The difficult part would be deciding between who wins the bids, since time is an unfair determining factor that leaves some other metric like price bid or bidder's history or a random element.

That's easy... of course my brother-in-law/fraternity brother/ex-coworker wins. Same as now.

as opposed to upper class conservatism, "if it ain't broke, how can I nudge things towards broken and get hired to pretend to fix it."

sounds like a decent first step to teach a child about math and get him interested without scaring him/her off. Not everyone learns the same.

sign my petition to prosecute NSA leaders: https://petitions.whitehouse.g...

surprisingly insightful...
and depressing...

You are also working against some personal interest in most cases. They can act dumb instead of corrupt.

You write the checks each month, we (the taxpayers) write the check when you have a baby that spends a month in the nicu, or you drop a tree on yourself playing lumberjack.

It's easy to say get out of the way, and ignore the multiple tangible and intangible benefits you receive from having the big bad gov as a buffer between you and multiple externalities. A handout is not the same thing as "getting out of your way" so you can dump chemicals in the river or do whatever your business would do in it's race to the bottom.

Nice strawman though...

They probably got a deal where those sales taxes actually go into walmarts pockets, at least for the 1st decade or so...
true story.

Obviously you get some non-monetary benefit from running your own business. Would you have started the business knowing what you know now? If you sold the business tomorrow would you make back your investment? There's alot that goes into starting a business, but there are plenty of small businesses that should just fail and let someone else take their business. Don't ask me to make it easier for people who shouldn't be running a business to give it a try.

Have you ever been diagnosed with schizophrenia?

So you think there is only room for one river guide, one fisherman, one coach? You don't have to be the best at everything. There is plenty of room for mediocre in a talent based economy. Mediocre might just be the starting point that people can't get past when they devote most of their time to a day job.

I've also seen plenty of "braindead" laborers. Their brains aren't always dead when they are off the job and they all have something interesting about them if you take the time.

People don't start out as "braindead", I would like to work toward a time when we don't make them "braindead".

I'd be surprised if those guys don't have hobbies or knowledge that could benefit others. From running a youth sports team, to gardening or habitat renewal. Their are all sorts of things people will do if you remove the financial incentives.

But, go ahead, toss that human on the trash heap...

Wow, you really believe that? Turn off Rush and flip over to NPR for one week. I doubt your mind will open much, but flip on newshour instead of fox and you might makes some progress. There are still some places with journalistic integrity, maybe the BBC.

If you follow a rigorous year long program, where you stop listening to lunatics, you might just climb up that intelligence scale. It must be hard to spend you life at functional moron. I hope we can help you.

Wooaahh.... Bankers don't get rich by paying people a reasonable amount of money.