Daniel Unplugged

One more point. Take a look at how well Venezuela is controlling the market there, and they are a government, will all the coercive power attached. People are ingenious in their ways of circumventing rules and market controls. The invisible hand is incredibly powerful.

Is it ethical? It is not unethical, unless the initiation of force is involved, such as if the government were to enforce your cartel by preventing competitors from entering the market. Good business practice? Perhaps. In the short term it may work well, but in the long term, in a free market, cartels are rarely sustainable. Competitors will find a way to sidestep you and your suppliers. New suppliers will appear out of thin air from all angles. You will be fighting a losing battle. Is it assholey? No. Distributors rights are commonplace. Treat your distributors well. If it is more profitable to do a deal with a competitor of yours, they will. If the market allows you to have a natural monopoly, then well done, and good for you. If you can hold onto it, then even better. It means you must be running your business really, really well.

Ah, a sunlight tax to go with the rainwater tax. It won't be long until we have a tax on the oxygen we breathe.

In reference to the above post, I want to offer some information for non-Australian readers. The liberal party is center-right, somewhat religious and somewhat pro business. The labor party is center-left, mostly athiest, pro union and anti free market. The greens are very socialist. The liberal and labor parties take turns at running the government, sometimes in coalitions.

So I have stopped at a red light. No cars in front, none behind. None to the left or right either. I look around for the police, then look for a red light camera. I drive straight through. My passengers looks at me in horror. "I can't believe you just did that." I laugh at them, but feel a great deal of pity. Traffic lights have the computational ability of a toaster. I am a human, my senses serve me well. The power of my brain is unmatched by the worlds fastest supercomputer. I have had the ability to determine when it is safe to cross a road since I was 5. Damn right I won't take orders from a toaster.

Agreed.

Why bother buying bitcoins just to use them for buying stocks? USD is much better for that purpose. You can't but shares in a public company anonymously in any practical way.

"...help people not make a profit." - Making a profit is a good thing."A state monopoly can provide a service at cost." - Usually they run a profit or a loss. Also, profits usually get reinvested in the business to increase production of the underlying product. If the state is to provide the same service a business would, they must also invest in new plants and equipment. Whether the funds come from a company's profit or from new taxes, they come straight from the consumer/the public. The net effect of this point is therefore zero."...business will provide it at a higher cost." - If a government monopoly chooses to charge prices at cost, and not tax the extra money needed for new investment, this may be somewhat true in the short term, but since there is no new funding for new investment, production and productivity cannot increase. Also, since monopolies, and especially government monopolies are inefficient due to the lack of market forces, in the long term it is near impossible to provide the product at a price anywhere near that which would be provided by a free market."... business will shaft the consumer..." - New investment can only come at the expense of consumption, whether it is by taxes or profit. "... and more importantly the poor." - Last I heard, business charge poor people and rich people the same price, there is no poor person surcharge.I really don't feel the need to make the arguments here against state monopolies, since the arguments for it presented here, are so weak.

I think the statement "poverty causes broken families" is barely true. I'm not even sure what the rationale for such a statement would be. A family is in poverty, so it breaks apart? Why? To bring them out of poverty? At most that would apply to the breadwinner (Usually the father), since I doubt it could be argued that a mother and children would be financially better off without the father, and, it would only make sense if the cost of living alone, and (maybe) paying child support/alimony is less than the cost of living together, which would be unlikely. If a man did ditch his wife and children for such a reason, I thing a lack of income would be among the least important problems facing the family, since he would obviously be a total douche. Another rationale could be: Families in poverty tend to fight a lot about money, due to a lack of it, and that that friction caused the family to break up. But, fighting about money is by no means limited to families in poverty, so there must be some other, underlying cause to the friction (not a lack of money), even if the friction seems to be related to poverty. In any case, a poor choice of provider (by the mother), and the decision by the father to have children that he can not afford to support, are significant factors to be considered. In this case, poor planning, and poor choices are the underlying causes of the breakup. Blaming the poverty is a cop out.Please state any other lines of reasoning if you think them relevant. ...and all this is occuring during the period of the greatest level of income of the poorest families in society in human history, families that are also far richer than the billion or so families in developing countries, which are not breaking up at anything like the rate that first world families are.

True. An employer used to be able to sack a bad worker, no questions asked. To a large extent, they still can, if the employee is a white male. All other things being equal, an employer would employ a white male over others for that reason. Employers like to minimize risk.In Australia, where I live, an employer must allow a woman to return her job after taking 12 months maternity leave. I can only imagine how many women of child bearing age, are being denied promotions to important positions in a company for that reason.

"...shaken the moral authority of the leaders of the Catholic Church" Herein lies (a significant part of) the problem. Even the author of that piece is helping to cover things up. If the author truly was bothered by the actions of the church, they would have said the following instead. "....shown beyond any doubt that the leadership of the Catholic Church is evil beyond belief, and should never, ever, be looked to as a moral authority, by anyone." Behind all great acts of evil, there is the shadow of the people who were complicit, ignorant, tolerant and supportive. The fact that the Catholics of the world are still willing to fund the church, and are still willing to accept such evil people as their leaders, shows how truly lost their sense of morality and virtue is. It is clear why Catholics must not eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, for if they did, they would cease to be Catholics. Much was planned ahead of time.

What is the risk that the employers would be taking in order to employ you? Could it be, that the risk you refer to, is the risk that they will get little or no quality work done, for the dollars they have to spend to hire you? If there was no minimum wage, you could reduce that risk to zero, hence removing the reason you can't get a job. If you used that opportunity to demonstrate that your labor is indeed valuable, you could then demand to get paid an appropriate wage. You would also get some of that experience, that would make it easier to move on to another, better job. If you can reach the first rung on the ladder, the next rung is always within reach. Yes, very easy to do. Buy a lawnmower, print some flyers, do a letter drop, and bingo bango bongo, you have created a job. Excuses for being unable to do that, are very limited indeed.

If politicians hold no actual power, then who is really in charge? While there are many groups that seek to influence politicians for their own self interest, it is the politicians who control the laws, even if they are hand picked by other organizations.

It is ubiquitous for unemployment people to state that "I can't find a job". The thesis of this post is to show that there is only 1 reason why that could be so, and, that it is always the same reason. First, I need to nut out what is actually meant when a person says such a thing. 1. Finding a job is easy, the trouble is my applications are always rejected. 2. I have applied for many jobs, and have been rejected every time. 3. I have made seroius attempts to get the jobs I have applied for. 4. The jobs I have applied for are jobs that I can do (I am not a lawyer, so I don't apply for jobs as such) 5. I want to work, ever if it is for a low wage. While these 5 statements are implied by someone who says "I can't find a job", I acknowledge that many who make the statement, are being dishonest in their implications. The following analysis only applies to those are being truthful in the full implications of their statement. "I want to work.", means nothing more than "I want to sell my labor to an employer. ". It is analogous to wanting to sell a car. If a car has been on the market for a long time, and has not sold, it is because the seller is asking for more than the market price of the car. Cars, and labor, will always sell at the market price, given a reasonably amount of time on the market. Since the person in question wants to sell their labor, they would naturally decrease the price of their labor, until it reaches it's market value and sells, just like when selling a car. Since the person's labor has not sold, something has prevented it's price from reducing to it's market value. That thing is the minimum wage. It is literally illegal for the person in question, to sell their labor (and for an employer to purchase it) at it's market value. That is why they "can't find a job". My sympathies go out to all who are prevented from working by the state.

You hit the nail on the head, but didn't you mean no and no?

Whats the bet that whomever made this video for the card company will get a few high paying job offers from marketing firms or big business?

Not that I think that it will help much, but here is the logical proof that taxation is theft from start to finish: 1. Theft is taking something that belongs to someone else. 2. The money you earn/inherit/legitimately acquire is your money. 3. Taxation is when the government takes your money. Therefore taxation is theft. I can take this further. 4. Extortion is when a person is threatened in order to frighten them into giving someone their property (usually money). 5. The laws governing taxation state that if you do not pay your taxes, you will be kidnapped and locked in a cage. 6. Taxation laws are enforced as per the above. Therefore taxation is extortion and kidnapping. 7. Theft is immoral. 8. Extortion is immoral. 9. Kidnapping is immoral. 10. Taxation is theft, extortion and kidnapping Therefore taxation is immoral. 11. Government, and all government programs, are funded through taxation. Therefore government is immoral. 12. Immoral institutions should be abolished. Therefore government should be abolished.

Thanks, how'd I miss that. Without doubt purposeful.

Not that I know

For thousands of years, saying 'God did it', has meant 'I have no idea what did it, but I like to pretend that I do.' Some things never change. Curious, has anyone noticed that 'God' and 'Good' are almost identical words. Is it just a coincidence?

I actually didn't mind it, apart from calling being a mother a job. If you think of it as a job, you are going about it all wrong.

What we have is not democracy per se, but representative democracy. They want to rule us, so they will never bring in democracy. They just call it that so that the fools think that the people are actually in charge of the government. It is enough to satisfy most people. Trying to determine the will of the majority on on great many different issues, by offering people a single vote on who gets to be their dictator for the next four years, is of course completely ridiculous. The system is designed to ensure that the will of the people does not influence the law much at all. The laws are written by government, passed into law by government, and enforced by government. The wishes of the people are an insignificant sidenote.

I accept the premise if the original post. To be lying, a person must know that what they are saying is not true. Is there a word that describes an inaccurate statement that is believed to be true. Perhaps we need one to avoid confusion.

If it's legal, you are free to do it. I hate to break it to you, but spanking, and some other forms of child abuse, are still legal. That doesn't for a second mean that it is moral. I agree that they had no principles, and that that is the reason why their system has become the way it is. I still believe, that it was their intention to have a small non-totalitarian government, even if they failed to prevent one.I am an ancap, and I base my beliefs on principles. I oppose government in it's entirety. My intention was only to point out that the founders opposed totalitarianism and attempted to prevent it.

In the above example, Americe is more free than Europe, even if the freedom to beat your children is not a desirable one. What is/is not socially acceptable does not determine the level of freedom, they are different categories. In a free society, many things will be free to do and socially unacceptable. I was referring specifically to the second amendment. It was by no means my intention, to let them off the hook for their other, especially moral, failings. Depsite their immortality about some things, can we agree that they were strongly opposed to a totalitarian style of government, and that they attemped (even if they failed) to prevent it.