>> ^dag:
OK sure- let's hate on Apple some more.
I remember when I was in sixth grade- it was really cool to hate the band Kiss. "Kiss Sucks" was scrawled all over the the wooden jungle gyms, on Pee-chees, carved into desks etc etc. I realized then, that their "Kiss hating" was more about social adjustment than actual dislike of the music.
Likewise, the blind hatred for Apple as a company, while very trendy I know, doesn't really make you any cooler in the eyes of your peers.
There, I said it. That feels better.


I think apple hate used to be fully legit when they used powerPC cpus, and overcharged for all their proprietary but equivalently functioning hardware.

These days, I have a quibble about having to front thousands of dollars to enter the apple "ecosystem". The google ecosystems is free (well, except my online soul gets sucked into the googlosphere).

The tablet pisses me off - if only because I figured my next computer would be an apple net book.

Prolly channelling some of the frustration from breaking a mac at work trying to make my dell mini9 a hackintosh

the big box stores like kmart and walmart always overcharge, because they expect shoplifters will take a percentage of their goods without paying. This is merely an explanation of the rules.

I lost it with the Gluon Gun overcharge and the tire squeals.

>> ^HollywoodBob:
You have ten people going out to lunch. Lunch costs 5$. Occasionally someone forgets their wallet or is short, so the rest of the group pools their money, and picks up lunch for that person. So while everyone is out 60 cents extra, they can safely know that if they're short one day they'll get their lunch taken care of by the rest of the group.

The ten people pooling for the guy who forgot his wallet is a great concept and I'm ok with it. However, there are many incentives against abuse in that setting because money is being contributed voluntarily. Also, no money is being wasted in your example, because there isn't someone mismanaging all the money and overcharging for their monopoly over the "food insurance" service.

Conservatives are happy to receive the free lunch as long as they don't have to pay the pittance to give someone else a meal.

I'm not a conservative. There's no such thing as a free lunch because someone's always paying for it, and a free lunch provided by government will tend to cost a lot more than lunch paid by charity.

Society prospers the most if individuals are free to cooperate with each other voluntarily. If government steps in trying to force people to help each other, you're instituting injustice, not just because money is being taken forcibly, but because it won't tend to be applied as productively as it would were people convinced voluntarily to apply it on their own, guided by their self-interests.

The goals of a society should be betterment of the whole, through group effort; not individual accumulation of wealth.

In a free society, an individual accumulates wealth by being productive, you can only be productive by helping others, by honestly convincing them to give you money in exchange for some service. On the other hand, in a social liberal society, you end up with more government, and that *actually* means individuals accumulating wealth at the expense of others, because people get their money taken from them forcibly.

If you think society's prosperity should be attained at the expense of some individuals, you're missing the point that society IS a bunch of individuals. Society isn't better off, it's worse off when you institute injustice.

Conservatives need to get over their greed.

You need to get over your fake moral high ground. You're the one being greedy if you want to take people's money because you think you can spend it more wisely. Either that or you're just another sucker rooting for thieves.

I find Moore's narrative on health care too simplistic. By his logic, should every good and service that is difficult for the average layman consumer to understand, thus opening up the potential for firm exploitation, be nationalised?

Expanding from the argument that insurance companies hide behind fine print to deny care and that provides a mandate for nationalisation, should we also nationalise car/computer repairmen? After all, most people don't have sufficient understanding of either to know whether they're being overcharged.

There's tons of examples of this, ranging from haircuts to medical operations where the consumer either doesn't know what they're getting into before they buy (referred to as an experience good), and where they really have no way to measure the utility they received even after they've purchased the good (referred to as a credence good). Both of these topics are covered pretty intensively in any subjects you take on Marketing or Economics.

What's needed is not nationalisation, which while fixing some perverse incentives might create some undesirable new ones, or might make whatever industry you apply it to highly inefficient. Instead you need greater transparency, you need standard setting to ensure that difficult terminology can be simplified for the average joe, allowing them to judge one product against another, and you need to find ways to force the consumer to become informed.

^ In Portland, Oregon a local news agency ran one of these sting operations on GeekSquad and only 1 out of 5 stores they went to attempted to overcharge them. All others fixed the issue for free. (Disconnected HDD cable).

Meh, Comcast would just try to get their grubby little hands all over it and try to overcharge you for intergalactic bandwidth.

Spawnflagger -

One of the main reasons things are so expensive in hospitals is "cost shifting".

X-rays, bandages, sutures, medications, etc are overcharged for in order to cover the MASSIVE amount of "free care" going out the door.

If fair prices were charged (and yes, the charges are RIDICULOUS), the hospital would be broke within a year - and I'm speaking for a public hospital - not "for-profit'.

The bottom line is, hospitals are required by law to treat people that come in the ER - no exceptions, no refusals. Now name for me one other sector/workforce/industry in our society that is required to provide its goods and services for free?

There is no "free healthcare" (and no it's not free just because you didn't pay for it - somebody did, trust me.). Do we need to run things in a different way? You bet. In fact, we're going to have to because this boat ain't gonna sail for long.

Other countries' socialist policies, like in say, the whole of Europe, do quite well compared to us.

Actually, this is causation without correlation. If you go to Europe, living situations are deteriorating. Their massive amounts of welfare have created a situation in which immigrants are coming not for opportunity, but to be subsidized by programs they haven't paid into their whole lives like existing citizens. Sound familiar? Our programs are being strained by the same problem. I won't deny that they've made better decisions with their socialist powers over the past twenty years. If you want to make this an argument about whose dictator is doing a better job at emulating the market, then certainly Europe wins. France, for example, gets 80% of their energy from nuclear power and is the largest energy exporter in Europe. I'm jealous. That's what the market would have chosen. Our dictators, however, have been blocking it for thirty years due to the influence of the radical environmentalist lobby. Our government-directed economy has also pumped billions of forcibly appropriated money into agri-business bio-fuels like ethanol. It reduced the supply of food because it became more profitable after all the subsidies to grow corn for ethanol than some other crop for food. And it takes almost as much energy to create as it produces. Negative net result, that money would have been better off staying in the hands of people who really couldn't afford to have it taken away. We realize this now, but it never needed to happen. Any product that wouldn't be able to compete on the market without being funded with stolen money isn't worth a damn. So why did we think a bill could do something the market couldn't? All subsidies are retarded, they have collusive anti-competitive redistribution written all over them, and that's exactly what we got despite election year promises that it would give us miracles.

In fact, imagine if a stranger comes to your house and says "Hi, I'd like to take some of your money from your paycheck every week because I think I can spend it better than you can on products and services for your life. You look pretty busy, irresponsible, and unintelligent." Would you give it to them? Why would you do that? That's essentially socialism in a nutshell. People spending other people's money on the claim they can do so with greater thrift than the person that earned it.

Another thing that we do different than Europe is maintain a gigantic military empire. Of course their socialist programs are better, they don't have a military industrial complex sucking trillions of dollars away from them. It's really not necessary in the nuclear age. No nuclear power has ever been invaded domestically. Because it's a losing proposition. If you win the ground war, they have nothing to lose so they launch them. But we're idiots over here, we have this manchausen syndrome where our CIA creates problems that eventually blow back in our face, at which point we can launch all out invasions under the pretense of self-defense. This might include installing the Shah in Iran. Or giving bioweapons to Saddam during the Iran-Iraq conflict. Or arming afghani warriors to fight the Soviets. Or paying off Musharraf in Pakistan to be a puppet. Terrorist propaganda becomes effective because of this shit.

Nowhere else in the world has a more libertarian system than us, as near as I can tell, and it handicaps us.

Price fixing interest rates = socialist
Bailout out bankruptcy with forcibly appropriated money = socialist
Allowing one industry to loan out money they don't have, at interest = socialist
Subsidizing one company and not another = socialist
Taxing one company and not another = socialist
Nationalizing private industry to be financed with forcibly appropriated money = socialist
Directing industry and research with forcibly appropriated money = socialist
Declaring lending standards discriminatory to low income people and forcing banks to remove them via the Community Reinvestment Act = socialist
Issuing a non-market determined or constitutional money, banning competing currencies, and taxing dollar debasement gains on gold as if it were income = socialist
Blocking nuclear power for 30 years = socialist
Blocking domestic oil drilling for 20 years = socialist


Actually no, they would just need to get enough market power, and apply it ruthlessly to stomp out competition wherever it rises.

Bullshit, no one but the government has endless streams of capital to buy up anything and everything. Only government monopolies are self-sustaining, because they're the only monopolies financed with forcibly appropriated money.

In your version of the world, AMD shouldn't exist. Aptera Motors shouldn't exist. Right? I mean, giant corporations a thousand times their size existed before they even entered the market. They should have been bought out. Oh, wait, what's that? Not all companies are publicly traded.

The reality is, in order for a MARKET monopoly (note: in an environment where they don't have access to government specific powers like inflation and subsidization) to stay that way is to continue to offering the best product at the best price. Because then there's no window, no opportunity for someone else to come in and eat into that marketshare. If a company is delivering crap or overcharging, however, that immediately opens a window for someone else to come in. That's how AMD got so large, Intel was doing exactly that with netburst architecture. Even with a monopoly position, competition was waiting in the wings.

Suppose Microsoft took XP off the market and put Windows 3.1 on the shelf? Do you think they wouldn't go bankrupt? Do you think a competitor wouldn't arise to take their place? Because they're an all-powerful monopoly, right? They don't have to deliver shit, they can just buy Macintosh and anyone else while they pay thousands of programmers to create a product that doesn't sell.

Doh. Someone doesn't understand basic market principles.

One of my favorites from the roaring 20's was the rate war. Slash your prices to nearly nothing, and let your company lose a lot of money, on the premise that the smaller company will go bankrupt before you do.

Actually, large businesses with lots of workers have far more overhead and are much more inefficiently run. That's why most businesses today are small businesses. My mother owns an advertising business for wedding directories with no one but herself employed. A local newspaper owned by the Gannett company recently created a staff of twenty people to try and compete with her. They lasted two years before the magazine ended the operation. It was costing way more money than it was bringing in, and the so-called greedy megagiant slashed it.

Nuttery, Ron Paul is the only politician who believes in the law? Seriously, that's what you're saying? He's probably the only Republican who believes in the law being supreme, but there's more than a few Democrats who believe in the supremacy of law (including some joker with a law degree from Harvard running for President...).

Supreme law is the constitution doofus. It's the law that came before all other laws, it's the laws against government to prevent them from becoming a tyrannical, collusive nuthouse like all other governments before it by assessing which powers, which enablements, it shouldn't have under any circumstances. And inflation was one of them. But after a couple hundred years, people became complacent, arrogant, and ignorant, like yourself, and politicians found that they could ignore it with impunity. There was no longer a bunch of gun-toting, tea-hating radicals ready to hang them on the nearest tree when they broke it. There was nothing but the opposing party. But that party loves to spend, too. So they compromise by allowing the other to break it so long as they get to break it in another way. Remember how the bailout failed and then got passed? They put some extra pork in there to get the votes they needed. Rum and arrowheads...

http://www.greenfaucet.com/economy/porky-the-bailout-bill/19680

Welcome to our country, and the socialist enablements that make this spending possible.

No, but he can still bribe the politicians to look the other way on violation of rights. They do it now, and I'm not sure why it would change, just because the companies have more money to spend (according to your theory).

The bottom line here is that attacking Democrats as being socialist is a huge fucking straw man. We like the free market, and we want it to work.

No, you don't, You don't even know what it is.

Most investment banks are now crying out to be regulated in the wake of this credit crisis, and given that they bribed the government into deregulating them in the first place, that should tell you something.

They're not crying to be regulated, they're crying to be bailed out after being regulated. What do you think regulation is exactly? Do you realize that the fundamental way in which banks operate is fraudulent? How do you regulate that? How do you oversee to make sure fraud is being conducted in the best way possible?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fractional_reserve_banking#Money_creation

This is the type of nonsense I hear from the republicrat camp. Regulation, the buzzword of the day. It's meaningless. To "regulate" the bank runs this system was causing, the Federal Reserve was created to backstop bankruptcy. Yes, failure, that free market pinnacle that makes private business suffer and fear consequences for risk and imprudent policy. Or how about the FDIC, FEDERAL GOVERNMENT INSURANCE on deposits. Don't worry, now you don't have to fear about losing your deposit on this scam industry. We've regulated it with the FDIC. OOPS, THE FEAR OF LOSING ONE'S DEPOSIT WAS WHAT DETERRED PEOPLE FROM GIVING IT TO HIGHLY LEVERAGED INVESTMENT BANKS OFFERING ABNORMAL YIELDS, CAUSING THAT BUSINESS MODEL TO GROW, CAUSING OTHER BANKS TO FOLLOW SUIT IN ORDER TO COMPETE.

The problem is regulation on fraudulent activity that should have never been allowed. It slowly but surely eliminated basic deterrents and self-regulating principles by backstopping risk and rewarding bad behavior.

>> ^vermeulen:
Monopoly and price fixing would can hurt the free market, and is possible under a free system.... how can you deny that.
Do you not think it is possible for the government to aid in the free market?
Such as to enhance competition?
I consider myself a libertarian, but I do think it is possible for some type of control of the markets to be beneficial.


"Monopolies" are one of the popular scapegoats for politicians to use to gain power, and one of the most misunderstood talking point for socialists. In truth, the only "true" monopolies around the world and throughout history are borne of government. I tend to draw a distinction by calling these "self-sustaining monopolies" because of way in which they are financed: with an unlimited stream of forcibly appropriated money rather than a choice to pay by consumers.

First, let's agree on one thing: in order to become a monopoly in a free market where every transaction is mutually agreeable rather than forced by the will of the clueless majority (like a tax or inflation), a company had to offer a great product that people wanted and that benefited them. As much as you may hate Microsoft, for example, Windows has changed the world for the better. As have Intel's processors. Now, many would consider these companies monopolistic. According to socialist theory, AMD should not exist. Intel was so large and dominant, that being such disabled any competition from forming without government intervention. What happened in the real world was that as a result of being large and dominant, and perhaps overcharging and under-delivering, a window of opportunity was created that allowed an AMD to come in and kick netburst's ass with the athlon series. They exist because of what Intel tried to do, not the opposite.

Here's the part that really busts the socialist's brains: If Intel had chosen not to overcharge and under-deliver, no window of opportunity would have existed. They would have effectively become a monopoly that was delivering a great product at a price no one could better. So... what's the problem with that? There isn't one. And while I agree that it can't last, socialists erroneously assume that a monopoly is inherently bad. It isn't, it just can't stay good. And when it doesn't stay good, it can't preserve it. Because even a monopoly can't put poop in a box and sell it, they are not immortal and all-powerful where they no longer need to deliver a product to service or prevent private capital not available for buyout from coming in and supplanting their marketshare.

The monopolies you need to be afraid of are the ones that are self-sustaining or government helped and enabled. Get companies AWAY from colluding with or taking advantage of government specific powers. When a company lobbies for a tax credit that another company or industry doesn't get, or a subsidy, or no-bid contract, or a bailout, or legislation crippling their competitor, that's when you need to be alarmed. So... be alarmed now, because this is everywhere and people are stupidly blaming the market when it is enablements in government like high taxes and an inflationary money making it possible.

>> ^BillOreilly:
Oh the irony, Lansing is the capital of Michigan, run by what? Oh that's right, a DEMOCRATIC canadian wench for a governor who has tried (and mainly succeeded) in running the state into the ground.

Sure, Bill, and she was also responsible for Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Lehman Brother...oh, wait, she wasn't.

And those banks that gave out all of those bad loans, they're all owned and run by a bunch of liberal Democrats, too, I guess.

Oh! And the Democrat in Lansing is responsible for sending our troops to Iraq at the cost of half a trillion dollars (and counting), and she's in cahoots with other liberals like KBR and Haliburton and Blackwater who have a history of overcharging for their services, too.

Yeah, it's all her fault.

What was the cost for the house though? Strive to drive down costs of even one part of that system, and we'll make some strides forward. I nearly put a Geotherm system into my home about 6 years ago. I WISH I did. I went with a high efficiencly oil system (more common in New England). While it is quite good, and my home is quite efficient on it's own... I WISH the cost for the Geotherm system was less. I was looking at $8k for a high end oil system, or closer to $20k at the time for a basic geo system. The problem? Only 1-2 installers would handle Geotherm in the whole region at the time. As a result they overcharged like mad and cost effective maintenance of the system was questionable, making it impractical for most homeowners.

Wait ... he STARTS OUT by telling people he likes to overcharge / fool people into paying more for his books?!

>> ^quantumushroom:
I've never heard of a war where everything went right, much less a streetfight. Then again, I'm not comparing the real world to Utopia. Success follows success in Iraq and all the American left does is continue to pour the whine.


Where everything went right? How about where something went right. This corrupt government is taking you for a ride, exploiting your country, overcharging your military for the extra buck or simply for a stock rise and you keep thinking this is about left vs. right. Wake up! Doesn't matter what side the administration conned into voting for them, what's important is that they are running your country into the ground. Normally I wouldn't give a shit, but it's starting to affect the global economy. Get your act together and try to understand that this is bigger than your petty red vs. blue bullshit.


Power is more important to leftists than oil is to anyone else.
Oil is a valuable commodity needed to run things. It is far more useful and tangible than any Socialist Council of Do-Gooders, who are parasitic wastes of space and unnecessary for good government. Democrats, the American equivalent of Eurosnobs, are preventing the tapping of American oil, of which there is more than in the entire Middle East. Presently we get most of our oil from Canada and Mexico, and not a drop from Iraq since 2003. Indeed, it's all about the oil.

Iraqi production rates are so low because the US bombed the shit out of most production equipment and refineries. In addition, foreign oil companies are reluctant to send their people to Iraq because it's a goddamn mess and there's not a shred of security. This is a clear failure of Bush's Iraqi agenda.

Saudi Arabia alone has more proved reserves than Canada and the US combined, so I don't know where you get your utopian oil surplus from.

Oh and on that France remark: War on Terror, Drugs, Iraq, Afghanistan...How's that going? You didn't even manage to find Bin Laden, how pathetic. But then again, you don't really want to find him, do you?

holy wall o text. anyway, lots of good info.

You have to consider this, prohibition didn't work for alcohol, did NOT work. End of story, good bye. Why would prohibition of drugs work? It's the same story no matter how you look at it, prohibition doesn't work. Make anything illegal and suddenly, theres a black market for it with criminals who can charge whatever they want for the product. Not only that, but they have no legal obligation to even PROVIDE the product, or guarantee its quality/purity/safety in any way.

Prohibitionists continue to argue for jail time or other punishments because they're operating under the basic assumption that it will deter criminals from pursuing that particular course. The problem with that is that these are *criminals* and a criminal will continue being one as long as its more profitable to him, because they don't have the same moral compass that the rest of the the world has. Some of them change, and it can happen, but the majority of them do NOT, and will not because its not in their nature to do so.

By legalizing it for *Regulation and Control* (these are the key elements here)NOT for free use (as every prohibitionist seems to assume legalization means) we remove the overall profitability factor for the criminals. If you have the option of going through proper channels and gaining your "hit" legaly where you know its a good product and don't have to worry about contamination or being overcharged for bad quality, OR going down some back ally and buying god knows what from some unregulated drug dealer (who would STILL get jailed btw under regulation and control laws) and possibly end up in jail because you aquired the drugs though an illegal source... folks will choose the legal way. Under prohibition, they have no choice about what to do when they go to get the hit. And they WILL get the hit if they want it. We could even enact some kind of "Shoot on Sight" policy where cops could drive down the street and kill anyone they see using drugs illegally and folks would STILL go out and get them. Its just the way the world works. Obviously this isn't something that could actually happen, its just a for instance to show that folks wanting the drugs don't care about the law when they go out to get them. Making more laws doesn't deter them, because they're breaking the law already to get them in the first place! Make all the laws you want, but if they're breaking the law already, why would they change just because we toss more down?