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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

How about studying the bug to figure out how to use the effect to make super effective speakers and sound equipment? That makes a lot more sense than the endless jokes about penises, what, are you all sexually repressed teenagers or something?

That is the problem with a commercial monopsony, they should be as equally illegal as monopolies, not that the US government has done anything to stop even the most blatant monopolies in the past decade.

In fact, many times in history have companies become so powerful that the populace they rule over actually starves to the point where they can no longer produce anything for the upper class, and die out. Mind you, most of these companies have been religions, which can be very convincing. It happened to the Mayans, the Romans, and to the Vinland Nord colony, the easter island civilization, among many others. Corporations and other fiscal entities can continue on until they bleed the people to death. The only thing stopping them is regulations that we, by sheer force of mass, force corporations to live by using the government.

No number of boycotts, no amount of effort in the modern era can possibly overpower the disgusting power heap that is the corporate world.

They currently own around 70% of the wealth in the nation. We would all starve to death long before they run out of money.

The top modern corporations control so much wealth and property that they simultaneously have in most areas a near monopoly on goods and services and a monopsony on labor such that the vast majority of people are essentially slaves to the corporate elite in one way or another. We who don't own property can't own property, even though it is significantly less expensive and more stable than renting at hugely artificial rates, we have to work our asses off for absolutely nothing and there are no jobs and no opportunities to escape this system. It is the most oppressive life I can imagine short of having internet filters, and these corporations have powers that the government couldn't possibly take as long as it is still accountable to the people. But the power of capital wealth is infinite, without checks, without balances, and without mercy.

I first read an article about body parts regenerated with dehydrated cell matrix made from pig bladders in 2008. Of course then it was only entire fingers, but still, the fact that anybody loses a body part permanently anymore is disgusting when we have this technology.

Also, corporations are far less

I had problems with Civ V initially, but I also had problems with Mafia II, GTA IV, CoD MW and MW2. Then I did a bios update and no more problems. Since then it has worked perfectly, I often play on huge maps and do tons of fun things. My only problem with the game is that even on quick mode it takes all damn day just to get through one round. But the graphical improvements, hex style, and gameplay itself is significantly better than CIV IV