "America" became great because "free individuals worked hard and government stayed out of their way" was never true - even in the days when there was no huge government welfare spending or people doing stuff on welfare/credit. So what's your excuse for those periods of time?
Amongst the minority who break the cycle, most did so by engaging in what you call cronyism: get government favors so they pay less, get more protection, etc.
On the other hand, I see them as perpetuaters of the cycle in question. Resorting to power as has been done so many times before to get an advantage over others isn't breaking any cycle.
Slashdot Mirror
even then Ken Lay was acquitted (vacated, with the same legal standing as an acquittal).
Wikipedia says he was convicted, but died before his sentencing trial. He was vacated posthumously because he died, not because of the corporate veil.
The courts disagree with you, especially when the "corporate veil" protects employees, not just investors.
You make these assertions. Where's the evidence? I read that the corporate veil protects shareholders not employees, but only those who aren't taking an active role in operation of the company.
Many individuals contributed to a corporate decision, but no human actually made the final decision in an actioable manner.
It's still a bunch of decisions by a bunch of people not a decision by a corporation. The corporation is not the group. It is merely a legally recognized structure by which the group is organized.
How did Rogue have grind?
[...]
and I've spent more hours in Rogue or it's variants than any other game in history
A lot of hours you say? Grind is not a well-defined term. But for me, I usually consider grind in a computer game to be a repetitive activity that you have to do at a computer just to play the game. For Rogue, that activity is clearing out a level. For a lot of modern MMO games, grind is clobbering mobs, harvesting resources, making things, and running quests - in the corresponding semantics of the game.
While I can see a case for programs implementing such algorithms as making decisions, you still have the problem that those things aren't corporations either. And someone bears responsibility, if the program implementing the algorithm is used improperly. Since all such use is in a sandbox where it is near impossible to commit an illegal act, it makes a poor case.
People "representing" a corporation make decision, but not for themselves, and not necessarily the decision they would make if it were their choice to make.
Ok. So you're saying that people make the decisions. Just because they have obligations is irrelevant. Everyone has obligations, including contractual ones like the above. We don't say the source of the obligation makes the decisions in those other cases.
That is because under law, the corporation made the decision and did the crime.
No, it's because the US Department of Justice decided not to enforce the law. That sort of corruption doesn't have anything to do with the business being a corporation.
Most of us has very little to loose
Costco doesn't fall in that category.
After all, corporations do not understand the physical pain of starvation.
Completely irrelevant since corporations don't make decisions or understand things. People do.
Unless the courts decide that it was gross negligence. So the legal reason is still there.
Or, not understand, and think your comment makes no sense.
I have to agree. You don't seem to understand. Maybe you should fix that before doing that straw man thing again.
I guess this is the same sort of thing that is said about any political label. Maybe I should be pleased that people are discussing libertarianism with the same lack of seriousness that they'd give to any other major ideology.
I see the two minute hate continues. It's amazing all the crazy shit that Emmanuel Goldstein believes.
and instead simply have stolen money from unconnected, largely unmonied Libertarians
Stealing money from the "unmonied"? I see a huge, gaping flaw in your plan. Might as well steal half a billion from your pet cat. I'm sure he's good for it.
As was already noted, the problem isn't stealing from monied or unmonied, it's stealing from people with access to illegal recourse. Those people have means for getting back which are worse than anything "monied" people can do legally.
Since there is no society, these types would have little means of coming back at him.
And of course, we have to finish with a two minute hate. Libertarianism is basically about minimal government necessary for society not minimal society. But I guess you don't care.
Even in Eve Online, the best modules drop from rare spawns in low-security space, and although players can now research Tech 2 blueprints, the cartels that control the never-ending ones that were given out in the first couple years of the game have such a price advantage that crafting isn't all that satisfying in the game.
And the obvious rebuttal is that these modules are only the "best", if you don't mind losing them over and over. Aside from awesome, status signalling killmails (notices that detail what an enemy loses when you blow them up), player-made is superior because it doesn't bankrupt you when your internet spaceship goes boom.
Second, Tech 2 "original" blueprints (which have two advantages - considerably more efficient use of materials for the single item that they make and they aren't capped as to the amount of the thing which can be produced) are basically collectors' items with some decent economic benefits. They're priced well over their manufacturing value.
Having played Eve Online as an industrialist and actually run the numbers on production with these things, I don't consider them at all that significant. It's more flash than substance.
Now, UO was a very innovative game for the CRPG genre, but created new problems. It basically invented the 'Grind'.
Grind was around well before UO. Rogue did it in 1980. And grind long predates computer games since it's a common component of many loyalty marketing programs offered by private commerce. From the Wikipedia webpage on loyalty marketing:
Trading stamps
The first trading stamps were introduced in 1891, the Blue Stamp Trading System, where stamps affixed to booklets could be redeemed for store products. The Sperry and Hutchinson Company, started in 1896 in Jackson, Michigan, was the first third-party provider of trading stamps for various companies, including dry goods dealers, gas stations and later supermarkets. S&H Green Stamps, as the company was commonly called, opened its first redemption center in 1897. Customers could take their filled booklets of "green stamps" and redeem them for household products, kitchen items, and personal items. When the G.I.s returned from World War II the trading stamps business took off when numerous third-party companies created their own trading stamp programs to offer to supermarkets and other retailers.
So it's takes a modest amount of effort to do something here? I don't at all consider the president's hands to be "tied" just because he has to exert himself.
Only three posts in and we're already doing the moral equivalence song and dance.
It's a troll. I wouldn't be surprised if the original poster actually gets pouty about "Americans" too and wrote that in some attempt at sarcasm or humor.
You included Social Security in the expenses, and divide the time range up in 'before SS' and 'after SS'
The first thing is because Social Security is part of the expenses. Due to the games played and depending on whether it's running a surplus or deficit that year, money from Social Security is dumped into or taken out of the general fund.
As to the second observation, Social Security was implemented by President Franklin Roosevelt who also was the first president to really cut loose with federal level spending in peace time.
Also, look at health and life expectancy before 1930. Now realize that huge amounts of the federal budget is SS & Medical (Medicare & Medicaid). If we didn't care about the indigent old, or the fact that national health insurance is more efficient (see what we spend on medical vs other advanced countries and the outcomes), and we didn't feel the need to be the world's police and paid down our debt, we could probably get back to ~4-5%...
Even if we did "care about the indigent old", the opinion "that national health insurance is more efficient" or a Cold War level national defence, the budget cuts would still leave the US in pretty good shape to deal with these issues.
There's this magic thinking that spending money on something is the same as getting results. I'd say the current state of the US government's functioning indicates this need not be the case.
learn who has what authority.
No. Congress has to officially close Gitmo, sure. But the president gets to decide who, if anyone, stays at Gitmo.
That's a very simplistic view. And obviously flawed. It neglects to consider that the government gives as well as takes.
I was arguing with someone over a similar issue when I decided to just look at US federal level government spending - including off budget things like Social Security. For about half the life of the US (140 years from 1790 through to 1930), the federal government was able to provide all these things for about 2-3% of estimated GDP with the exceptions of three major wars that happened over that period.
Now that is a bit over 20% of GDP. We're just speaking of the federal level, state and local governments do their own thing too.
So what is that spending providing now that is so much better than what they were providing before?
I don't know. A million is a pretty big number, so that has to be fast.
A "push"? All these fancy euphemisms for not honoring a promise. This lie is not off the table merely because he decides to "push" five years late.
It's not like the Mexicans wouldn't have gotten their hands on guns some other way.
US law doesn't actually work that way. If you knowingly assist in a murder, even if it would have happened anyway without your help, you are an accessory to murder. That's a felony. They also were engaging in criminal negligence.
One of the key aspects of the Fast and Furious case is that they reviewed the case, about a year in, and determined that a lot of these weapons ended up at crime scenes, including murders (20-30% of the weapons which had been transported into Mexico to that point, if I recall correctly). Yet they chose to continue the program.
At that point, they became accessories to the crimes committed with these weapons including a number of murders. And these firearms still occasionally show up at crime scenes.
Toss in that a US law enforcement officer died in a firefight which had two of these weapons involved (which incidentally was what finally shut down the program), and there probably should be some ATF agents getting put away for a long time.
The problem here is not that they were doing what normally would have been a fairly standard sting operation under difficult conditions (crossing a country border with some portion of the police on the other side coopted by large drug cartels), but rather the vile and callous disregard for the consequences of allowing high quality weapons, which they knew would mostly be used for criminal purposes, to be smuggled across the border without either notifying the Mexican authorities or keeping track of the weapons.
I expected him to welch on the promise, of course. But if he were serious about closing that prison rather than merely staking an easily retractable position, then he had plenty of time to get it done. A US president doesn't need to be all powerful in order to shut down an illegal prison.
Getting stuff merely because you're better connected politically is the essence of cronyism
Again, I'm just using the same defense as corporations. If unions are crony, so are corporations, and so are may other people. That would validate my other point that the "Good Old Days" of earning your way through hard work is long gone. Somewhere along the way, most people resort to cronyism. Pick your poison.
Seriously, you're rationalizing this on the basis that everyone does it? This is how corruption becomes endemic - enough people rationalize that it's ok because others are doing it too. Similarly, it dies when most of society doesn't accept it.
One of the few virtues of cronyism is that it tends to destroy those who get too greedy. They make too many enemies and get carved up the next time there is a regime change. I think that will happen in this case.
Let us recall that even now the wealthy pay most of US taxes.
No, you're the one wrongly characterizing middle class people as wealthy. The upper class are the top 1%, at best top 5%. The middle class doesn't start after the top 10% who pays 55% of federal taxes or 72% of income taxes They start in it, and before it.
You go ahead and move those goalposts. I see no actual rebuttal here of my observation.
It still isn't an illusion. I think it's sad how so many people can look at hundreds of millions of people bettering their lives right now and just say "That isn't actually happening". It's one of the mass hysterias of our day.
It is an illusion. What you call bettering their lives is bread and circuses. You said it yourself there's huge government welfare spending. The things people are getting are paid by welfare, and credit. They only have the APPEARANCE (illusion) of bettering their lives.
Well, if it actually is an illusion, I trust you will eventually be able to make an argument to that effect. Not merely say "Is not!"
The opportunities might not be as good now as they were a few decades ago, but people can still live their lives and do the things they want to do. I see plenty of people raising families, bettering themselves, and improving their circumstances.
While my rebuttal was oriented on the modern era, you originally claimed that the idea that "America" became great because "free individuals worked hard and government stayed out of their way" was never true - even in the days when there was no huge government welfare spending or people doing stuff on welfare/credit. So what's your excuse for those periods of time?
Amongst the minority who break the cycle, most did so by engaging in what you call cronyism: get government favors so they pay less, get more protection, etc.
On the other hand, I see them as perpetuaters of the cycle in question. Resorting to power as has been done so many times before to get an advantage over others isn't breaking any cycle.