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prosperity

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Posts posted by prosperity

  1. Now if you've ever read the TOS for a CC, basically when you sign the application you give them permission to **** you over any way they like. Rate changes, due date changes, limit changes, etc., all at their discretion.

    There is no conflict. If you read their contract and it says that they can do whatever they want, then that is something you sort out BEFORE you sign on the dotted line. The fact that you want something doesn't mean that you are entitled to it. This is essentially saying that you deserve $xx.xx amount of credit regardless of your contract, credit, or internal practices of the business.

    A lot of people would laugh at this, but the credit card companies are becoming slaves of the cardholders.

  2. If the Government published a list of those who paid the voluntary taxes (an appropriate action, IMO, since the moochers are getting something for nothing), then those who pay taxes could also help control the problem by choosing not to do business with those who do not choose to support their own freedom.

    Is there a way to make a sticky out of this topic? It seems to come up a lot. :dough:

  3. Sorry to chime in so late on this thread but here you go:

    but our molecular biologist friend above, is vague and not quite accurate in his explanations.

    If you're interested in genetic predisposition, i would be happy to explain further, if you want.

    Sure. Go for it. <_<

  4. I do not think these people are doing anything beneficial. Their goal is not to create websites that are useful for human beings, but that are just plausible enough to fool search engines into thinking that they are useful. Most of their content is not meant to be read by human beings, but only to raise the rank of the target site above that of legitimate websites with original content. Once a person clicks on their website, their only goal is to get you to leave it by clicking on an ad.

    To see how they pollute the web, try searching for a popular term. Can you tell which websites contain original information and which are adsense sites?

    http://www.google.com/search?q=acai+berry

    You really have to be careful about these broad assertions. This can be true, but if there was no market for it, it wouldn't exist. There is a value there and the value is that, if done properly, people click on these ads to go to find things that they really need and or want. Google is not an idiot. They track conversions and will adjust your earnings if you start sending advertisers crap traffic.

    It's really ingenious I think as a self-regulating mechanism. The advertiser wins (obviously), the customer wins, because he finds what he is looking for (proved by the conversion) and the publisher wins by revenue share with google.

    By the way, google is pretty decent at sorting out irrelevant info from relevant info. They are pretty good at punishing spam blogs and sites. So, while the content may not be exactly the best or most interesting on some of these sites, it does connect people to the products they are looking for. Some of these advertisers either don't know how to do SEO or aren't interested in it. Even the spammers only last a short while until they get slapped by google.

    Now, a really good example of how this is done correctly I think is askthebuilder.com I am attempting to do something similar with my blog. His model is simple. Provide useful information for free, and then provide the google adwords on his site to provide the tools they'll need for the projects he describes. When done properly, it rakes in a lot of money.

  5. My response would be, "Yes, actually, I do want to legalize narcotics too." There are plenty of deadly products on the market already which are only deadly if used improperly. Should they be banned? As for alcohol and narcotics, one man's poison is another's savior. Narcotics will be of immense value to someone dealing with a terrible illness for example.

    Relying on people to "follow the money" means that by & large, people will find they make money by offering good quality products.

    Hmmm, I think the argument was lost in the specifics. The anti-deregulation argument I hear uses that as an example. But the argument is actually that businesses would sell deadly products and "get away with it" because there were no immediate consequences. The examples that exist are (allegedly) alcohol and cigs.

    Of course, my response has always been take responsibility for yourself. Depending on the argument, you could make a case for consumer reports type associations that rate companies/products. Some people find that unconvincing though. I was wondering if there was a better argument I hadn't thought of.

  6. If there is a "Revolution", per se, I don't think it is going to start as a producers' strike a la Atlas Shrugged. Instead, I believe it will start with the more common conservative; the base silent majority, including the religious right, and even the not-so-religious right.

    I don't know where many of the members of this forum live, but those of you who live in and around the Ohio Valley/Appalachian Area...Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana, Tennessee, West Virginia, Etc...know of our unique breed of "redneck." I would call them "rednecks," because any urbanite, northerner or west-coaster would probably call them such at first glance.

    Business executives, business owners, doctors, pharmacists, scientists, engineers can all be seen driving big Ford turbo-diesel trucks with "NOBAMA" and "Where's MY bailout?" stickers on the back. Many might own or live on farms, board horses or graze cattle. Our culture is very rural. Most of the more successful who work in big cities like Louisville commute from either suburbs, or more rural towns that can be less than 20 miles away from downtown big-city.

    My barber is one of those. He owns a successful barber shop in the south-central part of Louisville. His barber shop is atypical, compared to most of the stylists and salons you'll find in the city. His shop is decorated classically; spinning barber pole on the outside, mounted heads of the spoils of his many hunting trips on the inside. He teaches a CCDW class about once a month in the shop, the class one is required to complete before obtaining a license to carry a concealed deadly weapon in the state of Kentucky. At the beginning of the class I took, he first mentioned how frustrated he is with the idea that private citizens are required to obtain a license from the government to carry a deadly weapon.

    The slogan of his barber shop is, "The safest barber shop in town!" It can be found on the front of camouflage baseball caps for sale, underneath the name of the shop, and the silhouette of a pistol. Signs are posted on the front window with the text, "NOTICE: EMPLOYEES AND PATRONS MAY BE ARMED." The signs don't lie.

    He owns a small arsenal. Like many here, when Obama was elected, he stocked up. I personally witnessed how the shelves of local gun-stores were emptied of first assault rifles, then hunting rifles, and finally pistols and ammunition within the first month after the election. Six AK-47 variants (Yugoslavian, Czech, some Russian) comprised his most recent purchase, as well as several thousand rounds of ammunition. When I asked him why he felt it necessary to have such a large arsenal, (I already knew the answer) he noted that the constitution, the bill of rights, and especially the second amendment, were designed to protect private citizens from an out-of-control government. Our style of government was formed so brilliantly, with checks and balances on government power extending to the people. If the bicameral form of legislature is designed to create checks and balances within Congress, the private citizens' "checks and balances" on both rest in our constitutional rights, including our right to keep and bear arms.

    "The ultimate power is the power to kill; it is the simplest and most efficient way to win any argument. Should this power, at some point, rest only in the hands of Government...we will truly be f*cked."

    The news was on during our conversation, news about the bailouts, mention of socialism, etc. We were both tsk tsking and shaking our heads. As began to leave, I sighed and said, "What can ya do?" With as serious as a demeanor as I've ever seen, he said, "I'll tell ya 'what can ya do.' It's high time for a good ol' fashioned revolution. I'm sick and tired of all this bullshit and I know I'm not the only one."

    Now this isn't some whiskey-drunk hillbilly sitting on a rusty oil-barrel in his backyard. This is a successful small-business owner. There are many like him here. LOTS. Doctors, engineers, lawyers, business execs, farmers...even police officers and members of the military. You might not know it, or believe it, because they keep to themselves. They work, they go home, spend time with their families, sleep, work. They don't have time to walk in the streets, beating drums and holding hastily-made signs.

    So there's lots of them, and they're fed up. I think they'll be the first one's to stage any kind of revolt, or revolution, as it were; the level of organization of which is debatable. One good thing about living in the rural sprawl is that there's a lot of space for you to do whatever you want and go unnoticed. For all I know, there could be a large militia training not more than two miles from my home in the deep woods.

    For that reason, I think it would be hard for anyone to really know if all this is just flighty theory until it really happens.

    One thing I do know is that, if all this were truly the case, they wouldn't fire the proverbial "first shot." They would wait for the first shot, then return fire with a level of "shock and awe" that would make the invasion of Iraq look like a bunch of kids playing with fifty-cent fireworks.

    I wonder if Obama regrets saying that stuff about Americans and their guns? Actually, he's probably forgotten it by now.

  7. In 1933, President Franklin Roosevelt signed the Gold Confiscation Act, which made it illegal for Americans to own legal tender gold. In the early 1970's, during President Richard Nixon's presidency, the right to own gold was restored. However, it was not until 1986, when President Ronald Reagan authorized the Gold American Eagle program that the Federal Government once again began minting non-commemorative legal tender gold coins for private ownership.

    I personally don't think it's wise to cash in your 401(k) and convert it into precious metals. On the other hand, investment advisors have often advised having some percentage (perhaps 5-10%) of your net worth in PMs as part of prudent diversification. It may be reasonable to have an even larger percentage in the form of PMs, depending on how pessimistic vs. optimistic one is about the long-term future of the American economy.

    What baffles me was he was so blatant about it. "Gold Confiscation Act". I mean, how do you make it illegal to own property???????

    As for the 401ks, they're not safe either. Remember these are trust accounts held for the benefit of you and your beneficiaries. They can very easily change the rules on those again. Who knows. We may end up with the accumulation penalty again - or some entirely new and creative rule or penalty - to try to recoup funds for paying for any number of debts "we" are racking up.

  8. I think it is reasonable to ask whether or not the system that is proposed to replace the current one is self-sustaining or not. If it collapses in on itself (high unemployment, economic gridlock, low consumer confidence, etc) then most people would say it hasn't "worked". So you have to make the case to people that their lives will be better under Capitalism rather than a mixed economy.

    Perhaps it would be better to explain why, when arguing for pro-Capitalist principles, the median income in the USA has gone slightly down during the last 8 years, a time with relatively less government oversight of the economy than the previous 8 years with higher taxes and more government oversight. Because people look at this and say, You know, this is why I should support government involvement in regulating the economy.

    Why do you think it's reasonable? Can anyone promise that the current system of Government owned anything will "work" in the sense you presented? No. The Government can talk a good game, but Government institutions have failed in the past and they are failing now - terribly. Immediate success or failure isn't the deciding factor of moral issues.

    Trying to explain that privatization works - and that is the reason we should work towards a capitalistic system - is just defending Capitalism on the grounds of utilitarianism. But then what do you do when you run up against someone who doesn't care about practicality, like Obama? You don't have a moral justification for it under a utilitarian defense. In fact, you end up defending it with an argument of depravity, which is the same argument the liberals use for Socialism.

  9. "Hitting them until they learn" is not sufficient--and not necessary, either. People already know that they hate being hit. What they don't know is that they don't deserve being hit--that the moral kudos goes to them, the "sinners," not to those meting out their penitence.

    This sounds like the psychology of a woman who get beaten by her husband and continues to stay with him. She doesn't like being hit, but she doesn't know that she doesn't deserve to be hit, so she stays and/or doesn't defend herself.

  10. I don't mean the producers would revolt. And I agree "giving up" is not appropriate. What I'm really wondering is when the producers will do what the individuals in the article are doing: withdraw their support of a failed state. How much more can they take? What will be the straw to break the camel's back? It's different for each of them, I'm sure, but I wonder what would cause a mass exodus?

    Effective tax rates have been much, much higher in the past, even as recently as the 70s, yet I think this was (given America's prominence in the world market) more endurable than it would be today. Would it take a 70% tax rate? 80%? 90? Would it take another alphabet soup of government programs and regulations?

    The revolution wouldn't be started by the producers - it would be started by the parasites who wake up one day to discover their hosts have gone. I'm no Cassandra, but the parallels between today and AS are eerie.

    I agree with Capitalism Forever...things will change - and I think they will change quickly - when genuine producers realize their own self-worth, stop feeling guilty for their earned values and realize that they are the ones with all of the legit power. Remember, the evil needs the good, not the other way 'round. Not that Govenrment is inherently evil...I hope you get my drift.

  11. "The world has NEVER experienced laissez-faire capitalism." The real answer is that it is based on principle, whether it actually works or not isn't important. I have issues with a philosophy that has no demonstrated track record unless of course you accept the previous proposition.

    Since Capitalism is a system where all property is privately owned (competition is a side effect, not an essential - most social-political systems have competition within the system), I'm not sure how or why you would bring up the issue of whether it "works". If you turn all property into private hands, then you are strengthening property rights to its full. If you make roads privately owned for example, then you have made roads privately owned. It "works", which means you have done it. Once you sell off the Government's interest in all of the roadways systems, it has "worked".

    Are you saying that there would be a problem making all property privately owned (thus it wouldn't "work")? Or are you suggesting there is an "is/ought" problem with private ownership?

  12. Interesting thread. I'd like to present some opposition, not from me, but common objections that have been presented to me by family members, friends, and acquaintances in support of regulation in these areas. I haven't been able to give what I think is a good counter to their arguments because they are giving concrete examples of issues which do exist or could exist based on issues that do exist, but there may be some history that I am not familiar with as to why these issues exist.

    Also, a lot of people stop buying a product when news of contamination is reported. Once the FDA assures people the product is safe again, purchasing resumes. In a free market, companies would not have the fallback of the FDA and would thus have a motive to maintain quality standards, and respond quickly and publicly to any quality issues.

    Pro-Regulation counter-argument: (this usually comes up after explaining that the FDA and drug companies collude) Supposing what you say about drug companies working with the FDA to alter or suppress information to protect drug companies from competition, allow them to turn out inferior products, etc. Suppose there is no FDA and they just do the same thing, except they turn to the media and other outlets of information to "buy them off", then what? Now that you don't have a regulatory agency, how do you protect people if the news media is bought and paid for?

    This one is a little "out there" but I've heard people say variations of it. The presumption is that - again - even if Government is corrupt, their brand of corruption is better than free-market corruption. I thin kit goes back to the idea that the free-market is inherently corrupt, which is why they trust Big Government over free-enterprise. Ideas?

    Your imaginary opponents keep arguing that business owners are only out for themselves and will do whatever they can to make a buck, but who are they going to make money from if all their customers keep dying? What motive would a businessman have to provide a lower quality product than its customers could afford? In fact if he did that he would soon lose out to a competitor. If his customers can't afford a better product then how could he afford to provide it to them?

    Pro-Regulation counter-argument: We already have this scenario where businessmen do sell products that kill people. Cigarettes, Alcohol, and what is that? You want to legalize narcotics too? Man, that's crazy. Do we need more businesses selling deadly products? Additionally, pharmaceutical companies make more money selling a drug that treats symptoms rather than selling drugs that solve the problem. Some of them have nasty side effects but it's all about the $$$. Capitalism is evil.

    My response: :blush:

    People just need to take more responsibility for themselves (businesses included). That should solve any perceived problem of inferior products, but at this point the collective attitude is running wild in the other person and they are not convinced that personal responsibility is "enough" because "we're only human". Now we're on a religious argument about "the depravity of man".

    Thoughts? Ideas?

  13. Here's a video of me speaking at the NYC Tea Party protest:

    I need to work on that shifty feet syndrome, but other than that I was pleased.

    There are a bunch of pictures, too, which I'll post to my blog when I get the chance. Here's the transcript of my speech:

    --Dan Edge

    2/27/09

    Speech for the New York Tea Party

    Like many of you, I was inspired by Rick Santelli’s comments on CNBC on February 19th, and even more inspired by the fact that so many people across the country have answered the call to rise up and protest the direction this country is going. Mr. Santelli said that Cuba “traded the individual for the collective.” On a deeper level, this means that they rejected a philosophy of individualism in favor of a philosophy of collectivism.

    Our Founding Fathers formed this country on the basis of a new, revolutionary idea that the individual’s moral right to his own life, liberty, and property is absolute, inalienable, and that these rights must not be violated by anyone including – and especially – the government. Mr. Obama, his administration, and most members of Congress, embrace the opposite view of the Founding Fathers. Sure, they will allow us to keep some of our freedoms and some of our property – until they decide that it benefits the collective to restrict our freedom and confiscate our property. Make no mistake: re-distribution of wealth; government-caused inflation that devalues the currency, destroying your life-savings; outright nationalization – all of these things are a violation of our individual rights, a violation committed by our own government.

    I think that calling this event a Tea Party is very appropriate. The original Boston Tea Party marked the beginning of a revolution against a statist government. What we need now is a revolution – a revolution of ideas. We have to fight for the moral principle this government was founded on, the principle that made the United States the freest, most prosperous nation in history: that the rights to life, liberty, and property belong to the individual, not the collective, and when the government subordinates those rights to the group, that is what you call tyranny.

    We’re here to tell you, Comrade President, that you’re not dragging this country towards socialism without a fight. Stop treading on me, Mr. President, because we, the people, the individuals of America, will not stand for it any longer. To hell with all your socialist (I mean “stimulus”) plans, to hell with Big Brother, and to hell with the collective!

    Thank you.

    --Dan Edge

    Great speech! That was awesome.

  14. I have been thinking about how to make my writing more effective.

    One of my ideas is to optimize cognitive load. By cognitive load, I mean the effort it takes to understand the ideas I want to convey. I want to maximize the informational density of my writing, but not so much that my reader cannot process it at a normal pace of reading.

    Here are some things that might affect cognitive load:

    • Word length. Longer words take longer to identify, so I can improve my writing by using smaller words.
    • Ditto for sentence size and paragraph length.
    • Analogies and figures of speech require an unnecessary cross-reference, so they are also out.

    I’ve also thought of some things that introduce distracting influences:

    • “Cue words” are abstract concepts that can trigger emotional responses and block rational analysis. For example, Obama’s latest speech contained “democracy”, “faith”, “reform”, “challenges”, “destiny”. (It’s OK to use these words when they are really necessary and placed in an unambiguous context.)
    • Group affiliations are another kind of trigger word – when a reader identifies the author as belonging to either his or an adverse group, it triggers a distracting emotional response.

    What do you think?

    (Many of my ideas come from George Orwell.)

    Do you want your writing to get read? If so, and this may sound odd, but hang out in the grocery store reading the National Enquirer. I would also study good advertising copywriters. People who make their living by getting people to read and respond to their writing - people like Dan Kennedy, as well as the late Gary Halbert, David Ogilvy, and Claude Hopkins.

    I'm not sure you want to eliminate emotion altogether. You may get caught up in a reason/emotion dichotomy and lose your reader's interest. I think for the most part, there are a lot of folks who like to feel connected to what they are reading - otherwise...why are they reading it? My educated guess is that it has something to do with the writer making the reader feel psychologically visible while the writer still conveys their ideas (which can be rational or irrational).

  15. Into what?

    Either the world exists apart from and prior to what we think or it does not.

    Either reason is the only proper tool of knowledge or it is not.

    Either egoism is the proper ethics or it is not.

    Either individual rights (taken as a unit) is the proper politics or it is not.

    Either Romantic Realism is the proper aesthetics or it is not.

    These two positions are exhaustive of the choices (anything else is an unstable and unsatisfactory attempt to mix the two) and the categories are exhaustive of the purview of philosophy. There's nowhere else to go. So how could it evolve if there is no place to evolve to? Is 1+1=2 still evolving to say 1+1=3 or 1+1=1.4>2>2.9? Some things do reach a final form. Some life forms have been as they are for 100,000,000 years with only non-supstantive changes. There may come some hew validations of things but they will not change anything major or definitive of the philosophical system that is OPAR. In fact they will use them.

    Also it's a closed system, sufficient as a philosophical system unto itself

    The fact is that it marks the last stage of evolution of reality-based philosphy, which start is associated with Aristotle so it's been in the making for 2300 years.

    I think you may see individuals attempting to expand on issues that Rand did not have time to do, or did not do for other reasons. Like her epistemology, for example. She only got as far as "an introduction".

  16. If by man-made you mean "created, altered, or controlled by man" then sure. Otherwise, we couldn't make property of land. We don't create the land usually, we simply alter and control it. So it depends on what other things you include under the umbrella of 'man-made'.

    I think it depends on what you are doing with the land that determines whether you own it or not. If you are just passing through, then no. If you are working the land, and no one else has previously made a claim to working the land, then I think you end up with ownership of the land because you've made it into something useful to yourself by applying reason to the problem of your survival needs or wants.

    Does that fall within the "alter and control" you are talking about?

  17. I doubt that a "multiplier" exists in the long run. The fact is that higher taxes and/or inflation are the end result of deficit spending. Of course both of these curtail economic growth.

    I agree. I don't think it exists either. It doesn't even really exist in the short run. it's just a variation on the broken window fallacy.

    We have so much more to endure, I think. I've often thought about which direction the U.S. should go...

    ...what I mean is...I'm wondering how strong America's resolve is. Do the people of this country have a strong enough sense of individualism and selfishness to swing this nation the other way if or when it continues to get worse?

    Let's suppose that Obama's administration signs another bill that spends $4-$6 trillion during his first term. Then his administration signs the child's rights treaty, and then on top of that let's assume that his administration saps the strength of the rich so badly that - in combination with with the health care reforms in the stimulus bill - these rich people start "cue jumping" or buying their way to the front of the line for the best services, similar to how it is done in Cuba.

    The middle class become outraged at this and the rich get another round of tax increases which pummel them into oblivion, innovation halts, new drugs stop being invented and tested and people start dying as a direct result...or Obama has to start raising taxes on middle class Americans - effectively lying to them - to fulfill his agenda, meet his budget demands, and of course satisfy his lust for power.

    The particulars are guesses in some cases...but if things were to get much much worse than they are now...would that be enough for American's come the next election where they will demand capitalism and a dramatic reduction in the size and scope of Government intervention into the economy? Or do you think that it's dangerous to juggle such sharp knives? Is a slow decay and a possible slow recovery, or a quick decline followed by a rapid change in direction better?

  18. Children have rights?

    http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/02/25...y-erode-rights/

    The details of the treaty:

    http://www.parentalrights.org/index.asp?Ty...7-08789FBE3C0A}

    ...so, basically, if you have a child and you tell him to go mow the lawn, the Government can step in and say "wait a minute, this is violating his right to leisure, he/she doesn't have to mow the lawn"????

  19. It is not precise to say that knowledge of goblins is not possible. Rather there is no evidence to suggest that goblins exist.

    I think this was discussed in OPAR. If I remember correctly, it largely depended on how it was asserted. If the arbitrary is being asserted, then knowledge of that arbitrary idea is not possible. It's neither true nor false. Cognitively, there is no way to analyze such a "concept". I think the concept of "god" was taken to be arbitrary, because one just starts out imagining some arbitrary being, claiming they exist. I think that applied to goblins also but could be mistaken. Seems that it is an arbitrary assertion.

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