bmacwilliam

I never said that, and no one would say that, it's patently false. You said this: which is patently false. There are several ETFs and mutual funds that invest in the small-cap companies that are in the Russell 2000 index. And venture cap funds which invest in even smaller, earlier stage businesses but mostly debt because of the very poor risk profile of start up equity investments which also happened to contradict another claim about risk. Don't let reality get in the way of your 'perfect ideas' Shayne... Bob

I think some of this confusion around Profit vs Product priority arises from folks who simply don't understand business. In its most simplistic form, profit is best thought of as a reward for doing your entrepreneurial job well. Products and/or services that people need/like/can afford etc., together with a well run organization can lead to profits. Concentrating on product can lead one to profit sometimes (sometimes not as well), just like concentrating on profit too much can lead to problems (especially long term if product/service suffers). Clearly, the magic happens (big profits and great products) when either by design or accident, product and profit motivations work together. But we see it all the time - people who want to make money so badly that they forget people need to like/want/need their product or service. It amazes me how often this is overlooked. On the other hand we have dreamers that have way cool ideas without the pragmatic skill to execute a successful business around them. Bob

Shayne, I humbly suggest you reflect on this above, because it describes exactly what you do in the face of facts that contradict premises of your arguments. You asserted that there was no way to invest in small/emerging business - false. Not to mention the rather obvious fact that the reason why the market is small is because most businesses fail, not because of "lack of government support" of some kind, but because the ideas are just plain dumb (mostly). You asserted that big business risk would be comparable to small without government involvement - false. Ridiculous actually. You asserted that one couldn't open a neighbourhood mom and pop shop bar/pub - false. You asserted that you'd get shot if you tried to introduce another form of currency - false, happens all over the place, including the US. This is not like a scientific theory where one example proves the concept wrong, but nevertheless, your position is weakened by failing to acknowledge facts like these and others but more importantly, you react the exact way you describe above. Bob

I think there's another concept here that seems to be overlooked. The simple, dispassionate look at education as an investment. It seems to me that if education was "too expensive", what this really means is that the payoff for investing in education isn't worth the money required to purchase it. This would be the same regardless of your wealth (a crappy investment for a poor person should be the same crappy investment for a wealthy person). Now if money wasn't available or the cost was too high, this could adversely affect the poor more directly. However, right now, money is almost free. Seems like a bit of a non-issue to me. Bob

Helping the child is morally neutral for Rand. Rand: "The fact that a man has no claim on others (i.e., that it is not their moral duty to help him and that he cannot demand their help as his right) does not preclude or prohibit good will among men and does not make it immoral to offer or to accept voluntary, non-sacrificial assistance." Rand's wonderful principle doesn't morally forbid the woman to help (well unless it was dangerous to do so). How nice. Great principle... But this the fault of pragmatism. I see. Looks a helluva lot more like an example of a result of a Randian-type principle to me. Bob

Where do you draw the line? In my approach I don't think in any such terms so I don't need to draw pragmatic lines. E.g., I don't consider it violating a homeowners property rights to save a hostage inside; I consider the hostage taker to be the rights violator in that scenario and my efforts to save the hostage, so long as they don't go beyond what is reasonable and necessary, are extensions of the rights-violating action of the perpetrator of the crime. Now I get it.... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophasia

Um... I agreed that this is wrong. I pointed out that competing currencies happen elsewhere. We're NOT in disagreement yet or in a fairy tale yet. Try to keep up. Now at the mere mention, that maybe, just maybe, there might be alternative currencies right under your nose, which invalidates your original claim (now downgraded to "serious consequences"), you seem to fly into uncontrolled fits of blathering. Sorry that reality has a way of spiking some of those silly claims. All swans are not white. I offered an example. I did not say there are no rules or principles. You offered another example, but what about mine? Did the government violate my property rights or not? Oh right, you don't think in those terms, sorry. Weasel eh?? I said it's more complicated. Here's why. It's a principled argument, but I'm sure you won't like it. There's a general economic assumption in free markets where one assumes that every man has his own best interests in mind when participating in transactions. This covers the vast majority of markets. I however, believe that medicine is an exception to this for a number of important reasons, but here's two: 1) We KNOW that the car salesman has his own best interest in mind when we shop for a car. We EXPECT the exact opposite with a doctor. We DEMAND that she has OUR best interests in mind. 2) There is an enormous knowledge gap between the doctor and patient. Much more than most other transactions. The first item, combined with the reality that we are dealing often with matters of life and death, should lead a rational person to conclude, from a principled perspective, that the standard free-market benefits do not apply the same way in matters of medicine and health. This complicates the issue of harmful behaviour, but I fear this could sidetrack the discussion and is not particularly pertinent to your other nonsense as a whole. No, not 'devoid of principle'. Principles without a reality check are useless. Most of your objections seem to be based on spasms in response to obvious reality holes in your principles. Your arguments in favour of ignoring reality don't work. Bob

Shayne, you're being ridiculous. You asked me "So, sometimes it is OK for the government to violate individual rights? When?" Well, I gave you an example of when an individual rights violation might occur. I thought I was answering your question directly. I'm so terribly sorry I didn't respond with an detailed outline of principles lest I be accused of the sin of "evading" again. I honestly thought you were asking about specifics. Anyway... "In my approach I don't think in any such terms so I don't need to draw pragmatic lines." You state that as if it's a good thing. You ask when it's OK for a government to violate rights, but you dismiss a "pragmatic" response. Absurd really. Then you asked: "Does one have an individual right to (say) grow pot and sell it, or (say) create an alternative to fiat currency and trade it? Is it OK to send in a SWAT team when someone does these things?" Then whined when I didn't make specific reference to a US citizen. What I was getting at was that I've seen alternative currencies in other countries alongside the "official" currency and this seemed to work fine, and I was agreeing with you that no, it's not OK to outlaw this. However, I have indeed used alternative currency in my country (and it probably happens in the US too, but I can't say for sure). I was a member of a barter network and certainly issued and spent "Barter Bucks" and had no SWAT team at my doorstep. Is that the third time now I've done something that you said I'd get a bullet in the head for? Is that a pragmatic bullet or a principled bullet?? It's abundantly clear "pragmatism" or "reality" isn't terribly relevant to your precious principled position. But again, that ain't a good thing. The harm of poor monetary policy enabled by fiat currency is a reasonably well understood topic. The harm of money supply tampering by government and resulting, dare I say pragmatic effect of inflationary harm on the general public I have a reasonably good understanding of. But I think it's clear, you're not interested in this. Too real I guess? Pot? Sure there's a harm in violating one's right to grow it. But dismissing the harm done by smoking it dismisses the entire pragmatic reality of the full picture. If you think having one's right violated is the only "harm" worthy of your attention, watch a loved one die of cancer and then tell me there's no harm again. Bob

So, sometimes it is OK for the government to violate individual rights? When? Well, maybe I own piece of land that becomes or just is strategically important for military defence. I don't like having my property rights violated, but the right thing to do could be to violate my rights to protect others no? Sure, this shouldn't be able to happen arbitrarily and without compensation (perhaps higher than market value), but I could certainly see where the balance of rights protection (life/property) for others outweighs my individual property rights. Grow and sell pot? Well, that's actually a more complex question, but for now, I'll say yes for the time being. "or (say) create an alternative to fiat currency and trade it?" Interesting question. I was just in Scotland. The bank of Scotland and the Clydesdale Bank both issue currency that's accepted everywhere as far as I could tell in addition to the regular Bank of England pounds. Doesn't seem to be a problem, and no, I'd have to say it's wrong to outlaw this anyway, and it doesn't seem to be impractical in reality. Harm? Well, perhaps you could flesh this out. One thing is that I'd guess the government would do a poor job at managing it compared to a private bank, but governments have a wide range of irresponsibility depending on which government you look at. The US seems to be on the wrong side of this these days at least. Bob

Yes, I do believe in natural/individual/inalienable rights. Generally, but I cannot say there are no exceptions, the Government crosses this line when these rights are violated by the Government. Protecting individual rights should indeed be the highest priority. Problems so far? Bob

Yes it is Shayne, and I provided you with a little bit of an explanation/elaboration. However, I will "evade" no longer. The answer to your simple question is....... No. (thought that much was obvious - my bad) Is that better? Bob

Cool!!! Please let me know what it is! Does it involve a fascist nazi plural marriage freemason conspiracy?? I hope so. Always wanted to be a part of one of those! Bob

Nope, not offended, just annoyed by your pettiness. Is this a reasonable representation of your view?: "It is hopeless, pointless, and even perverse to expect a political system to ever be instituted that, as a matter of principle (exceptions only due to individual error and rare corruption), respects individual rights." Feel free to rephrase to match your view. Shayne More accurate to say that much of what you percieve to be structural injustices, are in reality less serious, less secure or even irrelevant. And also, some of your percieved injustices are not really injustices. It is usually not unjust to give preferred service to wealthy people.

Friggin' George beat me to it. OOOooooooh!!! I like this guy less and less...

"Mormon plot to get control of the Federal Government. It's part of their prophesies."

I'm sorry if my "spin" offends you. You can sure dish it out, but... Anyway... "It seems important for you to believe that modern society is reasonably just and fair, that all individuals have a reasonable amount of liberty to achieve their chosen purpose if it is a reasonable one, yes?" No, modern society is not just and fair. Modern society has never been just and fair. Modern society will never be just and fair. Modern society can never be just and fair. It is my contention (one of them), that some of your complaints either would exist in substantially the same form completely absent of government interference and are in fact due to free market forces. While other complaints are just wrong and others are misleading. It's not fair that a poor/little guy has to pay more for money, but he always will, with or without the government. Just like it's not fair that the guy just starting his driving career who might be an excellent driver nevertheless has to pay more for insurance than the 30 year veteran with no claims or accidents. Completely free, unregulated banks will still loan rich people and rich businesses money cheaper. It ain't fair. Tough. I can make money loaning to big business too. One more, from your original post: "Only big business can afford to pay for lobbyists in Washington. Therefore, the political tendency is to favor big business." While this can be true, it is also true that, for example, seniors vote at a much higher rate than lobbyists. Some of this "pro-senior" leaning we often see here by politicians often offsets the lobbyist influence quite directly and vice-versa. But again, this is a different country, we do not have distressed and/or bailed-out banks. In fact, if seniors went up against the big banks, the seniors would and did, in fact, win. This happened recently with a significant change to mortgage fraud legislation that landed clearly on the side of not just seniors, but the individual in general at the expense of the banks. My problem is that your "spin" bolsters your angle, but does not in fact represent the full picture adequately at all. "It seems important for you to believe that modern society is reasonably just and fair, that all individuals have a reasonable amount of liberty to achieve their chosen purpose if it is a reasonable one, yes? If you were to learn that this was not the case, that would be a rather severe blow, yes?" No, it's not a severe blow at all. Because I've "made it" more or less, realistically everyone else either must have a reasonable chance too, or it must mean if they don't then I'm truly exceptional. Either way, to channel Charlie Sheen, I'm "winning" Bob

Thanks for bringing your motivations out into the open. This is something that we can work with. Your other nonsense was just your passive-aggressive method of furthering this motive, so that explains why it didn't make any sense. Let's see if we can nail down your premises here. Please try to be direct and honest and not passive-aggressive. Let's start with something simple. Is your position is that there are not gross injustices against the individual in modern society? Is it your position that there's really just not much to complain about? Shayne I have been direct, honest, and quite clear about my criticisms of your nonsense. Motivations are irrelevant to facts. The facts aren't on your side. How about you try a semi-intelligent response to some of those direct criticisms above? Bob

Shane, You can whine all you want and speculate on my motives, but let me tell what they are and remove your speculation. I don't like the way your original quote from your book cherry-picked items to bolster the "Poor little me, the world is stacked against the little guy" argument. This is not to say that there isn't some pieces of truth to it, but again I think you deliberately miss or are just ignorant of the more pertinent details under the surface of what you're saying, and so you 'twist' bits of truth to support your argument without looking deeper. I think your arguments (and subsequent defences) are either disingenuous or ignorant, most likely both. Combine this with a forceful and belligerent persona, and there you have my motivation for continuing to point out some of the more obvious problems. Let's just go back to your lamenting about the impossibility of your Small Business Stock Market idea. First of all EVEN IF this type of investment was not available (which it is), the more important question is would it exist in a free market without all of your evil government restrictions? Well, one of the biggest (but certainly not the only) challenges of the OTC Equities market is liquidity. Again, this is only ONE of many other challenges, but let's leave it to that for now. To think that a market could function for smaller, and even higher risk securities ('securities' is an ironic word here) is ludicrous. Whining about evil government restrictions on unicorns doesn't make sense if unicorns wouldn't exist anyway. In addition, people CAN buy diversified investments in micro-cap/venture businesses and they do so. Also, the Venture Cap funds tend to invest more in business debt vs equity because of the enormous risk connected to the unsecured equity side that simply cannot be ignored or rationalized with "Well, big business is risky too if they didn't get corporate welfare" argument. Nonsense. You are either deliberately ignoring these facts, or know nothing about OTC Equities, and even less about Venture Capital. Any of which is not acceptable to someone making the claims you're making. Get my motivation now? Bob

You're making yourself look rather foolish. This is completely false. I have, personally, first hand, just recently done EXACTLY THIS. Debt and equity positions in small business. But mostly debt - can you guess why? Right - risk. Equity risk in small business is very very high. "LSIFs provide investors with the ability to invest in early stage companies while providing tax credit for the increased risk and illiquid nature of these investments." Also note the "INCREASED RISK" in the sentence above...Sheesh... http://www.venturelinkfunds.com/ Yes, I can see how this would be "tiring" for you. Now its "propping up", not "bailouts" anymore. Shift the goalposts much? "Their "low risk" is only coming from the unjustified propping up". Some perhaps, but that statement as a general rule is not only unjustified, it's contradicted by another assertion of yours in the same post. "A big conglomerate is in effect a kind of diversification;" So which is it? Big business=low risk or high?? You accuse me of being confused while contradicting yourself in the same post?? Bob

If you don't understand human rights your questions are understandable. --BrantWell, I understand and accept the idea of inalienable rights - like liberty. I just don't accept that sexual liberty should be excluded. I think the same logic (and perhaps even more forcefully from a natural/evolutionary perspective) applies to sexualy liberty - inalienable. I think to think otherwise is usually just a weak rationalization. Usually it's somebody trying to defend their immoral decisions. Bob

Well, your one remark is remarkably wrong. Just because some big businesses fail obviously doesn't mean they're a higher risk as a group. You don't need to be an economist to know that the small business failure rate is astronomically higher than Big Business. Oh, a few companies get a bailout (0.01%) so that alters the risk profile? I think you're just screwing around and can't be serious. You don't see millions of rational people investing all their retirement funds in Joe's discount dog grooming service. Blue chip companies fail much more rarely and they're certainly not protected by bailouts (vast majority). Do I really need to point this out???

Back to the original question of the morality of selling your body. Two things I don't understand from the folks who consider prostitution a simple transaction between consenting adults are: If sex was a simple commodity, why isn't rape morally equivalent to shoplifting? If sex was a simple service, why shouldn't rape be just punishable by simple restitution at a certain hourly rate? I think prostitution as a simple transaction is a very weak rationalization.

Interesting. "Try setting up a lemonade stand or a small pub nearby your neighborhood. You'll find that you can't do it" Couldn't be more wrong. No confusion or distortion. " it is very simple for a big business to hire a professional accountant, but a huge burden for a small business to do so." Bullshit. Nonsense. Done it myself. "Only big business can afford to devise and implement the complicated tax-shelter schemes the current legal environment encourages." Bullshit. Nonsense. Done it myself. "The Federal Reserve hands out money at low or no interest to big businesses, who then either use it to compete directly with small businesses who have no such access to cheap fiat money, or loan the money out at substantially marked up rates to the smaller businesses." Now there's a distortion. Higher risk = higher rate, perfectly rational. Take out the Fed, and small business would still pay more for money no matter what. I'd like to know what the colour of the sky is in your world. Bob

Actually no, all you did was say that you know a guy who knows a guy. All you're talking about is hearsay. You are biased to want to make the case that big business has it harder, or at least about as hard. You haven't made that case, nor have you undercut my case in the slightest; on the contrary, a number of the things you said only confirm my case. The patent system and regulations alone are enough to make my case. The points about fiat money are just bonus material. Here's some more bonus material: Try setting up a lemonade stand or a small pub nearby your neighborhood. You'll find that you can't do it. The zoning laws corral us into big locations with huge expensive buildings that only big business can fund. We're not allowed to do the smaller stuff that individuals and small businesses could handle. Try going downtown and selling some wares. You'll find you generally can't do that either. We're mostly blocked and corralled such that we wind up working for some big employer. We're not 100% blocked, but there are very strong forces leaning that way. The current system is a kind of neo-feudalism. Shayne "Actually no, all you did was say that you know a guy who knows a guy" Wrong. I, me, first person. I hired the accountant - still do. "The patent system and regulations alone are enough to make my case." Perhaps. But this is the only reasonable thing you asserted. Other assertions are highly questionable and/or false. "Try setting up a lemonade stand or a small pub nearby your neighborhood. You'll find that you can't do it." I live in a different country so I'll give you the benefit of the doubt. Here? You couldn't possibly be more wrong. A small mom and pop pub just opened two weeks ago in my neighbourhood in a small (no big-box) commercial spot quite quickly (a month or two) after the previous business vacated. Was just in there on Thurs chatting up the new owner. One of my closest friends does this for a living. Opens a restaurant/pub in a cheap, non big-box location, cooks great food, builds the business, then sells for a profit and starts over. He's done this many times. He's good at what he does - best ribs ever. Again, different country, but your description doesn't fly here, not at all. I'm starting to agree with George again, please help.... Bob

You had no opinion on a very severe problem: patents. Also, you admitted to facts that clearly lead to small businesses being killed to the benefit of big ones. You are arguing more from bias than from actual understanding. Shayne I also pointed out specific situations where you're flat out wrong. The "complicated tax-shelter" comment (for one) I think is not correct. I also think you overstate the lack of funds argument too. Money is always much more easily available to those who don't need it and much more difficult to obtain for those who need it most. Money is indeed costlier for the smaller guys but this is a free-market based rational effect. This is Business, no, more like Life 101. However, I do agree with some of the items, but I believe that because of the errors, your conclusion is overstated at best. You say bias vs understanding. Seems to me to be more experience vs naïveté. Bob