@enoch

I agree with pretty much everything you said, except the part on rewriting corporate law based on its impracticality. Part of the effectiveness of capitalism is its unambiguous incentives, something as subjective as the public good would be too broadly interpretable and open up firms to endless lawsuits.

Negative externalities like pollution, standards on employment conditions, and anti-competitive rent seeking are all things best addressed in an adversarial system of corporation vs. government/citizens. In the same way asking the prosecutor to give a lenient prosecution would not work, polarised, balanced advocates work best in a market economy.

Obviously this has broken down to various extents. Corporate lobbying has tipped the balance. Short terms politicians and executives are incentivised to generated jobs/growth in the short term at the expense of sustainability. Larger corporations have the money to buy barriers to entry for competitors by capturing regulatory agencies.

Ideally countries would go to public funding system once you clear x votes of nominations or something similar, you'd have a shorter election cycle and advertising blackouts for a portion of that to limit the influence of money further, scrap jerry-mandering. Even if that were possible in the US, I'm of the view that the money would seep through in some shape or another. In many ways, the US as a concentration of the wealthy is a victim of its own success in the weight that this wealth has on its socio-economic future.

Somewhat more contrary to more left leaning arguments, I think populism fails equally. Now admittedly what passes for populism nowadays, economically at least, is simply the rebranded intentions of corporations with vested interests. But genuine populist economic policy also fails. People want the government to give them things for free and not give other people things for free. They'd rather see uncompetitive industries be propped up forever with subsidies than let them close.

I'm coming around to the view that what's needed is longer term limits, greater executive authority and concentration of power but balanced by firm limits on any elected office tenure. People don't appreciate the long term effects of effective policy before they have a chance to vote politicians out on the short term cost. Longer term limits, say 5-6 years x 2 possible terms would help alleviate that. It would detach elected officials from the need to constantly raise funds. Politicans could actually effect the mandate they were voted in on. Obviously this raises risks of abuse of power but as with everything, you have to balance that against the costs of long term stagnation.

I hate to create a comparison here to central banks, but it's an undeniable fact that once central bank officials were installed independent to act free from the whims of politicans in most developed countries in the 1970-90s, inflation quickly became a thing of the past. People can argue about current policy, devaluing the currency, the way funds are being distributed currently, but the point above is a historic fact. I am of the view that the same would hold (when applied in a more limited way) for the broader economy.

But anyway, this is all wonderfully imagine fantasy land.

"Over time, we're going to see what works and what doesn't and things will generally settle down"
Illusion and fantasy...total confabulation.

A government is a simple creation really, it uses force to achieve the end goal which is control, not unlike a rapist or a thief-The antithesis of liberty in the example of say, the American government works because force is used by an immoral core of liars and thieves to achieve goals that benefit the few rather than the whole of society. Examples of just how fucked things are at face value VooDooV, why bother to cite the examples that are glaringly obvious to anyone who at their core, is a moral and free individual...pointless and insulting to anyone who can think.

Mind you, infrastructure and social safety nets enhance freedom, but what should the end-goal be? To enhance the moral framework of a society, which has surely not been done so far with the American form of government, on the contrary, we see the fabric of what makes a society prosper and maintain a fairness for all being eroded to serve the interests of a few, through force and control...through civil liberties being chipped-away at through surveillance and more prisons, more laws, more fines and punishments for more people, etc. Deficit spending pays debt forward to further enslave the recipients of services like roads and social welfare programs, higher education, etc. The freedom to make poor choices at a micro and macro level is what the current government is all about, getting worse every year.

Urban sprawl will continue as folks with pipe-dreams tout more green, less energy usage, cleaner burning cars and factories, etc. One 'problem' is addressed by creating one for another somewhere else.

Ever listen to Buckminster Fuller's idea of a 'green' or 'energy efficient society'? It doesn't use ANY of the current models of societal structure, it pretty much SCRAPS them all for a trans-formative way of moving forward. The old models are shit if they accomplish them through force and control of human activity. YOU don't live in a democratic system, in case you have been asleep for your entire life, democracy is only a fucking word, a concept not unlike any 'ism' created by humans in the past 3000-7000 years.

The financial structure of the United States is inherently evil. It can not be made fair and moral for everyone, it wasn't designed to. It is designed to serve the few at the top, with enforcers and regulators at the bottom-tier of their system. The government is NOT inherently evil but it has been hijacked by cunts.

Just because you think you know how politicians should perform, does not make it happen that way. Sane health care system? Nope. Maybe for the privileged classes-What they hand the masses is complete shit. National debt? Foreign policy? How would YOU do it? Then that's probably saner than the way it's being run, innit? Government is not needed for ANY of these aspects of a civil and moral society to function. All it takes is moral and sane judgement and agreement at solutions and for folks to voluntarily subscribe to these actions, without force, without police, without armies, etc.

Many more examples too many to pontificate upon, many variables of systems, all of which could function to afford everyone freedom and liberty, WITHOUT a government. The government is a construct just like everything else man creates-It takes willing humans to make them either function efficiently, or to scrap them for something new and improved.

I'm no libertarian, no anarchist, just a practical human being.
There are more reasons for scrapping the world system of government than there are for maintaining them, you simply refuse to see any other way THAN systems of government.

Mankind can self-govern if it does so with a formidable and sound moral compass...Is mankind doing that? It can also make the entire planet it's playground if it chooses to do so...Is mankind doing this??
FUCK NO!

I've sold one car for scrap... and now I feel bad.

I don't think you're grumpy, radx. Granted, my posts tend to have that same ominous tone, in general so I guess I'm a grump too. If you really think about the scale of inequality today, the absolute plundering the ultra-rich enjoyed during the recent recession and the efforts to keep money in politics to perpetuate this cycle with brilliant tools like Citizens United, it's hard not to be bleak.

Unfortunately, what we like to call democracy simply does not have the teeth to affect meaningful change. I am encouraged by the relative economic performance from the list of countries that have scrapped first past the post (reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proportional_representation ) except for maybe Portugal, but even with more effective elections there is still an extra seat for the rich in every government.

Even more unfortunate will be the painful revolution the world will endure to either change from capitalism to some other form of economics (maybe resourced-based, a-la Peter Joseph.) If we don't simply slide obediently into greater and greater concentrations of wealth for the ultra-rich, we get closer and closer to revolution. But all it will take will be one upheaval to spur the revolution into action, be it:
- another, even more severe recession (maybe the EU will implode, taking the world economy down with it)
- severe global warming positive feedback loop from the arctic methane stores
- nuclear war

And who the hell knows what else might set people off. Maybe a solar flare will fry all the satellites in orbit and the lack of new tweets will create a world-wide frenzy of irate twats. And who knows when it will happen. Maybe 5 years, maybe 50 years. Since money pulls the strings, I think we're doomed to guess as to the source of VoodooV's "tipping point."

http://www.warwickshirerailways.com/lms/lnwr_cath1130.htm

Scrapped in May of 1962. 27 years on the job.

I'll bet the locals are happy.
And yes it will be scrapped. They just didn't want to have to torch it to pieces to get it to the scrapyard.

I'm all but certain they said they were going to scrap it. There's no economical way to fix it up.

yes and no, yeah I completely agree that Iron Man's rogues gallery is dated, but as I said in Honest Trailers, Mandarin deserved better. While I understand why they did it, to avoid the obvious racial stereotype. It was just stupid. Kingsley was so annoying. The whole Mandarin thing should have been scrapped.

You really aught to read the Extremis comic, they even made a motion comic of it. At one point, it was on Netflix.(sadly looks like it was removed, boo).

It posed some serious questions about where technology (and biotechnology) is heading. But that's probably why it was bastardized in the movie. No one cares about serious shit in a summer blockbuster, they just want pew pew pew. Which again, yeah, I understand.

You're right though, @ChaosEngine my foreknowledge of Extremis and my fandom of Iron Man since I was...13?? definitely colors my opinions. Had I not known about those stories, I probably would have enjoyed it more.

Still, even despite all that, movie still was grasping hard by putting in the kid sidekick and yeah, as the Honest Trailers pointed out, for some reason, the Iron Man suits were particularly crappy this time around among other really stupid choices the movie made.

I personally try and only eat local grass-fed meat. I spend about $600 to pack a freezer with organicly fed pork and beef and another $500 on an overwhelming amount of organic fruits & vegetables. We freeze about half of those, my wife cans and juices a lot of it as well as making jams, etc. It's very healthy food and delicious. We also have a chicken coup that is largely organic fed, a lot of it scraps that we get eggs and sometimes meat from. We have a wonderful little store in the area called Greenstar (Ithaca, NY) that sells largly organic, local foods so we get things like bread, milk, snacks from there generally.

We try to live and eat as people did back in the day and we spend around the same as someone who hits the grocery once a week but eat much better. Still we know full well that our living style is completely impossible for the vast majority of people who live in the center of a city and are often to poor to be able to afford anything but the cheap mass produced meat, if even that. It's a sad state and we count ourselves very lucky.

translation: I know you are but what am I.

Libertarianism in the best case is a redundancy. I still remember the first time someone introduced me to the concept of what a Libertarian was. My reaction was "duh, how could anyone possibly be against that?"

Reality however is quite different. Every time we've had an instance of a politician defending the "right" of a corporation to do things everyone knows is harmful to other people, guess what! they're a libertarian!!

Everytime we have an instance of someone complaining about some form of government excess or incompetency and that someone argues we should scrap the whole system, yet has no answer to the question of what would you put in it's place that would be better. Guess what..Libertarian again!

Everyone who seems to think rational self-interest will protect the strong from bullying the weak, again, probably a Libertarian.

Guess what? that conveys the sense that Libertarians = Anarchists or Objectivists/Ayn Rand worshipers.

We only hear about Libertarians when they're bitching about gov't. If the guy in the video is correct and they do agree that Gov't has a role? please elaborate? where IS gov't allowed to step in and intervene and be proactive? If your answer is the Military. BZZZT try again. Every fucking party on this planet agrees that we need a military, the only disagreement is in how much.

So it just does nothing to advance the idea that Libertarians do anything but bitch about the gov't Well get in line...everyone has some grievance with the gov't. Every single party on this planet wants gov't intervention in some things, no intervention in other things. They just disagree in what parts.

So it just makes Libertarians seem redundant. Every single person throughout the political spectrum wants gov't to be no bigger than it needs to be. If you think otherwise, then you need to put on your tinfoil hat.

Even if there was a better way of distinguishing Libertarians apart from the other parties. Guess what. every "ism" on the planet has the problem where not everyone agrees on how things should be done. Ask a 100 libertarians how they think gov't should operate and you'll get 100 different answers, just like if you ask 100 Christians about God, you'll get 100 different answers. Same thing goes with every party.

I'm sure there are some very well intentioned Libertarians out there. Name me someone who doesn't have good intentions? But it's been demonstrated as I mentioned earlier how Libertarianism gets used as an excuse to get away with doing shitty things to people who don't know any better. So tell me how I can tell the difference between the good Libertarians and the "bad" ones

Till then, Libertarianism is a meaningless term.

Thousands of people have shown up to testify at the capitol about this bill. We're only talking about this woman. Her speech was obviously effective. If I gave a few more shits, I'd link it... but you can find an interview with her where she describes exactly what drove her to scrap her prepared speech and go with this one instead. Having read reports and listened to personal accounts from friends who where there, her comments were actually relevant. And I'm glad she said them.

Obedience doesn't drive change. You respect Crist and Obama because they have money behind them and a good PR crew. They're on the right side of a false dichotomy. They play "good cop" for people who share a similar world view with you.

You watched a video of this nobody insulting elected officials because she's interesting and has balls for days.

My understanding is that those infrastructure enhancements have been put on the back burner if not scrapped altogether. This, coupled with a bus fare hike (9 cents was enough) broke the camel's back.

Well, Yellow Pages aren't made from trees. Rather they're made from sawdust and lumber scrap and post-consumable recycled paper, and either soy or veggie ink.

But that doesn't take into account the fossil fuels used to manufacture and deliver them.

They'll stop eventually, but there's still lots of rural communities in the US that don't have high speed internet access, and people rely on the YP.

It should be opt-in to receive them.

I don't see how it could possibly fly with any sort of stability? The only reason modern aircraft of that shape fly is because of fly-by-wire, computer systems that adjust the vehicles systems hundreds of times a second. So yes, it certainly is advanced for the time I really doubt it would have seen all that much success. Just one of dozens of scrapped designs the Germans tried to develop.

DUI checkpoint are akin to the KGB or the SS demanding you produce your papers whenever asked-The police in the U.S. would NOT perform these fucked-up exercises if more citizens made it harder for them-OBSTRUCTING is bullshit: It's a free-ticket for cops to arrest someone for ANY reason.

(Perhaps the resident copper here on the VS can chime-in??)

If more people through this type of civil disobedience would protest they'd scrap the "checkpoint" bullshit for random drunks and maybe do something that benefits society???

MADD was created by busy-bodies who needed grief counseling instead of a soapbox. Prohibition is for herd animals.