Comments on: Kill This Meme

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 08:20:45 +0000

My pleasure Ma’am! 😉 As you know… I like quotes and have many! 😀

How about this one:

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” -Abraham Lincoln

Who knew he was a prophet? I guess the name ‘Abraham’ might be a clue… 😉 😀

People of the World would do well to listen to John Adams:

“Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you. I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history, naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain.” –John Adams

A wise man indeed. Isn’t it a curious dichotomy that the human species is the only species that devolves (or just becomes dumber) as the generations increase, science not withstanding! 🙂

By: hipparchia

hipparchia — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 00:52:29 +0000

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!” –Benjamin Franklin i've always liked that one. thanks for the reminder! .-= last blog ..Game on! =-.

By: Bryan

Bryan — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 21:01:28 +0000

Ben was a Quaker, if a not particularly observant one, but he understood people and their weaknesses. Theories are great in a perfect world, but we have to live in a world with humans, so perfection isn’t an option.

Economic theories depend on rational models and people are not always rational. You really have to wonder how many times we have to have tax cuts for the wealthy to fail before people admit that they always fail.

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:01:29 +0000

PS… I *HAVE* to quote another quotation from Ben Franklin (that i actually prefer to the one that is usually quoted above):

“Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!” –Benjamin Franklin

And Ben was a pacifist! 😉 😆 But he was a realist first and foremost. Definitely nobody’s fool. 🙂

Ahem… back to work (been off sick most of the week) *shrug* So much to do… so little time… 😉

By: Kryten42

Kryten42 — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:53:28 +0000

But… Bryan… Rand and all the other assorted elitist propagandists want the multitudes of poor dumb bastards to believe in enlightened self-interest because it makes them feel all warm and tingly to believe that the elites are good, honest, hard working people rather than the lying, selfish, lazy scumbags they actually are. 🙂 I wouldn’t trust the average human to tell me the time accurately, let alone trust them with my life and livelihood.

People are so stoopid! *SIGH*

“When you see a rattlesnake poised to strike, you do not wait until he has struck before you crush him.” –Franklin D. Roosevelt

Ehhh… what they hey… one more for the road! 😉 Let’s see…

“They that can give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty or safety.” –Benjamin Franklin

Ooooohhh… There are sooooooooooo many! 😉 LOL

Oh, but for most people, the best is: “Ignorance is bliss!” LOL (BTW, that is often misquoted and was originally from the 18^th century English poet, Thomas Gray. “Where ignorance is bliss, ’tis folly to be wise.”

So so true!! 😛

By: Bryan

Bryan — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 19:46:41 +0000

Exactly what liberty is lost by prosecuting fraud and theft?

The purpose of the US government, as stated in the Constitution, is to promote the general welfare.

You are advocating for liberty, you want either anarchy or privilege, neither of which is really conducive to elevating the level of liberty. Rand, and other fiction writers seem to believe in enlightened self-interest as a control on excesses, but it doesn’t work, and has never worked, because most humans are greedy. That’s reality – deal with it, or die.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 00:24:41 +0000

Uhm, in case you haven't figured it out, nobody on this planet has proposed the notion that a Soviet-style planned economy should substitute for a mixed economy as is typical of Europe. Matching inputs and outputs in an economy cannot be done mechanically because it is inherently a chaotic system due to the quantum fluctuations in the neurons of its components, thus it must be done organically via a a trainable neural network system trained by tokens (we call the tokens *MONEY* and the components of the neural network system PRODUCERS and CONSUMERS). The question is the proper set of rules for setting up that neural network system to meet the goals of providing the best outcomes for the majority of the people of a nation, not whether there should be one. There is no more Soviet Union, and your red baiting is noted as further evidence of intellectual bankruptcy. Furthermore: 1) The end result of outsourcing government functions has been measured, and privatizing government functions has been provably shown to be more expensive than providing those services directly. Privatized prisons are more expensive than government-run prisons. Privatized commissaries for our soldiers are more expensive than government-run commissaries. Privatized municipal water systems are more expensive than government-run water systems. And so forth. 2) The effective result of reduced wages is debt inflation. Your fancy theory doesn't account for debt, or the fact that the effective bottom for reducing wages is starvation for large numbers of people. Your fancy theory dismisses hunger as not being an economic issue, or as incentive to work for less money (and how can you buy more food for less money? Only in ivory towers!). Perhaps it's not an economic issue, but it is certainly a biological issue. Biology trumps economics. When theory runs into blunt reality that people will not willingly starve to death when incapable of earning sufficient wages to buy sufficient food to survive because wages have been driven through the bottom, it is blunt reality that wins. Check out my comment on Another Victim of Greed regarding how changes in the U.S. tax code since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1981 have led to rent-seeking behavior seeking to extract gains from short-term transactions, rather than investment behavior seeking to maintain value via long-term investments. The actual economic data supports my assertions, and does not support your assertions, you are talking blue-sky ivory tower BS and I'm talking reality, i.e., what's actually happened and still happening in real life as vs. your theoretical natterings. Your fancy theoretical natterings sound good, but have only worked in fictional universes where cotton candy grows on trees and unicorns are real. Actual real live human beings simply do not behave in the manner that you describe, you are as deranged as the Soviet Central Planners who assumed that their workers would behave as idealized Perfect Soviet Workers. Reality simply *IS*, and you cannot dismiss it with smug hand-waving and bullshit theories. Just ask the Soviets about that. Oh wait, you can't, because they're *GONE*. .-= last blog ..Quote of the day =-.

By: Badtux

Badtux — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 19:26:11 +0000

Two words for the investment strategy of the American elites: Bernie Madoff. Ponzie schemes which rely upon trading worthless “assets” rather than investing in productive enterprises that add innovation and products and services to the economy are little more than mattress stuffing insofar as their contribution to the economy is concerned.

And if people don’t have jobs, it doesn’t matter how cheap the Chinese crap is at Wal-Mart, they can’t afford it. Duh. Not to mention the social implications. People do *NOT* willingly starve to death regardless of how much people like you tell them that it’s their duty to starve to death in order to preserve your precious religious theology called “capitalism” (a theology which is entirely faith based because it has never — *EVER* — worked in real life, all actual working economic systems have large dollops of socialism in order to handle externalities, crap we even wrote socialism into our Constitution by mandating that the U.S. government provide post roads and post offices). If people cannot obtain what they need to survive via legitimate means, they *will* turn to illegitimate means, or even turn against their elites and string them up from the nearest oak tree. Our elites here in the USA seem to have forgotten that lesson. They should ask the French nobility what the implications of your attitude of “let them eat cake” is. Oh wait, they can’t, because the French nobility all lost their heads in the reign of terror after the French Revolution, my bad! But our elites here in the USA have been so comfortable for so long that they have not the slightest idea what it is like to be hungry, or the dire things that people will do in order to obtain food when they’re hungry. They’re morons, pure and simple. Otherwise Bernie Madoff could have never took them for so many millions for so long.

– Badtux the Snarky Penguin

By: Badtux

Badtux — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 16:43:01 +0000

David Dunce: The money is going overseas to the Indian and Chinese investors who create. It isn’t staying here in the United States, because the U.S. elites refuse (absolutely refuse) to invest into innovation. They want something “safe”. For many years that was real estate until they drove real estate up into the stratosphere and caused a bubble and collapse. Now it’s government bonds, driving real interest rates for government bonds into the negative territory, which I suppose is indirect taxation of a sort. But really, they’re not using the money for anything productive, they’re just sitting on it as lumpy mattress stuffing. Economic history supported by economic theory explaining that history mathematically teaches us that money that is lumpy mattress stuffing might as well not exist insofar as its contribution to an economy is concerned, and that the correct and proper thing to do is promulgate economic policies which encourage that money to move out from under mattresses and start doing things. The Indians and Chinese don’t need that kind of stimulus to do the right thing economically, they have brains and know what they want to do. But our U.S. elites have become so inbred and stupid (sort of like the British royals in that, eh?) that they deserve to have it taxed away so that people who *do* know what to do with money can put it to some productive use.

In short, you are an economic ignoramus who has not the slightest idea what the “v” is economic activity money equation (hint: VELOCITY) and why the U.S. plutocrats sitting on their money rather than using it for funding innovation, production, or consumption basically makes that money useless. And if you are upset at the gratuitous insult, fine. You’re the moron who came on this board and started insulting people.

By: Steve Bates

Steve Bates — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 15:54:03 +0000

DD, don’t be sensitive when I say that with such a military career, you don’t have a lot of room to be advising Bryan on larger military matters. There’s no shame in being a grunt… my late uncle was one, as he repeatedly reminded my father, who was an officer… but there are good reasons that grunts don’t make the strategic decisions.

Remember how we got here on this thread: you felt compelled to toss in a completely gratuitous slur on my musical skills, a slur that had nothing to do with my competency (or lack of same) on the economic matter that was the topic of the thread. In economics, I have opinions but no certifiable expertise. Music is another matter… yes, I really did hold an adjunct position on a university music faculty for a couple of decades, meanwhile participating in and managing an independent performing group through four successful subscription seasons, and yes, I’m rather proud of my musical career (alas for you, undeniably professional). If I’m “touchy” (your word, not mine), it’s about the gratuitousness of your insult, not its content or severity.