Many of you have been much more disrespectful than I but somehow they get a pass.
So the rule is either step into the circle jerk and reach around or go away.
By!
Then how do we prevent runaway wealth concentration in a finite world, which inevitably ends up promoting the situation where the wealthy become so powerful that they buy up the government and ultimately the whole country?The answer: it stops when we separate State and money. Then, but not until then. That IS the revolutionary potential in the bitcoin protocol. "Number go up" is just the red pill. Once it's swallowed, the rabbit hole opens. Jump in and you'll see a whole different future begin to take form in your mind's eye. There are people working that vision forward into meat space. (I think it's as inevitable as the separation of Church and State, with as dramatic potential for human flourishing.)
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Mark_BC,
This is at least the third time that weâve had this conversation. Usually, I state my opinion, you come out with guns-a-blazing to say that Iâm wrong, I respond with facts and logic that effectively eviscerates your opinion, and then you go dark. Itâs really frustrating to deal with you when you do this. Would you consider that respectful? I sure donât.
I remember the last time this came up - you were proposing a wealth tax to stop the rich from becoming too rich. I said that a wealth tax already exists in property tax and pointed out that my yearly property tax consumed >13% of my total annual income from my pension. After that, you quit responding. I had hoped that you would have reconsidered your position and realized that your solutions are worse than the problem. Your post tells me that nothing has changed. Youâre deeply mired in a belief system that canât be questioned. Thatâs really sad.
So, letâs go through the same charade again. How many times will you respond before realizing your position is untenable? I have hopes but no expectations. Rather than wasting all my time debunking all points of your post, Iâll just concentrate on the first part - Iâll make it an easy question for you. If you bother to respond, we can go from there.
Mark_BC wrote: Then how do we prevent runaway wealth concentration in a finite world, which inevitably ends up promoting the situation where the wealthy become so powerful that they buy up the government and ultimately the whole country? I don't believe in the magic ability of a free market to fairly allocate wealth in a world of finite and decreasing resources. The free market can do lots of good things but it isn't perfect.The bolding is mine. I'm assuming you prefer a democratically elected republican form of government over any other form of government. (Please correct me if I'm wrong.) In this system, the people vote for their representatives who then work with other elected officials to craft laws and policies that govern the people of the land. Theoretically, it is one vote for each person who bothers to register and actually vote. The votes are tallied and the person with the most votes gets elected. That's pretty straight-forward, right? Do people try to game the system? Sure. It happens frequently. We assume that the errors offset one another and that the deserving person ends up winning anyway. (That's not always the case.) So, by having the public vote, we're using a free market system (because people are free to choose with whom to spend their vote) to elect the representatives. If you don't believe a free market system can be trusted ... how can you trust that the right officials will be elected? Grover
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Netlej wrote: The solutions I give would obviously NEVER be implemented by government such as it is. These points I have made must happen and obviously we the people must make sure it does. Instead though we will come up with infinite number of excuses for doing nothing and we will all just whine and moan and bitch. Like you.Netlej, Do you know the difference between a reason and an excuse? A reason is why an action happens. An excuse is made up afterward to explain an action. I'm looking at past history, human nature, and physics to develop a reason to do what I do. When I choose to do nothing, it is because I see nothing can be done to fix the situation. It results in acceptance of the situation - regardless of how dire that situation is. By the same token, I willingly tilt at windmills. I know it won't do any good because your actions are beyond my control. Still, I feel compelled to try to set you on the right path. The choice is yours to make. Nonetheless, you can expect me to point out your follies. Grover
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Chris, I completely agree, this is very, very sick. But I believe we all now know this is not about health or safety, but control. Keep up the good work, but as you now know, itâs time to prepare for the worst, expect worse than that, plan accordingly, and hope that is enough.
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Death isnât the only possible negative effect of COVID.
The post I shared summarized the arguments that led to the approval, and I believe all the materials that went into it are available. Youâre welcome to disagree with aspects of that argument or even the final decision (which would just be an allowance, not a mandate), but I think itâs unfair to argue that there was absolutely no rationale behind it.
It seems as if the route the elites are taking is to be as avariciously ruthless as possible and get as wealthy as possible in order to make it into the âsurvivorsâ clubâ, or âthe ones who get the lifeboatsâ. Really gotta show the gang that youâre one of them by demonstrating zero concern for the commoners, for goodness, justice, righteousness, and all that sissy stuff.
Thatâs one possible rationale for for the blatant nature of malfeasance weâre seeing. Gotta pass a test to get in the club. Kill a half million people by national-scale medical malpractice, ruin the retirement hopes of struggling blue-collars by inflating their money away, that sort of thing.
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So Josh, how many permanently injured, or dead kids, justify this?The justification is based on hopefully reducing similar or worse outcomes from COVID infections. The considerations that went into the decision suggested that any vaccine harm would likely be dwarfed by the benefits against COVID.
Fortunately for the VAST MAJORITY of the population it is nothing more than a flu type sickness with the no taste and smell thing for a few days or weeks. Covid was that way for my middle aged ass. How about this. Want a better covid outcome? Eat right, lose weight and exercise. Take vitamins and supplements if you want. Why the hell did they push the vax when they could have simply told people to exercise, lose weight and take vitamin D at the very least? You think I am going to trust those ass hats with anything at this point when they could have helped the situation but instead chose to do nothing⊠my trust in the medical establishment is nil at this point.
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Looming economic crisis? As a business owner, Iâm already feeling it! Normally it would be a dream to have way too much demand now you canât hire anyone! Iâm sure that the many inflated wages are going to make everything explode in price here soon. You wouldnât believe what we have to hire blue collar movers for! More than some places are offering for people with college degrees. Itâs insane!
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So now we know youâre a troll. Dr. Chris has quite thoroughly gone over the data (UK) about the risk of the vax vs. the benefit against COVID for younger people. Basically, anybody under 30 taking the vax is on the loss side of the risk/benefit analysis.
But youâre just shilling for the mainstream narrative, so why would you listen to the facts? Get lost, child. Youâre wasting everybodyâs time.
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The justification is based on hopefully reducing similar or worse outcomes from COVID infections. The considerations that went into the decision suggested that any vaccine harm would likely be dwarfed by the benefits against COVID.Uh huh. Mortality is just a "severity metric." It says: kids get the sniffles from COVID. Less risk than influenza. So your answer is "experimental shots in arms for babies?" I have a term for that - it is: "baby-killer." Hands Off The Children, Josh. Otherwise, you - and your co-workers - are nothing more than baby-killers. Utter scumbags. You don't want to be a baby-killer, do you, Josh? https://www.bitchute.com/video/yqd6mUbrGtIq/ Apologies for the "lack of science." I'm just absolutely disgusted by the Vax Pushers and their focus on profits over humanity. "Oh sure. Let's try an experimental shot on a 5-year-old because otherwise he might get the sniffles." Because - psychopathy.
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I am not sure why this person is getting 4 thumbs up⊠they are a spammer, as evidenced by the link to a moving business. They have made several posts todayâŠ
The admin team has been notified to take the appropriate action.
psyops much?
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Must be why car manufacturers and home builders are focusing on high end models only⊠Blaming shortages of course.
https://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/10/30/a-bill-to-allow-prescriptions-by-ai.aspx (link will disappear in 33 hours)
Mark_BC wrote: Then how do we prevent runaway wealth concentration in a finite world, which inevitably ends up promoting the situation where the wealthy become so powerful that they buy up the government and ultimately the whole country? I don't believe in the magic ability of a free market to fairly allocate wealth in a world of finite and decreasing resources. The free market can do lots of good things but it isn't perfect.Mark, I don't understand why wealth concentration is such a bad thing. Shouldn't the rewards go to those who make a better mousetrap? If you don't reward them ... and subsequently punish them with draconian taxes, all of us are left with inferior mousetraps. We all lose. The way I read your post is that you acknowledge that there is corruption in government, but you effectively give it a pass. Is it just that inevitable? Why don't we focus on the problem? There are corrupt government officials who need to be punished. (Please note that I'm not condemning ALL government officials and civil servants.) Why can't we rout them out? As far as I know, they all had to take an oath of office (at least in the US.) By being corrupt, they're violating that oath they took. Unfortunately, without considering the consequences, many people with a singular focus would blindly vote for a politician who supports your position - that the evil rich need to be taxed more to keep them from being able to corrupt government officials. What other baggage gets included with that vote? This is why I care about this. People who vote this way impact me. I can't do much about it other than point out ramifications and hope those people are thoughtful enough to consider the consequences.
The problem ultimately is the merger of public and private sectors. This could be easily prevented with clear laws if they were enforced when the public and private sectors were separate. The problem is, the private elites gained too much wealth a century ago and took over the regulators so the laws weren't enforced resulting in our recent descent into fascism. Recently I recall Chris mentioning how he would like to see some law preventing the revolving door between Big Pharma and government regulators by requiring a certain amount of years between working for each. In a functioning society with separation of public and private sectors, those laws would be able to be enforced.[Bolding in highlighted paragraph by Grover.] I'm a firm believer that people get the government they are willing to tolerate. Politicians learn what terms generate support from their constituents. Why don't they follow through with their political stump speeches? If people held them accountable, future politicians would learn to limit their promises. Instead, enough of the populace believes the lies and reelects the liars. The rest of us suffer. For what it's worth, I agree that civil servants (who are the government regulators) should be prohibited from working for or receiving any remuneration from any industry that they were regulating. I would also insist that the head of each department is responsible for the corruption of underlings (after a grace period.) You can bet that the bosses would put enough direction and resources to this problem that the problem would disappear. I just saw this article on ZeroHedge: https://www.zerohedge.com/political/americans-biggest-fear-corrupt-government-officials
I don't understand your logic here. You ask when it would stop, going from billionaires to millionaires to thousandaires. Well the same question could be asked of income tax right now. What stops it? A peoples' revolt would when everyone becomes uncomfortably poor. But if we taxed the billionaires we wouldn't need to target the 8 figure millionaires or anyone beneath. We'd have all the money we need to run government by taxing the billionaires and 9 figure millionaires.When I wrote that they would come after the billionaires first and others on the wealth tree later, it was more or less an admonishment of politicians' methods. You see, they work on a "divide and conquer" meme. Since you aren't a billionaire, you have no skin in the game if the politicians want to tax them to death. You would cheer that decision. Have you thought it through? Even if you taxed every penny the billionaires owned, would there be enough to satisfy the politicians' wants? Hardly. Once you agree to a special tax that only applies to the billionaires, it's a short hop to the mega-millionaires. After that, it's another short hop to the multi-millionaires. Hopefully, you can see where this is going now ...
I agree that subsidies are bayaddd... all they do is promote over consumption. Taxes are better.Taxes are better??? Once the elected officials have collected the taxes, what are they going to do with the money? How many of them bring the candy back to their electorate in order to buy more votes? (Talk about over-consumption.)
There is not one entity called "government". There are lots of different types of governments and examples through history. The USA had a pretty accountable government up until about 1913. Scandinavia up until very recently, and I think many countries there still do (I'm looking at you, Iceland). Singapore has the death penalty for corrupt politicians. We will always need government. The solution isn't banning government. The solution is figuring out how to best hold the government accountable to the people, not the other way around. This is done by a clear separation of public and private sectors and transparency (banning the insidious "public-private-partnerships). And limiting the wealth of those elites at the top of the private sector to say 20 million dollars in today's money, to prevent them from becoming powerful enough to take over the government and dismantling those laws.[Again, bolding by Grover in the above paragraph.] You started out on the right track in this paragraph. The US had its growing pains when starting out. We even had a few attempts at a central bank early on. It all changed in 1913 on December 23rd when Woodrow Wilson signed the act that created the Federal Reserve. Even the first incarnation of the Fed wouldn't have been as bad as the one we have now. That's another problem - politicians start with a small proposal that can be sold to the electorate and later build it into a monstrosity that nobody in their right mind would agree to at the beginning. So, what changed with the creation of the Fed? We went from specie based currency to a debt based currency. As I said, not all at once. At first, the fiat currency was 40% backed by gold. That means that the amount of currency increased to 250% of what it was just before the fed was created. (Who do you suppose got first access to that money? Hint: the people you think are corrupting the innocent government officials.) People were happy with having paper money at first. In the roaring 'twenties, they started speculating and getting unfathomably rich. When the bubble burst, they ran to the bank to withdraw gold. Sorry. No more than 40% could get gold and then the banks were bankrupt. Imagine that! Who would've thought that could happen? FDR changed the rules when elected, confiscated the people's gold, and then revalued the price of gold. (He also saddled us with unsustainable social programs like Social Security.) Another dozen or so years later and Bretton Woods made it that only foreign entities could exchange dollars for gold. Then, in 1971, Nixon "temporarily" closed the Bretton Woods gold window after too much money was created to be backed by the country's gold. Who could have seen this series of events occurring? The better question is who shouldn't expect this to happen eventually? You went off the track by advocating for an upper limit in wealth. As I stated earlier in this post, without compensation, why would someone bother to invent a better mousetrap? All of us would be poorer!
You didn't answer my question - who would you put in charge? You complain about fascism but blithely advocate for more of the same. Can you imagine the amount of pressure that head person would have to endure from those who want to corrupt for personal gain? Would you accept the death penalty for corruption - like Singapore does? If so, all the problems you complain about (concerning corruption) would magically disappear. There would be no need to limit wealth (but I suspect you'd still favor that outcome. I don't understand why.) You also seem to conflate universal health care with the remarkable results in Uttar Pradesh. It isn't the universal health care that caused those remarkable results. If it were, other Indian States (who also have universal health care) would have equally remarkable results. Instead, it's the treatment protocol that was used in Uttar Pradesh and not in the other Indian States. The US AMA (corruptly owned by big Pharma) has prohibited doctors from prescribing HCQ and IVM - under penalty of losing the medical license. Pharmacies won't dispense these products if a doctor prescribes them. Hmmm. Isn't that tyranny? The regulators (who are corrupt) have gone wild to make the corrupters richer. GroverYou want universal healthcare (to be paid by others.) Who would you put in charge - Fauci or someone like him?Every other country in the world has done reasonably well with universal healthcare. The US with its public-private partnership (aka fascism) is suffering under the same Covid fascism other countries are with universal health care. Hmm, the country leading the way with Covid treatments is India and they have centralized healthcare... where government officials actively seek out Covid outbreaks and give everyone Ivermectin. Which is why Uttar Pradesh yesterday had 2 new cases out of 240 million people. That government seems to have been able to organize itself quite well. Maybe because they managed to break free from Big Corporation. Again, it's about separating public and private sectors.
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Some people are worth more to society than others. Those people tend to get paid more. Also, society gets to determine peopleâs worth. Personally I donât think sports stars, actors and musicians should be paid more than people like doctors, fire fighters, cops, solders, engineers etc. However, I donât get to set salaries. The market sets those. How many people do you think would spend tons of money and years going to college if it wouldnât give them a better chance at earning a higher salary than a high school graduate? I agree with Grover. We need people to design and build that better mouse trap. The possibility of earning more money is a way to incentivize that. I am at work at LEAST 50 hours Per week. I get called by my guys and emailed by my boss on weekends. If I was stuck with the same salary as my hourly guys do you honestly think I would be busting my ass? I enjoy what I do but I also want to WIN. One way to win in the business world is through salary. Especially in technical professions when you donât want to go into management.
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