Hmmm, I've lived on the West Coast (California) my whole life and have never heard "trim" used that way.

Does it sting?

Come on. At least be honest. They'll listen to any lobbyist with bags of money. They don't have to be corporate.

The first company to actually do what you suggest would be the first to go out of business.

Fear campaigns is what the RIAA and their kin have been running, and it has done little to nothing to change hearts and minds. At least not in their favor.

It always amazes me how many people think the way you do, but there are several things wrong with this kind of reasoning.

First of all, it completely ignores past work. The rich don't become rich overnight. Their hard work starts in high school if not earlier. Even if they have rich parents to help them pay for the best schools they still have to get good grades, and then spend another 4+ years in college. There is a small minority who have parents powerful enough to push them through those things with poor grades, but it is not as if every kid with well off parents becomes well off themselves.

Second, you have to look at the skill involved in what they do. Anyone can hammer nails into a house, or use a leaf blower on the streets. It takes a lot more knowledge to successfully make something out of a business. Not only does it require a large amount of technical knowledge, it requires critical thinking, and people skills as well.

Third, you may think you see the upper management doing nothing but yakking and golfing but that is far from the truth about how much they actually work. When the roof builder goes home, he leaves his work completely. The management types never leave work. When they go home their work follows them. It even follows them on vacation.

Now, don't take this to mean that I don't think there are CEOs and management out there that are bad at their jobs and are vastly overpaid. There are. But for most of the successful people, "being in the right place at the right time" is a matter of always being there, so that when an opportunity comes they have the chance and skill to take it.

"No no I don't. "

Yes, yes you do. I am so sick of people harping on about the evil "Randian free market" as if everyone who believes in a free market must wholeheartedly agree with everything Rand ever wrote.

In the *real* world the leeching bastards are the receivers of government handouts. And all those resources you mentioned are paid for BY THE PEOPLE THAT MAKE MONEY. Something like 95+% of taxes come from the top 5% of earners. So stop pretending that they don't pay their fair share.

Even if they didn't your argument still doesn't hold water because by running a business and creating a valuable product, everyone else who buys their product and uses it gains something more than what they paid for it. So they already give more back to the country than they take just by selling something valuable. People that produce are the ones that make money and they are the ones that pay the taxes and they are the ones that pay for the resources that YOU use for your comfortable life.

I love how the GP presents a logical argument based in economic theory and all you can come up with is "LOL AYN RAND SUCKS!! SUCCESSFUL PEOPLE ARE ALL GREEDY, ITS THE POOR SMALL BUSINESSES THAT DO ALL THE REAL WORK! LOL!"

Take econ 101 for christ's sake.

Bullshit. MS has made wayyyyyyyyyy more money for people than they will ever make. That is the beauty of business. Every time someone sells a product or service they are both better off than they were before the transaction. To say it is unpatriotic to not want to pay high taxes is ridiculous.

My Kingdom for some mod points!

Meanwhile, most of the rest of the world will say something sucks when most of the things that make up that something suck.

For example, I have said "television sucks" not because I think all television shows suck, or there is something inherently wrong with the medium. I said it because I think 99% of the shows on television are complete drivel, cater to the lowest common denominator, and glorify the damaged parts of society.

It's just a generalization, it is not meant to hold up in 100% of cases. I don't think it indicates narrow mindedness. It indicates loose use of language as is common everywhere.

I don't think that means that using religion as justification for war is not an indictment of religion. I think it means that nationalism and "FEAR OF" religion are indicted as well.

I couldn't agree with you more. I was at the Guggenheim museum in New York, a very well respected art museum and they had a couple displays that have zero value as far as I can tell.

One was titled "Blue Plank" and guess what it was? A plank painted blue. That is it.

Another one was "Copper Plate", a 2'x2' copper plate on the floor. The caption nearby said the artist was challenging convention by putting it on the floor. I thought it had just been too heavy to hang on the wall or something.

I think I've taken shits with more value than those exhibits.

If that doesn't prove that "having value" is in the eye of the beholder, I don't know what would.

I think I'll need some soma if I'm going to live in this Brave New World

The pure free market is not perfect because of externalities. Parties not involved in a transaction can be harmed by a transaction.

However, this flaw in the free market does not mean that we should dump it overboard and become communists or socialists. It means we should put simple taxes on externalities, such as CO2 pollution, and let the market deal with it from there. Anything beyond that will lead to inefficiency and corruption, like we have with ethanol subsidies. Then the only people that win are slimy politician types.

The free market + sound taxes on externalities leads to the best system for matching merit to reward that there is.

I don't think what MS did in this case was illegal.

As far as I can tell the argument goes like this:

1. Netscape has the most market share.
2. MS started bundling IE with Windows
3. IE took over the market
4. Therefore MS bundling IE with Windows was anti competitive and illegal.

Clearly this is faulty logic, so maybe I'm missing something. But faulty logic has never stopped politicians before. It's not like the other browser vendors have tried to be competitive. MS spends millions on advertising their OS with their browser. How much did Netscape, Mozilla, or Google spend advertising their browsers? I certainly haven't seen any ads on TV for them. How can they legitimately claim anti-competitive behavior on MS's part if they aren't even trying to compete?

You present no argument as to why MS's activities were actually illegal. You just say they broke the law as if that must be true. Maybe you should present an argument before getting all high and mighty?