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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 24, 2011 - 08:39pm PT
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Oh, I will "disparage" a Tea Party event all day long.
And send every one of those suddenly fiscally conscious hypocrites back to their lilly white neighborhoods, so they can come "armed" next time.
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philo
Trad climber
Somewhere halfway over the rainbow
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Oct 24, 2011 - 08:52pm PT
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With all due respect to our veterans, how do we know this guy didn't turn into a drug dealer after his service.
It is a classic neo-con repug method to disparage the messenger when the message can't be.
You're a moron.
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 24, 2011 - 09:03pm PT
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No, the people who work in that corporation create the wealth. That's what workers are: wealth creators.
A corporation is an entity that uses capital such as infrastructure and labor to produce profit. But here is the key: how this capital is utilized IS IMPORTANT. How did all those little wealth creators in the Soviet Union fare?
This is the point that is lost on socialists. Creating wealth is a very complicated task, that requires an effective mechanism: capitalism, in which a natural selection process hones this ability. Central planning doesn't stand a chance.
Let's do a thought experiment: put all the union bosses and government bureaucrats on an island and let's see if they can invent all the modern conveniences we have, i.e., lightbulbs, automobiles, computers, etc.
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dirtbag
climber
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Oct 24, 2011 - 09:05pm PT
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Buncha horsesh#t.
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Gary
climber
From the City That Dreams
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Oct 25, 2011 - 12:10pm PT
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Let's do a thought experiment and put all the capitalists on an island and watch them starve to death waiting for someone else to do the work.
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Mighty Hiker
climber
Vancouver, B.C.
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Oct 25, 2011 - 12:12pm PT
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Getting excited about my counter-protest tomorrow.
What, did some lunch counter refuse service to poor little FatTrad, and now he's going to boycott it? Maybe have a little sit-down strike? Just like the real NAACP lunch counter protests of the 1960s?
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Nohea
Trad climber
Living Outside the Statist Quo
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Oct 25, 2011 - 01:11pm PT
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Aloha Gang! Lets take a closer look at who are the 1%
"The State Is the 1 Percent (edited for brevity)
by Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. on October 24, 2011
The "occupy" protest movement is thriving off the claim that the 99 percent are being exploited by the 1 percent, and there is truth in what they say. But they have the identities of the groups wrong. They imagine that it is the 1 percent of highest wealth holders who are the problem. In fact, that 1 percent includes some of the smartest, most innovative people in the country — the people who invent, market, and distribute material blessings to the whole population. They also own the capital that sustains productivity and growth.
But there is another 1 percent out there, those who do live parasitically off the population and exploit the 99 percent. Moreover, there is a long intellectual tradition, dating back to the late Middle Ages, that draws attention to the strange reality that a tiny minority lives off the productive labor of the overwhelming majority.
I'm speaking of the state, which even today is made up of a tiny sliver of the population but is the direct cause of all the impoverishing wars, inflation, taxes, regimentation, and social conflict. This 1 percent is the direct cause of the violence, the censorship, the unemployment, and vast amounts of poverty, too.
Look at the numbers, rounding from latest data. The US population is 307 million. There are about 20 million government employees at all levels, which makes 6.5 percent. But 6.2 million of these people are public-school teachers, whom I think we can say are not really the ruling elite. That takes us down to 4.4 percent.
We can knock of another half million who work for the post office, and probably the same who work for various service department bureaus. Probably another million do not work in any enforcement arm of the state, and there's also the amazing labor-pool fluff that comes with any government work. Local governments do not cause nationwide problems (usually), and the same might be said of the 50 states. The real problem is at the federal level (8.5 million), from which we can subtract fluff, drones, and service workers.
In the end, we end up with about 3 million people who constitute what is commonly called the state. For short, we can just call these people the 1 percent.
The 1 percent do not generate any wealth of their own. Everything they have they get by taking from others under the cover of law. They live at our expense. Without us, the state as an institution would die.
"They do not comprehend that the real enemy is the institution that brainwashes them to think the way they do."
Here we come to the core of the issue. What is the state and what does it do? There is vast confusion about this issue, insofar as it is talked about at all. For hundreds of years, people have imagined that the state might be an organic institution that develops naturally out of some social contract. Or perhaps the state is our benefactor, because it provides services we could not otherwise provide for ourselves.
In classrooms and in political discussions, there is very little if any honest talk about what the state is and what it does. But in the libertarian tradition, matters are much clearer. From Bastiat to Rothbard, the answer has been before our eyes. The state is the only institution in society that is permitted by law to use aggressive force against person and property.
Same goals, different means, two very different sets of criminals. The state is the institution that essentially redefines criminal wrongdoing to make itself exempt from the law that governs everyone else.
It is the same with every tax, every regulation, every mandate, and every single word of the federal code. It all represents coercion. Even in the area of money and banking, it is the state that created and sustains the Fed and the dollar, because it forcibly limits competition in money and banking, preventing people from making gold or silver money, or innovating in other ways. And in some ways, this is the most dreadful intervention of all, because it allows the state to destroy our money on a whim.
The state is everybody's enemy. Why don't the protesters get this? Because they are victims of propaganda by the state, doled out in public schools, that attempts to blame all human suffering on private parties and free enterprise. They do not comprehend that the real enemy is the institution that brainwashes them to think the way they do.
They are right that society is rife with conflicts, and that the contest is wildly lopsided. It is indeed the 99 percent versus the 1 percent. They're just wrong about the identity of the enemy."
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Oct 25, 2011 - 01:36pm PT
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only in America Lolli...
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Wade Icey
Trad climber
www.alohashirtrescue.com
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Oct 25, 2011 - 01:48pm PT
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The state is the institution that essentially redefines criminal wrongdoing to make itself exempt from the law that governs everyone else.
...the state, which even today is made up of a tiny sliver of the population but is the direct cause of all the impoverishing wars, inflation, taxes, regimentation, and social conflict. This 1 percent is the direct cause of the violence, the censorship, the unemployment, and vast amounts of poverty, too.
The state is the only institution in society that is permitted by law to use aggressive force against person and property.
The state is the institution that essentially redefines criminal wrongdoing to make itself exempt from the law that governs everyone else.
there seems to be some ring of truth...
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 01:55pm PT
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Let's do a thought experiment and put all the capitalists on an island and watch them starve to death waiting for someone else to do the work.
If we put all the labor leaders and all the bureaucrats on one island, and someone like Steve Jobs or Thomas Edison on another, where would you put your money?
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CrackAddict
Trad climber
Canoga Park, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 02:02pm PT
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notice how they evade the real world with their thought experiments?
The "Real World" is littered with the carcasses of dead economic models, all of them centrally planned. Capitalism has it's ups and downs, but it survives, and if Government gets out of the way it is usually stronger for it.
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TomCochrane
Trad climber
Santa Cruz Mountains and Monterey Bay
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Oct 25, 2011 - 02:06pm PT
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 02:23pm PT
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name your economic model which doesnt rest on a public envisionsed
rather than what we have in fact?
I'm not sure I understand what you're challenging us to do. If you're asking us to name an economic model based on reality, I've got plenty of them, but capitalism is the most realistic, because it recognizes that people, and metaphysical entities such as corporations, act in their perceived (as opposed to real) self-interest.
If you're claiming that any model with assumptions must have assumptions that are absolutely correct, then you don't understand models and assumptions.
My econometric models predict future economic outcomes better than the "consensus" forecasts I've seen, but they still predict imperfectly. That's the nature of our current knowledge and, I believe, the limits of trying to model a chaotic system where we have only non-experimental data.
If you want the parameters of any of my models, though, you're out of luck. They're proprietary. I've spent years estimating and refining them, and they don't get disclosed in public because they form a significant part of my livelihood.
John
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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 02:27pm PT
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Gary,
Using your "capitalist island" approach, I'd like to see an island of workers who don't save and invest try to make any modern items, or any significant profit. They may or may not starve, depending on the seasonality of their food supply, but they couldn't even organize themselves without someone taking an entrepreneurial risk.
Simply put, labor is not the only factor of production, nor is it the only wealth creator. Wealth comes from saving and investing. You can create wealth making $30,000 a year, if you can find a way to spend less than you make. You can fail to create wealth making $300,000 a year if you spend everything you make.
John
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Reilly
Mountain climber
The Other Monrovia- CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 02:30pm PT
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Now that Cristina has been re-elected in Argentina you will see again how
idiots trying to control their economy will fail miserably. I give them two
years, three at the outside.
Argentina is a great example of how you can destroy a country by re-distributing
wealth. In their case they manage to actually make it disappear as the
re-distribution goes up in the smoke of inflation.
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Norton
Social climber
the Wastelands
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Oct 25, 2011 - 03:04pm PT
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Be careful conservatives, you are increasingly on the wrong side of this thing.
Public opinion is overwhelmingly supportive of the protestors AND their "position"
By denigrating this protest, you are only painting yourselves even more vividly as "anti middle class" and putting yourselves and your Republican party on the wrong side of "class warfare"
The Right Wing's clear opposition to OWS could very well hurt them in tbe upcoming elections.
Let's hope so, so they can go back to concentrating on denying evolution and defunding Planned Parenthood, their really big issues.
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bluering
Trad climber
Santa Clara, CA
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Oct 25, 2011 - 03:14pm PT
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so these 8 cops
occupied a couple booths at dennys
spent an hour bragging about beating on unarmed civilians
and drinking
minutes later,
a mob appeared and beat the living sh#t out of these scumbag cop
two hours later
aint a witness to be found
aside from the f*#king badge with the black eye
You're a troubled soul...it must suck to be you.
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