Werd.

Freedom first. Always stand on the side of personal freedom.

Fuck fat people.

I'll be damned if me, my future wife Jessica Alba, or any of our 20 kids ever get fat.

And stop gaying up this thread with stupid political BS. Isn't there a section for that?????

Dude if she has 20 kids, she will never be skinny. Just pull out and skeet on her face.

Good point. I stand corrected.

Went to a renaissance festival this past weekend. Holee shittt.

http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._1998112_n.jpg
http://sphotos.ak.fbcdn.net/hphotos-..._5785222_n.jpg

BTW....vodka in coffee......interesting...even when the coffee is "mudslide". You can't taste the vodka, it doesn't smell....yet...that burning sensation on the throat is still there. WTF? I probably shouldn't be drinking this before going to bed :giggle:










and no....I'm not going to be getting drunk or anything........again.

Do it pussy

I love how civilian employees think they have power over military personnel when they are just lazy, stupid, and ignorant... and almost get run over by a 5k lb. pallet while yelling at me to watch where im stepping on his POS 7th hand purchased 747's pallet stop locks... then thinking he can redirect my "order" to instead of spotting the K-loader, he thinks he can force me to push a heavy pallet back to get his cellphone.

Dude... you seriously need to re-class, sounds like that job is going to give you a freakin heart attack.

Don't ever let a civilian think they're your boss. The civilians on a military compound are being overpaid to support the military. Not the other way around...and don't let them forget that lest I have to deal with them later.

I didn't mean that in a literal sense.

Taxes sure do go a long way, but I don't personally like taxes, and ever think they are the solution. What you are saying is: you the bureaucrat, decided you know what's best for another person and are going to punish them by the use of force. That solution is subjective, not objective; you cannot sacrifice someone's liberty simply for your displeasure with sweaty fatties.

"We contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself by the handle."
-Winston Churchill

Sure, the that fact that 30% of Americans are classified as obese tells you something, not that fat people are to "blame", or should be punished, but they are looters and have incentives to be fat. They are free to be as fat as they want, but what they aren't free to do is harm you or get in your way to pursue happiness as well.

When/if they cause your insurance rates to skyrocket, then you can complain. But insurance companies should have the right to deny obese customers coverage, or charge more for them specifically, at least in a true free market. If insurance companies actually had control over their business and customers, they'd deny these people coverage on most items. This would surely change incentives fast.

What is really scary is this Heath Care Bill that we just passed further "tips-the-scales" in the way of harmful incentives. When the government interferes in the free-market it is giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others. We are going to be punished to support their own self destructive behavior. They cannot be denied coverage, they cannot be dropped from their plans, and to top it off their fat kids will be covered until age 25, etc, all for free, all at no extra costs to them.

So why should they get healthy, and why should they give a shit about you?

Well, I'm not American, but I will post like I am one, so mind the first-person narration. If they have the right to abuse us in that sense, whether it be financially through taxes for their bullshit coverage or through person activity that is degraded by the sights, sounds and physical mass of obese people, then we should have the right to demand either A) Reimbursement, B) Changes to legislation requiring insurance companies to have completely different clauses and packages for obese people, C) Federal statutes prohibiting obese people from using certain public services or participating in certain public events (idealistically focused on the transportation and hospitality industry) and/or D) Implement an Obesity Tax of some sort, where obese people have to pay premiums for certain services.

I'm sure there are 1007 things wrong with all of that and that it would create so much conflicting response, but what else does it take for the government to realize that obese people are not on the same playing field as the rest of society? To me they are a burden.

Your intentions are fine and well, but government power doesn't go away once it's created. The same power that allows it to create taxes and penalties that happen to agree with your personal opinions will also allow it to create taxes and penalties that don't agree with your personal opinions 20 years from now when there is a different group in power.

No, our government's ONLY job is protect us from criminals and the harm of others. Our consitution is written to LIMIT the powers of government, not allow it to control our lives; unlike your kommie kingdom.

A. We have no right to demand some sort of payment from them for being fat. We do have rights to demand compensation for any money lost due to them being fat.

B. I absolutely agree with this, but the problem is, we need NO legislation because we are supposed to be in a FREE MARKET! If we had less government intervention in a private business's affairs, this would work itself out. A huge disincentive would be on the "weight" of their shoulders when deciding if they want to pig out like a fat fuck or not. If they were not able to secure health insurance, or free coverage through the gov't if they are classified as obese, then they'd have the choice of paying out of pocket for the lifestyle they chose, or they'd make a change in order to meet the requirements to participate in a service rendered by a private company.

C. I disagree completely. Might as well add a federal statue that doesn't allow illegal mexicans to mow my lawn :jerkit:

D. You don't get it. Fuck taxes. This is NOT the role of our government. Who is the Gov't to say that I need to be punished because I made a conscious choice to be fat. This goes against everything America stands for; we are created equal and we are free to peruse our own happiness.

yay for stripping away freedom.
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Very good point. Duly noted.

Sorry, I meant reimbursement for the taxes we would be paying to help fund these programs and such. I didn't mean an outright payment because we are thin and they are fat, ha ha.

Ha ha.... ah.. Mexicans. You are 100% correct. The only reason this is even an issue is because of the government and it's imposed limitations of EVERYTHING.

The government is supposed to represent the people as a society, aren't they? I thought the government is supposed to be our voice when we need society to hear it? In any case, the role of our government has long been abandoned by the assfucks in Office and they are essentially there to support criminals and the tax man. It's bullshit. I meant the government implement these or anything as a representation of the masses, so it would be the people that are directly affected that would be making the decision to tax or whatever.

Speaking as a contractor (civilian) that has dealt with the Military (Army and Air Force) this kind of behavior is stupid. As a contractor I always treat officers and enlisted with respect. I usually address the officers politely with yes sir and no sir, and by their rank and last name, at least until asked to do otherwise.

Not only is it respectful, but it is smart. If I treat people with respect then they are usually more helpful than if I act like some contractor jerk-off.

Is anyone else disturbed by those stupid Vagisil commercials? I don't want to see that shit. If they're going to complain and force the revisal and censorship of hilarious condom commercials then they should take off those, "Oh, my ---- is itchy and smells terrible and is secreting disgusting, puss juice. But never fear, Vagisil is here!" commercials.

You should go live in a hole.
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Who, me? I already do. It's called Canada. Well, it's actually kind of flat, but still. :facepalm:

Amazing how many people have yet to figure that out. And probably never will. Yet my 3 year old already has and applies it liberally ever day to get what she wants. :giggle:

The founders created our government as a necessary evil. When the articles of confederation failed they needed a more centralized government, which was only ratified when the bill of rights was authored. We are the only country in history to specifically grant unalienable rights to its people and limit the powers of its government. The government has no granted rights to do what it does today, in fact I'm willing to bet that 99% of the laws it passes are not constitutional as there are not granted these specific powers.

For example, anti-trust laws.

The only true monopoly can only exist by government. Think about that, the only true monopoly can only exist by government. It is impossible for a private company to create a monopoly unless by force, ie. the government. There will always be some new technology, some new technique, some new approach, that will compete. you'll argue, but if they price fix and lower prices so low that they are operating at a loss of profit there's no way to compete, but ill argue that eventually they'll run out of money and the competitor will have no competition. There is a great essay by Alan Greenspan titled "Antitrust" that really doves into this.

The gov't does not act on our behalf when to interfere in such concerns. And no where in the constitution does it say the gov't has to right to interfere.

FDR acted on our behalf during the great depression, he acted as our voice. He decided that the government should be intimately involved in the economy and can act above and beyond the Constitution in order to "serve the public." of course at an expense of someone else. The national debt as a % of the GDP went from 16% in 1929 reaching 130% by 1947 when he left office. The ends justify the means of course.

Everything he did was "for the people" by trampling the Constitution and through use of gimmicks to get people inspired by him and to continue to vote for him even though he was a class A fuck up. He created minimum wage which is biting us in the ass today and gives unfair advantages to unqualified workers and causing a major part of the immigration problem today. Social Security which is creating more and more debt today expanding the precedent for the wealth fare state shifting the US from individualism to collectivism, paving the way for the socialist loyalist leading the country today.

Remeber kids -

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have." - TJ

Very interesting. That's a kickass post, not gonna lie. I may have to take a look at this essay. Kudos.

I dislike governments.

In other words: Gov't is helping themselves to what's yours to help you help others who won't help themselves.

Exactly.

end the fed.

Go read Milton Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom". Then go back and read F.A. Hayek's "The Road to Serfdom". Then subscribe to the mises.org daily blog.

With regard to the concept of monopolies in general, allow me to posit a contrarian view.

Consider, in a historical contact, your local telephone company. For the sake of this discussion, we'll time-warp back to the 1950s, before VOIP and cell phones. And assume, for the sake of argument, that there are no local, state, or federal laws whatsoever that govern telephone companies. It's a completely free-market economy.

We all clear on the rules?

So, here we have a little midwestern town, and the residents think it'd be pretty keen to have phone service. So Company A comes along and says "Ok, we'll lay down the infrastructure, run wiring all over the town, and build a building with a big switch in it, so you all can have phone service."

And they do. They go to the county government and acquire easements. Then they drive wooden poles into the ground, string wire across them, construct a building, install the switch into it, and connect all the wires together. As time passes and the town grows, the company runs more wire, increases the size of the switch, and hooks up more and more subscribers. And it's great, because anybody in the whole town can pick up their phone and call anybody else, and from the customer's point of view, the system just magically works.

At this point, Company A constitutes a de-facto monopoly. Everyone in town who has a telephone is a Company A subscriber.

Now, what if Company B came along and decided that they wanted to offer telephone service in the local market as well? Of course, there's nothing to stop them from going to the county, requesting easements, running wire, building a switch, and so on. Problem is that Company A has already got 100% of the homes and business in town which have telephones wired to their switch. No new users will want to sign on with Company B, since they wouldn't be able to talk to anybody- all the other folks in town are on Company A's system.

Of course, if Company B were able to run some wires over to Company A and interface with Company A's switch, then it would be possible for people using Company B as their service provider to talk with people who are already on Company A, and vise versa. It wouldn't matter who your service provider was. But of course, it's not in Company A's best interest to allow this. Right now, they have a lock on the market, and allowing people to subscribe to Company B and yet still enjoy the benefit of talking to all of Company A's existing infrastructure would hurt their bottom line. So obviously, Company A is going to maintain a closed switch architecture, and Company B won't be able to sign on any subscribers to a system that's not able to talk to the vast majority of existing telephones in the town.

The only way to break this defacto monopoly is by gov't intervention. Unless some regulatory body comes along and forces Company A to allow Company B to interact with it, there will be no competition in this market for telephone services.

Your story fails because (1) you are applying an historical circumstance as if it's a physical law, and (2) you are too narrowly constructing your "market".

What I mean:

(1) Landline telephony was the dominant form of long distance communication for a lengthy period, but part of its dominance is due to the historical circumstances at the time. If a company is pursuing monopoly control, then other companies have an incentive to seek other avenues. Perhaps wireless communication gets developed earlier. It's extremely difficult to imagine the products and services that will exist even 10 years into the future -- and it's equally difficult to post what alternate histories may have developed under different circumstances.

(2) You are thinking of a "telephone" market, but really, the consumer market doesn't have demand for telephones in particular -- it has demand for cheap and efficient long-distance communication, and so even if a company dominates one product for a period of time, competitors still exist.

I re-read your post and had a passing thought on this section -- consider it in terms of the market shift from ICQ --> AOL IM --> MSN --> Google Talk, etc.

Maybe one street or one group of families decides that having cheaper phone bills is more important than having communication to the rest of the town.

This is a good point. And so you open another door of the so-called market. A market within a market.

I think Joe was touching on the issues of how governments hurt successful businesses and give new businesses open doors to the market, and give them a free pass on the legwork that the successful business has already done. That isn't right.

A theory behind government is that government should provide for things that have a public mutual benefit that no individual alone would be able or willing to provide for the public.

As an example: No one is going to go out of their way to build and maintain freeways for everyone else to use them. The costs are just too great, and benefits relatively far too miniscule for any individual or small group to do that. If everyone contributed their fair share, however; the costs become relatively minute compared to the huge cumulative gain that is seen. This is an example of highly effective governing serving an economic purpose. It should be noted that the vast majority of moneys which the government spends on maintaining roadways and creating new ones comes from a tax on highway-use fuel. This is a pay-per-use system, and people are charged a fee to use the roadways which is relative to how much they use those roadways compared to every other person. A business with 10,000 cross-country 18-wheelers is going to pay FAR greater taxes than an individual in a sedan who commutes 10 miles daily. People who don't use the roads won't pay road taxes because they don't buy gas. (Well, they may end up paying taxes to buy fuel for their lawn tractor, but consider how few pennies they would pay per year.) Before the mass market growth of alternative fuel vehicles, the government implementation of taxes in this system was very nearly perfect.

If we consider the telephone example, here is but one of many unique approaches to how the issue could have been resolved.
At the point where a telephone system was considered a benefit to society, relative to the costs, it should fall on the government to create the full infrastructure to support telephone communications. At the time of creations, people who are 'late adopters' will feel that they've been overtaxed for this service because they do not have any intention of using the service immediately, but if we identify that phone service is being requested at an alarmingly high rate, it makes sense for government to step in to create the infrastructure. Companies who have already created their own infrastructure should be rewarded, and refunded the cost that the government would have paid to create a similar government system. The systems would then be linked together permanently. After the infrastructure is complete, government turns over control of the system to civilian companies, who will be required to provide and maintain phone service through the infrastructure. Each company may set its own pricing for phone service to maintain and upkeep phone service, as well as provide any additional 'perks' that it can through the line. If the company wants to add stuff to provide more services (caller id, 3-way, tone dialing) then it may do so at its own expense, so long as the ability to call anyone with a phone is not interrupted. Any customer may select any phone service provider to maintain their communications link, and use of another companies added services requires an agreement signed by both companies. New primary infrastructure (running a grid of lines to a new town) is paid for with government moneys. Secondary infrastructure (linking the grid to a person's home) is paid for by the company (which is likely to charge the individual for this service, but may also sign an agreement with the individual to not switch service providers for 'x' months/years in order to run the line at 'no cost' to the consumer)

Again, I'm sure it's not perfect, but consider it another possible approach to solving the same problem.

To add to this theory, the burden (tax) that the gov't places on the people should scale with how much benefit said consumer gets from using this service. As with the highway example, people that use the freeway more end up paying more tax.

Now consider this theory relative to government handouts. How much of a benefit do the top 2% of income earners seeing for the 90% of all tax monies they contribute for something socialistic such as unemployment or welfare? This is definitely reason to cry 'foul'.

I chose the example of local-service telephony as it is:

a: One that everyone is familiar with, and

b: A story that has completely played out, to the point where we are able to empirically analyze it as a case study, rather than postulating and hypothesizing about what might become.


There are certainly many industries where this logic does not apply. And there are some infrastructure industries (wireless telephony, IP, etc) where the market has steered itself towards a competitive, multi-provider environment. You could, for instance, point out that all wireless telephone carriers are inter-operable. However even this example has a couple of flaws:

A: Using my Sprint phone, I can call somebody on the Verizon network. However, this is because of the aforementioned government-mandated interoperability. All cell phone carriers interface to the common public-switched phone system.

B: Most cell phones sold in the US are "locked" to a single carrier, and until just recently, it was technically a crime to "unlock" one and service it with a different carrier.

In fact, if you want a very recent example, take the iPhone. Apple has gone to some lengths to prevent owners of this device from installing applications onto the phone other than those officially sanctioned by Apple and distributed through their store. In effect, Apple sought to create and maintain a monopoly on software applications for this platform. It was just a few weeks ago that the federal government ruled that DMCA Section 1201 protects the rights of iPhone owners to "jailbreak" the phones in order to install software on them from other sources or service it with a wireless carrier other than AT&T.


Sure, you can argue that eventually Apple might have been de-throned by some other technology, but Apple wasn't alone in this scheme. I think it's safe to say that the community of users as a whole are better off with this rule in place than without it.

I'll point out that in many of the cases you are talking about, the incompatibility of competing systems is the result of intellectual property rights -- which is, as it happens, another case of government fiat encouraging monopolies.

God dammit, fuck ebay clutch kits. Every single part of this kit has failed me. First it was the PP and Disk, and now the bearings are going after about 1k miles.

Jesus fucking christ. Do it right the first time people!

There is only a few clutches that would ever be worth buying.

This thread is really gay now that everyone has a political hardon. Fuck the gov't. I get it.

I drove all day and I'm still in TX, fuck this state is large. Should reach Mississippi fairly quick tomorrow though.

U mad

I mad, I've had to drop the tranny twice because of this fuckin' clutch.

i just fired off an email that will hopefully reach the head of the human reasorces department at hella about the job i applied for. a friend is helping me get my foot in the door before everybody else so i hope that lady like my letter and resume!

I had to pull the entire motor twice (In addition to pulling once for the original rebuild), and drop the tranny seperately three times, because of a shitty builder, for a build that I was planning to conclude April 1 of this year, but instead finally got the drivetrain worked out within the last week, and am still trying to tie together loose ends.

In some cases, yes. In other cases, not at all.

Let's say we go back to the 1950's phone company. There's no IP at stake here. The standards of the phone system are widely published and distributed, and are not held to be in any way proprietary. Company A simply says to Company B "No, we won't allow you to run your wires into our building," and that's that: their monopoly is intact.

(The above is, in fact, completely true. As an example, the information which allowed the early hackers to divine the secrets of the tandem-trunk switch and create the first blue boxes was openly published in the Bell System Technical Journal (Nov, 1954 and Nov 1960), a publication which is available to the general public and was, at the time, subscribed to by many engineering college libraries.)

Of course, this dilemma arises only as a result of physical property rights. I suppose you could argue that if the government didn't enforce physical property rights, then Company B could have sent a team of armed engineers into Company A's Central Office to interconnect the switches at gunpoint. And certainly, automotive manufacturing would be a lot easier if henchpersons from Chrysler were allowed to break into Toyota's manufacturing plants at will and appropriate their tools.

An alternative, I suppose, would be to nationalize ownership of all commercial and industrial property. Oh, but wait- that means that the government itself would be a monopoly.

(Damn you, Vladimir Lenin, and your confusing notions of socioeconomic theory.)

It's really no different in today's world to say that intellectual property rights should be abolished as it is to say that the concept of property ownership in general should be abolished.




Oh, and Bond, shut your gayhole. We're rambling.

When my legs fall asleep. I try to walk on my toes. Makes me feel like an Avatar. ahahaha! Gonna try it tonight, while I'm dranked up.

Im about to light my fucking car on fire :vash:

Do it and i'll fucking murder you.

at least part it out (for free to me) first.

How will it float if it is on fire?

Hahahahaha, this guy is fucking insane:
http://byihypnosis.com/programs/addi...gar/index.html

Yeeeeeeeaaaaaahhh!

My gayhole is open for you JP ;)

Get some.

He says that this proves how "real" a sugar addiction can be, maybe it proves how "fake" a drug addiction can be, I don't know about you but I've never robbed a 7-eleven or some little old lady to fund a Snickers addiction.

This is exactly why I refuse to put my new engine in without a new driveline.

Amtrack Amtrack, whatcha going to do?
Whatcha' going to do when the gov't keeps dumping millions of dollars in your shitty company while monopolizing the businesses and forcing private companies from competing against you by building private rails, so everyone ends up losing in the end with a shitty gov't run train that constantly runs in the red and prevents innovation and improvement so it can continue to employee 19,000 public employees on the taxpayers dime.

^ Bah ha ha. Ah, I'm glad I don't live in the only country where the government fucks everything up.

Amtrack is going to give me a nice ride up to DC tomorrow for the cost that is 1/4th the price of a plane ticket. Thanks for subsidizing my ticket price Brain.

you know you'd rather ride on a private train if given the choice, the trip would be faster AND cheaper.

about that health care....