Derek McGowan

In reference to Baal statement about police and to JTS. I think that some people would gladly pay taxes for certain things (is it even still called taxes if they are voluntary efforts?) Such as for the police or to raise funds for an army if we were occupied, etc. But my post is really not about that aspect of taxes- the philosophical involuntary side but more about a simple equation, which is Is more production available in a system that has taxation because of inflation and my above points.

The way I understand it is that no one's "income" went up, the producer of the income would be keeping more of that income to utilize as the individual desired. Am I not understanding this part? A... I'm talking about buying power more so than income I guess. Buying power increases if one is granted a credit card as it artificially increases ones ability to trade but it doesn't actually increase income in the pure form

Unfortunately I don't have the actual mathematics background (calling on Baal) or the research in hand (calling on Selene) to prove this theory of mine but stick with me a bit. So the big problem I see with taxes is that they are involuntary. This so called theory doesn't stop that fact. Having to pay for something against your will no matter what the outcome just isn't right and that's just the way I see it... But Sometime I hear people complaining about taxes for other reasons, such as: if I had this money then I would be free to invest in other things... Lets get something clear, you would not have extra money to spend on anything if you weren't taxed, not on dinners, not on investments, not on tattoos or gold chains. Why? Because if everyone's income went up then inflation would naturally knock out all gains. Sure if you or a group of people got a bonus or no taxes or whatever then you or that group would indeed be richer, but if everyone got a million dollars then naturally, through market forces alone, that million would mean nothing as prices immediately climbed to compensate. Maybe you don't agree with the above (and I'd love to hear the opposition) but if you do then... Wouldn't it follow that the amount of work that gets done (products produced, services rendered) is greater with the tax system because a certain bit of money is skimmed off the top, artificially reducing income which in turn prevents a certain amount of inflation (which of course still happens with the printing of money) AND yet that skimmed money is still put to work. Add to the fact that that money, going into the hands of construction crews, is itself taxed which means that the work is getting done for even less than it actually cost (at the higher inflation) That doesn't mean that the government doesn't waste that skimmed potential. They still give it to cronies on no-bid contracts and inflated bills. And it still is being used to pay interest on loans which never should have occurred in the first place. And it still commits the cardinal sin of being involuntary but is it mathematically actually a bonus, when you look at it from a pure dollars-to-products perspective?

Maybe if they change the name then it would be more accepted by the critics (of course it would also have to be good!) But its definitely good to hear 39 episodes They can change name and then use the world of Atlas Shrugged as a template. Have the main characters of course but don't exclusively focus on them. Let the downfall of the nation be felt in sub characters, show how their lives are affected by the new laws, then start showing how the main characters (up to maybe the last season they aren't so much main) are coming together to combat the problem. Don't even take the audience to Galt's gulch, just have one character explain the place to others inter-cut with memories of time spent there. They can use the philosophy to show how real people in the world, not the idealized masses of the novel, react. The government officials (some of them) can be shown to actually think they are doing what is best. As an audience we should feel some sympathy for them as well, working to bale water, unknowingly causing the flood they fight to prevent. Going home distressed and being soothed by spouses. I would love to see where Dagny and the others only occupy 40% of screen time, or less. Galt- 10% a real mystery man. Then the true lessons can be learned because the audience wouldn't be so caught up with critiquing the unrealistic/idealistic nature of the characters displayed in the book

An interesting question Walmart has been outspoken against such laws but say it was implemented. A Walmart employee refuses to help a customer on the sales floor because of... say a head-wrap. Walmart fires the employee. Should the employee be able to then sue Walmart for trying to force them to go against their religious views (if of course there is no contract explicitly stating that all employees must follow company policy) even if they knew Walmart's implicit views on the matter?

Baal, If a worker always has the option of leaving a job/industry in which the environment doesn't treat one as they would like - thus their job cannot be considered involuntary servitude (im just using this as an example to make a point because I could argue the other way as well) so too is the option of closing up ones business/going Galt if the law of the land, the environment, doesn't suit them - thus it cannot be considered involuntary servitude. But even if it was, is that somehow worse or on par with another person being classed as an untouchable for cultural reasons. I see this person as really the one with no choice in the matter- thus "involuntary"

Why not, You appear to have forgotten about the other part of reality where humans have a annoying habit of reinforcing their imagined disagreements with things* into dogma until they are forced to actually try those things out, many times realizing that they were completely wrong to believe what they previously did. * lots of examples- I for one swore to my mother that I had no love of coloration in my art. It was graphite till I die...until I got to college and had to take a painting class, now I'm in love with it. People have automatically said that bean pies are disgusting, having never had one. This is the same for lots of food. I had Indian food at my wedding to finally get family to try it and they loved it. Children do this all the time. Tv shows that you assume you would never like having never seen them. An ex of mind was so against abortion, she voted for Bush PURELY on the basis of his antiabortion stance, then she actually had friends who told her their stories and she changed her mind. Etc

Selene, Can't say I really understand the question but I do fulfill commissions from individuals.

Baal, I'm not for involuntary servitude but the difference that I see is- If your life is severely disrupted by being structural discrimination there , in some instances, is no escape But If your business is disrupted because you are, by law , forced to serve certain individuals, then you can always choose to go out of business. Or even convert to a private service

Baal, it's not always as cut and dry as that. When people (indoctrinated by religion or culture and in command of major modern industries) form a group whose combined discrimination produces a tier of second class citizens it is actually the discriminated against who are the slaves, physically or otherwise

Responding on cell so I can't quite.... Selene, I was talking about the Indiana law. Fransisco, yes public protest. I was saying that in the former case (free Lancet) I , personally, would be in the anti-protest crowd defending the business persons right to choose. While in the latter case I would be in the protest crowd.... I said I was on the fence Something else has to be taken into account and that is licensing. If you have to have a food safety, fire safety, trade license to open a restaurant and the state government which grants it says that you have to jump through a number of hoops and one of them is your business being non-discrimatory then I guess the civil rights law could/would be held in that way. Historically, as far as African-Americans go, discrimination didn't hurt so much in the segragated restaurants but in more structural businesses such as banks. It's fine to say that a small business can determine its customers based on color or sexual preference but if a banking industry can withhold the loans that people need for economic growth (especially when the credit scores are in order) that IS a problem. Or if housing that is on the market is suddenly not for sale when a gay couple arrive with cash in hand... I don't have think real estate brokers should be able to do that

I'm on the fence with this one. I think free lancers and small family/privately owned businesses should be able to serve who ever they choose* but then the line should be drawn at publicly owned companies. Also it would be ridiculous if a police man, firefighter, marine, or any emergency/ public safety person could discriminate based on personal beliefs. * When it comes to businesses open to the general public such as restaurants it gets a bit tricky. The owners make a choice to have it open to the public, versus being a private club, therefore they should have to deal with the repercussions of that- being public outcry and protests if they then decide to discriminate.

I find that I'm okay with heights as long as I have something to hold on to (I have a sixty foot ladder I can go up no problem). On the other hand, free standing and just peering over a ledge, I even feel nervous on train platforms!

Havent read other responses yet but I wanted to add This is a perfect example. HBO is usually available only through cable. HBO the company has created a app for people to stream HBO through other devices without having to have a cable subscription. Guess what? Comcast, since they are able to read exactly what information goes over their last mile pipes, has been blocking the content. That means that they are getting int the way of business transactions between HBO and HBO's paying customers simply because they don't get their cut. https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20141216/04312629447/comcast-still-blocking-hbo-go-third-party-devices-never-bothers-to-explain-why.shtml and you guys defend this stuff??

Thats highly- highly optimistic and not really based in reality. There is a large portion of people that are not happy with America but they don't /can't just up and leave to a South American country. Things outside of theory don't exactly work that way

Derek, Government never does have that kind of power when freedoms are signed away. That kind of power grows later. The technique is to get a precedent, then enter with both elbows to open 'er up. History is replete with governments taking over small freedoms, then growing into monsters over time. That's just what they do. It's in the nature of money and power run by fools. (And please don't tell me politicians are the wisest among us. ) One of the problems debating this issue is that the government is already protecting a cartel on Internet coverage. Competition is mostly frozen out, not because of inherent costs, market, etc., but by law. The best thing in the world would be for the government to get out of the way and let newbies compete. Instead, reasonable people (like you) believe the solution to a problem with the current arrangement is more government--trying to cure a problem by increasing one of its main causes. What makes you think a government technocrat will have a higher degree of integrity than a corporatism technocrat? (Notice I said "corporatism" not "corporation." Corporatism is not a free market economy construction, but instead a form of crony capitalism, i.e., business entities plus government protections against competition, most often disguised as regulations.) In crony capitalism land, the players all like the same things, but they have them in different priorities. Government folks like POWER, then money. Corporatism folks like MONEY, then power. But both like money and power over integrity. Meaning both like corruption. Ah yes... they all like to posture about integrity--the more colorful and cool-sounding the posture, the better--without having to live it. Even stepping outside of crony capitalism, are government people inherently more moral than business people? Heh. Try defending that proposition. Increasing the power of the government does not decrease the power of crony corporations. It never has throughout history and it never will. It makes them more immune to competition and screws consumers in the end. Oh, it's good for show, I guess, to fool the public because of all the euphemisms and word games and poetry, but the money and power party goes on and grows on--as it always has, generally, until the respective civilization collapses. Here's an analogy for pondering. If I am sick because I have ingested a trace amount of cyanide, the cure is not to increase the dose of the poison. It is to stop ingesting cyanide--get away from the cyanide--and let my body heal. Michael sure there are examples of people taking too much power, there is even a well worn mantra (I think that is the word) "I gave you and inch and you take a mile" People do this things all the time, whether we are talking about teenagers with parents, spouses in relationships, employees with their schedules, CEOs with tax rules or other legislation or governments from Monarchs to dictators to Presidents. What about it? How about instead simply standing on the fact that is is possible, lets also see that it is not guaranteed to happen. But that is not my point at all. My point is that, I agree with you that we need more competition, and if it is laws that have prevented new companies from laying lines, then we should remove those laws. Fine, I'm with you but in the mean time we have to prevent the internet from being screwed. If your teenager is reckless with the car, yes you can almost guarantee that they will get better, you can almost guarantee that down the line they will get their own car but for now you don't keep giving them the keys with free reign. You have to put some rules in place to protect what is already there. The new FCC rules specifically say that they cannot specify prices or control connections or censor. Sure you can say that they have a foot in the door BUT they would have to go back into legislation again, and that means that I and others like me would see that they are now trying to go too far and stop them, just like when we protested the Intellectual property law they tried to put into place a few years back. You guys may be against governmental rules in principle and that's fine. I'm all for principles and because of that I'm strictly against ANYONE having the power to intercede in others peaceful communications and business transactions. And when a ISP directly says that they should have the power to block or slowdown traffic to any site that doesn't pay them a ransom, I have a problem with it. Please respond to this analogy- If there was a booming factory town with one road leaving out of it (a road cut through mountains). One road for mail to come in, for the import and export of products, for the commuting of workers, and I owned a 50 square for square of that road. I allow that I should be able to put up a toll booth and capitalize on traffic that passes over my property, but where I draw the line is if I also tried to take such control as to determine business transactions. "Oh you are going into the town to buy from who? No, sorry, that company pissed me off last week so you cannot enter." Or, "no, that company is competing with a business interest of mine that is in another town so you will have to pay me triple to pass" First thing you will try to say is allow someone to build a new road. Fine. But because the area surrounding a mountains, it will take years to blast through and build a new lane. You may be willing to wait the years it will take for another company to build out a network (from scratch if there is no agreement on sharing of the backbone from the already entrenched ISP) but I'm not. The internet is already too important and as the years go by and it continues to grow, not just in speed or content, but as it grows into something bigger (Artificial intelligence, Universal real-time translators, 3-d immersive environments) it will become even more important. The concept of the internet is just some service, it is a world and to have it handicapped by ISPs who are losing out big on their failed cable models (which no one likes- including you) and who know want to recoup some margins on something that they didn't even create. p.s. for Brant, and all those who think that ISPs spend big on research and development, something that could help justify their arguments, well ... they don't. They spend damn near nothing on R+D. Why would they? They technology for higher bandwidth has already been created. We in America aren't even on the top 20 of internet speeds AND the copper infrastructure has already been shown to potentially carry 4-5 times the amount of bandwidth as it currently does. http://www.cnet.com/news/lowly-dsl-broadband-poised-for-gigabit-speed-boost/ Sure they would have to pay a lot to upgrade their infrastructure but research- no p.p.s. Please just tell me whether you would be okay with my analogy or not

I'm pretty sure that they FCC doesnt have that kinda power but thats exactly what the ISPs wanted "AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast will be able to deliver some sites and services more quickly and reliably than others for any reason," telecommunications lawyer Marvin Ammori (he's the man quoted above) observed even before the ruling came down. "Whim. Envy. Ignorance. Competition. Vengeance. Whatever. Or, no reason at all." http://www.latimes.c...y#ixzz2qbGtpxBj and then this, on who ISPs shoppers feel about those who switch services between competitors for better prices Cablevision executives meanwhile have made their disdain for the smart consumer abundantly clear over the last few years, calling smart shoppers a "dead end" that the company has no interest in pursuing. Speaking at a recent investor conference, Cablevision vice chairman Gregg Seibert took this rhetoric one step further, declaring that customers that follow the best promo offer are a "low quality" subscriber that the company is happy to get rid of: "We found out that we were pushing subscribers back and forth on a highly promoted basis," said Cablevision vice chairman Gregg Seibert, speaking Monday at the Deutsche Bank 2015 Media, Internet & Telecom Conference in Palm Beach, Fla. "I don't want to roll a truck to you every two years if you keep going back and forth to another provider … So we're getting rid of that lower quality, lower profitability base of subscriber." Except "pushing subscribers back and forth" is what competition is. Fighting to offer a better value than the other guy is how competition works. That Cablevision and FiOS can just choose when they'd like to seriously compete illustrates perfectly how even in U.S. markets we consider to be more competitive, what we're usually witnessing is just coordinated competition theater. https://www.techdirt.com/blog/netneutrality/articles/20150310/07175630271/cable-proudly-declares-smart-shoppers-lower-quality-customer-they-have-no-interest.shtml

And I disagree

you can KNOW after you die..... bu in that state you'll never be able to convince others...

Today I heard on the radio that with the rise of big data and better more nuanced means of evaluating people's personalities, tests which can truly determine what career you would be most suitable for are becoming a reality. The radio story placed this in a positive light from the point of view of the individual looking to start a career- why experiment with emotionally dead-end jobs when you can go directly to the one that gives fulfillment. Unfortunately I see this can also be used from the other end- employers using such tests to only hire from pools that have whatever behavioral make-up needed. Why should they experiment with employees who will feel burned out in a few short years when they can get more productivity out of those who truly love what they do. BUT... then we get to a situation similar to communism where someone (some test) tells people what job they will take. It wouldn't necessarily be mandated by law but if you can choose something outside of your test score then whats the difference? You could say, well if the test is truly accurate then its a good thing that people work in the field that brings joy and I would agree. The problem is when the job position that someone matches for 100% happiness no longer exists or maybe it does but not in the area that the individual lives in. Or its not hiring. Or it has become a morally unacceptable career. Or it doesn't pay well...

http://gizmodo.com/how-clean-was-sold-to-america-1685320177 I posted this because I haven't worn deodorant in 15 years and only take a full bath once a week. And no, I don't stink even though I cycle. I found out that for many people, maybe most, deodorant is a scam. The same with lip balm. Its like the more you use it, the more the body expects it to do what it should be doing and then the more you stink. For many, it might be too late to go cold turkey and many would not want to endure the several months of bad news that will accompany you before it all gets better but I put this out there anyway for your information.

Yes, but I have diplomatic immunity Okay, Adam. He's got diplomatic immunity. SHAME HIM!! --Brant works best if he's Japanese--are you Japanese, Derek? 1/64th japanese. Great great great great great great grandmother played with a doll made in Japan

Yes, but I have diplomatic immunity

I dug up this old thread to excerpt from an old article (but I guess, its not old if you haven't read it!) From TIME January of this year Oh, sorry, a slight bit of back ground first. This guy Steven Brill, wrote and excellent article (2013) on the costs of surgery in the US. In it he mentioned the chargemaster costs for things like a dollar per aspirin and 7 dollars per gauze strip and even a five dollar charge for the marking of the spot (with a sharpie) that the surgery should occur and 30 dollars for the use of a heating blanket. Anyway, he followed up with this article in which he himself had a surgery and he documented the charges that occurred. Then he offers some policy changes that would get the systems prices back in line with reality. A few of them were pretty interesting and then he said "....Better yet, an excess-profits pool would be created. Those making higher profits would have to contribute the difference to struggling hospitals in smaller markets" Yes, that is verbatim.

Guilty! Yes that was a sensationalist headline designed to grab the attention of those ready to smash any socialist sounding ideas on this forum but... it was just a headline. This list is things that I think, from the perspective of the implications of an advanced society/first world morality and principles, that would be free in a idealistic fantasy world. This list does NOT take into account the very real overhead that is incurred when providing these products or services. This list is NOT a request for policy changes (in fact some things on this list already are free in some areas- and I don't mean free through tax dollars) and through this list I'm NOT advocating for a person, group of people or government to force private OR public individual or institution to provide any of this stuff. The things on this list just make sense to me in an idealistic setting. Again, this is not based in reality... 1. Water- One of the primary marks of a first world nation, going back to Rome, was an abundant supply of fresh water being supplied to its citizens. To me, it would seem to go against that principal to have even the possibility that one or some of the citizens can't pay for it. 2. News and product information- Having a well informed citizenry allows for more educated decision making to occur. 3. Voting- Self explanatory 4. Courts- In the instance of dispute arbitration, the playing filed should be level and available to all, especially when there are very real consequences to having lost an dispute/conflict. 5. Museums- If someone has art or natural history specimens in their home or office, then that is indeed a private collection in which you show it to your clients, friends, or family. But if one builds a 10,000+ square foot space dedicated specifically to sharing the collection with the open public then, to me, it seems that entry should be free. 6. Entry to beaches and camping grounds- If the area is not privately owned, why shouldn't someone be able to go and sit for a few hours to relax. 7. Vaccinations- If the expressed goal is to prevent outbreaks among the general public then everyone should have access to such (this is not an argument for mandating vaccinations) 8. Advice- I really don't like the coaching/consulting industry (and I say this even though my wife has been a consultant/coach for over a year now) I don't even care for the self help department in the book store. My opinion, of course. 9. On the health care front (!!Screeching Alarms!!) I'm on the fence as would I ideally want preventative care to be free ie., check ups every six months and dietary advice, or accidental medicine ie., getting struck by lightning, or burned by a fire that you didn't start or attacked by sharks. But no, I don't think that health care in general should be free. So there you have it. Beyond the reality based nature of scarcity (of time and resources) do you agree with anything on this list? Do you have other items that I missed? Stay tuned for my next list- illegal actions which should carry the highest fines. My WTF-you-do-that-for list?!