If government didn't have the power to affect the private sector, your argument would be meaningless because all the money in the world wouldn't change anything for them. The problem with socialistic arguments against reduced government is that they presume the same conditions that allowed our government to spiral out of control in the first place.
Eliminate all the laws that affect the private sector, good and bad, force the Federal Government to stop using the Interstate Commerce Clause to blow money on regulation, and kick the lobbyists out of the capital and you have a workable small government. Take it a step further and require the government to be supported entirely through donations and then they can't spend money on frivolities without our permission.
The fiberglass in Chew will kill you more readily than the actual tobacco. One of the first things you learn from other chewers is not to swallow anything while its in your mouth. It will tear up your stomach.
I daresay that it wasn't deregulation that got us into this mess, but rather the mandate that housing is a right. Our government let us down when they decided that it didn't need to make financial sense for a person to own a home, only that they needed to want it badly enough and they could get a loan.
The shocker is that we're doing the same thing to healthcare and my children will be paying for it.
I have a lower UID than you and I don't know what a root DNS server does. I do probably know way more physics, mathematics, and philosophy than you so can it. Especially if you're not going to explain.
That's the same attitude that perpetuates the modern socialist state, that we hold someone's life to be inherently sacred, but not the things that allow them that life. That we do not hold a person's food, shelter, or clothing sacred but that we hold his every breath sacred as if breathing were not made possible by any of those things.
It is a travesty that you believe anyone should be allowed to take anything of mine as long as they don't perpetrate physical violence upon me.
The founding fathers left a massive loophole in the constitution by declaring you have a right to life. You don't have a right to life, you have a right to live your own life.
Could you source some data for your comment? Otherwise it's at least as valid as your opponent's unsourced comment, and it seems less plausible under the example of an illegal alien obtaining employment through identity theft, and their subsequent ability to force another person to take on their personal tax liability.
So I'm confused. If you're saying you would rather it be at the expense of your life, then are you saying it would be okay for an illegal alien to enter the country but only on the condition that they shoot you first?
Or are you saying that you would rather we all die for the sake of everyone else in the world who is also dead at the hands of your philosophy?
There are also governments that will take your money at gunpoint and give it to other people on the condition that you are more productive than they are.
Because Digital Rights Management has sure demonstrated that it's possible to create something that's impossible to fake or defraud in any way.
In other news, now that the federal government has legislated away your right to choose for youself whether you want health insurance, expect them to make other critical health decisions for you, like whether or not you should floss, how much food you're allowed to eat, whether or not you should really have that extra donut, and other wonderful decisions.
No, what has destroyed our manufacturing base has been the widespread destructive regulation of industries by our government. When the British left Hong Kong, for example, there was a huge explosion of business and free enterprise because you only needed to fill out a single piece of paper to start a business. Here you have to hire people specifically to understand tax laws, people to understand trade laws, pay permit fees, etc..
If government truly gave a crap about business they would stop putting tariffs and duties on imports, stop regulating exports, and stop setting up new taxes on everything. When you have to determine whether a sale is legal before you can actually make the sale, that is a huge impediment to business. I've had shipments delayed by days simply because the shipper needed a harmonized code. If I were to ship to China there would be no such issues.
Economic protectionism is a huge protection racket, where we pay our legislators to protect our businesses by sucking the lifeblood out of them in taxes and tariffs and blocking blood transfusions through regulation.
And to allay your suspicion that I'm somehow a member of the elite in this country, I make less than 30k a year.
He may have left with a budget surplus, but that was to pay off the enormous national debt. You know, because you're actually supposed to pay debts, not get them forgiven.
No, because ideas are valuable property. Whether I can make copies of it without removing the original idea from my head is trivial. Ideas are worthless if they don't produce something. IE, music is only worth something insofar as it produces a response in the listener. If they have already experienced that response then the music is worthless.
Listener responses are a valuable, non-renewable resource, unless you've somehow discovered a way for me to completely forget a song. And then what was the point of copying it to experience it the first time? That is the value in the music, not the data itself.
This guy's methodology sucks. All he does is count the number of items available and then draw broad conclusions based on already-established opinion in the filesharing world.
I disagree with the premise that there is a limited quantity of stuff required for me to be happy. This is on the basis that someone must decide when I have enough stuff.
Our economy exists because of the creation of labor-saving devices. Imagine, if you would, a world where everyone decided that wood-fired stoves and ovens were good enough. The amount of time you have to spend maintaining the fire and heating the stove makes any attempts at cooking prohibitively time-consuming. Imagine coming home and spending 45 minutes boiling water for Ramen on your stove. My point is that, while advances in production may result in lost jobs, they usually increase our standard of living as a country.
The GP really did make an eloquent point about how the automated CNC machine improved his worker's standard of living by moving their hands away from the really dirty part of the equipment. In the company that I work for, we produce all of our walls for houses using a gantry. The facility produces almost half a mile of wall every day. That's walls for 20 or 30 houses a day. This can be accomplished with 15 people. This has halved the number of people neccessary to actually assemble a house, meaning that where before crews were 3-5 people now they are two people and productivity has increased. This means that we can sell more houses, meaning everyone gets paid more, and our standard of living increases.
Unfortunately if all you've ever done is flip burgers and someone creates a burger-flipping machine, you'd better learn how to operate the machine or you'll be out of a job. As a collection of individuals, our society needs to learn to adapt to changes in job availability because everyone's job is replaceable with technology.
Yes, because when someone else makes a bad decision like gambling all their money away or living in a city below sea level we should all be forced to pay for it with the fruit of our good decisions. What you are suggesting is tantamount to slavery because you insist that I work hard so that you can make bad decisions and not have to pay for them.
Why don't we just let those who do decide to live in such areas pay for their decision? I couldn't care less about your coastal city. But I know I will be expected to pay for it just as I've been fleeced as a taxpayer for New Orleans, and countless other disasters.
Speaking of fleecing, did you know that banks will reduce your mortgage payments and principle significantly if you are unable to make your payments? Whereas if you are able to make your payments you get nothing but an increased tax bill and an inability to borrow money.
Slashdot Mirror
Oh please. The odds of such a catastrophic failure as a wellhead blowing out during drilling are practically nil.
Typically in the latter system you speak of, you would call them something like "Great Leader," or "President for Life."
Probably AL4A and Wikipedia
If government didn't have the power to affect the private sector, your argument would be meaningless because all the money in the world wouldn't change anything for them. The problem with socialistic arguments against reduced government is that they presume the same conditions that allowed our government to spiral out of control in the first place.
Eliminate all the laws that affect the private sector, good and bad, force the Federal Government to stop using the Interstate Commerce Clause to blow money on regulation, and kick the lobbyists out of the capital and you have a workable small government. Take it a step further and require the government to be supported entirely through donations and then they can't spend money on frivolities without our permission.
Howabout you go enforce your idea of what's right on the other side of town and we'll go enforce our idea of what's right on our side of town.
Wait, are you arguing that we should pass laws against stupidity? As if that ever stopped anyone.
Judging by your "use" of "quotations" to "denote" a "chemical," I can only "assume" that you don't "believe" that "chemicals" "exist."
The fiberglass in Chew will kill you more readily than the actual tobacco. One of the first things you learn from other chewers is not to swallow anything while its in your mouth. It will tear up your stomach.
I daresay that it wasn't deregulation that got us into this mess, but rather the mandate that housing is a right. Our government let us down when they decided that it didn't need to make financial sense for a person to own a home, only that they needed to want it badly enough and they could get a loan.
The shocker is that we're doing the same thing to healthcare and my children will be paying for it.
I have a lower UID than you and I don't know what a root DNS server does. I do probably know way more physics, mathematics, and philosophy than you so can it. Especially if you're not going to explain.
That's the same attitude that perpetuates the modern socialist state, that we hold someone's life to be inherently sacred, but not the things that allow them that life. That we do not hold a person's food, shelter, or clothing sacred but that we hold his every breath sacred as if breathing were not made possible by any of those things.
It is a travesty that you believe anyone should be allowed to take anything of mine as long as they don't perpetrate physical violence upon me.
So are you saying that because he didn't make a good decision he doesn't ever get to make decisions at all?
The founding fathers left a massive loophole in the constitution by declaring you have a right to life. You don't have a right to life, you have a right to live your own life.
Could you source some data for your comment? Otherwise it's at least as valid as your opponent's unsourced comment, and it seems less plausible under the example of an illegal alien obtaining employment through identity theft, and their subsequent ability to force another person to take on their personal tax liability.
So I'm confused. If you're saying you would rather it be at the expense of your life, then are you saying it would be okay for an illegal alien to enter the country but only on the condition that they shoot you first?
Or are you saying that you would rather we all die for the sake of everyone else in the world who is also dead at the hands of your philosophy?
It stops being a compassionate act when we're forced to do it by government.
There are also governments that will take your money at gunpoint and give it to other people on the condition that you are more productive than they are.
Because Digital Rights Management has sure demonstrated that it's possible to create something that's impossible to fake or defraud in any way.
In other news, now that the federal government has legislated away your right to choose for youself whether you want health insurance, expect them to make other critical health decisions for you, like whether or not you should floss, how much food you're allowed to eat, whether or not you should really have that extra donut, and other wonderful decisions.
No, what has destroyed our manufacturing base has been the widespread destructive regulation of industries by our government. When the British left Hong Kong, for example, there was a huge explosion of business and free enterprise because you only needed to fill out a single piece of paper to start a business. Here you have to hire people specifically to understand tax laws, people to understand trade laws, pay permit fees, etc..
If government truly gave a crap about business they would stop putting tariffs and duties on imports, stop regulating exports, and stop setting up new taxes on everything. When you have to determine whether a sale is legal before you can actually make the sale, that is a huge impediment to business. I've had shipments delayed by days simply because the shipper needed a harmonized code. If I were to ship to China there would be no such issues.
Economic protectionism is a huge protection racket, where we pay our legislators to protect our businesses by sucking the lifeblood out of them in taxes and tariffs and blocking blood transfusions through regulation.
And to allay your suspicion that I'm somehow a member of the elite in this country, I make less than 30k a year.
He may have left with a budget surplus, but that was to pay off the enormous national debt. You know, because you're actually supposed to pay debts, not get them forgiven.
No, because ideas are valuable property. Whether I can make copies of it without removing the original idea from my head is trivial. Ideas are worthless if they don't produce something. IE, music is only worth something insofar as it produces a response in the listener. If they have already experienced that response then the music is worthless.
Listener responses are a valuable, non-renewable resource, unless you've somehow discovered a way for me to completely forget a song. And then what was the point of copying it to experience it the first time? That is the value in the music, not the data itself.
If you were a woman, I would marry you.
This guy's methodology sucks. All he does is count the number of items available and then draw broad conclusions based on already-established opinion in the filesharing world.
I disagree with the premise that there is a limited quantity of stuff required for me to be happy. This is on the basis that someone must decide when I have enough stuff.
Our economy exists because of the creation of labor-saving devices. Imagine, if you would, a world where everyone decided that wood-fired stoves and ovens were good enough. The amount of time you have to spend maintaining the fire and heating the stove makes any attempts at cooking prohibitively time-consuming. Imagine coming home and spending 45 minutes boiling water for Ramen on your stove. My point is that, while advances in production may result in lost jobs, they usually increase our standard of living as a country.
The GP really did make an eloquent point about how the automated CNC machine improved his worker's standard of living by moving their hands away from the really dirty part of the equipment. In the company that I work for, we produce all of our walls for houses using a gantry. The facility produces almost half a mile of wall every day. That's walls for 20 or 30 houses a day. This can be accomplished with 15 people. This has halved the number of people neccessary to actually assemble a house, meaning that where before crews were 3-5 people now they are two people and productivity has increased. This means that we can sell more houses, meaning everyone gets paid more, and our standard of living increases.
Unfortunately if all you've ever done is flip burgers and someone creates a burger-flipping machine, you'd better learn how to operate the machine or you'll be out of a job. As a collection of individuals, our society needs to learn to adapt to changes in job availability because everyone's job is replaceable with technology.
Yes, because when someone else makes a bad decision like gambling all their money away or living in a city below sea level we should all be forced to pay for it with the fruit of our good decisions. What you are suggesting is tantamount to slavery because you insist that I work hard so that you can make bad decisions and not have to pay for them.
Why don't we just let those who do decide to live in such areas pay for their decision? I couldn't care less about your coastal city. But I know I will be expected to pay for it just as I've been fleeced as a taxpayer for New Orleans, and countless other disasters.
Speaking of fleecing, did you know that banks will reduce your mortgage payments and principle significantly if you are unable to make your payments? Whereas if you are able to make your payments you get nothing but an increased tax bill and an inability to borrow money.