Yeah because we really tried to fight that war on poverty didn't we. Also it's been conclusively proven that TREATMENT helps drug addicts and not prison. So we should spend some of the enormous amount of money that we spend on prisons on treatment instead. That's the smart and moral thing to do.

I would totally go see the CGI "Elder Scrolls Online: The Movie" in theaters.

I will NOT be buying ESO: Online the game. The first time I have not bought an Elder Scrolls game. I don't know where Bethesda got it in their heads that people wanted a TES MMO. The whole idea of playing Elder Scrolls in groups just puts me off.

Plus, no way in hell I'm paying $15/mo subscription, or submitting to any other monetizing scheme.

What really burns me is that they're wasting all this dev time on the project. Not only am I waiting a whole extra dev cycle for my next TES game...but the amount of money they're investing is staggering. What if this brings down the franchise? It's a bone headed move.

"As I see it, there is a finite amount of money"

This is only true if cryptocurrencies like BitCoin have their way. According to the Fed, by contrast, an infinite amount of money is but just one click away...

Cronyism aside, this is not true at all:
"When one minimally productive person gets 50% of the capital in a project, it's impossible for anyone else to be compensated fairly."

No minimally productive person would get 50% in a free market. And "minimally productive" according to whom? Are you going by the Labor Theory of value? Because the Subjective Theory of Value posits otherwise. It shows that this could not happen (providing an absence of cronyism which, at the moment, is baked into the system). In other words, no one would voluntarily pay 50% of anything to someone they consider to be minimally productive. Would you?

Money is just a medium of exchange whose value is determined by the market. There are some scarce resources (as well as some non-scarce ones). Having limited money/medium of exchange makes prices go down. Wouldn't you want to pay less for gas, food, etc.? When the central banks inflate the currency (i.e., increase the money supply), there is potentially "unlimited" money to buy scarce goods. The market then makes prices rise as a result, making people effectively poorer.

"To say "much of the world is coming out of poverty" ignores reality. Perhaps the ruling class of much of the world is coming out of poverty"

Flat wrong: Look at the statistics. Millions in India, China, Southeast Asia, and other places throughout the world have come out of poverty in the last couple of decades. This is a fact.

The ruling class is never among the poor so I don't know what you mean by, "perhaps the ruling class of much of the world is coming out of poverty." What?

"This is usually not in spite of governments, but rather because of them."

Sure, it is mostly because of governments that such poverty takes so long to be eradicated. Corruption and stupid ideas like the "war on poverty," along with cronyism, currency inflation, commercial regulations, taxes, "intellectual property" laws, and more all contribute to this stupidity which keeps people poor. Throughout the history of civilization, only innovation and free commerce has brought people out of poverty on a larger scale.

I won't argue, however, against the idea that governments are always corrupt, since I completely agree. Nothing good comes out of government that could not come to us, more efficiently, more cheaply, and more effectively from private free commerce.

"Praxeology only shows what human behavior is like"

More or less, it shows the logic and the logical consequences of the fact that humans act.

"it is not an accurate predictor of behavior in an environmental hypothesis."

It depends on what you mean to predict. It is not prediction. It deals in apodictic certainties. Humans act and employ chosen means to achieve desired goals. These are certainties, not predictions. Other things are unknowns, like time preference, the means chosen, the goals desired, etc. and those you need to either predict (thymology) or wait and see (history).

"History is better, and when wealth inequality becomes so outrageous that the populace can't survive on what's left for them, they revolt."

So far yes, history would indicate this is a likely outcome or consequence, although you may need to look more closely at which sector of "the populace" has historically revolted or instigated revolt.

"I hope that this asshat (even if he's just pretending to be an asshat) is among the first ones hung, quartered, and force fed to his own family (like they did in France)"

What has he done to deserve being tortured and murdered? I am unclear about that. The revolution in France, of course, was a disaster that amounted to little good for all involved. But things like that have happened before, and could certainly happen again. Same with the Russian Revolution. Or the Nazi takeover of bankrupt Weimar Republic.

Human behavior cannot be predicted mathematically. Only econometricians seem to think so. Certainly not praxeologists! In fact, that's the basis of Misean praxeology: that you cannot predict human behavior and so economics differs from the natural sciences and requires a different method of analysis.

"that placates the Right Wing, right?"

I have no idea what would "placate the Right wing" or not. Let's not conflate right-wing statists with anarchists. Two completely different things. I also don't care what would "placate" the right wing.


If you really care about inequality, do what you can to oppose government policy, especially warmongering and central banking. They are the biggest contributors to the class divide, regardless of how you parse the data. (Of course, you may find that you can do very little.)

If you think you should be paid as much as the CEO of Apple, then by all means you should try applying to that job. I am not saying you are not worth it, but it's not me you have to convince...

It's funny you feel they are different things. As I see it, there is a finite amount of money, if one small group gets an unfair share (inequality) then the other groups MUST also get an unfair share. Equality (or to you, anti-inequality) means being paid in accordance with your production / productivity. When one minimally productive person gets 50% of the capital in a project, it's impossible for anyone else to be compensated fairly.
To say "much of the world is coming out of poverty" ignores reality. Perhaps the ruling class of much of the world is coming out of poverty, but at the expense of the populace of MOST of the world which is falling deeper into it. This is usually not in spite of governments, but rather because of them. They have, in most part, become a heavy hand of the business world, bought and paid for with hundreds of millions in bribes (contributions) around the world. They then write laws, regulations, programs, and create loopholes that can only be advantageous to the rich and powerful while reducing the programs designed to fight poverty and force the payment of living wages.
Praxeology only shows what human behavior is like, it is not an accurate predictor of behavior in an environmental hypothesis. History is better, and when wealth inequality becomes so outrageous that the populace can't survive on what's left for them, they revolt. I hope that this asshat (even if he's just pretending to be an asshat) is among the first ones hung, quartered, and force fed to his own family (like they did in France) along with a large percentage of the unapologetic 1%, then the people can redistribute their wealth without government intervention, that placates the Right Wing, right?
FYI: Thymology is not a word in the dictionary...at least not yet. Praxeology is the study of human behavior. It is not yet at a point where it's an accurate predictor. Sorry, but I don't see a "Foundation" story starting here. (sifi where human behavior CAN be accurately predicted mathematically)

I remember reading a long time ago about just how hot the coffee was and why they kept it that hot So I knew for a long time that it wasn't a case of some unscrupulous woman looking for a quick buck along with some ambulance chaser lawyers.

So even though it was *not* a frivolous lawsuit, even the reduced amount of money she actually got seems excessive. I wish we lived in a world where simply paying the medical bills and maybe a little bit extra for the trouble for recompense was adequate

But then when think about it in the context of a big corporation. How do you induce a large company to change? unless you hit them where it hurts, the pocket book. You have to admit that McDonalds initial offer of a few hundred bucks was essentially them flipping the bird to her. Had they just paid the medical bills and a little bit extra and lowered the temp of the coffee, This would never have entered the public sphere.

Maybe if we lived in a world where people weren't so obsessed about profits and the bottom line, we wouldn't have a situation like this.

I've spent obscene amounts of money on this game.


OBSCENE!!

*quality

What tipping has become in the US and Canada is bullshit. Because the goddamn employer has no legal need to pay their employees a decent wage, the customer has to completely subsidise their wage. So if you get a lot of bad tippers, you might not get enough money to pay the rent. What a fantastic system.
When did tipping become compulsory? When did you lot just lie down and accept that you're being raped?

The minimum wage laws in Australia, while not the greatest amount of money are a shite sight better than US/Canada, where tipping isn't required to be able to live.
Although who knows what Tony Abbott and his goons'll do to it

Which leads me to the drum I've always beat on the issue of heath and happiness in the land of Planet Chaos: The success of the health care anomaly in the U.S. is predicated on a chaotic decline in the overall health of the general population, that's how that machine makes ungodly amounts of money, as a partner-in-crime with insurance (mafiosi-style protection) companies and medical professionals (dealers/cleaners/fixers/hit-men) who, partnered with successful criminals like advertising execs and processed-foods concerns, insure for future generations a steady dose of being continually ill and feeling like they are about to die. Combine these psychotics with keeping peeps too distracted with $(illusion)$ and work to think clearly and the bulk of a country's population addicted to misdirection, newsspeak, and intentional reinforcement of intent and "responsibility" to the programming-arm (television, internet, regulated and controlled media ) of the above-described machine, and you have a bunch of robots thinking that they are about to die who are easily herded into the cattle truck of indentured-for-life, wage-slavery.

The best health care system is one where the majority of the population of a country is relatively healthy up and until the moment of cascading failures associated with time.

The system we have now or any fix, will only work to the benefit of all with a nation of fit people, not fat, lazy, ignorant globs of flesh who are incapacitated through the negative reinforcement described above, and the perpetrators of the same, eliminated....Or, put these criminals in a box or prison or otherwise not allowed to work their evil.

In other words, the United States health care system has been designed to implode upon itself with the criminals who built it, fleeing to their fortified compounds to be protected by dutiful armies and local constabularies, otherwise known as PAID BODY GAURDS.

You have to look at how much individuals pay for healthcare, all hidden costs included, proportional to the amount of money they earn and get to keep.

The US government pays a lot for healthcare. When you work for a major university (as I have you), you became acquainted with how much funding their university hospital gets for research from the government. And in countries like Canada, where you can't even find a doctor and have to wait months to see one, of course the spending will be less as they have fewer medical providers and fewer variety of services. But your point is well taken. The US government does spend more "tax" dollars per capita than many of these other socialist healthcare utopias.

I agree with this from the article you posted:

"So what’s the moral of the story? Simple, notwithstanding the shallow rhetoric that dominates much of the debate, the United States does not have anything close to a free-market healthcare system."

Because we have just a partially socialized system, we have only a partial healthcare clusterfuck. But it can get much worse. Ask my colleague why he came to the US for cancer treatment (like Canadian politicians and the rich do) and didn't stay in Canada.

The US government has more money than other governments, so it can spend more. But I was referring to how much individuals pay, not how much a government pays. So, I'm not entirely sure I understand your question fully since I don't equate "Americans" to the US government. Not one and the same.

And look at what's included under "healthcare" costs. Is paying the overpaid humongous US "healthcare" bureaucracy a "healthcare" cost? What about Congressional medical insurance? Or military hospitals?
It's really hard to know, given the lack of economic calculation involved in government spending.

But you can see both sides use the same "US spends more per capita" to come to opposite conclusions. One says, it spends more but because it is not more socialist, it sucks more (not true, though). The other says, it spends more, so it means it is too socialist compared to other countries.

See if you can find data on where exactly the money is spent and the breakdown, more specifically than "healthcare."

how do you even practice for this type of shit?! the amount of money you have to spend to buy blocks or the amount of time to find them lying around...

Back when I was in High School (not all that long ago, mid 90s), I had a somewhat low opinion of some of my History/Government/Social Studies type classes. A lot of that was because they were *all* hired as teacher/coach combos. I felt like they had a tendency to phone in the teaching bit because what they were really there to do was the coaching. I still think there is a big mismatch between the amount of money and energy spent on sports programs versus academics in public schools.

However, as much as I scoffed at those teachers at the time, looking back they did some of the things this kid is suggesting quite well. They talked with us, discussed and debated issues that came up for whole class periods, trying to get opinions from everyone. They got me/us thinking about things. One of them gave us a project to watch a Hollywood movie about some historical event of our choice and then write and present a report about what facts they got right or wrong. Looking back, I'd have to say that it could have been a heck of a lot worse if they were just expected to teach to some arbitrary standardized test, and their jobs or at least salary depended on yearly improvement in test scores.

So, I think that @Yogi is right and that is probably more of an institutional failing than a bad teacher, although we don't really have any evidence one way or the other from the videos. In spite of thinking that his anger is perhaps directed a bit off of the most important target, he definitely comes across as more reasonable in this interview (which makes sense, he's had time to cool down and consider things more fully). Hope the school doesn't come down on him too hard, if at all.

Rather, agenda-oriented assholes attempting to fast-track any legislation which gives them more power and control of every aspect of a human's life. We have a President who's an obvious shill working according to his principles-(I.E. principle agents)

Hope Rand wins his party's nom. If he runs....Don't expect him to be treated with any more respect or air-time than his retired father, though....

What you may expect though, is another charade disguised as an election, and another piece of human garbage spending record amounts of money to brainwash a willing, retarded, and developmentally-disabled generation of so-called voters.

Hicks' bit is funny, but it's also complete horseshit. If I can work a shit job for a few hours to make enough money to allow me to take any one of a number of other jobs that I'll love for weeks/months/years, it's not a question at all.

If anything, that's how you know you are on the global artistic roll call. Work hard, occasionally doing shit you hate for obscene amounts of money. I wonder if Bill had ever had a dump truck full of cash driven to his door if he'd have felt differently.

These are the guys that should be getting paid the bulk amount of money.

Yep, these guys are fools. But dude - trying to reclaim 'faggot' in this way seems less than useless. Unnecessary to make your point, which is that these guys are willing to spend an inordinate amount of money to claim some sort of idealized 'masculinity.' Consider that your use of the word 'faggot' and comment that 'men are dead' does much the same thing. Men are men - there're lots of different types of us. These guys are fools not because they fail to meet an idealized 'masculinity,' but because they are desperately chasing that masculinity in the silliest, most helpless way possible.

Those comments aside - a good find.