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Comment Re:So what you're saying... (Score 1) 66

What a surprise, you come in late to the discussion, insert your opinion, and provide no support for it other than claiming it to be equivalent to the word of god because you typed it out on your own keyboard.

To "come in late" and "insert your opinion" is a bad thing somehow? Oh no, this conversation started YESTERDAY, I better not participate! How stupid can you be?

As to providing no support, as usual, you're a liar. I provided the support to your actual argument (535 voting members per 100,000 people) in my very next sentence.

I was merely setting up an upper limit for his request.

You're lying. You were backing up your claim that the two things were "working against each other" by setting up an example -- that was not implied by what he said -- for it to, in your eyes, fail.

Interestingly enough, if you had waited a little longer before inserting your response, you may have been able to make yourself look a little less foolish.

Howso? That doesn't make me look foolish. It doesn't disagree with anything I wrote. Just because he did mean that, doesn't mean he said or implied that he meant that. He did neither. Please learn how to read.

Being as you have made a reputation for yourself of shouting out false assumptions about other peoples' beliefs

You're a liar. I never said or implied what his actual view was. I only pointed out the fact that he didn't imply it.

... and then refusing to admit to ever being wrong ...

You provided not a shred of evidence that he implied it, and then say you somehow demonstrated that I was wrong to say he didn't imply it. As usual, you're a liar.

Comment Will you walk into my parlour? (Score 1) 186

.... said the Spider to the Fly.

Seriously - once this genie is out of the bottle there is no way to bottle it back up. The fear of employment repercussions, insurance, etc all become a concern.

“For me, I’m so excited about the possibilities to improve things for people, my worry would be the opposite," he told the New York Times's Farhad Manjoo. "We get so worried about these things that we don’t get the benefits Right now we don’t data-mine healthcare data. If we did we’d probably save 100,000 lives next year."

Eeesh.. I heard this same logic, earlier this year, being applied to the pooling of all NHS records for pharmacons and researches to peel through in the UK. "Think of all the causality linking and better and better benefits".. Eeep! What?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
http://www.nhs.uk/nhsengland/t...

Comment Re:Big "if" (Score 1) 66

Indeed. As I mentioned above, in my view -- and this is where many libertarians are wrong, I think -- we need a strong legal framework protecting our rights from violations by others. You can mostly do this via contract law, of course, but one way or another, economic wrongdoers -- that is, people who commit fraud and otherwise violate the actual rights (as opposed to the imagined rights) of others -- need to be held accountable, and our legal system just sucks at doing that, in large part because it is slow and costly.

Comment Re:Big "if" (Score 1) 66

And a balanced diet is Hostess Cupcakes with skim milk.

You're a disgusting and despicable person who is no better than Adolph Hitler or George Bush. Defaming Hostess treats by washing them down with barely milk-flavored water is treasonous.

Comment Re:So what you're saying... (Score 1) 66

...crony capitalists...

Is there another kind?

Of course. The majority of us who are capitalists, but are not crony capitalists. Me. Probably you.

all software and hardware is regulated in one form or another through things like the Invention Secrecy Act

False. That's simply and clearly false. None of the software I've written -- that you know about -- is regulated by the federal government. I've used software libraries that are so regulated, of course. But none of my software is so regulated.

(And I presume you're not talking about copyright law, because that is a different thing, and I've written public domain software anyway, which would not be under those regulations.)

Open source is a bit player

Shrug. It's relied on in almost every business and government agency in the world that uses computers in some way.

open markets are the key to long term success

Capitalism includes open markets. In addition, it has the added benefit of civil rights, which open markets don't necessarily have.

Capitalism is great, but we are now seeing what inevitably happens as it matures.

False. We are seeing what inevitably happens when you have two additional factors: 1. government allows itself to be bought, and 2. people lie about the causes of the problems as being from "capitalism."

Problem 1 is easily solved, if we're willing: make the scope of government much smaller. A government that is not allowed to create ObamaCare will not be the target of health insurance companies looking for handouts, for example. Every single person who was in favor of ObamaCare, or the SCOTUS decision on ObamaCare, is a cheerleader for crony capitalism, because that is what the decision equates to: government can force us to buy any product it wants to, as long as they call it a tax, for the benefit of crony capitalists.

Of course, the left is always pushing crony capitalism. That's their main trade. Whether it's tax breaks for electric cars, taxes on alcohol ... Democrats do this literally all the time. It's why they exist in Congress. Republicans do it too -- in particular, tax breaks for large companies to locate here or there, subsidies for agriculture in important voting states, that sort of thing, which Democrats do too -- but Democrats do it all the time.

It will eventually close the market to all but its most exclusive club, as designed.

Then it wouldn't be capitalism, so your argument is self-refuting. Crony capitalism itself isn't actual capitalism, for that matter, because where government controls the markets, it's not capitalism, because capitalism is private control. Of course, this isn't black-and-white, but shades of grey: you could say that certain antitrust laws, laws about fraud, and so on can happily coexist with a capitalism system.

But a system, like health insurance today, where government explicitly restricts who can enter the market, mandates who must buy the products, sets up most of the rules for the market, mandates what services must and must not be provided within a certain low and high price point ... this is not capitalism, or anything seriously like it. It's anti-capitalistic.

Comment Re:So what you're saying... (Score 1) 66

The existence of crony capitalism is counterexample to the notion that capitalism will protect us.

So the existence of A is an argument against straw man B.

How is that interesting?

He didn't say capitalism alone will protect us. As his comments made clear, he is in full agreement that crony capitalism is bad.

We had capitalism before, yet crony capitalism still emerged? Capitalism did NOT work to keep crony capitalism from emerging.

An orthogonal problem. That's like saying, "you say we should use computers for business, but computer errors have led to the downfall of businesses, so clearly, computers aren't the answer." It's just idiotic. We should both use computers, and work to reduce computer errors and their impacts. We should both have capitalism, and work to discourage crony capitalism. Duh.

There is no virtue in capitalism.

I completely disagree. Capitalism means that a person uses his natural faculties to create wealth to further his own interests. That is one of the highest virtues there is.

If you want virtue, go find it in your church, but as we all know, government and church are not supposed to mix together.

What a completely odd and meaningless non sequitur.

Comment Re:So what you're saying... (Score 1) 66

By increasing the supply of purchased politicians, and limiting governments and markets to no more than 100,000 citizens

Aren't the first and last working in opposite direction?

Obviously not.

US congress includes 535 voting members (senators and representatives total). If you had 535 voting members for every 100,000 people you have basically each person representing on average 186 people.

What's your point? Nothing he said implies that he would have 535 voting members for every 100,000 people. Don't be an idiot.

Comment Re:So what you're saying... (Score 1) 66

I would counter that those situations [oil industry, cable TV, health insurance] were created not in response to excess regulation, but rather in response to the general absence of regulation. I see no way that capitalism left to only its own devices would not create more situations like those.

I would counter that you could not possibly even begin to make the case that the situation with health insurance was in response to the general absence of regulation. That's just completely dishonest and stupid. HMOs, employer provision, lack of competition, and almost every other significant feature of health insurance today -- other than the basics: that it exists, that it covers medical expenses -- was directly driven by federal and state regulation, well before ObamaCare came along.

There is simply no doubt whatsoever that if these regulations did not exist, we would have much more competition, much more portability, and therefore, much lower prices for health insurance. No economist would disagree with this.

Comment Just great... (Score 0) 38

Now hackers can focus on ONE API to place their pop-up ads inside your house, in your picture frame, on your refrigerator door. OR I can just see shady repair shops driving by your house with a device that disables your thermostat, then send someone to your door just in the nick of time, offering to fix it!

Comment Re:Dangerous (Score 1) 345

Dangerous to your trim, maybe. Dangerous to your life? Not so much.

It is not speed, but difference in speed, which is dangerous to your life. I fear the one coming up behind me at a difference of 50+ MPH MUCH more than the one next to me doing a couple MPH different. Yeah, the guy next to me may take out my mirror or scuff my door, but the guy behind me may kill me.

Comment Re:Just AC's? (Score 1) 24

instead you frequently write new complaints

LOL - nothing I do on this site is "frequent".

you couldn't make that shit up by just banging randomly at your keyboard

Don't need to. The liberal trolls (like yourself) are nothing if not completely predictable.

or are the accounts you complain about actually you, and when you write as railgunner you're just an act? the argument in favor of you expressing the opposite of your actual beliefs in this account are becoming stronger on a routine basis.

Gee, that sounds strangely like something d_r would write, as well as being completely ridiculous. This further proves that all liberal trolls are essentially redundant, and that the world will be a better place if they all went and played in traffic.

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