Livemike

Notice how there is absolutely no analysis of WHY the guy went back on is word. Let's accept the women's claim at face value. Her husband promised her that they would have 2 kids. Now he wants to go back on that agreement. Did he always want one kid? Or did something about having their first kid change his mind? If he always intended to break the promise that says something about him and the relationship that really should be examined. If he always intended to follow through but something has changed THAT really should be examined. Instead there is simply no questions asked, nothing is delved into, no theories of his behavior and what it means are presented, not even bad ones. It's as though the man does not exist except as an obstacle to the women getting pregnant again. Maybe the financial situation is bad, maybe he just isn't coping as well as a father as he'd thought. Neither of these are necessarily permanent. It's quite possible that in a few years he the finances will be better and he'll have learned better parenting/coping skills. Or, and here's a thought, he doesn't want to have 2 kids UNDER 2 at the same time. I mean their daughter isn't even a year old and she's so desperate to have another she's prepared to lie to her husband? A bit of breathing room isn't a horrible idea. Relationships based on deception are.

Except that it shouldn't be. When someone is legally contracted to do something you ought to be able to expect they will do it.

Reading the comments on the KS page, it seems like he may have made 2,000 copies of the book. So then even after burning these books, he could send everyone what they're owed. He is really just putting the squeeze on for "express" delivery charges for something that was due over a year ago. Total sociopath.

This is a commentary on "Raising Taxes on Corporations that Pay Their CEOs Royally and Treat Their Workers Like Serfs". Firstly it should be obvious that even the title is absurd. There are no corporations that force to pay them before they can quit their jobs or do any of the things that serfs were actually forced to do, like fight wars. But I expected no better from a man fundamentally ignorant of every subject I've ever heard him talk about. "This growing divergence between CEO pay and that of the typical American worker isn’t just wildly unfair. " Of course he doesn't actually support that claim. What would a "fair" ratio of CEO pay to worker pay consist of? I don't know. He hasn't defined what he means by "fair" in this (or any other) context. Nor has he included any information about the productivity or effort of either group or if and how these have changed. Certainly there's no information about how and why the efforts of either group might have changed in relative value. So in short this claim is pulled out of his fundament. " It’s also bad for the economy. It means most workers these days lack the purchasing power to buy what the economy is capable of producing — contributing to the slowest recovery on record. " There's no reason to believe that CEOs are less likely to spend and invest, thus creating demand, than other people. Transferring money doesn't make it better for the economy. "Meanwhile, CEOs and other top executives use their fortunes to fuel speculative booms followed by busts." Oh god does this idiot actually think that executive salaries, rather than government money creation, are the main source of speculative funds? Or that other people DON'T fuel the speculative booms? Do you think CEOs bought all those homes? Serious Reich you are pig-ignorant. "Anyone who believes CEOs deserve this astronomical pay hasn’t been paying attention. The entire stock market has risen to record highs. Most CEOs have done little more than ride the wave." Most is not all. Even assuming many or even almost all CEOs don't deserve their salary, what does this have to do with workers pay? It is shareholders, not workers who are worse off when CEOs are overpaid. " but this week I’ll be testifying in favor of a bill introduced in the California legislature that ... sets corporate taxes according to the ratio of CEO pay to the pay of the company’s typical worker. Corporations with low pay ratios get a tax break.Those with high ratios get a tax increase."* So then workers in corporations with highly paid CEOs get a pay rise, while workers whose CEOs are less well paid will not. So workers have and incentive to work for high-CEO-pay firms, regardless of whether they create more value in those firms. On the other hand firms with highly paid CEOs have an incentive to fire their low-skilled workers and hire ones more skilled workers who demand higher pay. Bear in mind this is from a bill that he claims "at least creates the right incentives.". Yet even the most basic economic analysis shows the exact opposite. While the free market encourages entrepreneurs to find the resources least useful to others and use those, this does the exact opposite. Those whose labor is highly sought after find that it's even more so, those who labor is not will find it even less so. The incentive is to ignore the most efficient way to produce something and find the way that justifies the lower tax rate. This is about as far from "getting the incentives right" as it is possible to get. For example take an extreme case. Suppose there was a CEO whose brother was mildly intellectually handicapped. As a result he has an interest in getting mildly intellectually handicapped people into the workforce and over the years became skilled at using their labor in place of non-handicapped people. Their labor is still not as useful as a "normal" persons, being worth only, say $8 an hour, compared to say, $12 an hour for others in the same job. This CEO would suffer a serious pay cut because he did this under the proposed legislation. While of course he might choose to pay the intellectually disabled the same rate as normal people ($12) but how can this be justified to the shareholders, whose money it is? How is it their responsibility as shareholders to provide extra money to the disabled? While it could be argued that taxpayers, citizens or even "the rich" should provide help there is no reason why owning particular shares makes you responsible. But let's look at it from the other angle. This encourages shareholders to pay their CEO or highest paid employee less. Is this a good thing? Not necessarily, even if the effect was uniform across all firms, which it wouldn't be. By encouraging firms to pay people less than they would in a free market they encourage those people to quit and form their own companies, becoming self-employed and thus not subject to any limit on compensation. While there is nothing wrong with people doing this if it's justified by consumer demand, this isn't the case here. These executives would be starting a new firm not because they believe their actions would be most productive that way, but because they believe that they would be least taxed that way. Again, this is the exact opposite of "creates the right incentives.". But there's more. Suppose that a CEO or other highest earner learns that the shareholders through the Board of Directors, will cut their pay from say, $5M to $1.25M because the medium wage of his workers is $50K. He asks the Board members individually or in groups, if they really think he's not worth $5M. They all say "No we believe that you're worth the money, but the extra taxes we'd have to pay are a lot more than the extra value you give us, so we're going to cut your pay regardless.". The logical response to this is to say "Fine, but I'm going to steal the difference from the company and if you try to find out how I'm stealing it, I'll quit.". Notice the incentives here. The board know that the CEO is worth $5M, but that they can't pay him that. The CEO knows that he can't openly and legally get the money he's worth. They both know that if he takes the money covertly and illegally it's in neither of their interests to stop him. Of course the benefits need not be in direct theft. The age-old tradition of nepotism could get a real revival as a result of this. Why begrudge a man worth $3M more than paying him a few jobs for his nephews. Of course since the nephews aren't being employed for actual productivity they won't be put in the roles where they would create most value in the economy. Or even any value in the economy. So their potential labor value is wasted too. Of course he could employ female "friends" instead. It's just a bad incentive extravaganza here. But let me get back to something I mentioned before, " even if the effect was uniform across all firms, which it wouldn't be. ". Firms differ in the average pay of their employees. This is not because some firms are run by generous, openhearted George Bailey types and some by Ebenezer Scrouge types. It's because some require lots of highly skilled labor and some require a lot of low-skilled labor. Because the labor of a worker with low skills can be substituted for by many other worker's labors their pay is low. Because the labor of a worker with high skills cannot be substituted for by many other worker's labor their pay is high. Under this legislation CEOs and others who might become the most highly paid workers of a firm have an incentive to work for firms that mostly use high-value labor. This is not a good thing. There is nothing inherently better about the best management managing small numbers of high-paid workers as opposed to large number of low-paid workers. Walmart and McDonalds both need good managers just as much as Apple or Google. This legislation will result in those who management skills would be most useful to low-skill companies going to work for high-skill companies instead. As a result bad decisions will be made at the low-skill companies, resulted in wasted resources, less production, production less suited to what consumers actually want and even possibly the bankruptcy of the company or it's exit from the jurisdiction where this law applies. "What about CEO’s gaming the system? Can’t they simply eliminate low-paying jobs by subcontracting them to another company – thereby avoiding large pay disparities while keeping their own compensation in the stratosphere? No. The proposed law controls for that. Corporations that begin subcontracting more of their low-paying jobs will have to pay a higher tax. " Note that the law only increases the taxes for decreases of 10% or more of full-time equivalent workers. This really shows how little thought went into this bill. I mean really who can't figure out that this will mean 9.8%-9.9% cuts in full-time equivalent year on year is an idiot. Which doesn't mean I'm surprised Robert Reich didn't figure it out. Note of course that the increase for firms that do decrease their direct employees by 10% is 50% of the previous tax rate. Note that this is regardless of whether firing these people pushes average pay of direct employees up, down, or nowhere. So far from being designed to plug a potential loophole in the legislation this clause is merely creates a tax on outsourcing. Of course even in this it's flawed. It's supposed to discourage substituting outsourced labor for direct employees. But what it actually does is discourage hiring indirect employees at the same time as firing a certain amount of direct employees. So if a company subcontracts for some people in industry A at the same time as shutting down an unprofitable plant in industry B they can get hit with the tax increase, even though the indirect employees are not substitutes for the direct employees, and may not even be paid less than them. The sheer lack of thought in this bill is astounding. "For the last thirty years, almost all the incentives operating on companies have been to lower the pay of their workers while increasing the pay of their CEOs and other top executives." Which incentives are these and incentives for who? As usual Reich states the simplest possible position and doesn't justify it. That's because his job is to have certain attitudes, not to actually deduce or explain facts or theories. However some things have occurred that indirect do create and incentive for increasing CEO pay. The value of the CEO to the company can be expressed as a simple equation: CEO value of company = (Capital of company * ( percentage return(CEO) - percentage return( best alternative CEO)) + cost of employing best alternate CEO Best in this context means the alternative CEO with the highest value to the company. So the larger the company the more worthwhile it is to pay for a better CEO. This is pretty obvious when you think about it, no matter how good a manager someone is it's not worth paying them $10M to manager a $20M business. So what has led to big companies? In a word government. Regulation is less costly to comply with per dollar of revenue for big companies, and regulatory rules have multiplied for decades. There are of course direct encouragements of scale like "Too Big To Fail" which is still worth about $83 Billion dollars** or about 3% of the US Federal tax take for 2013. Think about that. For ONE INDUSTRY the subsidy for being big equals 3% of what you pay to the government. And that's from ONE market distortion "Too Big To Fail". That Reich doesn't mention this means that he either doesn't want to, or can't, explain these distortions. But there is something more than ignorance in the support of this bill by Reich and others. There is sheer evil. That seems like a strong term, so it's probably best to define it. I define evil as the willingness to inflict suffering on others for the sole reason of being allowed to do things that would not be justified if that suffering and the goals that suffering served were taken into account. So what suffering am I talking about, why wouldn't it be justified and what goals are being served? Well I hope I've explained the suffering. So what is the goal of the legislation? We can dismiss the idea that it's goals are what it stated since it doesn't efficiently achieve those goals. So either the legislation has other goals that are concealed or the writers of the bill do not wish to examine how their bill would work. If the latter then the true goal of the legislation is to allow the writers of this bill and their supporters to pretend they are solving the problem rather than actually solve it. So the actual goal is to avoid the effort of thought an actual solution would require. There are a number of possible concealed goals and I think each requires it's own paragraph. Firstly this bill would make it harder for big business compared to small and medium sized business. It's much less of a burden to pay your employees 1/25 of the bosses pay when the boss only manages 100 people compared to if he manages 10,000. So the bill can be thought of as essentially a subsidy for smaller businesses. But that doesn't explain why they sought this means to get an advantage. Why not simply target the many and various ways that large scale is advantaged? Because these various government programs have been promoted with various false justifications for years, and it's hard to attack the entrenched propaganda. Additionally the justification that the bill raises workers wages is more acceptable than that it raises the profits of a type of entrepreneurs. The bill also seeks to claim that the costs will be on CEOs who are unpopular, rather than shareholders in big business, who are not so unpopular (and include the pension funds of many voters). Secondly this bill would benefit high skilled workers over low-skilled ones. Employing low-skilled workers would impose additional tax costs under this bill for many (although not all) firms. That means that some firms will be willing to pay more for high-skilled workers to substitute for larger numbers of low-skilled workers. Thirdly and most importantly this bill diverts attention from the failure of regulators and other government employees to prevent the problems afflicting American workers. By focusing attention on the actions and incomes of employees the authors of this bill implicitly excuse anyone else of being the main cause of the workers distress. This is important as regulation has been increasing substantially for as long as anyone can remember. There will of course be many people who claim that regulation has reduced in the past decades. To them I ask by what measure? What measure of regulation actually decreased in the last, say 30 years? Pages of regulations? Estimated cost of regulations? Cost to start a new business? What? I've asked this several times of various people who claim the economy was deregulated and have never got an answer. But even without being evil this bill would be grossly unfair. Consider the effect on the wages of two workers, identical in all ways except that one works at a big firm with a highly paid CEO and another works at a small firm with a lower paid CEO. Why does the former deserve a raise and the latter not? I've already mentioned the CEO who employs intellectually disabled people at lower rates of pay, how does he deserve a pay cut for employing the previously unemployable? And it's not just intellectually disabled, but physically disabled, recent immigrants whose language skills aren't great, the long-term unemployed, former convicts and many others are less productive than other potential employees. Hiring them at the wages their productivity justifies can serve both the shareholders and them, but it costs the CEO, how is that fair? Of course the response might be "These people aren't at fault for their lower productivity***, why should they deserve less money that more productive people.". But business isn't about who deserves things but who can produce net value. Suppose that Klaus wanted to be a pilot, saved his money for courses and studied hard. The night before his final qualification exam he comes across some skinheads beating a Jewish girl, he intervenes and saves her, but gets as "kurb party" which loses him his right eye. With one eye nobody wants to hire him as a pilot and he has to take lower paid work. So does he deserve less money? Of course not. But his potential employers don't deserve to be the ones to pay the difference between what deserves and what his labor is worth. While there might be a case for government taxing people to reimburse Klaus for the difference, it's certainly not justifiable to slap it all on the firms that do employ him. So the argument that these people (might) deserve more is not a valid argument for making their employers pay them more. It's an argument for them being the subject of some sort of charity, or if necessary, government aid****. Even more unjust than the differential effects on pay is the differential effect on employment. Low-skilled workers will lose jobs under this legislation, even though they are ostensibly one of those supposed to benefit. Why should they lose a job just so someone with more skills, who could have gotten another job anyway, can do their work? This is the biggest hypocrisy to me, the brutal abandonment of the very disadvantaged for the better paid workers. This is true sociopathy and it disgusts me. * Full quote of two paragraphs so I won't be accused of taking it out of context. "There’s no easy answer for reversing this trend, but this week I’ll be testifying in favor of a bill introduced in the California legislature that at least creates the right incentives. Other states would do well to take a close look. The proposed legislation, SB 1372, sets corporate taxes according to the ratio of CEO pay to the pay of the company’s typical worker. Corporations with low pay ratios get a tax break.Those with high ratios get a tax increase." ** Source http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/wp/2012/wp12128.pdf via http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2013-02-20/why-should-taxpayers-give-big-banks-83-billion-a-year- *** This is not true all the time but it's true some of the time. **** I do not in fact favor government aid, but at least it would be better than sticking the costs on random employers.

Damn right. This pope only got in because the previous one didn't feel he could handle systematic corruption at the Vatican. The guy they brought over to investigate financial corruption at the Vatican bank is Cardinal George Pell. Pell comes from Australia, where he won't be missed, particularly by abuse support groups and victims. Even the guy they get in to clean up one kind of corruption covered up another kind. "Child abuse litigation has cost the Catholic Church some $3 billion (1.7 billion pounds) in settlements in the United States alone, and shaken the moral authority of leaders of the world’s largest religious denomination." No what has shaken the moral authority of leaders of the world's largest religious denomination is their actions. People don't lose moral authority when they get sued, but when people think they should be. If they could show that they responded to the accusations with sensitivity, justice and vigilance then their moral authority (fiction-based as it is) wouldn't have been damaged.

The death of former New South Wales Premier* inspired me to remind people of the brilliance of "The Chaser's" Andrew Hansen.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXHleozgQ18 * Premier is the head of state government, the equivalent of governors in the USA.

If the lobbying is to increase coercion it's evil, if it's to reduce it it's good. http://reason.com/archives/2014/01/28/crony-capitalism-vs-market-mor/1

"Comparative advantage originally meant that those who were “relatively most efficient in industrial production (by good fortune Britain) would continue to industrialize,” notes historian Douglas Dowd, “while the most relatively efficient hewers of wood and drawers of water would go on doing just that.” Not surprisingly, the theory has been most popular in the dominant economic powers: Britain in the 19th Century and the United States in the 20th." Actually it didn't mean that at all. All it meant was that those who were most efficient should do something. That doesn't necessarily mean those are _currently_ doing it. For instance if they hadn't found a way to use coal instead of wood Britain would have had to abandon steel-making as wood became practically non-existent in the Isles. "In the 1840s, Ricardo's followers promoted the opening of British grain markets in part as a way to alleviate the Great Famine in Ireland. But Irish peasants remained too impoverished to buy even cheaper grain. In free trade's first collision with skewed income distribution, one million died of hunger and disease." Except that Ireland in the 1830s and 40s wasn't anywhere near a free trade economy. It was run by the British specifically to make it WEAKER. The restrictions on economic activity were massive and deliberately designed to impoverish an ethnic group. To blame this on free trade is at best utterly ignorant, at worst just dishonest. "Even the paterfamilias of free-market economics, Adam Smith," He was nothing of the kind. In fact he was considerably LESS free market than most economists at the time. "On the other hand, free-market nostrums indiscriminately applied have often wreaked havoc. In post-Soviet Russia, “reformers” relied on a draconian version of comparative advantage to eviscerate any industry that could not compete internationally. " Actually what happened was that "reformers" simply allowed gangsters to take things over and didn't bother with the Rule of Law. To use this against the free market when the former USSR never even came close to free markets, is absurd. Those parts that were higher on the "Index of economic freedom" did best. "But the Pure Theory of Trade is based on a bevy of what Dominick Salvatore of Fordham University calls “magnificent assumptions.” It presumes, among other things, that competition is perfect, capital cannot move between countries, and all resources are fully employed." The piece doesn't even try to support the claim that free trade theory requires perfect competition or that capital cannot move between countries, with good reason. There was NEVER such an assumption. In fact free trade theory includes the idea that it's a good idea for capital to move between countries. Comparative advantage works whether or not the capital that contributes to it can move. As for perfect competition that has nothing to do with free trade theory. They are simply making things up. "The benefits of comparative advantage presuppose full employment, says Mark Weisbrot, research director of the Preamble Center in Washington, DC. Otherwise “you can no longer say that each country is made better off through further opening up of trade,” because too many workers displaced from losing industries will end up in worse shape" Nope, whether or not there is full employment is IRRELEVANT for whether free trade works. If there is unemployment that's because it's too expensive to employ people. Free trade lowers the cost of living making it cheaper to employ people at the same real wages. Yes a _change_ to free trade will cause temporary unemployment as people take time to switch jobs, but so will a _change_ to protectionism. The thing causing the unemployment is a change in patterns of economic activity, which would occur regardless of the _direction_ of the change. "And what economists call the “negative externalities” suffered by society—families torn apart, communities hollowed out—are not fully captured by the statistics." Why would there be more "families torn apart, communities hollowed out" with free trade than without it? Price's 1st rule of argumentation, if you pull it out of your ass, it's shit. This guy also gives us a massive sob-story about how badly low-skilled workers are doing in the developed world due to free(ish) trade. Hey doesn't that mean that low-skilled workers in the developing world are doing their work? And that these people would logically be some of the "winners"? He doesn't cover that because he doesn't want to face the question, who needs the money more, US or third world workers? "Another important problem with comparative advantage is that it is static: it accepts the current balance of power and wealth between countries as a given." Actually comparative advantage isn't necessarily static and indeed has changed many times in the last 20 years. The "current balance of power and wealth" has changed drastically. "The way comparative advantage is often applied to poor countries, says Weisbrot, " Applied by who? The whole point of free trade theory is that government doesn't decide how to apply it. " But relying exclusively on these sectors can be a trap, according to Richard Brinkman of Portland State University, stunting an economy's capacity to grow in more productive directions." But free trade theory doesn't say to "rely exclusively" on anything. It simply says that using government force to dictate what to rely on doesn't work, and it doesn't. "The International Monetary Fund constrains many poor countries " And has nothing to do with free trade. "Brinkman asserts, is that it tends to equate simple statistical growth with development." Actually it doesn't. There is nothing in free trade theory that says anything about the validity or not of "simple statistical development". Whether or not the benefits of trade would show up in the statistics has nothing to do with free trade theory. The benefits of trade might for instance be taken in more leisure time for the people of both countries and the "economy" not growing at all. "A more fundamental criticism levied against free trade is that it is not socially or environmentally sustainable."' And it's also a stupider one. Why would free trade be any less sustainable than inefficient production, which by definition uses MORE scarce resources? "Critics like David Morris of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance argue for local self-sufficiency." I see and is there ANY reason to think we should listen to him? I mean simply saying critics argue isn't an argument. "They propose giving up some marginal economic efficiency in order to promote more basic human and ecological values." I see, and why would producing within a country rather than outside it promote any of these values? They don't say. They just assume that there is an argument there, somewhere, that free trade damages these values. Even if that were true, where is the evidence that _the best_ way to serve these values is through restricting free trade? Where is the evidence that giving up the benefit of free trade is the cheapest way to gain these benefits? This is a fundamentally dishonest way to argue. "Theories aside, say some critics, the most powerful nations and corporations dominate world markets so much that, like high mountains, they make their own trade weather." And why would that mean that free trade is a bad idea? "And some of free trade's strongest proponents practice it only when it suits them. At the same time that the Clinton administration was selling the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and the WTO, Greider observes, it was also helping to create a worldwide aluminum cartel that curtailed production and propped up prices." Again, how does this invalidate free trade theory? "But in the wake of the Asian crashes, prominent economists have singled out financial tsunamis as a contributing factor." Said "tsunamis" were caused entirely by government monetary policy. In fact without the combination of fiat money and central banks none of them could have happened. None of this is covered of course because this isn't an article on economics, it's a collection of excuses for corruption. " “Capitalism is a dynamic system, it produces productivity gains, and eventually people will capture some of those”, says Weisbrot. “The question is: do we want to make the rules of the game such that it takes half a century for them to do so like it did during the Industrial Revolution.” " Actually the industrial revolution workers gained pretty much instantaneously. In fact if it weren't for the enclosure movement, that massively increased wage labor supply by stealing the commons, it would have raised the wages as soon as it happened. "Is child labor a defensible edge in competitive labor markets or a violation of basic human rights? " Which right would that be, the right to starve by age 10? "Are restrictions on hormone-treated beef a restraint of trade or a legitimate consumer protection? " Is anyone forcing people to eat said beef? If the consumers want the beef they clearly don't want that "protection". " they are about what root values should be incorporated into the trading system, and whether standards should be harmonized up or down." Who says that everyone has to incorporate the same values? Why do you get to "harmonize" your standards onto someone else's life? "At the crux of the debate are conflicting conceptions of democracy, of how much power citizens should have to regulate their living conditions when they intersect with international trade." Actually it goes deeper than that. How much power should other people have to determine how I live my life? Because when you control my trade you control my life. Where do you get the right to do that? "As Jeffrey Garten, former Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade, asked recently in the New York Times: “How does a sovereign nation govern itself effectively when politics are national and business is global? When the answers start coming, they could be as radical and as prolonged as the backlash against unbridled corporate power that took place during the first 40 years of [the 20th century].” " Actually in the first 40 years of 20th century saw a backlash against free trade that vastly increased corporate power. In mean how ignorant must you be to call people like Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt (either one) or Churchill a "backlash" against corporate power?

"If treating people like livestock, attracts more customers, because it's cheap... life for people will be awful under a capitalist society. Customers need to constantly value labor more in their purchasing decisions, or the value of their own labor will decrease. " Customers don't need to "value labor more" for labor to have more value. You seem to think that what determines what someone's labor is worth is whether the buyer of the buyer of it cares about them. This is not even close to true. People's labor becomes valuable when there are a lot of different uses for it and few alternatives to it. That is to say when there is high demand relative to supply. Caring didn't make wages go up during the Industrial Revolution. " What the modern Republican party, and most (not all) of its associated "libertarians" want, is for the labor of "other" people, to stay cheap, while they continue to believe "I'm a beautiful and unique snowflake worth millions". ' Where's your evidence for this, at least for the libertarians? " What did the Walton family invent? " A cheaper way to sell goods. That's significant. Yes, I know they get subsidies via eminent domain, but AFAIK that's a small part of why they're profitable. " I'd be shocked if the people currently running Koch industries actually invented, or manufactured a new chemical." Would you also be shocked if they provided the capital necessary for the inventor of a new chemical to actually invent? Because I'm pretty sure that happens at least yearly (considering they're in the petrochemical business). " Every time you (or I, we all make mistakes), buy Nike shoes, you're voting with your dollar. You want a government like the one in Nigeria, or some other poor African dictatorship. ' No I'm sorry that's rubbish. Just because I trade with someone who trades with someone under a dictatorship doesn't mean I support the dictatorship. It simply means I won't boycott what may be somebody's only way to live. "nonsense, almost all of that money goes straight to the warlords, and you're inherently devaluing not just the value of your own countries manual labor, but the worlds. ' Almost all isn't all, and in any case I very much doubt "almost all" the money goes to the warlords. The warlords can't extract more than the difference in costs between other countries and the non-corruption costs in their country. And there are a lot of countries competing for the money. " Capitalism without self respect, is a race to the bottom. " It's not self-respect that makes wages go higher, it's productivity. Without investment that's not going to happen. "Then bitch about being victims of government. You're not a victim. The military could go on strike tomorrow. People have chosen governance, it was and is, a terrible choice. " I see so because the military _could_ go on strike tomorrow, I'm not a victim, even though I've never been in the military and have nothing to do with what they do. And I'm not a victim because "People" have chosen governance, and so what, I'm people therefore I've chosen it? No sorry, fallacy of composition. "here are a whole bunch of choices you make, and one of them is to be governed. " Nope all the choices listed have me being governed. Criminals are governed, and so are the Amish.

Where is the evidence that he was being honest? In fact the indications are exactly the opposite. He claimed things without evidence then offered the appeal to traditional wisdom as an argument. He made no attempt to discover whether the science supports the "old saw". Stef mentions, every time he talks about spanking "THE EVIDENCE", "THE SCIENCE" or similar. So either he's looked at that science and decided it was bunk, then not told us why, or he didn't look at the evidence. The first is unlikely, if he knows something that supports his case he would inform us. If it's the second then he's obviously dishonest about his desire to present us with the truth. He's only pretending to care about the correct way to raise children, he really only wants to justify abuse. There is a third possibility, he looked at the evidence, knows it's irrefutable but wants to contest the case anyway, so he simply ignores evidence and makes up bullshit

Are we supposed to believe that children who don't get spanked don't understand it's painful? All children have painful experiences, for a start when they're starting to walk they fall down. They can very easily understand what pain means and empathize. In fact not only all young humans but all young PRIMATES can do this. The ability to understand others pain is a evolutionary advantageous trait in social animals. Children have been observed empathizing without any need for absurd infliction of evil for them to understand suffering. But I suspect you knew that. I suspect you've seen children act comforting to others, without the need for you to inflict similar pain on them to make them understand. I suspect, like most evil, your statements are designed to excuse what you have already done. Grow up, accept that you did wrong, and resolve to do better. Offering lame excuses will only lead to the need to offer even lamer ones, and that's a spiral that goes nowhere good.

And what exactly does he cry about? Because if it's the damage he did to you he's doing nothing to stop that. If it's something else then I'm betting it's the result of his own actions, right? So yeah, he's feeling miserable about, whatever it is, that's natural. That's what happens when you make stupid, self-involved choices without considering the impact on others or your future self. So why feel bad for him? It's not like he got hit by a truck or lost an arm in a terrorist attack. Anything that happened to him is his fault. Why waste your empathy on him when there are people that didn't cause their own pain?

Fair electricity rates? Right because the rates commissions turned down a request for a rate hike from the artificial monopolies created by the fucking government, NOT! Thanks man you just gave me my daily "State rage" moment.

Ok, let's assume (against all reality) that this is a valid analogy to the human population and earth. At 59 minutes he says 1/2 a test tube full (1/2 TTF) of bacteria find 4 new test tubes. So if 1/2 a test tube full find 4 new test tubes in a minute how much easier would it be for 2 TTFs to find another 8 test tubes in 1 minute? Well twice as easy. He's basically setting up exponential growth in resource use but no exponential growth in resource discovery/utilization. This is the exact opposite of what has historically happened. It's the old Malthusian bullshit AGAIN. It has never been more irrelevant. The main economic problems are not limits on physical resources but limits on how many ideas we have and the mental ability to implement them. Those scale, or more than scale, with population. But it this way, suppose you wanted to generate power from the sun more efficiently. More people mean more people who can have ideas on how to do that. Whether or not there is a large population this requires a certain number of person-hours of effort. The larger the population the less this costs each person, but the benefit to each person remains the same as cheap power is available to all. Same thing for cancer cures, better weather prediction, etc. etc. While it's true that a bigger population will mean less fixed resources (e.g. oil, iron ore, wave energy from the ocean) available per person that hasn't been the primary determinant of prosperity for some time now.

They didn't just make up the way the plates moved. They based it on evidence, matching up places that used to be together by fossil records and geology, figuring out which part of the rock faced magnetic north when they were formed etc. . The theory was originally quite unpopular and faced rigorous challenge. That it would completely misstate what actually happened and this would not be noticed by it's detractors is absurd.

Even in that he's not that smart. Yes the US foreign policy is imperialist, people have been noticing that since before he was born. His analysis of current events is so bad that he STILL thinks that without government corporations would be more powerful EVEN AFTER THE BAILOUTS. The spunk.org link is some of the most arrogant demeaning twaddle I've ever heard. It's simply strawmen and shaming tactics. Why the hell should I have to waste my time and highten my blood pressure responding to such nonsense?

This guy wants $10 for a book "disproving" Darwin. Now if he could actually do that he'd get the Nobel prize worth $1M. His name would be internationally known. There would be TENS OF THOUSANDS of preachers urging their followers to buy his book, each convincing dozens of followers to buy his book. Yet he's not on any bestseller lists. Not even the ludicrously non-credible creationists have praised him have they? And yet you expect us to believe that a theory that has withstood criticism for over 150 years is destroyed by your little text? Note that he claims that these criticisms were known from the start, so they've clearly been discredited for over 100 years. Stop wasting our time.

Actually Jon Stewart is considerably better than many mainstream "news" shows. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtDJ6Ay4QMw

If we encounter an intelligent alien race what level of technology will they be at? This will mostly be determined by how long it's been since they evolved sentience. This in turn is overwhelmingly determined by how long since their planet developed life, which is overwhelmingly determined by how long since their planet formed which is overwhelmingly determined by how long since it's star formed. So for instance a star like the sun but 0.01% older would (all other things being equal) develop intelligent life 457,000 years earlier. Even if the aliens developed technology only 1/2 as fast once they became a sentient species they would still be about 28,000 years ahead of us. With a gap like that being willing to shed their loathsome green blood will not do us any good. If they want to fight we're doomed. Conversely if we are more developed we would probably be at least thousands of years ahead, if not tens of thousands. So if they attack they only have the advantage until we break the rifles out of storage and rustle up some Kevlar. I don't care how aggressive they are, after the first taste of bolt action fire they'll drop their atlatls and run. So we either can't, or don't really need to try to, defend ourselves from aliens. What makes sense therefore is to cooperate with them just like other humans. Those who are most efficient at cooperating will prosper, just like they do now.

Why would there be an incentive to back their clients regardless of right? When you back someone who is wrong their security agency HAS to defend their client. Those who do not defend their clients when they're in the right simply go broke. So any "back regardless" security agency, will constantly find itself at war with other agencies. The choices for an agency with a client in the wrong are a) back to the hilt, b) go to court and then accept any contrary judgement or c) give up immediately. The result of a) are war in which the other agency can't afford to lose. This is extremely expensive and unsustainable.The result of b) is that your clients accept that the agency tried their best for their client. The result of c) the clients conclude that the agency won't protect their interests if the evidence as much against their client as in this case. If the evidence is overwhelming this is trivial. If the question of guilt is at least questionable then clients will view this badly. Private security agencies don't just need to satisfy clients, they need to avoid expenses. Becoming "hired guns" without reference to the rights and wrongs doesn't do this. In fact other agencies will actively try to harm the agency if they do this, since the survival of an agency allows it's clients to ignore the law hurts them. They can only offer security if everyone agrees to the rules, at least in general. So acting like you posit actually costs a fortune just to defend the security agency.

"So why isn't morality relative and subjective? I suspect that I am conflating "morality" with annother word I am unaware of. Anyone care to shed light?" If morality was relative and subjective then that would mean that moral rules applied only in certain circumstances. But the rules on what those circumstances were would have to be objective, otherwise the rules wouldn't apply at all. You couldn't for instance have the rule for when you follow certain rules be "If you're kinda female", it has to be "If you're female". If you have objective rules that determine when the other rules apply then there must be a reason for them, an objective rule behind that objective rule. The ultimate "rule behind the rules" must be an objective principle. Any rule that does lead back to an objective, universal principle is simply what other people want you to do. It has no more validity than me saying "Tits or GTFO" (note I'm not saying that).

Here's the debunking by Dave Gamble at: http://www.skeptical-science.com/religion/todays-daft-claim-black-hole-discovered-quran-nope/ "A Muslim has posted the following claim that is currently doing the rounds at the moment … (I've had to truncate the text a bit, it is too long to post it all) … THE SCIENTIFIC MIRACLES OF THE QURAN : BLACK HOLES … the verse below may also be pointing to this scientific discovery about black holes: When the stars are extinguished, (Qur'an, 77:8) Moreover, stars of great mass also cause warps to be perceived in space. Black holes, however, do not just cause warps in space but also tear holes in it. That is why these collapsed stars are known as black holes. This fact may be referred to in the verse about stars, and this is another important item of information demonstrating that the Qur'an is the Word of Allah: [i swear] by Heaven and the Tariq! And what will convey to you what the Tariq is? The Star Piercing [the darkness]! (Qur'an, 86:1-3) Sigh! … what can one say. It is of course the usual stuff, pluck some vague poetical phrase out of context, massage the words a bit, then crowbar in a claim about it describing modern science. Was this an original claim? Nope, not at all, it came from here, the guy who posted the text simply cut and pasted (as usual) without any thought. Did he truly think it would impress? perhaps. Well, things have changed, no longer can individuals be conned so easily, If, for example, I key in “Quran black hole debunk”, the first hit is this YouTube rebuttal … (it is part of a collection that debunks many of these “Miracles in the Quran” claims) …" http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=HFavFQKFvZ8 "It took me 30 seconds (or less) to find this debunking, and there are many other rebuttals out there, it is not alone. What is clear is that the Internet is now very much becoming the marketplace for ideas and beliefs, stuff that would have been previously unchallenged is now robustly debunked, all you need is just one or two clicks and you have the answer, so when challenged with stuff like this, go and search to see what the other side is saying and become familiar with the full conversation. So where does the claim from and who is it being propagated by? Many of these modern variations of “Modern Science in the Quran” claims that I see cut and pasted come from individuals such as Harun Yahya (real name is Adnan Oktar) – also known as Adnan Hodja (Preacher Adnan) and, to his followers, Adnan Agabey (Big Brother Adnan). What is truly weird about his stuff is the cherry picking. We face claims that modern science is in the Quran, but at the same time we are advised that the parts of modern science that conflict with the belief are rejected, evolution for example. So who exactly is this guy? Adnan Oktar is a very well-financed author and Islamic creationist based in Turkey. He has a collection of over 60 websites that Muslims tend to cut and paste from quite a lot, along with a stream of YouTube clips containing wild claims that are presented in a sciency sounding manner, hence fool many. These clips are also often promoted as “evidence” for Islam. His only formal educational training is as an interior decorator, and also in Islamic theology. What now motivates him is that he has discovered that the promotion of such claims to the Islamic community is very very profitable. He is crazy – That is not an opinion, but rather a clinical fact. At one point he was arrested and charged with promoting a theocratic revolution for which he served 19 months. During this time he was first confined to a prison clinic, and then Bakirkoy Mental Hospital where he was diagnosed with an obsessive-compulsive personality disorder and schizophrenia. He is listened to – He has successfully built a large publishing enterprise (the Science Research Foundation) and sells his daft rhetoric though Islamic book stores worldwide. He is considered to be one of the most widely distributed authors in the Muslim world, and has a television show that is viewed by many in the Arab world. If all this stuff has indeed been robustly debunked, then why does it persist? Mr Oktar will carry on because it is e$$entially a license to print money, and has made him very wealthy $elling the books and tapes to the guillable. As for the believers, the term that perhaps best describes it is “Confirmation Bias“, they have been successfully conned, in a world where previously cherished ideas are being challenged there is a rising tide of religious insecurity, hence the market for stuff like this that apparently confirms the original belief, and permits little things such as reality to be happily ignored. It is perhaps a worrying trend, and illustrates how some are retreating away from modern science back into religious dogma. An interesting quote from Richard Dawkins on all this is found here … After I give lectures, I am often approached by honest and sincere young Muslims who have been deluded into believing that important ideas of modern science were anticipated in the Koran or by Muslim ‘scholars'. I always ask them for examples, and the ones they produce are always pathetic testaments to the power of wishful thinking. – Richard Dawkins"

On the contrary I think it's a good thing. It's at least acknowledgement that they did wrong. That's the first step to true reform. Can you imagine believing a drunk driver who claims to be no longer addicted, but who will not admit that he was drunk when he crashed through your wall? The fact that the State is forced to take back it's justification for a vile act that's a good thing. EDIT: I take all that back after reading the article referenced in an above post: (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/dec/24/alan-turing-pardon-wrong-gay-men) They didn't apologize they just said that he should no longer be considered a criminal. This is bizarre, why should he not be considered a criminal but all the other men who did the same thing should? Is it because he was a genius and very helpful to the state? Then should a genius who was helpful to the state and who murdered or stole also be forgiven? Is the criterion some sort of ratio between wrongness (defined by the state) and usefulness (also defined by it)?

$5 Billion is about $2777 per McDonald's employee per year. Assuming that they work a 40 hour week, 45 weeks of the year (and I know many work a lot less than this) that's $1.5 /hr more, much less than what is being asked for. But even if it wasn't, so what? Yes the shareholders could decide to be generous to their workers and pay them more. Or they could take the money from dividends and be generous to people who don't work for them. It's a mystery to me why people assume that giving people more than they are actually worth for a service is the best way to be charitable.

Another example of Prices law of anarchist evil X: Whenever someone claims that evil X will thrive in an anarchist society, it will be found to be thriving in a statist society and the state will be contributing to it.