Hugo

Whatever, you godless Commie pinko. Ford's raise wages did not cause unemployment, because he raised demand without a corresponding raise in supply, thus causing the price of labour (wages) to increase. Minimum wage laws raise the price of labour without an accompanying increase in demand. The demand for labour therefore declines, creating unemployment, because the supply of labour remains unaltered. The problem with your argument is that you take a formula in which two variables have been changed, and think that it would work exactly the same way if only one variable was changed and the other was artificially held static. Mathematically, that is impossible. To claim otherwise is to deny the law of supply and demand, which is as factual as the law of gravity.

Show me the consent form that slaves (in the traditional rather than the Marxist useage) sign, please. Basically, I'm rejecting the notion that anybody who consents of their own free will to labour for a wage or no wage can be considered a slave. I say that a slave is somebody who never consented to the conditions of their labour. Well, in marriage one party (the alimony seeker) is claiming that the terms of a contract were breached and the other (the unwilling donor of alimony) claims that they were not. Just as in any other breach of contract, an arbitrator must be brought in to make a judgement. The sued party may not have anticipated the outcome, but it is fairly predictable that in the event of a divorce one may well be sued for alimony. It's not really coercive, August. Real, maybe, but it does not exist. You can't pick it up and put it in the trunk of your car. Therefore it is metaphysical.

August, I grow tired of your constant attempts to change the meaning of words to suit whatever crackpot theory you're espousing today. Get a dictionary. It is not slavery unless the labour is coerced, i.e. if the worker is forced to accept a lesser wage than he otherwise would if not threatened by violence. Unions work this way too, interestingly. They force an employer to pay a higher wage than he otherwise would if the union was not threatening him with violence. Acts of charity are traded for metaphysical things e.g. self-satisfaction, promise of a "place in heaven" etc. This is indeed possible, since people make trades of the physical for the metaphysical every day. It's also quite easy to assess the value of metaphysical things in this way. Obviously, the value of the metaphysical reward Thelonius receives for his charity work is equal to or greater than the value of his labour, or he wouldn't do it.

Is the key tenet of communism not "from each according to ability, to each according to need"? In which case, that would forbid a truly equal distribution because the needs of some are greater than those of others. How do you know which are descendants of "nice" aboriginals and which are descendants of those who sold their people as slaves and joined in the white man's wars? How do you know which ancestors were the rare people who lived on land that they traded for fairly, and which are the ones whose ancestors robbed it from others in the endemic warfare of aboriginal society?

Maybe slavery exists in some places, but until you can show me the whips and guns that drive Indians into the factories of Madras and Calcutta, it isn't there, and wherever slavery exists that will not be a labour market by definition. Apples cannot be oranges. Only things that are either worthless or (effectively) infinite in supply are sold for nothing. Everything else has a 'barrier' greater than zero. In the case of labour, the lowest price or wage is the sum of S (standard wage rates, or the wage that would be earnt if workers were robots without preference to any place of employment) plus A (attachment, or the maximum difference between market wages and standard wages that do not cause workers to migrate i.e. the factor of preference for a given employer) plus C (the cost to the worker of fulfilling his want-satisfaction). In all cases this will be a positive figure and not zero, as you have claimed. In some cases, M (the market wage) will be less than S+A+C, and people will tend to move from those employers to ones where M>S+A+C, which will over time and in a free market and given freedom of movement create a tendency for M=S+A+C.

No, they would never be obtainable with minimum wage laws. Ford's wage raises were brought about by market measures and, as such, were sustainable and beneficial. Minimum wage laws are a non-market measure, because the wage increases are not necessitated or even justified by any market measure. How convenient for you. However, I win this debate because God backs my argument. (You see how silly things can get when you throw out completely unsubstantiated claims?)

Obviously! Since "fair" is subjective, my definition of "fair" will by its very nature be arbitrary. Sweal asked for my opinion. I gave it. Perhaps you would be happier discussing mathematics than politics? Yes, that was an act of coercion. However, the problem now is that one cannot identify either the victim or his descendants so it is not possible to make good the wrong. In that event you really have no choice but to continue anyway. Say you find a corpse in the woods with its throat slit. It cannot be indentified and the identity of the murderer is similarly uncertain. What do you do? Silly, August. You can't "steal" metaphysical things because they don't exist. Quite so. Marxists think that rewards in proportion to needs are fair. Capitalists think that rewards in proportion to effort and skill are fair.

You have been arguing throughout this thread that wages will tend to shrink and this is why we need a minimum wage, to prevent (in your words) the bottom dropping out of the market. This is despite the fact that since the beginning of the industrial revolution, real incomes have risen, and risen fastest before the introduction of minimum wage laws! Since labour is traded in a market like anything else, a minimum wage makes about as much sense as a minimum price on food or cars. <sigh> Complete the following sentence: Labour is bought and sold in a ... That makes no sense! You agree that coercion is not part of the market, but say that it is part of the market? Which one of your multiple personalities am I talking with this morning?

It isn't a strawman argument, Thelonius, it's called "reductio ad absurdum", which means to take a fallacious argument to its logical conclusion to show how fallacious it is. In your case, you are arguing that the lower limit on prices is zero, and that prices will always tend to move downward, therefore in reductio ad absurdum, according to you the price of everything should be zero. So then you contradict yourself, because now you are saying that labour would never be sold for free because a margin will be added to it by the seller (i.e. the worker) in addition to the costs (the lifestyle of the worker)? That isn't what you said a few posts back! Can you please make up your mind what it is you're arguing? That was not a market. Markets involve trades made of the free will, and slave labour is not freely given.

It's a coercive market and thus inherently unfair. An example would be the trade in stolen goods - all outcomes are necessarily unfair because there is one person (the original victim of robbery) in each transaction who has been coerced.

Ad hominem fallacy. Refute the author's points or give it up. If I were you, I'd keep quiet about Ford's wage raise because it refutes the point you and Thelonius are making. Before 1938 (when Ford paid his workers this wage), there was no minimum wage. You and Thelonius have both stated that without minimum wages, the labour market is a "race to the bottom" in which wages will fall. Ford operated in a free labour market without a minimum wage, and his wages were increased. This contradicts what you are saying. If you're going to cite things, it's considered smart to first make sure they don't refute your own argument! Ad hominem fallacy again, therefore invalid. Make a citation of your own or give it up. Facts and research trump feelings. No, this is an analysis of unemployment data. If you dispute it, either provide conflicting data or a superior logical analysis of the same data. You don't understand. Blacks earn less than whites in the US. The minimum wage laws make low wage-earners unemployed. After minimum wage legislation, the unemployment of lower-wage earners (black teenagers) rises up more dramatically than the unemployment of higher-wage earners (white teenagers). Therefore, minimum wage laws have made more low-income people unemployed. Does that clear it up? Unfortunately for you, I've got the facts, figures and studies, and you have nothing. Therefore, it is I who has the fact, and you who has the theory. I gave it to you. You didn't understand it. This problem does not exist. If it did, then logically, before 1938 in the US the average real income should have been spiralling downward, instead of rising upward as it actually was, barring the effects of the Great Depression, which was itself caused by interventionist policy. Again, the facts completely contradict what you are saying. This is why what you call "my theory" is a fact, and yours is just a falsehood.

The only "unfair" outcome is one obtained by violence and/or coercion, Sweal. Coercion has no place in a market, it is a non-market interaction. Therefore, any market that includes no coercion is fair, and any market that uses coercion is unfair. Absence of coercion is freedom, coercion is bondage. Therefore, the less the coercion, the freer the market, and the freer the market, the fairer it is.

It depends on whether or not the issuing government is still keeping up the pretence of a gold standard. For instance, in the UK banknotes read: "I promise to pay the bearer on receipt the sum of X pounds." Of course it's a lie, and commodity money is not used any more. So your point is correct. Guess again. Ford did not raise wages so that his employees could afford a car, he did it to combat absenteeism and high employee turnover. Ford's employees were always getting paid more than minimum wage, so this point is wholly irrelevant to your argument anyway. -- Investors Business Daily, 1999. Unemployment for black teens in the USA is now at 30.1%, considerably higher than for white teens. Before minimum-wage legislation they were almost indistinguishable. It is a fact that minimum wages cause unemployment. The theory is sound and it is proven correct by empirical facts (i.e. every time minimum wage is raised, unemployment goes up for low-wage earners, even amongst overall job-creation), and a theory that is proven correct is called a fact. Then why would we need a minimum wage law? Yes, unfortunately, they are misguided. Most leftists have their hearts in the right place but are woefully ignorant on the matters of which they preach, and when leftist policies are enacted they invariably make matters worse than they were before. So it is with minimum wage. Leftists argue that it will help the poor and raise their standard of living, but in actual fact, what it does is make the poor unemployed and lowers their standard of living, and then places an additional burden on those still employed who must now pay their unemployment benefits. It's also usually the case that leftists get hung up on figures and buzzwords, failing to comprehend what goes on behind them. For instance, only 15% of minimum wage earners live in a poor household (Cornell University study). To raise minimum wage - even if it did not cause unemployment - basically amounts to giving more money to the teenaged children of affluent households.

Consider the food industry. Clearly an essential service, the free market runs the food industry with little to no interference from government, and starvation is unheard of, while food is plentiful, great in variety and cheaper than ever before in human history. Now take the examples of the postal service or the health service, run by the government. Both are a complete mess, with falling service levels, ever-greater costs, and so forth. As Thoreau said, the only way in which government can help business is by getting out of the way. Be careful that you don't get obsessed with indicators rather than what they are supposed to indicate. The Soviets made this mistake, and proclaimed economic success when tractor manufacture rose although people in Moscow could not buy shoes. Wrong. The world-renowned psychiatrist should not get paid the same as the mailman. If you believe that they should merely be closer in wage, then be aware that the point you set is completely subjective and arbitrary, and therefore as indefensible as your statements on what the nicest colour or the best-tasting food is. Again, don't make the Soviet error and get hung up on industrial figures. This is a post-industrial economy. Are your possessions bought with your earnings, or did they appear out of thin air for you? Incorrect. Nobody currently working would be affected. The only difference it would make is that people currently unemployed would be able to find work. McCloskey, Donald, "The Industrial Revolution 1780-1860: A Survey," The Economic History of Britain Since 1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981). See pages 105-108. Williamson, Jeffrey, Did British Capitalism Breed Inequality? (Boston: Allen and Unwin, 1985). Page 18: I already gave you the link. Stop wasting my time. Ah. So you mean that you ignore changes in language made over the last 150 years? Should I speak to you in Middle English - is that why you are so incomprehensible? You know you're desperate for an argument when you start claiming that you are right because you use a different dictionary to the rest of the English-speaking world! Well, the facts have proven the exact opposite of what you say. When we were laissez-faire, economic growth and the increases in real income and standards of living were staggering. However, socialism has failed completely (in Soviet Russia), the mixed economy has failed completely (in Sweden, facing a stagnant economy, low standards of living and massive public debt), and Keynesianism has failed completely (in Japan, where Keynesian economics led to a recession and Keynesian remedies completely failed to bring any measure of revival). The flat-earthers are like the interventionists: clinging to an old, dead theory that has been proven wrong with empirical evidence time and time again but who just refuse to give up the ghost. No, it would require an absence of legislation. Anyway, rejecting change because it is change just marks you out as a reactionary and a timid soul afraid of progress. What you claimed was lunacy. You said that falling wages would not accompany falling prices because apparently, in your world, every credit provider has undergone a lobotomy and will keep on handing out ever larger loans to people who are increasingly unable to repay. But the problem is that your position is logically indefensible. You say that a certain measure of interventionism is good, but there are absolutely no objective grounds for the point you establish. You might as well argue about what the most pleasant smell is. If what you say is true, and you want more equity, then you are arguing for greater poverty, because the greater inefficiency will lead to smaller returns to be distributed amongst a greater number of people. Basically, you advocate that everybody should be poor. I would suggest that you go to Bangladesh, which should by your criteria be a paradise: everybody is equal, and everybody is dirt-poor and struggling to survive. Stop wasting my time. I'm not playing word games with you, make a point or shut up. This particular argument started when you tried to put words in my mouth, so give it up. You got caught. Deal with it. Ah. Then you must believe the price of everything is zero. Because if the price of everything is not zero, then your whole theory is refuted. And raw materials are bought and sold in... what? A meat grinder? A player piano? Or a market? The labour market is indeed a market, and nobody argues that it is not. What you are doing is trying to twist around and claim that it is not because it is the only way you can get out of the massive self-contradiction you are caught in, but you just look more foolish because you are trying to claim that black is white. The labour market has sellers (workers) and buyers (employers) trading for a commodity - labour. The price of labour varies by quantity purchased (i.e. hours of labour) and by quality purchased (i.e. the skill level of the labour). It will also be affected by all other market variables, such as relative supply and demand (a glut of supply will depress prices, while a dearth will raise them). What is actually happening in the Third World is an improvement in living conditions. People leave their fields where they live hand-to-mouth and go to the factory because it offers better than what they have. Therefore, the proponents of minimum wage (including you) seem to want to banish the improvement of living conditions, if I may borrow your fallacy of prejudicial language for a minute.

Based on what? You act as though the price mechanism does not exist. Labour is a market. If what you say is true, then every product and commodity should cost ten cents (to borrow your figure), including limousines, mansions and Learjets, because according to you there is absolutely no restriction on the downward mobility of a price.

First off, Slavik: It is very difficult to understand you. I will try, though. It was August's point. I was trying to explain to you what he meant, apparently, I was unsuccessful as you still do not understand. Non-commodity-based currency is just paper, and paper does not have much value as you can buy 500 sheets for a few dollars. Money has value not because it is intrinsically valued, but because the government says it has value. Do you now understand? Your clarifications are as confusing as your original points. I am not going to request clarification on every single point you make (they are all rambling, incoherent, and filled with grammatical and spelling errors), if I believe I have deciphered your point I will answer it. If you do not wish people to misunderstand you, I would advise you to take some remedial English classes and maybe use a spell-checker. You act as though my example was my entire argument. It is not. My argument is that where standards are necessary, they will be established without the force of law. For instance, why are all ATM cards the same size or shape? Why is paper made in pre-set sizes? Why do refrigerators work at around the same temperature? So, you are telling me that earning nothing is better than earning a little? Well, by all means, FedEx me everything you own, right now! You will be better off afterwards, by your standards. Because I gave you five names, one of which had won a Nobel laureate in the field of economics, who refute your argument. You have not provided a single name despite your claim that you know all these mysterious economists who back up your nonsense. You lose this point. Already refuted here. In fact, you'd do well to review that thread, and this one. Most of your nonsense has already been shown for what it is there. Right back at you. In fact, your first link is invalid because it does not go back far enough and does not look at figures in enough detail. For instance, by 1870 the Industrial Revolution was old news in Britain, but taking figures for Western Europe as a whole is fallacious because non-industrial nations like France and Spain drag down the figures from industrial ones such as Britain and Germany. Your second link is similarly worthless. It makes projections for the year 2020, 2050 and 2100, but these are absolute and complete guesswork. No serious economist makes a prediction for more than ten years out because there is absolutely no way to be accurate. Your third link makes the fallacy of restricting himself to a very narrow selection of sources (most of his citations are of himself), and ignoring those that dispute him (e.g. McCloskey) without offering a reason why. Add a dictionary to your shopping list. Marx was of the middle class. QED. Ad populum fallacy, Slavik. At one point the minority held the viewpoint that the earth was round and that it orbited the sun, that bleeding and leeches were bad for your health as opposed to good for it, that bad smells did not cause plague, and so forth. You are advocating a mixed economy. That means that your idea of "best" - redistributivism - must be imposed by force, with taxation and police men. QED again. This is what you said: Are you done making a fool of yourself yet? And this is because of redistributivism? Then you must believe that the citizens of the USSR were far better off than either! I assume you'll provide figures to show me how the average Soviet citizen lived in a bigger house, drove a nicer car, ate more food and of better quality, and so forth, than an American citizen? No. This is what I said: If you bother to read that, you will notice that I am not saying the terms are rubbish, merely that your false dilemma between them is rubbish. Where did I say it was?

Money is paper. What gives it value is the reputation of the issuer of that paper. A few sheets of printer paper from the Federal Reserve can have a lot more value than the banknotes in your wallet. In my defence, I must point out that your spelling and grammar are atrocious (which contravenes the rules of this forum) and it is quite hard to decipher the meaning behind your words. That is unnecessary, because the market set its own standards. If you disagree, I invite you to show me the act of government which defines the many complex standards involved in your computer (PCI, VGA, USB, AGP, SDRAM, ATX, etc). I don't understand. You're saying that earning nothing is better than earning a little? You're not listening. Markets determine wages. Minimum wage laws have an effect at the bottom end of that market. If the minimum wage was abolished, anybody earning above minimum wage would not be (directly) affected. What are their names? Do you know that Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek disagrees with you? What about John Clapham, R. M. Hartwell, W. H. Hutt, Donald McCloskey, etc.? I don't believe you know a single economic historian who claims that. But by all means prove me wrong. I'll require at least 6 names, and at least one will have to have won a Nobel prize for you to win this particular duel of citation. Hitler has been "a major contributor to sociological perspectives even today." You have not proven that. In your incoherent rambling I think I can make out that although Marx was a member of what Communists call the "bourgeoisie" it does not matter because he was not specifically a factory owner - despite the fact that Communist thinkers despise the class that Marx belonged to and believe that merely belonging in that class refutes a person's arguments? Well, excuse me while I laugh my ass off at your pitiful ignorance. Lew Rockwell, Walter Block, Thomas DiLorenzo, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and many, many more are still writing right now. Ah. Then tell me why your definition of "best" is superior to mine and should be imposed on me by force, please. But it is an idiotic point. You claimed that people would build up massive debts, and completely failed to realise that debts are built up from creditors, who do not, as a rule, allow people to build up debts they cannot possibly repay. Prove it. What is it, Economics for Dummies? Big Bird Teaches Keynesianism? Learn Price Elasticity with Barney? Efficiency and equity are indeed economic terms. I never said that they were not. What I said was that they were subjective. Read before you reply in future. Why is equitable better? "Hypocrite" has an "e". You don't have a point here, so I'll just correct your spelling and wait until you can formulate an actual argument.

Just a thought here. Maybe if there were not such restrictions in publishing and broadcasting, such as myriad expensive licenses and permits, the requirement for state approval, taxes and so forth, the media market would not be so skewed in favour of big companies and against small independents? I will be interested to see how the internet develops. Streaming radio and (after broadband gets faster) video offers an opportunity for more small and independent media outlets with much lower operating costs (servers cost less than radio broadcasts). As of yet, I don't believe the government has started to lean on internet media, although if it grows enough to be worth it they will probably demand their cut.

No, that's been explained many times. I would suggest you try reading some anarchist texts before you start posting based on ignorance. Whether or not Karl Marx has a similar theory doesn't really prove anything except that a broken clock is right twice a day. Because anarchy in a state of government is a public goods problem. Everybody personally stands to gain from government or can see a way in which they could stand to gain, so they are either happy with the status quo, or interested in manipulating government to get their own way rather than in abolishing it altogether. Altruism is relatively rare, therefore, anarchism is relatively rare. Hitler, too, had a legacy. Many dictators around the world have modelled themselves on him, pursued absolute power and military conquest, and sought to murder thousands or millions based solely on ethnicity or for political power. See Kosovo, Rwanda, Iraq, Syria, Chile, etc. What does that say about Hitler? Would you defend him and his legacy? Of course not, which demonstrates my point: the influence of a man alone is not a justification for his ideas. A maximum wage does not represent a free market. Would the market be free if there was an upper limit on, say, the amount of food you could purchase in a week?

A banknote is a piece of paper that says, "This piece of paper can be exchanged for x amount of gold." If you wrote one of these yourself, the BMW dealer would laugh at you. If, on the other hand, you had a piece of paper from the Bank of Nova Scotia Gold Warehousing service stating that it was worth 70oz. of gold (about $40,000 US), they might well accept that. The minimum wage causes unemployment. Without a minimum wage, everybody who is willing to work for a market wage will find work. However, when the minimum wage is fixed at $5 per hour, every worker whose labour is worth less than $5 per hour will be unable to find work. This is borne out in practical experience. The last time the US government raised the minimum wage by 50 cents, about half a million minimum-wage workers lost their jobs. Markets do determine wages, but minimum wage law is an externality that distorts market outcomes. Failed? Since the advent of capitalism the human race entered an unprecedented era of peace and an unparalleled rate of economic growth and betterment of the welfare of the common man. Since interventionism has been introduced, our pace of economic progress has been slowed and even stagnated, the pre-20th-Century peace has been broken by the two most destructive wars in human history and dozens more amounting to well over a hundred million war dead, and the governments of the world have committed more than three hundred million murders against their own citizenry. Illegitimate power. If one man does not have the right to kill another man or steal his property, why should a million men, or ten million men? No, it does not. You are confusing money with wealth, a rather silly but all-too-common mistake. Karl Marx was, without doubt, an absolute moron except in his ability to evangelise. Upon reading his work it becomes clear that he has no understanding of history, human nature and psychology, economics, politics and so forth. In fact, he even refutes himself! He states that people argue positions based upon their class origins. All that is necessary, he claims, is to expose the author as a bourgeoisie and he is refuted. Karl Marx is a bourgeoisie, ergo Karl Marx refutes himself. Adam Smith wrote a long time ago and has since been refined and corrected. I would suggest that you read some capitalist texts written within the last century. There cannot be an economic theory with defined parameters. One can predict a certain number of factors, however, economics is a field of human endeavour, and humans are frequently illogical and irrational and often don't do what one would expect. Therefore, any economic theorem has at least one massive and forever unknowable variable: human action. I think you do not understand how the market works. If you leave it alone, it will run itself without any planning required. The choices of a million producers and consumers will automatically steer it in the best direction (remember that "best" is subjective). Now, hands up who got a mortgage, car loan, or credit card without being approved for credit first? No credit provider will loan to somebody whose ability to repay is in serious doubt. This is a false dilemma. Your rambling about pies and efficiency vs. equity is rubbish, there are no such dilemmas. You don't understand what opportunity costs are. "Efficiency" and "equity" are subjective terms and thus not useful for economic calculation. Trade-offs are judged on an individual basis. My friend buys a big-screen TV for $3000, he has judged that the TV is an acceptable trade for all the things that $3000 may have bought him. I don't buy the TV, I have judged that a TV is worth less than all the things $3000 might buy me. Do you understand this?

Wrong. Wal-Mart hopes that you will voluntarily give them your money in exchange for goods and services. The governing party takes your money by force in exchange for whatever they deem you are worthy of, which is often nothing, or services that are worth less than nothing (e.g. the "service" of imprisoning you for smoking pot or riding without a motorcycle helmet). The Space Shuttle has three main computers. They do not share the workload, the workload is tripled and they perform exactly the same computing tasks at the same time, in parallel. The reason behind this is that if any one computer should malfunction, the other two can "vote" the faulty calculation off the network and catastrophe can be avoided. August would say that this is unnecessary, because in his world, hardware never malfunctions, software never has bugs, and people never make mistakes or lie. The funny thing is that "the market" has also provided antidotes to all of those problems. Tivo will skip TV commercials, and the Zap will hang up on telemarketers for you. Hotmail and Thunderbird will filter out your spam. Ad-Aware and Seek and Destroy will remove spyware from your computer, and if you don't want to get spyware in the first place, run Linux. Exactly. I believe that in the US, the government has a larger turnover and employs more people than all Fortune 500 companies put together. But the thing that should concern you the most, willy, is that unlike a corporation, the government has the power to imprison you or even kill you if you don't do their bidding. I can choose a different insurance company or lawyer or divorce my wife, estrange my parents and start a new family without leaving my house. Can I choose a different government?

No, August, they are not, by any stretch of the imagination. "Government" does not mean "whatever August1991 thinks it should mean today so that he can play silly games", it means a political body with a monopoly over law and justice in a given geographical region backed by violence or threat thereof. Consumer Guide and Reseller Ratings do not fit that description in any way. Government is not an agent you hire. Government is an agent who forces you to hire him and violently attacks anyone else trying to get in on his market. Yes, I have hired a lawyer, and no, hiring a lawyer is nothing like government. For one thing, there were many lawyers I could have retained in my geographical area. Stop talking nonsense now. Don't make me start pasting from dictionary.com. Yes. Wal-Mart spends their own funds. The Liberals, PCs and NDP spend other people's funds.

Sure. I assume you're familiar with Consumer Guide, Reseller Ratings, and so on. Most online stores now have databases of customer reviews, for instance. No, that's a bad idea. All it takes is for that one person to make a mistake, forget something, have a bad day at the office, take a bribe and the whole test is worthless. Let me ask you this. Say you were going to spend $20,000 on a car. Would you read one review of it and base your purchasing decision on that? Or would you read several reviews, go on the web and look for recall information, ask other owners what they thought of it, etc.? Depends - is he or she using violence to maintain a monopoly?

What about power tools? Those must be a drain on the healthcare system. People are in the ER all the time after construction-related accidents. Don't we need graphic warnings on power tools? What about showerheads? You might get scalded! And don't get me started on kitchen knives! We'll have to make the handles two feet long to fit all the warnings and graphics on there, but hey, anything for health and safety... right? Legislation? Richard Nixon tried to outlaw airbags, and the first act of the FDA was to press charges against Coca-Cola for removing cocaine from their beverage. I can find you plenty more examples where legislation has acted against the best interests of the consumer. For instance, perhaps you've heard of the drug Alleve. It's legal in the USA, banned in Canada. Either the American government is allowing Americans to take an unsafe drug, or the Canadian government is needlessly denying Canadians a perfectly good option for pain relief. In either case, one legislative body is doing harm to those it is supposed to protect. Now tell me, what legislation makes car manufacturers put ABS and EBD systems in cars? What piece of law encourages them to install side airbags and window curtain airbags? Why is it that car manufacturers struggle to exceed federal crash-survival ratings and compete with each other for resilience in a crash? What makes them install large ventilated disc brakes on all wheels, making them stop in far shorter distances than listed in government guidelines? Why has Mercedes developed a system that will automatically keep a car on the highway in its lane and a safe distance from other vehicles if the driver should fall asleep? I think that market forces, not legislation, make cars safe. People want to drive safe cars, and manufacturers want to sell them safe cars. Plain and simple. If there were no legislation of the automotive industry at all, I'd bet that cars would actually be safer than they are now. For instance, Ford is fighting a class action lawsuit at the moment because in some of their trucks the doors come open during a collision. Their defence is that the doors met federal safety standards! Now if those standards did not exist, they would not have a defence, would they? In that event, to avoid the lawsuit (which would most probably have gone against them) they probably would have tried to make their doors safer from the outset, rather than just scraping by at what the government had decided was an acceptable minimum. You can learn to drive and get a license without ever seeing an instruction booklet. I did.

I said I wouldn't get into it, and I won't. A statement such as "homosexuality is not something one can change" is hotly contested and there is certainly enough argument and evidence on each side that there is no consensus, and such a statement evidently cannot be proven sufficiently to reach any kind of consensus. Therefore, I will thank you not to throw opinions around as though they were facts. Now, do you have anything else? Shouldn't cars come from the factory with graphic pictures of mangled corpses from highway accidents on the dashboard, then? As just about everything is dangerous, if your argument is indeed sound, it would be smart to plaster everything in sight with warning labels and graphic pictures.