Do you realize that we have that large criminal class right now? And that it did not exist before the welfare-state?

Why do some people who are intelligent enough to realize that higher taxes get passed to the consumer too dumb to realize that (in a free market) lower taxes get passed to the consumer as well?

No, we can't have that. What would millions of "public servants" do if we run out of problems?

The state thrives by it's own incompetence. Let's take welfare:

Before the state was involved, private charity was taking care of the poor: And poverty actually declined! In the 19th century the society went from "on the edge of starvation"-poverty to "not being able to afford a car"-poverty. Nevertheless the "progressives" decided that the poverty is unbearable and that the state had to solve the problem. After half a century after the "New Deal" and more and more welfare laws the US has been effectively transformed into a welfare-state. And poverty did not decline, it rises! While the free society created a strong middle-class that dominated society in the second half of the 20th century, the welfare-state has created a society dominated by bankers and billionaires.

But the state thrives by it's own failures. And the failure of the welfare-state is just an argument for MORE of it - and so it will go on until the whole thing collapses like the Soviet Union.

You'd end up in a shit hole of a society in which things like roads and schools don't work and don't get funded.

Isn't the US the country where the public schools are so bad that people pay twice for schooling (once for public via taxes and the second one for private schools) to give their children a chance for education?

Basically you made the GP's point by mentioning the school-system.

Exactly.

But the stupid sheep don't realize it. Lower taxes would bring lower prices AND higher salaries - in effect that what politicians promise every election, but the sheep think that politicians are some kind of magic shamans who generate wealth by touching it. (which is called the "multiplier effect" - some people are actually dumb enough to believe it)

Also the billionaires spend huge amounts of money on "charity" to keep the sheep as dumb as they are. (Think of Bill Gates' "Common Core" or the the George Soros NGOs)

Wrong. I can't change the "public park" according to my private wishes.

If you really want to call some software public, then it must be proprietary software because the government can send people to Microsoft or Apple any time and request them to spy on users, let them hack into computers, etc. - The Windows or iOS ecosystem is in that way just like a public park.

Free software is much more private than that because it is not controlled by a corporation which can be forced to do the government's bidding.

In fact there is a lot wrong for public schools, and they are one of the things the state should immediately get out of. (and public schools among central banking was one of the planks in the communist manifesto, BTW.) But that is another topic altogether.

Yes, there are still many small problems, but it really pays off filing a bugreport (with example file) - they have a much better management of bugs than most opensource projects and the chances are good that you will be able to get a fix in a few weeks. I have very good experience with that.

Well, the problem is that Microsoft no longer makes software they are familiar with!

The ribbon-interface for Office was already alienating their users, although in the end it was accepted - but Windows 8 is just one step too far - a LOT of users are fed up. Apple is profiting from that, but also Android and maybe soon Steambox.

I wrote: "they also have a system in place to protect it from criticism - just try to criticize it and you will see the system in action"

You wrote: "thatsracist"

Q.E.D.

"my definition"? Huh?

The general definition is a centralized economy, i.e. no private property.

Of course that causes so much starvation and misery that even Stalin did not go "all communist" and just *had* to allow a black private market (and also private gardens).

But the Cambodian communists really believed in communism - and they really realized it - of course the whole thing collapsed after a few years.

"Spending money" is easy. Building something useful with it not so much.

If you want to build something in the US, you have to pay for the corruption (the Americans have even a catchy well-sounding name for corruption: "Affirmative Action" and they also have a system in place to protect it from criticism - just try to criticize it and you will see the system in action). The US has given over half a billion(!) dollars for the Obamacare Website to an AA-company - and even then the website didn't work. Obviously they are so corrupt that even with half a billion they couldn't pay a million (probably less) for a real company to do the actual work. They had to have it all. That is how inefficient things are in the US.

No way the US could build the Panama canal or go to the Moon today. That capability is long gone. It has truly become the Brazil of the North.

*every* communist country had enormous differences in wealth between their citicens. Compare the members of the Soviet nomenclature (who had even special shops with Western goods) with the Gulag-slave. (More than 10% of the population were Gulag-inhabitants, so we are talking about a large segment of the population here.)

A little known-fact was that the income differences in East Germany were about the same as in West Germany - but only when you assume that the people had equal rights which of course they hadn't. When you take all the privileges/penalties into account the differences were much greater than anybody in the West can even imagine.

That is not true, Cambodia under the Red Khmer was truly communist, they even disallowed private gardens and forced everybody to wear the same clothes.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sci...
http://bigthink.com/videos/we-...

Oh come on - the mouse in the video seems to be extremely slow and probably already heavily injured. The chickens outnumber the mouse and are so confused and timid that they let it get away.