You're a liar. It was in this discussion thread.

Holy shit, you're retarded. Crony capitalism happens via regulation. That's what crony capitalism is.

You're a liar.

You're a liar, in implying that this somehow argues against anything I wrote. If you had read my other comments, you may have been able to make yourself look a little less foolish, as I clearly wrote that insurance companies are a great example of crony capitalism.

You're a liar. I never claimed that. You said the "situation[] [was] created not in response to excess regulation, but rather in response to the general absence of regulation." But no, in fact, the health insurance situation was created by excess regulation. Health insurers didn't "own Congress" like it does now in 1973 when Ted Kennedy and Richard Nixon started forcing us into HMOs, and they certainly didn't "own Congress" when it passed the Public Health Service Act in 1944.

There was never a time, in my lifetime and longer, that government didn't massively control the health insurance business. To say that there is some response to "general absence of regulation" is just lying.

... because you're stupid? I've never said anything like that. Ever. I said that if it is going to be regulated, the Constitution requires it be the states who do so, as opposed to the federal government. That doesn't mean I am in favor of states doing so.

You're a liar. Nothing I said is in favor of federal government regulation of commerce.

I just gave example laws that do this. A specific regulation from those laws could include the federal employer mandates to provide insurance, a mandate which -- apart from being unconstitutional -- increases the cost of health insurance by reducing competition and portability, not to mention reduces job mobility etc.

This is indisputable, which is why you -- while expressing disagreement -- don't even pretend to try to provide an argument against it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.)

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

What a completely odd and meaningless non sequitur.

Obviously not.

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.

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.

They claim a patent is pending.

The blogger presumably has had to build an audience by displaying some sort of insight that attracts people and keeps them reading his stuff. Or hers, depending.

In my world, that is better than a guy we'll call "Rick 'the thief' Scott" instead of using his real name, which is "Rick 'the thief' Scott," who spent $73 million to buy his way into the Florida governor's mansion.

"And how did he get all that money?" you ask.

"He was CEO of Hospital Corporation of America when they were ripping off Medicare for billions of dollars, and paid the largest fine in U.S. history," said the little red hen.