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Comment Mist (Score 1) 259

What I would do is any of the following: Make shade, Make breeze, or add mist. Tarps and poles help the first. Large fans with the second, and using water sprayed over a large area would help cool the air, cool the people, and cool the surfaces. If you combine fans, shade, and mist, you can cool off even 120+ temperatures to a reasonable level over a large area at minimal cost.

Comment Re:Unfortunately... (Score 1) 254

You are not free to negotiate with your employer, they have all of the power in the negotiation and you have none. You need their job to survive, so you work for whatever conditions they put on the table, as if you ask for more they will make sure you don't work in that city ever again. Clearly you haven't spent much time navigating such negotiations.

I won't start my own business because I can not acquire the capital. I have written business plans and offered to sell them to investors with the resources to start such a business, but nobody wants to do the legwork. Nobody will lend to a poor person who lives in a city, no matter how concrete their plans, no matter how well trained they are and how good their points are, and capital is largely monopolized in the US, with the vast majority of capital in the nation owned by a few banking institutions with identical services and policies.

I am extremely interested in the things we are talking about, I am extremely anti-communist, and it is not ignorance on my part that we are discussing, but your inability to grasp well known and well proven economic reasons for the events of the past and present. You can choose to give up and admit you are dead wrong at any point, you just choose to propagate the lies that actually make your life sound like you made good decisions instead of coming to the reality that you made poor choices, sucked at what you did, and are now making a living in a place where it is nearly impossible not to because you had to take the easy way out. Reconcile it however you please, but don't expect me to listen to what you have to say just so that you can reinforce falsehoods within your own mind so that you can sleep at night.

Comment Re:Unfortunately... (Score 1) 254

Legal and physical force is not the only kind of force out there. There is also economic force. If you are working for somebody at a job for 20 hours a day and not making enough to live, you get by. That is it. You can not go search for another job, you can not leave, especially when protesting gets you shot. Like in the free market instance of Pullman. did you miss that example the past few times I mentioned it, or are you just to uneducated to know what I am talking about?

lol the EPA? You don't exactly have to jump through hoops, just no dumping hazardous waste, it has to be disposed of properly, and don't use the worst, most wasteful and polluting methods of shit. But even those regulations are extremely easy to get around, just look at the Koch brothers business, one of the biggest in the country, they account for the majority of the pollution in the country without paying any kind of fines or having any restrictions. They also pay their workers as little as possible and personally see billions of dollars a year in profits.

I know exactly how hard business is in a country dominated by incredibly huge corporations. As did the people I have known. The difference between me and the people I know and you, is very simply market analysis. The people I know started businesses where there was a demand but not a supply, like a new Mcdonalds on the side of town that lacks one, a GNC in a mall that doesn't have one but sees good business, a car garage body shop in a part of town with a lot of beat up cars and people that can only just afford them, etc. I am myself and Inventor and engineer, right now I have invented a new gas separation technique that is significantly more efficient than fractional distillation, the old method, that if used in Carbon capture would be as much as a 25% decrease in plant efficiency, whereas my invention takes less than 2% off the top. It is so efficient that it could significantly reduce car pollution and increase their efficiency and horsepower. I had the idea, and it took me one month while taking a ton of classes to turn that idea into a 3d prototype on the computer complete with electrical circuitry and get the mathematics which showed it would work all together. I couldn't even get the automotive industry to look at it. Not one of the two dozen companies even responded with anything besides "We will look at it if you give us full rights and sign your patent over to us before hand" from Delphi. I know the breaks. You brought a crappy product into a market in the wrong place and time. You did not adequately do market research and planning that would allow you to turn a quick profit like the successful business owners I know and myself.

Again I am not talking about a percentage of the companies worth. I don't know how I can explain this to you any better. I really don't. It is incredibly simple. I am talking about the actual value of the labor of the guy sitting in the excavator. As in, without this guy working right there, we make this much less. It does not include the physical capital, the costs of the employee, or anything, it has to do with the value of the work that they did. That is all. I don't know what about that is so fucking hard for you to understand, you really must be slow in the head or something.

Your explanation of the great depression relies on such fallacious ideas that it almost made me laugh. First of all it relies on the government actively working towards what they knew would cause a collapse, second it does not explain the actual reasons for the asset bubbles to collapse, which I addressed very well due to free market pressures that have caused booms and busts since the beginning of time.

WWII brought on enormous government spending in military operations and put enormous amounts of money into the hands of the middle class, the men who fought and the workers who made the weaponry. It was followed by a time when the top marginal tax rate, the tax on millionaires, was over 90% and that money was used for a enormous expansion of government benefits that saw the greatest golden age in US history. This was followed by Reagan, who rolled back those policies and lowered the top marginal tax rate, which saw the beginning of the decline of wages that stretched to the present day, which was doubly accelerated every time the top marginal rate was lowered and the regulations on working conditions were scaled back. Although there was huge economic gains, the majority of Americans NEVER saw any benefit from it, actually being hurt in the process.

My life a failure? I design things that will make our world a better place when they reach market, and then I find the right people and places to make it happen. I occasionally debate the people who believe that in order for us to have a better world we need to pay people less and be cruel to them for the sake of profit. Once in a while I meet somebody who actually has enough of a heart to realize what they are doing is wrong and stop it. My life is extremely fulfilling.

Comment Re:Unfortunately... (Score 2) 254

See, the problem with all of that is that you are ignoring the facts. You say that working for literal slavery is not a possibility in a free market, yet you ignore the reality of the old north when factory workers in the north worked more hours than those in the south and had a significantly lower life expectancy and quality of life. There was HUGE demand for labor, and low unemployment, and yet people like Pullman were still able to force wages so low that employees could no longer afford to eat and rebelled, and they hired mercenaries to put down the rebellion. This was before there was any government regulation on US markets. You ignored everything I said by dismissing it as ridiculous, and yet the facts, history itself, reflects what I am saying as true and what you are saying as false.

In addition to those problems, in the past 40 years labor regulations have relaxed, and in the past decade tons of regulations were scaled back by the disgusting, fascist, anti-American republicans, and at the same time wages fell, and working conditions worsened, despite falling costs and massively increasing profits. From what you said, in these conditions, scaled back regulations, increased profits, prices should fall and wages should rise. But the EXACT OPPOSITE has happened, for exactly the reasons I gave. You talk a lot of smack, but reality simply disagrees with what you have to say.

I never said anything about sharing gains. I said it is about value. If each worker has a production capacity of 150k worth of merchandise a year, and that bring that much revenue into the company, after costs and taxes, they should get at least 60% of it. If the top brass of a company makes a bad decision which causes the company to take losses, then they are responsible for the negative value they have to the company. It is that simple. But apparently the simple processes I have described here by which reality works and reality in which we live is perfectly explained are something that you can not even hope to grasp.

Also, right now, billionaires have a top marginal tax rate below 30%, and the less you make the smaller the tax. Apparently you don't even know what fucking taxes are here, yet you insult them anyways. It is amazing how ignorant people like you have so much weight in the economy. And that is not an ad hominem, that is an observation.

lol, you didn't make a salary for years? You must really suck. I've known a lot of small business owners in my old community, franchise owners, people who started up their own businesses, and NEVER did I meet somebody who had trouble turning a profit in more than a couple months. In fact, most of them are doing VERY well right now. You really must suck at everything, hell you can't even grasp basic economic ideas, and you failed to run a business even in the great conditions for business in America, and you can say they are bad all you want, but the effective tax rates are literally non-existent, and regulations are so easy to avoid a blind deaf monkey could do it.

I know what you are talking about, I have heard these theories before, but the fact of the matter is you are wrong in every respect. The great depression was caused for a very straightforward and causal reason, unlike the meaningless metaphors that lack an actual causal reason why the great depression happened. Basically, yes, the twenties were roaring, but the majority of Americans were actually seeing lower wages and the rich were getting rich at an accelerating pace. Businesses and people took out enormous investment loans that would only pay off if the price of goods continued to rise, but as the American people got increasingly poor they had less and less buying power in the markets and could no longer afford even to take out loans to purchase goods, and the bubble collapsed on itself. The same thing happened with home prices in 2008, everybody bet that prices would continue rising because banks had successfully kept prices artificially running away by holding stock off the market, but as construction caught up to the rate banks could hold houses off the market and wages kept falling, the number of people who could buy homes continued to drop until the banks could no longer support their loans.

I would love to hear a response, if it actually includes you understanding economics and explaining your ideas using causal relationship instead of lofty metaphors and outdated myths, but I highly doubt you even have the intellectual capacity to do such a thing, considering your abysmal failure at everything you have done with your life so far.

Comment Re:Unfortunately... (Score 1) 254

The free market can drive wages down to literally slavery. Just look at Pullman in history. Because corporations have an essential monopsony on labor markets, because they own most of the capital, they have driven wages down as profits go up and workers work harder. This is an inevitable effect of the free market. The free market inevitably drives prices up, wages down, quality down, it is simply an effect of how the the free market congeals power by concentrating it. Businesses are always at war, and the best among them always wins, taking enough market share to be able to abuse their market share. Government can stop the coagulation of power by keeping monopolies and monopsonies split up, they can also say that you can only steal 40% of the work of somebody, you must pay them for the rest, to avoid the kind of exploitation that totally destroyed American's buying power over the past 40 years, that lead to the poverty that made the great depression so terrible, the factory conditions that were worse than the slavery in the south. You can say that is effective free market all you want, but that is cruel and sickeningly ineffective.

Comment Re:Unfortunately... (Score 1) 254

I didn't. I am talking about your false perceptions of the economy and your inability to realize that in the face of overwhelming evidence. How about you be a deer and do something to help society instead of your mongering to exacerbate the present conditions of monopsonic and monopolistic behaviors that have driven prices up and wages down by signing this petition:

http://www.change.org/petitions/make-wages-fair

Comment Re:Unfortunately... (Score 1) 254

I have dealt with people like you hundreds of times before, and you all rely on the same fallacious depictions of reality in the creepiest way possible. Free markets inevitably push wages down, prices up, concentrate power in the hands of the wealthy, and impoverish the masses. Governments can be whatever we make them to be, and while they have the capacity to be evil, they don't have to be. Free markets are inevitably cruel to the masses, governments can be, or can be nice to them. It all depends on the government. But free markets can ONLY lead to high prices, low wages, and systematic oppression.

Comment Re:Unfortunately... (Score 1) 254

No actually, I do not mean government. I mean business. Governments do not have to favor certain monopolies over others, in fact they can be used to destroy monopolies wherever they form, and for a short period of time after the sherman anti-trust act, it actually was used in such a way.

Business can absolutely and positively be used to remove ALL of your freedoms and reduce you to a slave and you have no choice in the matter. The fact that you do not believe that makes you incredibly niave of the workings of the world, so I'm going to assume you are some sheltered kid who has had life handed to him on a silver platter. Or at least a copper one. If you want an example of how businesses can do this, you need look no further than Pullman, who used their localized monopsony on labor to reduce their workers to slaves. They worked more and more hours every day for less and less money, and the company owned the land, housing, and food that the workers bought. Pullman then lowered wages to the point where the employees could no longer even afford the rents on the pullman housing or the food, even when working 20 hour days 7 days a week. This is just the best example and the closest to perfecting the method in history. Right now businesses have driven down the cost of labor to a small fraction of what it should be, and thanks to commodities speculation they have driven up the cost of living to the point where most Americans can no longer afford it. The actions of businesses and large companies have taken away my right to the fruits of my labor and yours to the point where without a college degree the average American has to work at least 80 hours a week just to pay the national average rent and electric, heat, and buy shitty food that will inevitably cause them to develop diabetes. You can pretend that is still freedom all you want, but it isn't, not in any way whatsoever.

Even in the best market conditions, even if government gave huge subsidies to small and new starting businesses, starting a new business to compete with any of the super-massive corporations out there today will fail. They have economies of scale, and barriars to entry are impossible for the average American. I can guarantee you beyond all reasonable doubt that any of the intelligent bottom 275 Million Americans on the income bracket, even if they had a perfect business plan, knew well what they were doing and had everything lined up to bring around massive profit, could ABSOLUTELY NEVER get started because the banks work for corporations. And the banks work for corporations for free market reasons, always have and always will in a free market. A government can help small business and hurt large ones, it does not inherently have to behave in the way you describe, whereas the markets will always inherently behave in the way I describe.

There is no competition in todays markets. This has nothing to do with the government. This is because corporations match each others services and prices so closely that there is no difference between shopping at one as opposed to the other. One of them can raise prices by a dollar or two, and the people who shop their won't notice or won't think it is worth the drive to the further away store. It is what is called by real economists an effective monopoly, which there is in every single large market in America right now. This is why home prices are so high, food prices are so high, everything is so expensive. You know the actual cost of producing enough food to feed 1000 Americans for a year? It is about 50 dollars. But the cost to Americans thanks to commodities trading and a lack of competition is more like 30000 dollars. And that is not pulling numbers out of my ass as you keep saying, those are valid figures.

Again, Barriers to entry are incredibly high even without any government at all, even with governments giving subsidies for the equipment required to start a business. Take microprocessors for example, for a set of the machines required to produce microprocessors of the 32 nanometer process, you are looking at a good 200 million dollars in startup costs, in JUST the cost of equipment, and I am lowballing it so you have nothing to bitch about. Barriers to entry are inherent facets of reality, and you anarchists always pretend that they are not. Well guess what, the free market can easily prevent everyone under the top five percent of wage earners from ever, ever having the ability to start a business, and it does.

You do not get it. Businesses will always maximize profits. The best way to maximize profits is to make your workers work more and get paid less, and raise prices. Luckily for businesses, thanks to their incredible size and the fact that the majority of Americans make far too little money to launch competing ventures, a polyopoly exists in which a few large businesses which are effectively one in the same exist and make decisions that are the same at the same time, they are really just one company for all intensive purposes. They can lay off lets say a third of their work force, and then force the other two thirds to pick up the slack for the same pay. In fact, because they have just increased local unemployment, they now have MORE determination over your wage, and can scare you into working for even less, by threatening to have you not working at all in a job market that won't have you. This is how a company like staples laid off more than half its workforce and boosted prices in a time when costs were shrinking at a massive rate and the company saw an increase in revenues of over 600 million dollars. This is how over the past 40 years as GDP increased by 34x average wages well. Not because the people didn't deserve it, but because business took away their income by sheer economic force.

Businesses enslave and it doesn't make them governments, they are still performing business transactions and they still exist solely for the purpose of profit. A government exists as the people tell it to, a business exists to make money at everyone's expense. What about that is so difficult for you fucking retarded douch-wagons to understand, it is really straight forward definitions.

In the entire eastern US, private banks own the vast majority of housing. Yes there are multiple banks, but banks monopolize specific geographical regions and do not sell all of the houses they own. Just as De'Beers does with diamonds, bank of America does with housing. By holding vast amounts of housing empty and off the market they drive down apparent supply, and then prices increase rapidly. The asset bubble was mostly because the price of housing was inflated by about 10x what is was fifty years prior, through massively increased housing production all over the nation, the banks could not keep buying housing, and incomes kept falling instead of rising over time as the banks predicted, due to the actions of other large corporations. The crash was ENTIRELY the fault of businesses pushing down on people, forcing their incomes lower and their prices higher. The same thing is true of cars, which drop in value by several thousand to their actual value as soon as they leave the car dealership lot, of food, which is being forced to incredibly high prices by commodities speculation on the free market. You completely lack a comprehension of the processes at work here, to an extent which is flat out scary.

Mandating that companies pay workers at least 60% of the value they add to a company would not cause unemployment. Because it is inextricably linked to how much a worker makes a company, businesses are bound to try to increase profits, and laying workers off just means less revenues that match the lessened costs. Instead it gives companies incentive to hire as many workers as possible. The more workers they have the more that 40% of income they get to exploit adds up. The more workers they fire, the less revenue they are left with able to steal from the workers. Instead of just laying off a third of your workers and then making the other 2/3 pick up the slack, you would then have to pay the remaining workers that much more, so it would not be profitable to do. It is all of the benefits of very high minimum wages without any of the drawbacks. Plus, is a man not entitled to the fruits of his labor? A corporation can use their monopsony on labor to force wages down to far too little to live on, and they absolutely will.

Also, Inflation is not something governments have to do. They do not have to inflate it. They only do because businesses are telling them to, and our current government is practically owned by big business. Businesses LOVE inflation. Because it means their workers at minimum wage can be paid a smaller part of the companies revenue every single day, and they get even higher profits.

Comment Re:Unfortunately... (Score 1) 254

There is one major problem that makes everything you just said dead wrong. By amassing large amounts of capital, corporations have far more power over your life than any business possibly could. Any business that reaches even ten or twenty percent of a market share, or a market is dominated by a few large businesses with no serious competition, and barriers to entry are high (which they always are, just on the need for physical capital to produce goods and services), the corporations and companies can employ monopolistic and monopsonistic policies to control every aspect of your life. Maybe not as directly as some communist countries do, but they can force you to spend 20 hours a day working for jack shit, in fact, at EVERY SINGLE POINT in history when there was not sufficient regulation preventing businesses from paying people in bread crumbs for working themselves to death, businesses have done just that. Businesses will enslave people at every chance they get, and because they hold the food, and have effectively eliminated everyone elses ability to grow it, as long as they own all the houses and drive up home prices by holding stock off the market, they can force people to live in rented apartments at way higher than the median cost, they can force people to work difficult and ridiculous jobs just to pay the bills so that they can survive. And when there are only a few companies out there, and they all have the same services at the same prices and treat people in the same way, there is effectively no difference between them, so voting with your dollars does nothing. That is when you can vote with your dollars, when there isn't an effective geographical monopoly.

It is IMPOSSIBLE to stop businesses from destroying people like this without the power of government telling them they can not do so. History proves this indisputably and irrevocably. Governments are incredibly prone to corruption, they attract the wrong types of people, and they give great incentive to use their power for profit motive instead of for the people. But, they can be controlled. Yes, our constitution is very lacking for modern times and needs a major overhaul, but that is not going to happen, there is too much opposition by the rich and the millions of idiots they have tricked into fighting against their own interests. The fact is a good government does as its people tell it to, and protects their interests against those with the power of capital that allows them to do whatever they want. Without government, power is still exerted over the people, in the form of whomever has the most money. The only difference is who your leader is and what their motives are. Governments have to keep the people happy, businesses only have to make a profit, they can piss off every customer, as long as they have made sure they don't have an alternative service, they will keep making money indefinitely. That is how such evil and disgusting corporations in America have managed to stay in business for decades. Markets do not require two parties to come to agreement. They only require that businesses make money. If I have food and you need it to live, and nobody else has food so you have to buy it from me, I can charge you as much as I want to for it, and you pay it or die. Sure that is your choice, but it is a lot less of a choice than you have with a government. The average consumer has choices that are exactly the same, you choose whether to pay exaggerated rent here, or pay roughly the same down the street and get the same services, but there is nowhere where the services are different and the prices are different, you don't have an alternative, you pay out the ass or you live on the streets. That is not two parties coming to agreement, that is one party using their force of capital to force the other party to part with far more than they should have to. When you understand that, you will understand why an engineer can make a company ten million dollars a year, get paid fifty thousand, and be expected to be ecstatic about his five thousand dollar bonus. There is no agreement there, there is a company using its capital to say " you can get your ideas or talents to market without us, so you work for the wage we set, or you don't work at all." You can deny it all you want, and I am sure you will, but look around you, that is the reality in which we live.

There is a way to fix that and ensure that deals are fair and that companies don't abuse their power of capital and physical capital: you mandate that companies pay workers/contractors at least 60% of the value they add to the company. This limits exploitation to 40% of what somebody makes, and ensures that people don't get too screwed like they have been for the past 40 years (after all, since 1970 GDP went from 0.5 T to 17 T, a 34x increase, and Americans have worked harder every year. Despite this, wages have fallen over that same period, and prices have skyrocketed). Such a law would ensure that employees are paid fairly. It wouldn't increase unemployment because laying off workers to boost profits would have no effect, the more workers you have the more profit you can make, simply making them work harder for less is an impossibility. And raising prices to increase profits just pushes wages higher. It avoids the problems of minimum wage and the problems of price ceilings, while helping people not be paid dirt for their hard work.

No matter what somebody has power. Governments can use that power however they are set up to use it, good or bad. Businesses can ONLY use that power to make profits. Every single instance of free, unregulated interprise in history has lead to conditions no better than slavery, in fact typically much worse. The average factory workers in the north in the industrial revolution worked much harder than the slaves of the south and had significantly worse working conditions and living conditions. You can call it freedom all you want, but it IS slavery, and it IS evil. You can pretend that unregulated markets are good all you want, but you are dead wrong. There has never been an unregulated market in history that did good for the people. Sure it made the wealthy have better lives, but the rest of us, the 99% of us that never see the profits, we get fucked up the ass with a pineapple made of rusty iron.

Comment Re:Unfortunately... (Score 1) 254

Not at all douche-wagon. I said governments can be corrupt and go against the people. But bad governments don't mean governments are bad. That is like saying because chocolate cake with lard filling is bad for you that all food is bad. Governments are the only organizations which can actually be by and for the people, while some fail at that and royally suck, they should then be overthrown and replaced by a real government instead of a tyranny. My point is that you anarchist types are so damn against government you don't realize that you are giving corporations the right to oppress you far more than any government possibly could.

Comment Re:Unfortunately... (Score 4, Insightful) 254

So mr. anarchist, you don't think large companies and corporations are capable of significantly worse effects of oppression on our lives? I know it is an assumption, but judging by what you said I assume you are totally against all government regulations of the corporate world. Using barriers to entry, monopolistic and monopsonistic actions, most US companies have managed to drive prices through the roof while driving wages through the floor, despite the fact that in the past 40 years GDP went from .5 T to 17T, a 34 fold increase. If that isn't oppression, nothing short of China's internet censorship, Soviet Russia, or Hitlers Germany qualifies. When you let corporations exploit people to an unlimited extent, they will. Regulations ARE necessary, if they weren't, we wouldn't be in this shithole situation right now, it would be a lot better as the deregulation of the past 10 years goes into effect, instead of even worsening quality of life. But don't let the facts affect your anarchism.

Governments are the only thing in the world that is by, for, and of the people. Corporations are for profit, by profit, and of profit. Profit isn't a moral imperative, people are. Governments can become too powerful, too strong, and too evil, but they do not have to be inherently, and can and have been controlled by the people for periods of time. This is not true of large businesses, who have amassed so much power that voting with your dollars is either ineffectual or impossible.

Comment Re:Unfortunately... (Score 4, Insightful) 254

Don't blame LulzSec, blame the people who will be putting such laws in place. That is like blaming flaming homosexuals for making gay marriage illegal, or blaming rape victims for the high number of rapists in prison. This kind of douchebaggery attitude is what will lead to improved tolerance of such government policies. Fight the government policies.

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