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Pliny

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Everything posted by Pliny

  1. Lots of reasons for reform but any reform government institutes will probably be based in adding to the bureaucracy. They don't know they are the problem.
  2. In the nanny state, with seat belt laws and the "parental laws" you mention, they certainly don't make any one smarter or more able to look after oneself by making correct choices. All you have to do is follow the laws. But the laws are getting so copious and complex no one really understands them, even the people who are charged with enforcing them - tax laws are what I'm specifically thinking of here. We need to be able to think for ourselves. Certainly, our past knowledge gained through the experience of our predecessors should be available to us but to make laws about seatbelts, gambling and prostitution and even drugs is unnecessary. WE should be well informed about these subjects though so we can make proper choices and often we are only given propaganda about them. Government, in my view, has to provide an avenue for justice, essentially. Anarchy is really a bit scary. A libertarian does not believe in the initiation of force against another. Anarchy stems more from communism which holds no concept of private property - no one should own anything - Not good if you have a favourite pair of shoes.
  3. By economic terrorism I mean adverse effects the central bank can wreak upon the economy.
  4. So you are saying Obama has an authoritarian bent and an inability to think rationally? I think that the authoritarian part may be right as the issue concerns defense. I think the pro faction is composed of "Hawks" and believe in military force and the power position of America globally to solve problems and the cons are comprised of "Doves" including the extreme peaceniks, Moore and Gore.
  5. Quantitative easing isn't happening then? I think you will find the Federal Reserve bought the 800 billion dollar bond in 2008 and created the "money" out of thin air to do so? Yes, the Federal Reserve is a private entity. In an emergency, situation like a bailout or financial collapse government creates a bond and the central bank buys it. The central bank then creates the funds.Yes, there are Canada Savings bonds and other bonds. A good portion of the debt is owed to the central bank though. In the US it is a private entity called the Federal Reserve which, incidentally, has acknowledged it is even buying mortgage backed derivatives from Fanny and Freddie these days. Buying debt from them with "money" created out of thin air. The central bank is apparently not a private entity in Canada.(But I have a suspicion it is.) China holds a couple of trillion in US debt. Most of the "money" supply is created by commercial banks making loans. Of course it is government policy and it is government policy because the fiat currency system enables it, just like quantitative easing is enabled by the monetary system. It wouldn't be done without a fiat currency. Since it can't create money out of thin air for every event, if it were a commodity backed currency, it would stick pretty close to its budget. It would have to live like the rest of us and pay its bills. It might be better if government just organized collections for emergencies. Do you think the people would respond to an appeal to contribute to bailing out a corporation? You have to ask some vital fundamental questions, like why did government turn our money into a fiat currency? What are the advantages?
  6. The central banks aren't relinquishing any power soon. When you have the very best thinking that they know what's best nothing will change. Their world will not collapse without a fight that means economic terrorism.
  7. In this case I haven't in any depth. Being a minarchist I do believe that justice is a mandate of the government. Corporations colluding against your best interests is simply your view that a free market system will be a corrupt system. What we have now is a corrupt system where corporations receive subsidies as privilege over other corporations, and get bailouts that reward bad management. What we have become is self-centred consumer cows even corporations are self-centred which explains why they need to be subsidized and bailed out at the level, and as often, as they do. Reward and punishment seems disconnected with action. It's a society where you work hard, do your best and get shafted. You have to be willing to sacrifice principle to get ahead. People who get to know the system will work it. If there is no giving out bailouts and subsidies that are essentially unfair then your success must be based upon your own merit. And that means you have to be interested in the welfare of others to be able to work in harmonious co-operation. A lot of economic Libertarians are free market anarchists. Economically, the market works better when it is not interfered with through government fiscal and monetary policy. The legal structure of a free market system would most likely just be based in contractual agreements and the obligations therein. I doubt anyone could build a lasting corporation. They would tend to go through the cycle of conception, creation, decay and obsolescence never achieving the status of too big to fail. As far as jobs go, that would make the government look like a sanctity of security. Those are just some of my thoughts on the matter. I have a lot more reading to do before I have any where near a complete comprehension of the options let alone the best course for business to take. Perhaps it should just start and evolve from there, not letting government seize the reins by trying to stabilize the economy through degradation of the money and printing it as needed. Or controlling it by instituting wage and price controls. Or lowering interest rates to encourage borrowing or raising them to encourage saving, adding an arbitrary and distorting the natural supply and demand of the market. Business then has to wait and see what the government is going to do. Look at Obamacare, this is government getting in the way of the economy. Firstly, no one owning a business knew for sure how it was going to affect them. They are learning and they have to make adjustments. But Obamacare was designed to destroy the private health care insurance industry in the US and it looks like it will do just that. He wanted a single payer system which he knew would never go anywhere so he feigned giving it up and wrote the act so that the clear choice for business and the people would have to be an entirely public single-payer health care system. I think it will be turfed before it goes that far. The economy is deeply affected by Obamacare. Did the US healthcare system need fixing. No doubt it could have been improved upon but Obama took a wrecking ball to it. The one thing the healthcare system in the US had that is advantageous over public systems was its flexibility and ability to change. Unlike Canada where no change other than adding resources is possible. We just have to wait until it collapses to get any substantial change. Once again though it is government taking on the role of the individual in society and usurping the true joys of living in being able to help others. The government pretends it can do a better job. It can for a short time, I suppose, but in the long run it gets costly, corrupted and conservative, where service becomes a secondary purpose to its existence. But perhaps a wrecking ball was necessary to effect real substantial change. It will be laong time before the dust settles on this one.
  8. There are probably those who think like that. I don't think the massive surveillance was intended to be as massive as Obama made it. But just a guess. A subsequent Administration, and not necessarily the antecedent, can generally be counted on to abuse powers established by former Administrations sooner than later. Bush, in my opinion, did make a mistake enacting the Patriot Act, that and invading Iraq were his two biggest mistakes besides "Fool me once. Shame on - Shame on you. Fool me - you can't get fooled again!" http://politicalhumor.about.com/cs/georgewbush/a/top10bushisms.htm I don't know. I just found it surprising what side of the issue some of the individuals noted were on. Al Gore? A big government guy against it! Whodda thunk it? I guess he is just for government engineering society but respecting civil liberties. I suppose some deem it the government's mandate to ensure national security any way they can.
  9. In what respect? As legal entities? As corporate individuals? Might it be one of the rules established by free enterprise? Perhaps, I would think there need be no recognition of that by the State but I couldn't say for sure? C'mon in Michael the waters fine! Just a little bit more from my previous post regarding how a person's reward is best realized when they have felt they have been of service to someone else. Why would you want the government to take over all of the worthwhile endeavours of life, essentially helping others, the result being you end up becoming a self-centred consuming cow demanding government provide you your fair share and politicians, if you make enough noise, only too willing to buy your vote providing it.
  10. First of all, in trying to understand Libertarianism in my view there isn't a real solid agreement on precisely what it is and I have had my most confrontational political discussions with Libertarians. I don't consider a single-issue self-described Libertarian a Libertarian at all. Those that want marijuana legalized or those that want prostitution legalized are single-issue Libertarians. If the NDP said they were going to legalize those things they would be voting for them.so I don't think those individuals have embraced the concept of Libertarianism at all. They just want the government to cater to their special interest and actually that is precisely what is basically wrong with our form of universal democracy. Marc Emory was one of those. He's a smart, brave guy willing to martyr himself for the cause. He lost faith in Libertarianism ever being able to achieve, in his lifetime, what he wanted to achieve. He was ready to vote NDP. His life simply revolves around that issue and he would sell his soul to see it happen. In addressing your concerns kimmy I must first point out that there is no such thing as Utopia and Libertarianism would not be able to prevent you from dying, getting sick or suffering loss., that sounds more like something that our current governments will promise you . Being a Libertarian does require a little intestinal fortitude and a little patience while you try and learn to swim in the deep end. Now I am a minarchist Libertarian so I don't agree that there should be no government at all. I do think they should have a very limited mandate on a national level. As the area of influence becomes smaller the government could become larger and perhaps some may deem they form a commune based upon the ideas of Marx. The freedom of choice must exist though and if people opt out they should be able to find an area where their ideas of government are more agreeable with others. This is just my idea. As for the market, it should be a free market to the point of being anarchical which sounds like chaos but of course rules of any activity are generally established over time so anarchy as chaos would not be the case. The thing is that government should not be making those rules or intervening in the affairs of business. As for roads, I suppose all the wagon trains heading west had to wait for the government to make the trails for them before they could go. Now under Libertarianism there may not be roads built where ever you think they should be built but if there is a demand for them they would be built. There is a book that argues the case for roads built under private enterprise written by Walter Block and called imaginatively, "The Privatization of Roads and Highways" For poverty, Henry Hazlitt has written a book called "The Conquest of Poverty". There's the deep end and it is all about the individual learning to swim. Most people learn to swim but some obviously don't or are too afraid. You do need some confidence in yourself and your ability but once you learn to swim there is great freedom in the water. If the government is going to look after you then people won't. They will be less inclined to be sociable. In the olden days poverty was more of a localized thing and there were only local people that could care for the poor it was more of a struggle. Today with the internet the whole globe can be appealed to for aid. As an example, little Sarah Murnaghan with only her parents arguing her case had national support and a judge overruled the federal government's decision. Do we really need government to make decisions about being compassionate. Government politicians, and bureaucrats will only follow the rules in making their decisions they have no ability to override them or think about the circumstances of its application. It boils down to that's the law and we follow the law. So we better be really careful about what laws we make. A more intelligent application to problem-solving is to look at each case instead of having a rule where no one is responsible for injustices and appeals have to be made to a judge to use common sense. One of the greatest enemies of a society in governing is time. People don't look at the future as much as they should and sacrifice it for short term gain. It is partly the fault of politicians that promise things to the public now without thinking of the sustainability of a program in the future. Or creating something thinking that all other things will remain constant, such as economic and population growth. A sideways move in population growth and immigration becomes a very important issue. The US ignored illegal immigration for decades, mostly because of the economic benefits it provided and now it is a huge problem for them. Libertarians may say there should be no borders anyway. I would argue that perhaps you can create a country without borders but it doesn't sound feasible. In a world of choice constitutional republics would ensure there were borders even if you didn't care about them. Probably, criminals would be attracted to a place where they aren't going to hassle you at the border. With freedom comes responsibility. It is you who has to learn how to swim, in other words, develop your skills and abilities and respect only those that earn your respect. You will have to learn social skills and interact with others to share in the production of wealth not just the production of money which is what a centralized state offers the individual. The co-operative and harmonious interaction of individuals is what makes life worthwhile and feeling that you contributed to the welfare of others is uppermost in your own personal well-being.
  11. When I was a child I was at a swimming pool and way over there was the DEEP END. I had thought about going over to the DEEP END and jumping in. Of course, the water would be way over my head. What was I thinking!. There was some apprehension about going over there but, no matter my fears, I still wasn't going to pee in the pool. My parents had brought me up to be hygenic, I guess. Being a greedy capitalist today I don't think it was about thinking of others but looking after myself. So looking after myself was sort of an invisible hand looking after the other swimmers. All of a sudden I had Adam Smith all figured out. Or was it Adam West? One of those guys, I don't think I had heard of Adam Smith yet. Later on in life I thought, I am getting kind of disheartened with the Conservatives. Since my first vote, in which I voted for Pierre Trudeau, I had already lost faith in the Liberals and Mulroney gave me cause to abandon the Conservatives. I really tried to understand Kim Campbell, who took over form Mulroney buit kept falling asleep when she was talking. Or, after listening to her for a five minutes I would look over to my wife and ask, "What did she just say?". My wife would just throw up her hands and have an "I don't know!" look on her face. Over my voting career the NDP never appealed to me. In my view, they were about punishing the rich and squeezing whatever they could out of the economy. Not that that idea separates them from the Liberals and Conservatives. I did know that Governments like to control their populaces and that the only way they could do that was to place the burden of taxation upon them or drug them. So economics was a place to start, since they aren't drugging everybody, in understanding governments. I found out that all they do is tax and spend basically. It didn't matter if it was Liberal or Conservative. I'm still not considering the NDP as a viable political party they seem to eager to tax and spend. Anyway, I had lost all faith in the popular political parties. I didn't know anything about Libertarianism which as far as I knew was about anarchy, no government! That seems kind of scary - they were at the deep end of the pool. I wasn't about to jump in there, all my apprehensions about the deep end returned. Well, if governments just tax and spend I should really educate myself about economics and the place to start was learning about money, what it is and how it influences society. Of course money is kind of a tool. Originally, it was a commodity that people feel is valuable. Then the valuables were stored in safe houses and IOUs were issued by those safe houses. You have probably figured out by now that those safe houses were the Banks. As I researched money I kept running across Austrian Economic Theory, which sounded interesting. You know what though, they were at the deep end of the pool. I wasn't going to go there but I eventually had to take the plunge. Libertarianism is at first a scary concept. Small government? Does that mean less police and consequently more unsolved crimes? Does that mean the roads won't get paved? Does that mean there is no welfare? No healthcare? Is it Anarchy I have to go to bed so goodnite.
  12. Jew hating is racist which is how he will fight racism I guess. What do you do with people that have a mission to wipe Israel off the map? Invite them in?
  13. Yep. Very simple. But aren't there people that don't belong to unions that like Unions and wish they were members of a Union? They don't seem to be in much demand these days. Couldn't one also say, in all simplicity, that the poor don't like the rich because it is a simple matter of them begrudging them the amount of wealth some of them have. That explains it all so simply. I like simple.
  14. I remember when it was 25 cents/imperial gallon. I think "gallon" is what you meant. We changed to the metric system in the seventies.
  15. Yes. Decisions regarding life and death should be void of senseless considerations of compassion and we need the cold hand of science to make laws so that politicians don't need to make decisions and look like heartless death panel members. Science and the law make it a black and white issue. Sarah Murnaghan must die. And of course Mulcair doesn't have to stop for RCMP cruisers...there is no law that says the leader of the NDP must do so. Laws are for the "little people" - Right?
  16. And I would go further in the opposite direction by not even allowing some citizens to vote - Criminals for one.
  17. Tim is right so far. Dollar is heading up and gone over $.98. There is still time for the head of the TD bank to be right though. According to the article, by early next year it should be 90 cents.
  18. All right. You do have to agree it is "created out of thin air". They have that power. "At will" is just a semantic difference you wish to argue. As to "at will", of course there are limitations or else they will destroy the currency by destroying confidence in it. Expansion or contraction is not the entirely of it. When and for what purposes are a part of that as well. If they can bail out one bank why do they do so and not another bank? How do they choose? You might assume it is for reasons that are best for the economy and the nation and they would tell you that. If that is true, based upon circumstance they make the determination of what action to take. But they do make the choice. Ronald Reagan would probably choose not to bailout corporations. Obama would chose to fund Solar Power companies and bail out certain corporations. They create the "money out of thin air" and then direct where it goes. Sometimes its political payback. I call that creating it at will for their specific purposes. If a hurricane Sandy hits they better be able to "at will" create some cash for it. Am I just making this up? As you look further into it you will find in general people don't really care about these things and whatever the experts tell them they accept to be true. Purpose has a lot to do with people's decisions and choices they make. What are they trying to accomplish is a good question to ask. We know with the laws they have made and the creation of a fiat currency they have a better ability to accomplish the goal of a stable economy. That is their stated goal and the reasoning behind the creation of the extant economic system. Does it look like they are able to do this. Most of the system, at least in the US was created a century ago, although it took until 1971 to entirely abandon the gold standard. Have they been successful in achieving what they want? Has there been peace and prosperity? Has there been peace and prosperity over the last century? Maybe they had to establish the system in other nations to realize the stability they desired? Now it is a global system, only three nations don't have a central bank - Iran, Somalia and North Korea. So...are things more stable? They pretty much have the structure in place. But I see quite a bit of instability, both nationally and internationally. Are things stable? Well there are problems with religion in the middle east. Russia and China are rising economies and the US seems to be losing its place as the world's only superpower. These are de-stabilizing factors. What economic tools can they use to maintain stability? Probably, build up the military! Maybe set up a Dictatorship in some country that will act as an ally...or not. They can do this "at will". Certainly the taxpayer will have to pay it back but $17 trillion dollars later.... I would suggest the fact you can't see that a fiat currency would contribute to the creation of cronyism and corruption is simply a demonstration of the depth of your understanding.
  19. Is that your very expert opinion? I haven't heard anything new from you that I hadn't already heard before. If all you can do is tell me I'm full of it then you haven't got anything. Just take a fact like reading the side-effects of these psychotropic drugs. School shootings and movie theatre shootings, if you hear of a seemingly motiveless random act of bizarre senseless violence against innocent people, especially children, Mothers killing their children, drowning them in bathtubs, stabbing them to death, someone severing the head of a passenger on a Greyhound bus,.those kinds of things, and then, in a lot of cases kill themselves, you can be pretty sure they were or have been prescribed psychotropic drugs or got them in some fashion, on the street perhaps. Or is it a chemical imbalance? You pick.
  20. Well, not pharmaceuticals, just psychotropic drugs. Most Americans and Canadians are not violent. Is there any reason these non-violent people should not have a gun if they so desire? Of course we don't want violent people to have them. It seems Psychiatrists either can't make a determination of who will commit random acts of senseless violence from who won't. I don't pretend I could either but they are the experts and have an abysmal record of keeping them out of schools and movie theatres.
  21. Actually, Dr. Szasz's book is a timeless statement on the field of Psychiatry and even more pertinent today. Implying it is out of date doesn't help your understanding of the subject. You can poo-poo my citations if you so wish but it doesn't encourage me to make any more. Yes there are probably thousands of articles on pig farmers. You could narrow it down if you just wanted to read those pertinent to the discussion - the prescribing of psychotropic drugs and their effects. But I don't think you are interested in any more data than you already have. You are a smart person but these criticisms are beneath you. The points you make I am well aware of. They are the common everyday views of most people. Most people just accept those views but when a subject affects them they do some research. I have had a couple of relatives that spent a better part of their lives committed and died in hospital. I have looked a little deeper than what most people have. If you have anything new or any thoughts of your own on the subject let me know.
  22. The split on the surveillance fiasco is interesting to say the least. The likes of Al Gore and Michael Moore are siding with Rush Limbaugh and Glen Beck. Odd? Here is a list of how they are split. I think I have copied it right. Think it's Ok: Sen. Lindsay Graham - Republican Rudy Giuliani - Republican Presidential Candidate Sen. John McCain - Republican Sen. Dianne Feinstein - Democrat Sen. Harry Reid - Democrat Newt Gingrich - Republican Presidential Candidate Dana Perino - Republican Bush Press Secretary Greg Gutfeld - Libertarian/Republican Political Analyst Fox News Sen. Jeff Medley - Democrat The list that think it is not ok is even weirder: Michael Moore - Liberal political activist Al Gore - Former Vice President Rush Limbaugh - Conservative Talk Show Host Glen Beck - The Blaze Ariana Huffington - Huffington Post Ron Paul - Republican/Libertarian Rand Paul - Republican Congressman Bob Beckell - Democrat Political Analyst on Fox News Rep. John Conyers - Dem Rep. Jerry Nadler - Dem
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