Let's compromise.

[midwestyankee]

I am talking about skewed incentives...and, you're right, businesses' interests are faced down by unaware consumers, which skews the playing field.

It just strikes me as "odd" that interest groups have more power in dictating what your "civil" behaviors and goods should be. That is not always a bad thing, it's just ...odd (and that makes my statement naive beyond belief).

I'm going to disagree in degree. I don't think that interest groups determine what the civil behaviors should be; they determine what we will have to accept as civil. And they do this because they have a louder voice in the process. Ten million unemployed single mothers can't yell as loudly as fifty lobbyists with bulging checkbooks.

 

[teknight]

OK. Your definition is better.

 

[midwestyankee]

OK. Your definition is better.

Regardless, it's an inefficient system that leads to bad results.

Imagine, if you can, how much different things would be if our elections were all publicly funded (and so mercifully short) the way they are in much of Europe. Sure, quite a few lobbyists would lose their jobs and poor Karl Rove would have to work for a living instead of raising truckloads of money to give to pliant right-wingers, but that's a tiny price to pay for the nation as a whole in order to achieve something closer to true representative democracy.

 

[midwestyankee]

Speaking of unintended consequences...

Consider this: the new regime of TSA inspections has been at least partly responsible for a slightly better than 50% increase in the use of chartered jets this November as compared to the same period last year.



Source

 

[Netzach]

Here's the thing: whenever government chooses to intervene in business (not where matters of safety are concerned) then I (and everybody else) is forced to promote the interests of a narrow group of people because our tax money goes to protect X group or Y industry. Why do I have that obligation? Granted, right now, I have nothing at stake in any of this, so I have a biased unbiased viewpoint, but, why, beyond a social security blanket, which would represent, in my mind, the idea that not everything always goes according to plan, and is basically insurance writ large, am I responsible for everyone else's choice? Why are you responsible for the careers people undertake?

I'm not being combative, but, what is my obligation, ultimately?

However right you might be in principle it no longer works that way in reality. Marxism and Libertarianism are both ideas which are super on paper and both fail for the same reason:

they assume good intent where there is none.

The only fair way to play a game is one with some agreed to rules and enforced rules. You can't win at football by mowing down the competition with machetes.

 

[midwestyankee]

However right you might be in principle it no longer works that way in reality. Marxism and Libertarianism are both ideas which are super on paper and both fail for the same reason:

they assume good intent where there is none.

The only fair way to play a game is one with some agreed to rules and enforced rules. You can't win at football by mowing down the competition with machetes.

Sure you can - once. But after that, any team that has heard how you operate will refuse to play you. End of market.

But, to your point, if the other teams don't understand how your machete works and can't find out what you did to your previous opponents, then you can keep wielding those machetes all you like. In the real world, this is called being Goldman Sachs.

 

[WriterDom]

Regardless, it's an inefficient system that leads to bad results.

Imagine, if you can, how much different things would be if our elections were all publicly funded (and so mercifully short) the way they are in much of Europe. Sure, quite a few lobbyists would lose their jobs and poor Karl Rove would have to work for a living instead of raising truckloads of money to give to pliant right-wingers, but that's a tiny price to pay for the nation as a whole in order to achieve something closer to true representative democracy.

Those pesky democrats never raise any money. Boohoo. Finally Karl helped republicans play the democrat game. I think, still, the democrats raised more money.

That's why tax policy always sucks. Once you set the rules, a million and a half lawyers start pointing out the loopholes.

I wish they would take the money out of it. One million is enough to run a senate race. 500,000 for a house race. Maybe 50 million for president. What I hate even more is when people spend millions of their own money. For that reason alone I was glad Meg got beat.

 

[WriterDom]

Looks like we have a deal. I wanted two years all along. I was asking for more for wiggle room but none of you libs wanted to bargain. Then I was thinking that two years is going to dump it in the lap of another lame duck congress so three would have been better. But two will work. And glad to see Obama wanting to lower the payroll tax for one year. Like the fed chief said on 60 minutes, there is a time to raise taxes and cut spending but now is not the time.

I'd like to see drilling in ANWR and a brand new shiny pipeline built of both oil and natural gas. Think about it as a union jobs program. As as trade off, I'll go ahead and legalize and tax marijuana. I thought about legal meth too. That shit could be made for pennies in a factory. Sell a nickel bag and 95% would be tax profit. Yeah, some would get hooked but the obesity problem would be crippled. And with cheap meth, far fewer crime to support your habit.

 

[rosco rathbone]

Looks like we have a deal. I wanted two years all along. I was asking for more for wiggle room but none of you libs wanted to bargain. Then I was thinking that two years is going to dump it in the lap of another lame duck congress so three would have been better. But two will work. And glad to see Obama wanting to lower the payroll tax for one year. Like the fed chief said on 60 minutes, there is a time to raise taxes and cut spending but now is not the time.

I'd like to see drilling in ANWR and a brand new shiny pipeline built of both oil and natural gas. Think about it as a union jobs program. As as trade off, I'll go ahead and legalize and tax marijuana. I thought about legal meth too. That shit could be made for pennies in a factory. Sell a nickel bag and 95% would be tax profit. Yeah, some would get hooked but the obesity problem would be crippled. And with cheap meth, far fewer crime to support your habit.

Union jobs AND legal weed? Win win. I don't give a fuck about the polar bears.

 

[Netzach]

Union jobs AND legal weed? Win win. I don't give a fuck about the polar bears.

I don't either, but I do like salmon and I like having an ocean with life in it, I'm crazy about this life on earth as we know it thing.

Fuck stuff up up there you fuck up the world. As in everything south of the point of the pipeline dumping out when BP fucks up again.

A northern BP I can do without. I thought the BP incident kind of illustrated that industry and environment are not always on the opposite sides of the issue.

 

[teknight]

Democracy inaction

Monitoring America
Just a snippet from the contents:

The months-long investigation, based on nearly 100 interviews and 1,000 documents, found that:

* Technologies and techniques honed for use on the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan have migrated into the hands of law enforcement agencies in America.

* The FBI is building a database with the names and certain personal information, such as employment history, of thousands of U.S. citizens and residents whom a local police officer or a fellow citizen believed to be acting suspiciously. It is accessible to an increasing number of local law enforcement and military criminal investigators, increasing concerns that it could somehow end up in the public domain.

* Seeking to learn more about Islam and terrorism, some law enforcement agencies have hired as trainers self-described experts whose extremist views on Islam and terrorism are considered inaccurate and counterproductive by the FBI and U.S. intelligence agencies.

* The Department of Homeland Security sends its state and local partners intelligence reports with little meaningful guidance, and state reports have sometimes inappropriately reported on lawful meetings.

 

[Netzach]

Monitoring America
Just a snippet from the contents:

I always thought the East German model to be the best kind of totalitarianism.

 

[teknight]

I always thought the East German model to be the best kind of totalitarianism.

I say it lacks German efficiency...reminds me more of Russian slop....

 

[Felix_Jones]

However right you might be in principle it no longer works that way in reality. Marxism and Libertarianism are both ideas which are super on paper and both fail for the same reason:

they assume good intent where there is none.

The only fair way to play a game is one with some agreed to rules and enforced rules. You can't win at football by mowing down the competition with machetes.

"Maybe a planned economy is better than a free for all where the worst man wins."
-George Orwell

 

[Felix_Jones]

I always thought the East German model to be the best kind of totalitarianism.

I drove through East Germany in 1994...there is no good type of totalitarianism. Much like everything else, the Germans were just being the best Communists that they could be. That country goes in both barrels, and everybody follows along, no matter what the plan is. And, by the way, is a big part of why me and my family escaped our little corner of Europe in the 80's.

 

[teknight]

I drove through East Germany in 1994...there is no good type of totalitarianism. Much like everything else, the Germans were just being the best Communists that they could be. That country goes in both barrels, and everybody follows along, no matter what the plan is. And, by the way, is a big part of why me and my family escaped our little corner of Europe in the 80's.

There was no more East Germany in 1994.

 

[Netzach]

I say it lacks German efficiency...reminds me more of Russian slop....

Well getting the neighbors and family members into the state spying takes time...

 

[Felix_Jones]

There was no more East Germany in 1994.

Well it's not like that particular bit of land or its people suddenly disappeared after 1989. The change didn't happen overnight, and crossing the border from the "West" was definitely a sea change.

 

[Netzach]

I drove through East Germany in 1994...there is no good type of totalitarianism. Much like everything else, the Germans were just being the best Communists that they could be. That country goes in both barrels, and everybody follows along, no matter what the plan is. And, by the way, is a big part of why me and my family escaped our little corner of Europe in the 80's.

By best I mean most insidiously frightfully evil.

Get the people to do the policing and it all runs itself.

 

[Felix_Jones]

By best I mean most insidiously frightfully evil.

Get the people to do the policing and it all runs itself.

My bad, yeah I'm in agreement there. East German border guards were famously notorious.
I have a feeling all the German kink happened in the west, those eastern animals did the sadism for real.