The Mighty Buzzard (profile), 18 Jun 2012 @ 7:48pm
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There are 300+ million people in the US. If only one in every ten thousand people threw on a Punisher t-shirt and grabbed half a dozen guns, the TLAs couldn't even remotely handle it. If one in one hundred did, the combined police forces of the nation couldn't handle it. If one in ten did, the US military couldn't handle it. Plus the Punisher t-shirt makers would get sick rich.
The preceding was not me advocating violence. I am completely ambivalent about the idea of giving the corrupters of our political system a fatal case of lead poisoning. Me actually advocating violence would be in the form of a time-delayed post made after I'd already preformed quite a bit of it.
The Mighty Buzzard (profile), 14 Jun 2012 @ 12:57pm
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She never really had policies though, just ideals. Most of her work was Why rather than How; what not to do rather than a comprehensive map of how it should be done.
Someone taking a half-assed understanding of her philosophy (or deliberately misunderstanding it for their own gain) and making policy out of it can't really be laid on her shoulders. I'm fairly certain she'd have some righteously pissed off words to say about what was done with her message if she were still around.
My philosophy is, in general, the government should stay out of competitive matters. Right up until someone does something anti-competitive. Then they should come down on them like a ton of bricks.
Truly anti-competitive mind you. Simply being too good for anyone else to beat isn't enough. Any action aimed at stifling competition though is. Including pretty much all exclusive contracts, even if the parties aren't dominant market forces.
The "in general" above because there are times when the system breaks down and the government should take steps to restart competition in a sector. That power should be used exceedingly sparingly and only when absolutely necessary though. Monopolies hurt the involved sector of the economy but so does government meddling.
The Mighty Buzzard (profile), 14 Jun 2012 @ 11:59am
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I know it's asking a lot but you really should reread it if you think that. You missed quite a bit.
I'll grant you that she was pretty pissed off at communism. Quite understandable given her background. Anyone trying to sell that she was for any form of stifling competition though either didn't understand her work in the first place or hasn't read it in a while. There were too many examples of both public and private anti-competitive practices that her protagonists had to fight to even remotely claim that.
Look, I'm not a Rand fanatic. I think she was a terrible novelist and somewhat short-sighted. My disagreement is strictly factual rather than idealistic.
The Mighty Buzzard (profile), 14 Jun 2012 @ 11:34am
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You should reread Rand. Though extremely long-winded and painful to read, there is no possible way you can take Atlas Shrugged as even remotely endorsing crony capitalism. Buying laws protecting businesses that otherwise couldn't compete was one of the central complaints of the book.
As for monopolistic practices, Rand's protagonists thrived on rather than feared competition. Witness the National Alliance of Railroads (a private entity) and the Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog rule used to force Phoenix-Durango out of competing in Colorado.
Seriously, Rand might have been a terrible writer but nothing you see in the so-called capitalism today can be justified by her ideals.
The Mighty Buzzard (profile), 14 Jun 2012 @ 10:58am
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Kind of goes without saying. Any freedom you that aren't willing to absolutely destroy the entity trying to remove it to keep? It was only ever yours on borrowed time to begin with. Be it metaphorical or actual, continued freedom is only possible at gunpoint.
It's a nice thought, Mike. I guess you just have more faith in humanity than I do if you think silly little things like facts can ever matter more than money and power to politicians or that the general public can be made to see what's good for them or even care if they do see.
That's the main reason I say if we don't have lobbyists and play the corruption game, we're going to fail. Yes, we managed to get SOPA/PIPA more or less killed in the States and they've done well on killing ACTA in Europe. We've also seen pretty much nothing of the sort on CISPA or TPP just a few months later. I really do not believe we have the backbone to make a sustained fight of it in numbers large enough to achieve a situation we can call a win.
The Mighty Buzzard (profile), 7 Jun 2012 @ 11:33am
Re: Are You Playing Stupid, Naive, or Just Dumb?
You seem to have some wires crossed there. Fascism is easy to spot by pretty much all power being concentrated in one individual. I really fail to see that here.
Also, there never has been and never will be any form of government that isn't at least largely bought and paid for, except where power is concentrated in one individual. The more people who hold power, the more likely you are to have corruption and the odds are pretty high with just one person.
Further, it's not corporations that own the politicians. The *AA, Big Oil, Big Pharma, and most every other lobby group with any significant power aren't corporations; they're cartels. Not that the politicians care. Even an individual with enough money can buy one.
Last bit, your calling the US a police state is either poorly chosen hyperbole or you've no idea what an actual police state is like.
While I pretty well agree with the sentiment behind the statement, pretty much every descriptive word choice you made was entirely wrong. Please use more of your own brain and less anti-establishment rhetoric if you're going to argue a point I agree with.
The Mighty Buzzard (profile), 5 Jun 2012 @ 10:56am
Re: Re: Re: Re: Business is the key word
And yet, it's still got a puny screen and is a pain in the ass and far less immersive compared to flopping on the couch and getting your veg on.
Sorry, I can't see the enormous flatscreen TV hanging on the wall losing its place in the market. Especially when it's so easy to hook up a media center PC/ps3/etc... and pipe (legally or otherwise) downloaded content to it.
The Mighty Buzzard (profile), 5 Jun 2012 @ 10:40am
Re: problem ?
That's great, kid, don't get cocky.
It's part of the fundamental nature of government to betray its people for money. The US has fucked up health care and IP laws, Britain has freedom of speech only as long as it doesn't inconvenience their government, Greece has bankrupted itself giving handouts in trade for votes, France is working on the same and has IP laws worse than the US.
Everyone has their own issues to deal with before they go talking shit about someone else's.
Way I see it, we have two main problems with health care in the US.
Judges allow suits for a bazillion dollars against Doctors/Hospitals to go forward any time someone doesn't get the desired result.
Insurance companies aren't interested in going back to lower payouts if it means lower premiums.
The first is essentially doing to health care exactly what the patent trolls are doing to innovation. Crippling it with lawsuits that enrich lawyers and force providers to treat in more expensive ways to avoid lawsuits rather than to cure patients. Every health care provider in the nation, from corporate to individual doctors, should expect to be sued multiple times per year. They're all required to carry unholy amounts of malpractice insurance.
As for the second, insurance companies are simply unwilling to give up their monopoly on the entire health care industry. They've now managed to enshrine into law that every person and company involved in either giving or receiving health care must carry insurance to pay for it.
We've let trial lawyers write the fact that doctors are human and make mistakes into case law as willful negligence. We've let insurance companies become the only ones who are legally allowed to pay to either give or receive medical care. And we've allowed them both to acquire the second and first most powerful lobbies in Washington, respectively.
Can we all see now why we're well and truly boned, no matter what we hear out of politicians around election time?
On the post: Matthew Inman To Charles Carreon: Take Time Off, Stop Saying Crazy Sh*t To Journalists, Calm Down
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On the post: Leaked TPP Proposal Reveals That US Wants To Give Multinational Companies Tremendous Power
Re: Re:
The preceding was not me advocating violence. I am completely ambivalent about the idea of giving the corrupters of our political system a fatal case of lead poisoning. Me actually advocating violence would be in the form of a time-delayed post made after I'd already preformed quite a bit of it.
On the post: DOJ Realizes That Comcast & Time Warner Are Trying To Prop Up Cable By Holding Back Hulu & Netflix
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
On the post: DOJ Realizes That Comcast & Time Warner Are Trying To Prop Up Cable By Holding Back Hulu & Netflix
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
Someone taking a half-assed understanding of her philosophy (or deliberately misunderstanding it for their own gain) and making policy out of it can't really be laid on her shoulders. I'm fairly certain she'd have some righteously pissed off words to say about what was done with her message if she were still around.
My philosophy is, in general, the government should stay out of competitive matters. Right up until someone does something anti-competitive. Then they should come down on them like a ton of bricks.
Truly anti-competitive mind you. Simply being too good for anyone else to beat isn't enough. Any action aimed at stifling competition though is. Including pretty much all exclusive contracts, even if the parties aren't dominant market forces.
The "in general" above because there are times when the system breaks down and the government should take steps to restart competition in a sector. That power should be used exceedingly sparingly and only when absolutely necessary though. Monopolies hurt the involved sector of the economy but so does government meddling.
On the post: DOJ Realizes That Comcast & Time Warner Are Trying To Prop Up Cable By Holding Back Hulu & Netflix
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
I'll grant you that she was pretty pissed off at communism. Quite understandable given her background. Anyone trying to sell that she was for any form of stifling competition though either didn't understand her work in the first place or hasn't read it in a while. There were too many examples of both public and private anti-competitive practices that her protagonists had to fight to even remotely claim that.
Look, I'm not a Rand fanatic. I think she was a terrible novelist and somewhat short-sighted. My disagreement is strictly factual rather than idealistic.
On the post: DOJ Realizes That Comcast & Time Warner Are Trying To Prop Up Cable By Holding Back Hulu & Netflix
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re:
As for monopolistic practices, Rand's protagonists thrived on rather than feared competition. Witness the National Alliance of Railroads (a private entity) and the Anti-Dog-Eat-Dog rule used to force Phoenix-Durango out of competing in Colorado.
Seriously, Rand might have been a terrible writer but nothing you see in the so-called capitalism today can be justified by her ideals.
On the post: DOJ Realizes That Comcast & Time Warner Are Trying To Prop Up Cable By Holding Back Hulu & Netflix
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On the post: Does 'The Future' Need Lobbyists Too?
Would be nice but...
That's the main reason I say if we don't have lobbyists and play the corruption game, we're going to fail. Yes, we managed to get SOPA/PIPA more or less killed in the States and they've done well on killing ACTA in Europe. We've also seen pretty much nothing of the sort on CISPA or TPP just a few months later. I really do not believe we have the backbone to make a sustained fight of it in numbers large enough to achieve a situation we can call a win.
On the post: Obama Administration: $1.5 Million For Sharing 24 Songs Is Perfectly Reasonable
Re: Are You Playing Stupid, Naive, or Just Dumb?
Also, there never has been and never will be any form of government that isn't at least largely bought and paid for, except where power is concentrated in one individual. The more people who hold power, the more likely you are to have corruption and the odds are pretty high with just one person.
Further, it's not corporations that own the politicians. The *AA, Big Oil, Big Pharma, and most every other lobby group with any significant power aren't corporations; they're cartels. Not that the politicians care. Even an individual with enough money can buy one.
Last bit, your calling the US a police state is either poorly chosen hyperbole or you've no idea what an actual police state is like.
While I pretty well agree with the sentiment behind the statement, pretty much every descriptive word choice you made was entirely wrong. Please use more of your own brain and less anti-establishment rhetoric if you're going to argue a point I agree with.
On the post: Sprint Changes 'Unlimited' Broadband To 5 Gigs... While Still Advertising Unlimited Broadband
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On the post: Sprint Changes 'Unlimited' Broadband To 5 Gigs... While Still Advertising Unlimited Broadband
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On the post: Duh: The TV Business Is On The Verge Of Collapse
Re: Welcome to the Internet.
On the post: Duh: The TV Business Is On The Verge Of Collapse
Re: Re: Re: Re: Business is the key word
Sorry, I can't see the enormous flatscreen TV hanging on the wall losing its place in the market. Especially when it's so easy to hook up a media center PC/ps3/etc... and pipe (legally or otherwise) downloaded content to it.
On the post: Freemium Medical Care? Indian Hospital Shows That A Charitable Hospital Can Still Make A Profit
Re: problem ?
It's part of the fundamental nature of government to betray its people for money. The US has fucked up health care and IP laws, Britain has freedom of speech only as long as it doesn't inconvenience their government, Greece has bankrupted itself giving handouts in trade for votes, France is working on the same and has IP laws worse than the US.
Everyone has their own issues to deal with before they go talking shit about someone else's.
On the post: Freemium Medical Care? Indian Hospital Shows That A Charitable Hospital Can Still Make A Profit
Re: This is the way US insurance used to work
The first is essentially doing to health care exactly what the patent trolls are doing to innovation. Crippling it with lawsuits that enrich lawyers and force providers to treat in more expensive ways to avoid lawsuits rather than to cure patients. Every health care provider in the nation, from corporate to individual doctors, should expect to be sued multiple times per year. They're all required to carry unholy amounts of malpractice insurance.
As for the second, insurance companies are simply unwilling to give up their monopoly on the entire health care industry. They've now managed to enshrine into law that every person and company involved in either giving or receiving health care must carry insurance to pay for it.
We've let trial lawyers write the fact that doctors are human and make mistakes into case law as willful negligence. We've let insurance companies become the only ones who are legally allowed to pay to either give or receive medical care. And we've allowed them both to acquire the second and first most powerful lobbies in Washington, respectively.
Can we all see now why we're well and truly boned, no matter what we hear out of politicians around election time?
On the post: If You're Going To Leak Classified Info About The White House, It Better Make Them Look Good
Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Man...
GP-AC: Violence is like duct tape. If it doesn't solve the problem, you didn't use enough.
On the post: Dear Ari Emanuel: We're All Meeting On The Internet, Come Join Us
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Media companies need to start looking into how to become a service industry and they need to do it fifteen years ago.
On the post: Dear Ari Emanuel: We're All Meeting On The Internet, Come Join Us
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Media companies need to start looking into how to become a service industry and they need to do it fifteen years ago.
On the post: French Film Exec Insists That Anti-Piracy Efforts Made Sure No French Films Were Downloaded For 7 Months
On the post: No, Writing A Song With The Lyric 'Let's Go Thunder' Doesn't Entitle You To 30% Of The Oklahoma City Thunder's Profits
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Seriously, how did a football state end up with a pro basketball team?
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