You have a good point...

If we are willing to live in primitive conditions worse than our current prison population and if other governments give us free weapons to resist the u.s. government we could probably do the same in the mountainous and densely wooded areas of the country.

Relatively speaking, it ends much worse for the wealthy than it did for the poor.

People who are starving and hopeless lose less than people who "have it all". Just a teeny bit of generosity would allow the poor to live much better. And on the high end, the wealthy don't even live worse. If everyone has $800,000 instead of $900,000 then you'll find the total cost of the expensive things cost $100,000 less.

Societies which have more even income spreads are measurably happier. To be fair, I'm not sure if they are more stable.

Then again, tyranny can be stable for a long time so stability isn't the best measure.

I agree. Reviews from someone who bought the item are more valuable.

The change might cut out people who bought the item thru another channel.

My main issue are fake reviews. And a company can always "sell" an item to it's employees who then give it glowing reviews. And buy products from competitors and give them terrible reviews.

I made over 100,000 and I assure you that I would have felt a $1000 fine.

Now- if you are saying , "made an extra $100,000 and was fined $1,000 for it" then I agree with you.

That was the problem with the investment bank fines. The fines were smaller than the extra profits.

I'm not sure AT&T made that much extra just from denying 1% of their customers some bandwidth.

Based on federalist paper commentary, it's a common view that the 2nd amendment is also about keeping the state free from the state itself turning tyrannical. You also have to consider that when it was written government oppression by England was in the immediate past. Only by being armed were the colonists able to stop England's oppression.

However, when you consider that today a person in an apache helicoptor flying over 2 miles away can put a half dozen 30 millimeter shells in your chest, center of mass, at night, modern weapons civilians can own don't stand a chance against the government.

So then you have to ask, have we reached a point where the cost in blood of our citizens killing themselves is worth it.

No I don't. I saw that line of reasoning but don't agree with it

For example, if I have a moving business and I have to pay three guys $60,000 a year and I take in $100,000 a year- I only get to keep $40,000 a year. If I were shareholders, we would split $40,000 per year.

The government has always recognized that costs of doing business are not part of your gross revenue. Other than occasional abuses, the government has never allowed buying of toys and cool cars to come off of gross revenue.

Businesses typically have net profit ratios of 3% to 7%. If you fined them based on their gross revenues, most would immediately be at a loss for the year. It's obviously unreasonable to bankrupt companies with fines. It's not good for society to constantly throw people out of work and destroy businesses that way.

At best with your line of reasoning, a fixed amount or deduction should be used. Because people overspend on cars, housing, clothing, food and only a base amount should be allowed to be ignored. A person shouldn't get a smaller speeding ticket because they bought a really nice house and an expensive sports car.

For people, fines are too high for the poor and too low for the rich. In some countries, they recognize this and fines are actually percentage based so a wealthy person can get a multithousand dollar speeding ticket while a poor person gets a fine for less than a middle income person.

But for middle income people- most fines are set based on their remaining income- not their gross income.

I understand where you are coming from but...

Revenues are not profits.

AT&T's profits in 2014 were about 6 billion. Their annual average profits over the last 6 years were about 10 billion a year.

Fines are usually not a tax deductible expense so they lower profits not revenue.

So the fine was over 1% of last years net profits and about 1% of their average net profits.

That would be like getting a $1,000 fine if you made $100,000 a year. You'd notice.

Machiavelli called the role the "Bad Lieutenant". The "nice" leaders have all the bad things done by the BL and then are "shocked" to find the BL did bad things and fire the BL.

google "guitar hero lawsuit dropped". Tons of articles.

Lead result
http://www.wired.com/2013/02/a...
Judge Dismisses Axl Roseâ(TM)s $20M Guitar Hero Lawsuit

I was speaking about the restaurant industry as a whole. It would cost them less than a penny each to have songs created. You know- just like programmers collectively write programs and make them public domain.

Even Houston alone has 4000 restaurants so $25000 for songs would be a one time expense of about $6.25 per restaurant.

What is "money" in a society where no one can earn it except a select few?

Money only has meaning in the context of how we share things in society.

Especially as a publicly held company, apple could change management literally tomorrow.

The new management could monetize user data instantly.

http://www.city.ac.uk/news/201...

The "money" quote:
âoeIt [Sweden] collaborated with the United States on extraordinary rendition by the CIA of people who had applied for asylum to Sweden. And Assange's Wikileaks website exposed a whole range of US-Swedish cooperation that did not reflect well on Sweden's global image as âa good stateâ(TM).

That's why sweden would extradite Assange unless there is a significant change of government. He embarrassed the government of Sweden.

At least one condom submitted by the lady as the one used by assange appears to have been new and not actually used.

Full text on it here, but it looks she gave them a ripped condom which she said she had kept from the incident and there was no DNA on it. The only way that could happen would be if a new condom was opened and ripped.
http://rixstep.com/2/20110619,...

I have no love lost for Assange. And I'm very against rape. But this is a very unclear situation where one of the lady's in question has suspicious ties to the U.S. government. Sex by surprise isn't rape.

http://www.rawstory.com/2010/1...

And the swedish government acted in an unusual fashion because it was Assange. (the ladies were advised to drop the matter until it was known that they were complaining about Assange.)

The only way I could see convicting as a jury would be to strongly believe the females over the male as all the activity took place in private and was indistinguishable from consensual sex (which also took place).

It is well known that if Assange is extradited to Sweden he will immediately be extradited to the United States.

And that the real crime he committed was offending the united states intelligence agencies.

And when he is extradited to the united states, he'll disappear and not be seen again for a decade if ever..