Republicans Open the New Session of Congress - Page 17

On January 10 2011 15:49 Scruffy wrote:


I responded to your "challenges" till you called me a racist. Its a common move from the left, attack the person since you have no real argument. /exits general forum ignorance till another day.

On January 10 2011 11:41 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:
Also, another issue of libertarianism I feel is that, no matter how transparent corporations are, there is no guarantee that the average consumer will have the time/energy/knowhow to access relevant information as to whether to support such a corporation (by consuming their goods/services). That in itself is a lack of transparency. It doesn't matter if 40% of the country knows that walmart is fucked up, if the other 60% keep buying, walmart will survive. Speaking of walmart, isn't it a case where their sales are greatly driven by the poverty of their consumers? If you're on minimum wage, you don't get to care how immoral your wholesaler is, you just buy the cheap shit. How do you get around that without regulation?

On January 10 2011 14:13 Balthasar wrote:
North Korea is at least an attempt at socialism.

Also you should realize libertarian isn't considered right wing. Many actually contest its left of center. (Please admit you were wrong =) haha.)

On January 10 2011 16:02 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:

balthasar can you respond to this please? also the post that was above this? are you purposely ignoring my posts now or was it an accident?

On January 10 2011 15:49 Scruffy wrote:


I responded to your "challenges" till you called me a racist. Its a common move from the left, attack the person since you have no real argument. /exits general forum ignorance till another day.

Scruffy wrote:
Do you really think African-American's poverty demographics have shifted in the past 50 years? They have probably gotten worse. Its almost like the Dems want to tell them (although more covertly, obviously) "Hey, guess what guys, vote us in, and we will pay you to not work!" Pretty sweet deal if you can get it I guess.

On January 10 2011 06:52 Mayfly wrote:


I read a few reviews and any excerpts I could find. The main thesis seems to be that government has to respond to "failures of market-based approaches" with regulations, and therefore that a belief in that market-based approach will only lead to an even bigger government.

That is partly true, but if you increase regulations because something fails, then you have to decrease regulations when something does not fail. They regulated charter schools because one school was mismanaged. Why not deregulate the other charter schools? It's a clear bias and a failure of democracy, not a failure of markets.

On January 10 2011 16:28 Tasteful123 wrote:
Lefnui, is this your idea of fun? Using your time to feed right wing trolls who came here without any willingness to budge on their ignorance? You can reason all you want with them but in the end it's going to end up with the right wingers equivocating the faults of the right with faults of the left. That is the best you're going to get out of them, if at all.

Yeah, I guess the Republican party is pretty bad - but the Democrats are bad too! Yeah, Fox news is pretty biased - but MSNBC is too!

Any sane person should know the massive difference in the amount and quality of bullshit pouring out of either side... too bad everyone always tries to make it look like both sides are equally bad.

Scruffy, just admit to being a racist. It'll make it easier to believe that you're an actual right winger instead of a troll.

On January 10 2011 16:28 Tasteful123 wrote:
Lefnui, is this your idea of fun? Using your time to feed right wing trolls who came here without any willingness to budge on their ignorance? You can reason all you want with them but in the end it's going to end up with the right wingers equivocating the faults of the right with faults of the left. That is the best you're going to get out of them, if at all.

On January 10 2011 16:02 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:

balthasar can you respond to this please? also the post that was above this? are you purposely ignoring my posts now or was it an accident?

On January 10 2011 16:41 Kimaker wrote:

I'll do it!

In regard to transparency, the alternatives to a purely free market all involve varying degrees of governmental control. All those same arguments (lack of time/energy/know how) could be made about governments and a citizen casting votes during an election, so in that respect we break even when arguing between the two (very broad) possibilities, based on transparency alone (considering the mitigating factors you're applying). I'm assuming you'd prefer some degree of governmental regulation from your posts, if I'm wrong please correct me, and if I'm right, further specification on your part would be nice so that I can know what I'm arguing against.

You're putting up an implicit strawman for the second part there. Give me something concrete to argue against as opposed to speculative assumptions about Wal-Marts immoral behaviors that people buying things cheaply at their store's contributes to. Are we talking about Chinese sweat shops? Textile mills in India? What? If that's the case you're making, then those are all out of nation anyway, and our laws can't/shouldn't effect them.

On January 10 2011 16:06 Lefnui wrote:


No, it is not. Not remotely, not in any way, shape or form. When a country claims that it's socialist, that's not enough. It actually has to be socialist in order to be an example of socialism, crazy concept huh?

On January 10 2011 16:49 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:

Yeah I want regulation :D

Ideally in the case of elections, people aren't voting for specific changes within each corporation, they're voting for broad ideologies that their politicians represent. I.E. if one politician says "I am for regulation against companies that do x y and z," then voting for that politician would (ideally) bring regulation against x y and z. Therefore, whereas in a free market, individuals have to research every corporation they're consuming from and intelligently decide how to consume, with politicians promising specific reforms, it's up to just that politician/party to figure out what to regulate. It's still less research on the part of the individual citizen in the regulation case, non?

Actually that's a good point that I hadn't thought about before (that we shouldn't be allowed to stop out-of-country immoral behavior). However, I'm not for free-trade either, so that's not to say the government wouldn't have some power over each corporation's resources in my ideal vision. However, I'm pretty fuzzy on trade dynamics in general, so I'll just spiritually concede this point because I can't argue it further. If anyone would like to pick up for me, feel free :D.

However I believe you still haven't addressed the problem of lack of choice among the poor in our country.

On January 10 2011 13:40 Balthasar wrote:


Look at Enron and Worldcom, they cooked their books. Just because a company puts out a bogus 10K (annual income statement, doesn't mean they are transparent.

2. Big corporations are easier to monitor, since "bad things" that are done in one place will probably be done in many places.

Are you kidding me? Morality has nothing to do with size. There are evil small businesses and big corporations. In fact the corporate structure can be more evil because stakeholders and management have limited liability while sole proprietorship and partnerships have unlimited liability.

3. Big corporations are easier to discourage from doing "bad things" (just look at the green thing going on in most big corps).

There's many green small businesses as well. What's your point?

4. Big corporations are the reason you are rich.

Are u *beep*ing insane? Big corporations don't make anyone rich unless you work for one. Everyone makes themselves rich by working hard and getting (hopefully honest) paycheck.

On January 10 2011 16:14 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:

Can you qualify this? I read the book and it wasn't just one charter school that failed, but the whole system. Charter schools, while good on paper and successful in very few cases, have generally failed to create choice for impoverished areas. In fact, all school voucher programs have enrollment rates below 10% among eligible citizens because even with vouchers, inner-city families often cannot afford the expenses to attend anything other than the crappy little public school in their area. So yes, the market approach failed there. If you have solid evidence to the contrary, please present it. (My evidence is all in the book, which I still encourage you to read)

edit: note that my definition of "failure" is probably a little more broad than yours in this case. Please read the book though. I advocate good charter schools, and I've even volunteered at one (KIPP Heartwood), but as a system designed to help the impoverished, it's success has been extremely limited and the whole concept is distracting from real education reform, in my opinion.

On January 09 2011 22:29 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:

by the way, how do you feel about agribusiness? i know it's been a huge success in feeding people, but is factory farming worth it? (random tangent, you don't have to answer this question haha)

On January 10 2011 15:49 Scruffy wrote:


I responded to your "challenges" till you called me a racist. Its a common move from the left, attack the person since you have no real argument. /exits general forum ignorance till another day.

On January 10 2011 17:37 Mayfly wrote:


Can't comment on that since I haven't read the book.

All I can note is that voucher schools seem to work pretty good elsewhere, for instance in Sweden of all places.

Now schools in general are a joke but if you have to compare...

On January 10 2011 17:24 Kimaker wrote:

Yes, I'll admit that it takes more time and energy to research all of those corporations properly, but it's still all just numbers. Numbers, unless the books have been cooked, don't lie! People do. And they'll lie through their teeth on Easter Sunday, in their best suit, straight to the priests face in front of their mother, and God, and everyone because that's how people are when they want something. It's not always even malicious or intentional, but it happens. This adds a whole new dimension to electing with your ballot instead of your dollar because you suddenly have something as esoteric and abstract as "character" involved, which can't be quantified and pointed at and let you say, "Here is a solid piece of evidence as to what is going on in this mans head!"

Even reaction time by the public I feel is superior when you look at corporations vs governments.

When a news story breaks that a politician has done something wrong, unless it's big enough to get him impeached or ostracized by his party, we have to deal with him until his term runs out. If the former is indeed the case, then we have to STILL deal with him since he still holds his position until he can be proven guilty.

When a news story breaks that a corporation is fucking up, people can vote IMMEDIATELY about how they feel regarding what that corporation did. With their money. By not spending it. If they still spend it despite what ever transgression, clearly you are alone in your outrage, or at the very least a minority.

In the end, I feel like you're going to have bullshit going on at both ends, but you have more threatening control over a corporation as a consumer, than you do over the government as a citizen.

And as to your second point, it's a sad fact of life, that our choices are limited in part by our possession of land, labor, and capital. Obviously individual ambition and talent plays a huge role, but anyone can have that. That being said, I need you to be more specific about what you mean by choices so that I can address what you're getting at in detail. If you mean economic choice, well, that's how it's always going to be. Perfectly even distribution of wealth can only realistically be achieve in one way, and that didn't work so great last time they tried it. If you mean socially, then I don't think there's anything to be DONE about it, at least not consciously. That's more of a matter of societal perceptions that judge based on material wealth and appearance as opposed to personal ability and potential. But like I said, I don't know what your context is.

As a broad generalization I honestly, don't think their lack of choice is that much of an issue. That may be cold hearted, but that's how I feel.

On January 10 2011 18:02 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:

Sweden is a completely different story because they're pretty good at the whole combating disparity thing. I can tell you that vouchers won't work in the US unless it starts to look like welfare though (i.e. the poor get more voucher credit for transportation/book/etc costs). Obviously conservatives won't support that. Otherwise, the ability for the middle class and above to use their tax money on private school only fucks the public school system more, which needs tons of reform. (What the fuck is tenure below college anyway?)

On January 10 2011 18:39 Mayfly wrote:


I wouldn't say Sweden is good at the "whole combating disparity" thing, but then again I'm not exactly sure what you mean by that.

What is bad about reform? I don't see why schools need to be public. Everyone paying the same no matter how much you consume is terrible. I sure wouldn't want to share my lunch bill with everyone else, I would have to eat lobster every day in order not to get abused.

On January 10 2011 18:47 SpiritoftheTunA wrote:

Schools not being public inherently gives up on the idea of equal opportunity, something that Americans generally do not want to embrace.
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/013/702uscvj.asp
wait i linked the wrong article if you clicked on it it probably actually encourages your view :D. But my main point is that no private schools would want to cater to the impoverished, since they have no money to spend. Thus taking away one of their only opportunities to... not be impoverished.

I agree that schools currently overemphasize standardization and soulless work, but that's a result of how Americans have attempted to measure our schools' success, not a result of schools being public in the first place. The more we test our kids to make sure they're doing well, the more we'll teach to those tests (and lose our souls). It's a case of observation greatly interfering with the actual process, and Americans need to wisen up and stop it.

To the agribusiness question: yeah, qualitative everything. Do you think their practices are a problem? If you were suddenly the dictator of everything food-related, would you reform it at all?