No, your position is to pretty much reject the state entirely.
Yes, because it would be impossible to have a state without income tax. Good one, Sherlock. Your assertion that my argument is intellectually dishonest rests solely on that falsehood. However I'm prepared to accept the possibility that you're ignorant rather than dishonest.
Nor, unlike you, do I hold any illusions about being about to provide my own self defence
Not a historical reality. Having grown up on a farm I assure you we provided our own self-defence. Police would never have got to us in time. I would suggest that if you are incapable of self-defence it is because you are not armed. If you believe you are inherently incapable, then what do you think is the difference between the police and you that makes them capable? It isn't a genetic dysfunction in you, it's the gun. That being so, it is government that has made you dependent on government.
You have declared yourself to be part of the culture of dependency, despite denying that it exists.
You had to modify my post that you "quoted" so you could attack "my" logic. We balance a person's right to choose with their ability to do so. My post says nothing of what should happen between a 20 year old and a 40 year old. 20 year olds are legally adult and expected to fend for themselves, even if they may not always do it well. If it has to be OK for a 14 year old to have sex on the basis that a 20 year old can, then why not a 10 year old, or a five year old?
If you are any sort of a decent human being, you set the limit somewhere. I haven't read your other posts on this topic but it sounds like you set the limit at menstruation. Others think it should be set higher. They aren't necessarily illogical or wrong because they disagree with you. Morality tends to have shades of grey, laws tend to be black and white. Personally I see a difference between a 14/18 couple and a 14/30 couple, the law in my country doesn't. I had to take that into account when I was 18 if I didn't want to risk prison time. Maybe you weren't being evil, but you were certainly being stupid. Risking prison time for nooky? It's not like you couldn't have found someone older, surely? So you can question my logic if you like but I definitely question your judgement. Would you feel better about being in prison because you didn't think you'd done wrong?
I knew a girl who was sexually active at 12. She certainly consented with men, but I think it was wrong of them and they were exploiting her unfairly. I don't know if she menstruated at that age, nor do I find it relevant.
Taking informal surveys of the views of teenagers doesn't tell you much about how society is going to be in the future.
It certainly says something about now.
Not much. The purchasing power of teens isn't exactly the biggest sector of the economy.
Be that as it may, the illusion of it being cheaper worked.
It's not an illusion, it's sold in smaller amounts. Go to a bottle shop and check the price on one beer compared to a carton. People haven't been fooled by this, it's just preferable to purchase in smaller amounts sometimes, even at a higher price/unit.
If you seriously think people should forgo online distribution because it's nice to get outside then there's no point discussing this with you further. I mean, it's nice to go outside, so why not make a spear and hunt your own meat?
Or if, you know, you want games to be produced because you like them (or big budget movies, or mainstream music, or novels, or whatever).
No need to lose sleep, just pay. Like most people do, those are still multi-billion dollar industries you know, even though OMG the evil PIRATES are coming!!!
You will need to work long and hard to convince me that's how the "majority" of people think. Indeed, from the travelling I've done, Australians are only second (behind the Americans) for being skeptical of the Government's ability to provide anything. Indeed, about the only major difference between Australian and American attitudes towards Government is that Australians expect the Government to screw up out of incompetence, whereas Americans expect them to simply be flat-out corrupt.
To the extent that's true, they agree with me and reject the nanny state. What's your argument again?
If you want to look at it like that, feel free. It's grotesquely intellectually dishonest, however.
You say that but you offer no argument to refute it. The product of someone else's labour can never be a basic right to others without implementing in some degree a slave state. If your "basic right" obliges me to work without reward in order to pay for your right (income tax), in what significant way does that differ from me being enslaved by you? Police aren't free but they are a convenience. In the absence of police you are responsible for your own self defence. In the absence of a hospital can you perform your own heart surgery?
The problem is there is mostly that "young people" want to move straight into a mansion rather than work their way up like their parents did.
Don't you think you're saying something about our education system here?
Which "living standards", exactly, have been "massively reduced" and how are you measuring it?
A house, the one major expense for most people, used to cost about 2.5 years of an average wages in my area, now it's about 7. That's in the space of 10 years. Families used to be able to get by on one wage, now most people can't.
In any event, the housing bubble in Australia, as it was in the US, was driven by ludicrously and irresponsibly cheap credit.
Irresponsibly cheap credit made possible by our GOVERNMENT OWNED reserve bank, and no deposit loans made possible by the first home owners grant. Think, dammit! If people begin to realise the culpability our governments have had in this they wouldn't fall for the "it was caused by a lack of regulation" propaganda.
Somehow I bet that explanation doesn't include "because a whole bunch of people got in when banks were handing out credit like candy and drove prices up", or "because you fritter away your cash on meaningless toys like iPhones and trendy clothes"
How much is your bet? You obviously haven't been reading my posts. I'll make some money on this!
Or the biggest reason: "because you desire to live beyond your means after being brainwashed by the media into thinking you can".
You are correct, but remember it was our government that told everyone that buying consumer goods with the stimulus was the thing we needed. We have a government actively promoting financial stupidity (all major parties).
There's certain more meddling than there should be. However, I strongly disagree that there's any "culture of dependency".
Australian's resist that culture of dependency but it is being implemented incrementally. Perhaps I'm looking more negatively at what the government's doing while you're looking more positively at people's resistance to it? I don't have time for this right now, but I do think you should consider that this nation was built on voluntary co-operation between the people and recalcitrance towards the government. I think we ought to shift the balance way over towards recalcitrance from where it is now. One last thing though:
I guess that explains why every Australia doesn't work, retires at exactly 65 and lives in the lap of luxury, never uses private healthcare and spends most of their life at school or in Univerisity.
Most teenagers I talk to don't understand why they should pay for anything if they can download it for free.
Most of the boys I knew in primary school wanted to be policemen or firemen. Taking informal surveys of the views of teenagers doesn't tell you much about how society is going to be in the future.
All iTunes proved is that people may be willing to pay if the price is very, very low, and the content gets delivered to their virtual door.
The price on iTunes is not very low, it only seems that way because you pay by the song instead of the album. Even if the price goes down that's quite normal with the advance of technology, otherwise why bother with progress? We pay for internet connections to get content right to our homes, of course consumer demand is affected by that. You think we should saddle up our horses and ride to town for our music? What are you thinking?
If it's about a video game sold in their retail stores, they won't think twice about downloading it.
If enough people think that way either the business model will change or those games won't be produced any more. One way or another it won't last, don't lose any sleep over it (unless you are a games developer staying up late working on your new business model).
There is a vast gulf of difference between sleeping easier at night because you know a personal disaster won't have you out in the streets begging for scraps, and being "unprepared to look after yourself".
Further, you make the erroneous assumption that the only people who would otherwise suffer are those who aren't prepared to look after themselves. All the preparation in the world won't help you when you're on a low wage and your child gets diagnosed with some illness that requires more money to treat than you'll make in twenty years.
By unprepared I mean "not able", not unwilling. Australians don't have to save money because if you lose your job we'll give you the dole indefinitely, your retirement plan will be worked out between the government and your boss, your health insurance by the government, your education by the government. As I have mentioned in my previous posts, the government will even make sure you get your vitamins. I'm not talking about the lowest wage earners only it's the majority who simply do not develop the habits and mentality of self-reliance necessary to a free people. You think the government and the company are really going to look after you? I'm ok with having that as a backup plan but to make it the mainstay of our daily habits is insane.
It's very admirable to want to make sure people aren't left to fend for themselves in the face of disaster but in the process we've created a culture of dependency that is very dangerous. We don't just look after people in times of disaster, we have the government meddling in our every day lives and that meddling is constantly advancing.
But we don't, because we buy in their protection with favourable trade arrangements.
Note that most of the US's "defence spending" today is not spent on "defence". Of them, us, or anyone else.
I doubt our trade agreements go close to paying for our military shortfall. In any case, I'd prefer not to have the agreements and look after ourselves, for the US military to stay in the US and for ours to not follow them into their various wars.
...it is foolishness to hold us up as an example of doing it better. But we are, in pretty much every metric you care to measure. Education, health, economics, etc.
Except for that bit about being dependent on them. I wouldn't be boasting about economics though. In real terms we've had a massive reduction in living standards over my lifetime. All you have to do is include housing in your inflation figures. Don't be fooled by the relatively mild effects we've had from the financial collapse. Young people starting out now have incredible financial obstacles to overcome compared to 10 years ago. The financial collapse wasn't the disaster, the housing boom was. The fact that not many people seem to understand that doesn't speak much for the education system either. How can young people afford to pay for others healthcare, education, baby payments, social security, etc, etc, when they can barely afford a place to live? Your desire to make sure people don't get hammered by disaster is making it so that people are being overwhelmed by daily necessity.
Same "preoccupation" that exists with all things society has decided are basic rights - protection from others, workplace safety, non-discrimination, etc. The reason you can't opt out of health care is the same reason you can't sell yourself into slavery.
Well, I disagree that health care is a basic right. It is a product of other people's labour and has to be paid for, unlike things such as the right to be secure in your person and property (protection from others, workplace safety, non-discrimination). For the product of another person's labour is a basic right of mine, then somebody has to become my slave. In our case we spread the slavery out by taking a portion of people's income but the principle is there. You say I can't sell myself as
It's as much stealing as not paying your doctor or your plumber for work performed. Sure, you can claim "I didn't take anything physical from you, therefore, you aren't actually losing anything when I don't pay you", but work needs to be done, you want the benefits of that work, but you balk at paying for it.
The doctor and plumber's time is limited, number of copies of digital media isn't, so it's a bad analogy. Not to justify copyright infringement as I agree that copyrights are a good thing, but it isn't at all the same as stealing. Consider the situation with MS Windows. While they would prefer that people buy it instead of copy it, they prefer people to pirate windows than use a competing product. Can you think of any seller of a tangible product that would prefer you to steal their product than use a competitor's product? Stealing doesn't work like that.
While I agree with the concept of copyright, the constant extension of copyright terms, lobbying for draconian legislation, deliberate public misinformation programs and abuse of the court system by copyright holders is far worse than what the "pirates" are doing and was happening long before copyright infringement became commonplace. I oppose any measures in support of that industry until they demonstrate their willingness to clean up their own act first. Until then, if the pirates destroy their businesses I will be cheering from the sidelines. Vote for the pirate party.
User generated content? All crap, all the time. No, that isn't going to be the future of entertainment.
It won't be the whole future but it's here to stay whether you like it or not. User generated content is being used as the entire basis for mainstream media content sometimes now, such as in this news story about the "wedding dance video". You are way off base if you think this type of content isn't going to have a place in mainstream entertainment.
What most people don't understand is we've grown an entire generation that believes it all should be free and will never, ever pay.
Like with free to air TV and radio? Free content is hardly a new thing, for many people a significant portion of their entertainment has been free (ad supported) content for decades.
The idea that people aren't willing to pay is a lie anyway and everyone who promotes the idea knows it. iTunes proved that. If you provide the product or service people want they will pay for it. Make paid for DRM free downloads available at the right price and most people won't bother with "pirate" sites with even minimal risk of getting caught. Just having predictable quality movie and music files will win people over on convenience over illegal downloads.
You sound like the kind of person who would never understand until they've been bankrupted by a serious illness, or seen someone suffer through an illness because they couldn't afford payment.
Luckily for you, you're an Australian, so you don't actually have to worry about that happening.
I wouldn't count on that. Our social security and health care will be unlikely to survive the next two decades. The baby boomers will soon all retire and our ratio of workers to full time social security recipients is likely to be close to 1:1. The practice of consumerism, spending money on frivolities thinking that makes us prosperous, instead of frugality is going to bite us on our big socialist collective arse. Socialism in Australia may look ok to you now but it isn't going to last. When it collapses we will have a population that is totally unprepared to look after themselves.
In any case, how different do you think Australian health care (or any other socialist health care) would look without the drugs and equipment developed by that evil American system? Or if our defence spending had to be adequate to actually defend our country because we didn't have US military bases here? Australian socialism as it exists is absolutely dependent on our relationship with the US, it is foolishness to hold us up as an example of doing it better. It will be interesting to say the least to see what happens if we swap out that relationship in preference of China.
Universal Healthcare isn't about the Government being your surrogate parent, it's about a whole bunch of people who have decided to share the cost of keeping each other healthy, because they understand that this means their whole culture is better off because of it.
Done voluntarily, that's called insurance and I agree. What is the preoccupation with the use of government force? If it was really about "a whole bunch of people who have decided" as you claim, it wouldn't need to be compulsory.
I also want to add that you Americans have the weirdest ideals about healthcare. ARE YOU FREAKING CRAZY!!!
Although I am a fellow Australian, I think I can explain this to you. In our country, we have the government taking very good care of us, for example with the new requirement for bakers to put iodised salt in bread. Now it is very unlikely for any Australian to have an iodine deficiency because the government will make sure we get our nutrition, just like a good parent makes their children eat their vegetables.
Strange as it may seem, some people do not want to be locked in a perpetual childhood, nurtured and comforted by the parent figure government. They are prepared to take on the risks and hardships of adulthood and desire to make their own decisions. A great many, though not all, of the people who think this way live in the US.
Why is it "a learning experience" if a sixteen-year-old jerk breaks her heart, but we'd throw a thirty-year-old in prison for far less?
The disparate negotiating power of the thirty year old. It's not about a difference in what the girl is doing, it is about a difference in her ability to understand the situation and control what is going on.
it is the willful disregard of the risk and dangers to the minor's psychological well-being you are engaging in that is the problem.
The risk of maternal death during childbirth also significantly higher for young women. While some people may think that the availability of contraceptives and abortion make this irrelevant, it does refute the idea that a 13 year old is automatically physically ready for sex just because she has her period and grown some breasts.
>>>Same line, different signal.
>>No... same line, different bandwidth.
I'm sure you're correct but for someone with my level of knowledge on the subject there is no practical difference. I've never bothered to learn more about that than I needed to get my connection working. I assumed that since the audio signal from using the phone and the ADSL connection would work at the same time that it was different in some way but didn't know the details (although I knew it was the same line because I wired the connection);-)
Does that mean that a DSL modem still uses an audio signal? I've had a quick look at wikipedia and a couple of pages google turned up but it's not clear to me from what I read.
Wow! Great post! When are you starting your next conspiracy story?
Congratulations. I'm glad someone called him out on this. Government workers being slow to finish a job unless the pressure is put on them? How do people come up with these ridiculous conspiracy theories?
So those elements you bring up about firearms and knives are immaterial.
First, I didn't bring them up, I was responding to a post in which someone else brought them up.
Second, it is not immaterial. Murder and assault are already illegal, there is no reason to hold firearms, knife or alcohol/glass sellers responsible for other people breaking the laws regarding murder or assault. In the same way there is no reason to hold ISPs responsible for other people breaching copyright. It is the same reasoning that holds the seller of a tool (or the tool itself) responsible for the misuse of the tool.
Knife makers enabled uncountable murders by stabbing, and other crimes such as robbery. Firearms makers enabled untold deaths, and other crimes such as robbery.
Firearms are not available for self-defence in Australia. It is illegal to carry a knife except for narrowly defined purposes. It is under consideration to ban glasses in pubs, requiring drinks to be served in plastic, to try and prevent "glassing" attacks. http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/glass-ban-wont-work-hotels-association-20091005-gjbz.html Of course, those of us who pointed out the stupidity of this line of thinking and where it would lead when the gun bans were introduced were mocked as extremists. Nobody would be banning knives we were told. Even we did not anticipate such an absurdity as banning glasses.
Do not count on the average Australian to have the logical capability to understand what's going on. Possibly they will oppose it if they want to download free stuff, if not, they will probably think it's a wonderful, necessary thing.
It is not fraudulent, because they do not lie about it.
Yes they do. They tell every depositor that their money is available. That is not true. They are relying on people being confident enough in the system not to withdraw their money. It is a confidence trick, otherwise known as fraud.
What enables banks to create money is that people treat bank account balances the same as cash.
You can pay your taxes and debts with that bank balance, directly transferring it with no cash involved. Try that with stocks or bonds. That's why bank balances are counted as part of the money supply and stocks aren't.
Even the wikipedia article on money supply you linked to tells you this. Stocks are not listed as part of the money supply, loans are, with clarification in the section on Fractional Reserve Banking"The different forms of money in government money supply statistics arise from the practice of fractional-reserve banking. Whenever a bank gives out a loan in a fractional-reserve banking system, a new sum of money is created."
The government counts it as newly created money and that is quite specific to banks (or at least the financial industry). The new money is created based on the fraud of telling all depositors that their money available when it really isn't, as you know.
The reason it can be available to both, is that people don't actually all take all of what's available to them at the same time.
So it's available as long as you don't take it. Otherwise known as "not available". If everyone the bank tells they have money available can't all get it at once then it's fraud. The fact that the fraud is pulled off successfully based on their knowledge of "statistics and psychology" doesn't change this fact.
Dollars are dollars, and whether the money I take out of my bank account is the same money that I put in is not a question that makes sense.
It isn't a matter of whether they are the same actual bills, it is a matter of the books showing money as available balances that doesn't exist.
It's not that the money is available because they created it, it's that what they do counts as creating money because that money is available.
Even you said it's "available" because people don't come and get it. That means "not available". If I have one $100 note and tell 2 people it's available to them, I would be lying. It can only be available to one of them. If only one or neither of them try to collect I might get away with it but that wouldn't change the fact that I was lying. The same ethical principle applies to banks, though not the same laws.
The Federal Reserve Bank says banks create new money, you say they don't
No.
Yes. I have linked twice to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, proving my claim that they say banks create money. Your posts are enough evidence to prove that you say they don't. Except the places where you admit that they do but claim that it doesn't really count.
Due to the way large groups of people behave, it is possible for money to effectively be in two (or more) places at once. This is what is meant by banks "creating" money, they set up the situations in which this can happen.
Yet it can't simultaneously be at the tax office and in my account. To pay my taxes requires it to be transferred or withdrawn out of my account. It isn't a property of money that allows it to be in two places at once, it is a property of banking laws legalising what would be called fraud if anyone else tried it. I know full well that is what is meant by banks creating money. It is fraudulent because money can not really be in two places at once, they only get away with pretending that because people don't call them on it, ie: withdraw their money.
You seem to understand well enough what is happening but you've become so accustomed to banks committing fraud that it seems reasonable to you. I suspect you wouldn't accept such behaviour from yourself or anyone other than a bank.
The money banks lend out does come from deposits, just like it always has (yes, even before the fed existed). The reason it counts as "creating" money, is that any individual depositor can still withdraw their entire deposit if they want to.
The money of a deposit can not be simultaneously available to the depositor and a borrower, even as printed notes. If the money is still available to the depositors then the money the borrower has is not the deposited money, it's a simple as that. If you take the view that they are not creating new money then they are lying about having the money available in depositors accounts, therefore the description "fraud" is accurate either way.
The Federal Reserve Bank says banks create new money, you say they don't, I guess we'll just have to leave it at that. http://www.chicagofed.org/publications/fedcentralbank/fedcentralbank.pdf Either way you like to describe it, as creating money (counterfeiting) or lying about deposits, it is still fraud.
With such math from a bank executive who needs fraud?
The bank executive's math is fine, he just used bold differently.
"[...] 72 percent of financial institutions say that in the last 12 months they have experienced a case of data theft [...]. Meanwhile, most banks [...] remain in denial, says a former Wachovia Bank executive"
No, it's statistics and psychology (and nowadays, also a bit of government assistance).
It certainly makes use of statistics and psychology and is made possible, not merely assisted, by government regulation. However it also meets the criteria for fraud IMO.
Most people think banks loan out money from deposits. In reality the money they loan out is newly created "checkbook money" as confirmed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago [pdf warning] To achieve this goal, the Fed works to control money at its source by affecting the ability of financial institutions to "create" checkbook money through loans or investments.
The average person is deceived about how banking works and the banks make money through the practice of that deception. With the government backing they have it doesn't work the same as if it were a privately conducted fraud. The impoverish the country instead of a specific individual who does business with them.
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No, your position is to pretty much reject the state entirely.
Yes, because it would be impossible to have a state without income tax. Good one, Sherlock. Your assertion that my argument is intellectually dishonest rests solely on that falsehood. However I'm prepared to accept the possibility that you're ignorant rather than dishonest.
Nor, unlike you, do I hold any illusions about being about to provide my own self defence
Not a historical reality. Having grown up on a farm I assure you we provided our own self-defence. Police would never have got to us in time. I would suggest that if you are incapable of self-defence it is because you are not armed. If you believe you are inherently incapable, then what do you think is the difference between the police and you that makes them capable? It isn't a genetic dysfunction in you, it's the gun. That being so, it is government that has made you dependent on government.
You have declared yourself to be part of the culture of dependency, despite denying that it exists.
I submit your logic is flawed.
You had to modify my post that you "quoted" so you could attack "my" logic. We balance a person's right to choose with their ability to do so. My post says nothing of what should happen between a 20 year old and a 40 year old. 20 year olds are legally adult and expected to fend for themselves, even if they may not always do it well. If it has to be OK for a 14 year old to have sex on the basis that a 20 year old can, then why not a 10 year old, or a five year old?
If you are any sort of a decent human being, you set the limit somewhere. I haven't read your other posts on this topic but it sounds like you set the limit at menstruation. Others think it should be set higher. They aren't necessarily illogical or wrong because they disagree with you. Morality tends to have shades of grey, laws tend to be black and white. Personally I see a difference between a 14/18 couple and a 14/30 couple, the law in my country doesn't. I had to take that into account when I was 18 if I didn't want to risk prison time. Maybe you weren't being evil, but you were certainly being stupid. Risking prison time for nooky? It's not like you couldn't have found someone older, surely? So you can question my logic if you like but I definitely question your judgement. Would you feel better about being in prison because you didn't think you'd done wrong?
I knew a girl who was sexually active at 12. She certainly consented with men, but I think it was wrong of them and they were exploiting her unfairly. I don't know if she menstruated at that age, nor do I find it relevant.
Taking informal surveys of the views of teenagers doesn't tell you much about how society is going to be in the future.
It certainly says something about now.
Not much. The purchasing power of teens isn't exactly the biggest sector of the economy.
Be that as it may, the illusion of it being cheaper worked.
It's not an illusion, it's sold in smaller amounts. Go to a bottle shop and check the price on one beer compared to a carton. People haven't been fooled by this, it's just preferable to purchase in smaller amounts sometimes, even at a higher price/unit.
If you seriously think people should forgo online distribution because it's nice to get outside then there's no point discussing this with you further. I mean, it's nice to go outside, so why not make a spear and hunt your own meat?
Or if, you know, you want games to be produced because you like them (or big budget movies, or mainstream music, or novels, or whatever).
No need to lose sleep, just pay. Like most people do, those are still multi-billion dollar industries you know, even though OMG the evil PIRATES are coming!!!
You will need to work long and hard to convince me that's how the "majority" of people think. Indeed, from the travelling I've done, Australians are only second (behind the Americans) for being skeptical of the Government's ability to provide anything. Indeed, about the only major difference between Australian and American attitudes towards Government is that Australians expect the Government to screw up out of incompetence, whereas Americans expect them to simply be flat-out corrupt.
To the extent that's true, they agree with me and reject the nanny state. What's your argument again?
If you want to look at it like that, feel free. It's grotesquely intellectually dishonest, however.
You say that but you offer no argument to refute it. The product of someone else's labour can never be a basic right to others without implementing in some degree a slave state. If your "basic right" obliges me to work without reward in order to pay for your right (income tax), in what significant way does that differ from me being enslaved by you? Police aren't free but they are a convenience. In the absence of police you are responsible for your own self defence. In the absence of a hospital can you perform your own heart surgery?
The problem is there is mostly that "young people" want to move straight into a mansion rather than work their way up like their parents did.
Don't you think you're saying something about our education system here?
Which "living standards", exactly, have been "massively reduced" and how are you measuring it?
A house, the one major expense for most people, used to cost about 2.5 years of an average wages in my area, now it's about 7. That's in the space of 10 years. Families used to be able to get by on one wage, now most people can't.
In any event, the housing bubble in Australia, as it was in the US, was driven by ludicrously and irresponsibly cheap credit.
Irresponsibly cheap credit made possible by our GOVERNMENT OWNED reserve bank, and no deposit loans made possible by the first home owners grant. Think, dammit! If people begin to realise the culpability our governments have had in this they wouldn't fall for the "it was caused by a lack of regulation" propaganda.
Somehow I bet that explanation doesn't include "because a whole bunch of people got in when banks were handing out credit like candy and drove prices up", or "because you fritter away your cash on meaningless toys like iPhones and trendy clothes"
How much is your bet? You obviously haven't been reading my posts. I'll make some money on this!
Or the biggest reason: "because you desire to live beyond your means after being brainwashed by the media into thinking you can".
You are correct, but remember it was our government that told everyone that buying consumer goods with the stimulus was the thing we needed. We have a government actively promoting financial stupidity (all major parties).
There's certain more meddling than there should be. However, I strongly disagree that there's any "culture of dependency".
Australian's resist that culture of dependency but it is being implemented incrementally. Perhaps I'm looking more negatively at what the government's doing while you're looking more positively at people's resistance to it? I don't have time for this right now, but I do think you should consider that this nation was built on voluntary co-operation between the people and recalcitrance towards the government. I think we ought to shift the balance way over towards recalcitrance from where it is now. One last thing though:
I guess that explains why every Australia doesn't work, retires at exactly 65 and lives in the lap of luxury, never uses private healthcare and spends most of their life at school or in Univerisity.
Straw man much?
Pirates have the rum. As an Aussie, I feel it is my patriotic duty to side with the pirates.
Most teenagers I talk to don't understand why they should pay for anything if they can download it for free.
Most of the boys I knew in primary school wanted to be policemen or firemen. Taking informal surveys of the views of teenagers doesn't tell you much about how society is going to be in the future.
All iTunes proved is that people may be willing to pay if the price is very, very low, and the content gets delivered to their virtual door.
The price on iTunes is not very low, it only seems that way because you pay by the song instead of the album. Even if the price goes down that's quite normal with the advance of technology, otherwise why bother with progress? We pay for internet connections to get content right to our homes, of course consumer demand is affected by that. You think we should saddle up our horses and ride to town for our music? What are you thinking?
If it's about a video game sold in their retail stores, they won't think twice about downloading it.
If enough people think that way either the business model will change or those games won't be produced any more. One way or another it won't last, don't lose any sleep over it (unless you are a games developer staying up late working on your new business model).
There is a vast gulf of difference between sleeping easier at night because you know a personal disaster won't have you out in the streets begging for scraps, and being "unprepared to look after yourself".
Further, you make the erroneous assumption that the only people who would otherwise suffer are those who aren't prepared to look after themselves. All the preparation in the world won't help you when you're on a low wage and your child gets diagnosed with some illness that requires more money to treat than you'll make in twenty years.
By unprepared I mean "not able", not unwilling. Australians don't have to save money because if you lose your job we'll give you the dole indefinitely, your retirement plan will be worked out between the government and your boss, your health insurance by the government, your education by the government. As I have mentioned in my previous posts, the government will even make sure you get your vitamins. I'm not talking about the lowest wage earners only it's the majority who simply do not develop the habits and mentality of self-reliance necessary to a free people. You think the government and the company are really going to look after you? I'm ok with having that as a backup plan but to make it the mainstay of our daily habits is insane.
It's very admirable to want to make sure people aren't left to fend for themselves in the face of disaster but in the process we've created a culture of dependency that is very dangerous. We don't just look after people in times of disaster, we have the government meddling in our every day lives and that meddling is constantly advancing.
But we don't, because we buy in their protection with favourable trade arrangements.
Note that most of the US's "defence spending" today is not spent on "defence". Of them, us, or anyone else.
I doubt our trade agreements go close to paying for our military shortfall. In any case, I'd prefer not to have the agreements and look after ourselves, for the US military to stay in the US and for ours to not follow them into their various wars.
But we are, in pretty much every metric you care to measure. Education, health, economics, etc.
Except for that bit about being dependent on them. I wouldn't be boasting about economics though. In real terms we've had a massive reduction in living standards over my lifetime. All you have to do is include housing in your inflation figures. Don't be fooled by the relatively mild effects we've had from the financial collapse. Young people starting out now have incredible financial obstacles to overcome compared to 10 years ago. The financial collapse wasn't the disaster, the housing boom was. The fact that not many people seem to understand that doesn't speak much for the education system either. How can young people afford to pay for others healthcare, education, baby payments, social security, etc, etc, when they can barely afford a place to live? Your desire to make sure people don't get hammered by disaster is making it so that people are being overwhelmed by daily necessity.
Same "preoccupation" that exists with all things society has decided are basic rights - protection from others, workplace safety, non-discrimination, etc. The reason you can't opt out of health care is the same reason you can't sell yourself into slavery.
Well, I disagree that health care is a basic right. It is a product of other people's labour and has to be paid for, unlike things such as the right to be secure in your person and property (protection from others, workplace safety, non-discrimination). For the product of another person's labour is a basic right of mine, then somebody has to become my slave. In our case we spread the slavery out by taking a portion of people's income but the principle is there. You say I can't sell myself as
It's as much stealing as not paying your doctor or your plumber for work performed. Sure, you can claim "I didn't take anything physical from you, therefore, you aren't actually losing anything when I don't pay you", but work needs to be done, you want the benefits of that work, but you balk at paying for it.
The doctor and plumber's time is limited, number of copies of digital media isn't, so it's a bad analogy. Not to justify copyright infringement as I agree that copyrights are a good thing, but it isn't at all the same as stealing. Consider the situation with MS Windows. While they would prefer that people buy it instead of copy it, they prefer people to pirate windows than use a competing product. Can you think of any seller of a tangible product that would prefer you to steal their product than use a competitor's product? Stealing doesn't work like that.
While I agree with the concept of copyright, the constant extension of copyright terms, lobbying for draconian legislation, deliberate public misinformation programs and abuse of the court system by copyright holders is far worse than what the "pirates" are doing and was happening long before copyright infringement became commonplace. I oppose any measures in support of that industry until they demonstrate their willingness to clean up their own act first. Until then, if the pirates destroy their businesses I will be cheering from the sidelines. Vote for the pirate party.
User generated content? All crap, all the time. No, that isn't going to be the future of entertainment.
It won't be the whole future but it's here to stay whether you like it or not. User generated content is being used as the entire basis for mainstream media content sometimes now, such as in this news story about the "wedding dance video". You are way off base if you think this type of content isn't going to have a place in mainstream entertainment.
What most people don't understand is we've grown an entire generation that believes it all should be free and will never, ever pay.
Like with free to air TV and radio? Free content is hardly a new thing, for many people a significant portion of their entertainment has been free (ad supported) content for decades.
The idea that people aren't willing to pay is a lie anyway and everyone who promotes the idea knows it. iTunes proved that. If you provide the product or service people want they will pay for it. Make paid for DRM free downloads available at the right price and most people won't bother with "pirate" sites with even minimal risk of getting caught. Just having predictable quality movie and music files will win people over on convenience over illegal downloads.
You sound like the kind of person who would never understand until they've been bankrupted by a serious illness, or seen someone suffer through an illness because they couldn't afford payment.
Luckily for you, you're an Australian, so you don't actually have to worry about that happening.
I wouldn't count on that. Our social security and health care will be unlikely to survive the next two decades. The baby boomers will soon all retire and our ratio of workers to full time social security recipients is likely to be close to 1:1. The practice of consumerism, spending money on frivolities thinking that makes us prosperous, instead of frugality is going to bite us on our big socialist collective arse. Socialism in Australia may look ok to you now but it isn't going to last. When it collapses we will have a population that is totally unprepared to look after themselves.
In any case, how different do you think Australian health care (or any other socialist health care) would look without the drugs and equipment developed by that evil American system? Or if our defence spending had to be adequate to actually defend our country because we didn't have US military bases here? Australian socialism as it exists is absolutely dependent on our relationship with the US, it is foolishness to hold us up as an example of doing it better. It will be interesting to say the least to see what happens if we swap out that relationship in preference of China.
Universal Healthcare isn't about the Government being your surrogate parent, it's about a whole bunch of people who have decided to share the cost of keeping each other healthy, because they understand that this means their whole culture is better off because of it.
Done voluntarily, that's called insurance and I agree. What is the preoccupation with the use of government force? If it was really about "a whole bunch of people who have decided" as you claim, it wouldn't need to be compulsory.
I also want to add that you Americans have the weirdest ideals about healthcare. ARE YOU FREAKING CRAZY!!!
Although I am a fellow Australian, I think I can explain this to you. In our country, we have the government taking very good care of us, for example with the new requirement for bakers to put iodised salt in bread. Now it is very unlikely for any Australian to have an iodine deficiency because the government will make sure we get our nutrition, just like a good parent makes their children eat their vegetables.
Strange as it may seem, some people do not want to be locked in a perpetual childhood, nurtured and comforted by the parent figure government. They are prepared to take on the risks and hardships of adulthood and desire to make their own decisions. A great many, though not all, of the people who think this way live in the US.
Why is it "a learning experience" if a sixteen-year-old jerk breaks her heart, but we'd throw a thirty-year-old in prison for far less?
The disparate negotiating power of the thirty year old. It's not about a difference in what the girl is doing, it is about a difference in her ability to understand the situation and control what is going on.
it is the willful disregard of the risk and dangers to the minor's psychological well-being you are engaging in that is the problem.
The risk of maternal death during childbirth also significantly higher for young women. While some people may think that the availability of contraceptives and abortion make this irrelevant, it does refute the idea that a 13 year old is automatically physically ready for sex just because she has her period and grown some breasts.
>>>Same line, different signal.
;-)
>>No... same line, different bandwidth.
I'm sure you're correct but for someone with my level of knowledge on the subject there is no practical difference. I've never bothered to learn more about that than I needed to get my connection working. I assumed that since the audio signal from using the phone and the ADSL connection would work at the same time that it was different in some way but didn't know the details (although I knew it was the same line because I wired the connection)
Does that mean that a DSL modem still uses an audio signal? I've had a quick look at wikipedia and a couple of pages google turned up but it's not clear to me from what I read.
I'm pretty sure you're not using the phone line, but rather the cable that the phone line also happens to use.
Same line, different signal.
Wow! Great post! When are you starting your next conspiracy story?
Congratulations. I'm glad someone called him out on this. Government workers being slow to finish a job unless the pressure is put on them? How do people come up with these ridiculous conspiracy theories?
So those elements you bring up about firearms and knives are immaterial.
First, I didn't bring them up, I was responding to a post in which someone else brought them up.
Second, it is not immaterial. Murder and assault are already illegal, there is no reason to hold firearms, knife or alcohol/glass sellers responsible for other people breaking the laws regarding murder or assault. In the same way there is no reason to hold ISPs responsible for other people breaching copyright. It is the same reasoning that holds the seller of a tool (or the tool itself) responsible for the misuse of the tool.
Knife makers enabled uncountable murders by stabbing, and other crimes such as robbery. Firearms makers enabled untold deaths, and other crimes such as robbery.
Firearms are not available for self-defence in Australia. It is illegal to carry a knife except for narrowly defined purposes. It is under consideration to ban glasses in pubs, requiring drinks to be served in plastic, to try and prevent "glassing" attacks. http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/queensland/glass-ban-wont-work-hotels-association-20091005-gjbz.html Of course, those of us who pointed out the stupidity of this line of thinking and where it would lead when the gun bans were introduced were mocked as extremists. Nobody would be banning knives we were told. Even we did not anticipate such an absurdity as banning glasses.
Do not count on the average Australian to have the logical capability to understand what's going on. Possibly they will oppose it if they want to download free stuff, if not, they will probably think it's a wonderful, necessary thing.
It is not fraudulent, because they do not lie about it.
Yes they do. They tell every depositor that their money is available. That is not true. They are relying on people being confident enough in the system not to withdraw their money. It is a confidence trick, otherwise known as fraud.
What enables banks to create money is that people treat bank account balances the same as cash.
You can pay your taxes and debts with that bank balance, directly transferring it with no cash involved. Try that with stocks or bonds. That's why bank balances are counted as part of the money supply and stocks aren't.
Even the wikipedia article on money supply you linked to tells you this. Stocks are not listed as part of the money supply, loans are, with clarification in the section on Fractional Reserve Banking "The different forms of money in government money supply statistics arise from the practice of fractional-reserve banking. Whenever a bank gives out a loan in a fractional-reserve banking system, a new sum of money is created."
The government counts it as newly created money and that is quite specific to banks (or at least the financial industry). The new money is created based on the fraud of telling all depositors that their money available when it really isn't, as you know.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ubJp6rmUYM
According to this video they are panning for gold, they need 0.3 grams a day to survive. Posted March 2009.
The reason it can be available to both, is that people don't actually all take all of what's available to them at the same time.
So it's available as long as you don't take it. Otherwise known as "not available". If everyone the bank tells they have money available can't all get it at once then it's fraud. The fact that the fraud is pulled off successfully based on their knowledge of "statistics and psychology" doesn't change this fact.
Dollars are dollars, and whether the money I take out of my bank account is the same money that I put in is not a question that makes sense.
It isn't a matter of whether they are the same actual bills, it is a matter of the books showing money as available balances that doesn't exist.
It's not that the money is available because they created it, it's that what they do counts as creating money because that money is available.
Even you said it's "available" because people don't come and get it. That means "not available". If I have one $100 note and tell 2 people it's available to them, I would be lying. It can only be available to one of them. If only one or neither of them try to collect I might get away with it but that wouldn't change the fact that I was lying. The same ethical principle applies to banks, though not the same laws.
The Federal Reserve Bank says banks create new money, you say they don't
No.
Yes. I have linked twice to the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, proving my claim that they say banks create money. Your posts are enough evidence to prove that you say they don't. Except the places where you admit that they do but claim that it doesn't really count.
Due to the way large groups of people behave, it is possible for money to effectively be in two (or more) places at once. This is what is meant by banks "creating" money, they set up the situations in which this can happen.
Yet it can't simultaneously be at the tax office and in my account. To pay my taxes requires it to be transferred or withdrawn out of my account. It isn't a property of money that allows it to be in two places at once, it is a property of banking laws legalising what would be called fraud if anyone else tried it. I know full well that is what is meant by banks creating money. It is fraudulent because money can not really be in two places at once, they only get away with pretending that because people don't call them on it, ie: withdraw their money.
You seem to understand well enough what is happening but you've become so accustomed to banks committing fraud that it seems reasonable to you. I suspect you wouldn't accept such behaviour from yourself or anyone other than a bank.
The money banks lend out does come from deposits, just like it always has (yes, even before the fed existed). The reason it counts as "creating" money, is that any individual depositor can still withdraw their entire deposit if they want to.
The money of a deposit can not be simultaneously available to the depositor and a borrower, even as printed notes. If the money is still available to the depositors then the money the borrower has is not the deposited money, it's a simple as that. If you take the view that they are not creating new money then they are lying about having the money available in depositors accounts, therefore the description "fraud" is accurate either way.
The Federal Reserve Bank says banks create new money, you say they don't, I guess we'll just have to leave it at that. http://www.chicagofed.org/publications/fedcentralbank/fedcentralbank.pdf Either way you like to describe it, as creating money (counterfeiting) or lying about deposits, it is still fraud.
With such math from a bank executive who needs fraud?
The bank executive's math is fine, he just used bold differently.
"[...] 72 percent of financial institutions say that in the last 12 months they have experienced a case of data theft [...]. Meanwhile, most banks [...] remain in denial, says a former Wachovia Bank executive"
Fractional reserve banking IS fraud!
No, it's statistics and psychology (and nowadays, also a bit of government assistance).
It certainly makes use of statistics and psychology and is made possible, not merely assisted, by government regulation. However it also meets the criteria for fraud IMO.
Most people think banks loan out money from deposits. In reality the money they loan out is newly created "checkbook money" as confirmed by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago [pdf warning] To achieve this goal, the Fed works to control money at its source by affecting the ability of financial institutions to "create" checkbook money through loans or investments.
The average person is deceived about how banking works and the banks make money through the practice of that deception. With the government backing they have it doesn't work the same as if it were a privately conducted fraud. The impoverish the country instead of a specific individual who does business with them.