Not my "meme." I rarely, if ever, refer to it.

But, it's true. Capitalism relies on private control and a free, competitive market. Crony capitalism is government control and a resulting non-free market by explicitly decreasing competition.

I mean, sure, you can call it whatever you want to, but when I say "capitalism works" and someone says "crony capitalism is proof it doesn't," that's just stupid, because crony capitalism flatly violates some of the primary tenets of capitalism.

So you admit you lied.

False, but telling that you think such a stupid thing. To you, there's no difference between freedom, and not-freedom. It's just two different options, neither better than the other.

a. I never saw you ask that. It might've been in the comment I replied to, and I didn't see it, because after your massive whopper about what you want people to think crony capitalism is, I stopped reading.

b. Why would I produce an example of something I never asserted? Once again: holy shit, you're retarded.

I haven't seen the case strongly made. If you have a link, I'd be obliged. Stories I saw all handwaved at it.

But they are Republicans. Voter suppression is expected. It's OK.

Only because I see YOU STANDING BEHIND ME. What the fuck, man?!?

Sorry, no. I have these things called pride and integrity.

You fucking asshole.

Nice, except you said "altruism," which is an illusion. True, Cochran is not altruistic, but no one ever is.

This is the first I've heard of this. I want to know specifics. For example, does state law say you cannot participate in GOP runoff if you participated in Dem primary? And is that what happened? If so, then yes, Cochran should lose, but really, MS screwed up, because they should have disallowed those Dem primary voters from participating.

Fuck everyone who wants to use government to push "fairness." "Fairness" isn't a real thing: nothing is inherently fair or unfair, except for someone violating your rights (unfair) or you exercising your rights (fair). There is no other objective concept of fairness. So when someone is pushing "fairness" through the government -- except in those limited senses of protecting individual rights -- they are really pushing their own private moral judgments on everyone else, taking away our freedoms even more.

Except, it is.

Wow. You really think that damn_registrars, of all people in the world, claiming A means B, is actual evidence that A means B?

Seriously?

Yes, within a certain context, where government is not siding with the thiefs. You attacked that notion within the context where government is siding with the thiefs (or, at least, you were ignoring whether government was siding with the thiefs).

As I noted in another comment, crony capitalism is not capitalism. Your claim "The existence of crony capitalism is counterexample to the notion that capitalism will protect us" is idiotic, because either it is saying that crony capitalism is capitalism, or it is saying that smitty claimed capitalism will solve all our problems regardless of what government does. Obviously, neither of those is true.

False. You do not know what "wealth" is. Try harder.

It's the only reasonable means to the end. In what other system would I be free to use my natural faculties to create wealth to further my own interests? Every other system we have works to prevent me from using my natural faculties, or at least significant restricts it, or else it takes my wealth after I've created it, or else it restricts what I can do with my wealth. Capitalism is the only means we've yet seen in humanity for doing this, except for, perhaps, anarchy, which is destructive in other ways.

You offer this quote as though it disagrees with me in some way. Why?

But, as I said, it was not merely a non sequitur, it was also meaningless. It said nothing. It made no point, and had no meaning.

Yes, by dishonestly and meaninglessly claiming that virtue is only for churches, and not all other aspects of our lives.

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.