Ever hear of angie's list? It has been around for a decade or two and largely takes the difficult out of the equation.

I was kind of thinking the same thing. Except instead of yellow pages, I was thinking angie's list. They do some subscription thing to make money but screen reviews and only allow customers of whatever services to make them. I think they are limited to home improvement type stuff though.

Don't you think there is a difference between someone who can afford booze and drugs who can hold a job and someone who drinks to the point they cannot? Isn't there a difference between someone who buys a bag of weed and someone who buys groceries?

Just because we do the same things doesn't mean we are equally doing them. When you know when to stop, when you don't do it beyond your means, you do not end up losing your means, you are not the same. But that really doesn't matter because other choices play a bigger role. Choices like being a single mom or having 10 trophies (kids) or screwing up jobs so you are stuck with shit jobs and low pay.

But hey, did you know that two income families making minimum wage is not considered in poverty? Divorce them and both will be.

Sears tried something like this years ago. Except it mostly dealt with connecting contractors to customers who purchased the products sold for installation. They ran into a lot of legal problems. Some areas considered them to be contractors themselves so they needed to be licensed and bonded. Some areas considered them liable for disputes that popped up. They got a handle on it but not before some headaches. Amazon will find this out too.

I'm going to guess that it has a lot to do with nutrition too. But in the US, there is quite a few people who are considered in poverty who are there by choice. I don't mean they choose to be in poverty but choices they make places and keeps them there.

I'm sorry but what was your point?

Its not like they did anything different than what was already happening. They just did it better. And in my neck of the woods, the vast majority of natives simply blended into society. They were not killed for the land.

Have you seen our tax code? When I took Federal Income Taxation in law school, I had to get a copy of the tax code, and it was about six inches thick. (I don't remember, or care, if or how much it was annotated.) That's a mighty long list of exceptions to consumption tax.

But consumption taxes will never take on, because the tax code is really about control. If I grant tax favors for certain preferred behaviors, I can exercise a phenomenal amount of control over what you do. If I'm a power-grubbing statist anywhere on the purple spectrum, that's much better than merely influencing what you buy.

I gather from news reports that they not only rammed the gate but security cars when less than lethal attempts to subdue them were being tried. But otherwise i agree with you with the exception of reasonable. Any other way needs to be reasonable enough to not cause extreme risk to someone's life. When that is present, lethal force is warranted whether it is obvious or not.

I think it's fine for private individuals to shout "Dont go to this business because they don't like gays". I DON'T think it's OK to use the force of government to force a private individual in to a business contract for any reason.

Two words:

Bus Boycott.

"[they] rationalize injustice by pretending to defend something many of us hold dear,"

Couldn't that be said by BOTH sides of this issue? Wouldn't it be injustice to force a private citizen to enter a private business contract/engagement with another private citizen against their will and against their beliefs?

I believe It's discrimination to not hire/or fire based on sexual orientation. I do not believe that it is discrimination to refuse to take the money and provide services to someone who wants to you to make a cake for their same-sex wedding. Trust me -- the small business bakery market will weed out those who want to miss great business opportunities and/or sales just because they don't want both figures on a cake wearing pants.

Actually the entire idea of these special entitlements that destroy individual rights TO DISCRIMINATE is a power grab by the insane government that is out of control.

Individual people discriminate every day. As a potential employee you can choose to work for a one legged Brazilian tranny and there is nothing any of the other potential employers can do to stop this obvious bigotry and discrimination by you against their businesses, NOR should there be anything they could do to force you to work for them. That's EXACTLY the same thing.

PRECISELY the same thing, since you working for a company is exactly like a company doing work for other people. When you buy a product you are buying work done by a company for you. A company is people standing behind it (corporations are in fact people, not as in 'Google is a living person', it is not. It is as in Google is owned by people, that's the people corporations are). A person that owns/runs a company has his or her right to discriminate and the Constitution of the USA is there to protect that right.

A right is a protection against government oppression and abuse, nothing else.

A government telling somebody that just because they are employing somebody they now lost a right is abuse and oppression and a power grab and unconstitutional and illegal and immoral.

Should people discriminate against each other based on sex, gender, age, race, colour? We know that some will and some do. If a business does so, it will face consequences whatever they are in the market. As to a belief that just because a business exists somewhere you automatically get an entitlement to their service - that is hubris and destruction of the people running that business as individuals and it cannot stand.

Of-course you are absolutely 100% correct, which was my first comment on this topic before the one you replied to. But my first comment appears to be extremely unpopular here.

Oh, I have no doubt they considered ending it. Probably in a "how much power would we lose if" type scenario but consideration likely was there at some point.