I’m not a republican I’m an independent.
Also remember that at the time the Articles of Confederation were adopted, they didn’t even give the federal government the power to TAX–an OSHA style regulation on worker conditions (read: slaves) would have been out of bounds by several miles in that kind of minimalist government, no matter how sensible it seems to modern minds (being that we are already conditioned to a federal government several orders of magnitude larger than any the FFs envisioned).
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Owning people as slaves is and was a repugnant activity. Particularly those who considered slaves somehow less than human, and/or abused them.
However, some form of indenture - from employer to evil master, spans human history. And has done so with the full blessing of the societies within their era.
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Price isn’t the be all end all metric. He is in the business of keeping up the fossil fuel industry from all the scientific criticism of global warming issues.
No, it doesn’t, that’s libertarian myth. Markets are legally ordered social institutions that have always involved government intrusion to improve transparency and competition. Where libertarians get it wrong is always defining government involvement in a market as an End, when it’s not - it’s a Means to some End. If the End is good - better tranparency and competition, for example - then there’s government involvement isn’t categorically bad, it’s just a tool to accomplish a good End.
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A bit of an aside, but I was watching an antifa protest in New York on my facebook.
I get the impression that they believe that if they are successful and Trump were ousted from office- Hillary would be installed as the new president because she came in 2nd.
No one has ever said that, its just the impression that I get from all of these protesters. What do they think is going to happen?
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I’ll do you one better. I was reading about the G20 protesters and looking at the signs. There were alot of anti capitalist logos intermingled with Anarchy shirts while other folks had USSR/China style banners.
I want to ask the crowd there: How can you have Anarchy and depend on central planning to any degree? Can you define fascism for me? Did anyone make money on your antifa banner?
You are ignoring the roughly 23% of world GDP that is the black market. They have supply, demand, customers, prices, delivery, investment etc… all not only without governments, but in spite of them.
Looting.
http://vendedy.com/the-black-market-is-now-the-2nd-largest-economy-in-the-world/
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No, I’m not ignoring it. It’s irrelevant to my point. And just because they exist doesn’t mean they’re good.
If 23% of world GDP is black market then it can’t all be hookers, cocaine and guns. We both know it isn’t.
The question is why would so much of the world’s business be done without government. If we assume that they are rational actors then it would follow that for 1/4th of world business the benefit of government intervention is outweighed by the cost.
I would argue that the number of people who would make that analysis is higher than 23%, it’s just in developed countries it’s tough to go black market. You can’t even sell cigarettes on a street corner without being choked to death.
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Of this 23%, are we assuming none of it is govt sponsored? When we arm rebels or a militant group, are we flying in USA arms, or are we having an IC member place a call to the local arms dealer? What makes you think the black market is immune to the involvement of govt?
Only 1% of India’s 1.2 Billion people pay taxes/file returns. I doubt that 99% are selling illicit items to make a living. Way more rice/lentils/curry than guns/drugs/human trafficking going on.
Why stay off the radar? Couldn’t be that India’s government is incredibly corrupt, demanding bribes for everything.
Markets can exist without government. That was the only counter I was making. I wasn’t getting into a quality argument. Hard to judge the results of a hidden economy.
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It’s pretty fucking important from a business perspective.
You wrote, “He is the greatest President if you’re in the fossil fuel industry.” Stock prices are down almost 7% over the last 3 months and the world is saturated with oil already amd Trump wants to (at least he did not sure now) to sell off some of our reserves increasing supply even more so than now. That is not good for the oil industry, which I don’t really care about, generally, but there will be economic costs.
Nobody said otherwise. But markets can’t develop without government, and sane people who appreciate rule of law don’t want to participate in black markets for their livelihoods, bread, and retirement savings everyday.
Trump is a good friend to the industry. Trying to roll back a lot of regulations of that industry. The decline in stock prices may be due to a lagger effect of the Obama regulations. But make no mistake Trump is a good friend of the fossil fuel industry.
But less than 100 days into his presidency, it already is clear that the Trump administration has allied itself with fossil fuel interests—embarking on a systematic effort to roll back restrictions on oil, gas and coal development and cut programs on climate change. Trump ended an environmental review of the Dakota Access pipeline, clearing the way for construction, four days after he took office.
There are plenty of examples and mucho evidence.
@ Presentism -
Do you think that definition applies when people reinvent or misremember events from their own life? I’m thinking of the 2001 Pew Poll where about 30 percent of Americans supported gay marriage. I wonder if we polled people now about their recollections of their opinion in 2001, how many would say that they always supported gay marriage. That would be an interesting study, particularly to see how many progressives now remember it as an idea only held by conservatives, or to see how many would claim that they supported gay marriage much earlier, say in 1990, or in the 1980s at the height of the AIDS scare.
Of course, if I’d been alive in Germany in the 1940s I would have been involved in the Hitler assassination attempt. I probably would have been the mastermind so it would have worked! And have been hiding dozens of Jewish kids in my attic.
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I completely disagree. A market is the opposite of central planning. A true market cannot be planned. Attempts at planning a market often end with unintended consequences.
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Sure better than George Washington … well no. How about lets wait until he has finished
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I think the years of Obama through Trump will be written as a pivotal moment of time in American History, especially as Historians begin to truly unravel what HAS happened; what IS happening; and what WILL happen during this time period.
You have posed an interesting question.
I don’t discount that people can change their minds, soften stances, or such. But l doubt people will change opinions that they hold both morally AND intellectually - having formed their position through deliberate consideration.
Regarding homosexual marriage - a deliberate, systematic, well funded, and seemingly tireless effort has been made to gain acceptance of homosexuality. No stone has been left unturned by its radical advocates. Exaggeration of % of practitioners, denial of the health risks, a constant shaming/badgering of its opponents who speak out against it morally, the outsized effort to normalize its reputation through entertainment, media coverage, public school system, legal battles to put it on equal footing (perhaps even privileged / protected minority status) in marriage, adoption, retirement benefits.
Who can stand against so indefatigable an opponent? See my early line about moral/intellectual consideration. But those on this side of the issue, will continue to be shouted down by its advocates and assorted white knights raised to eagerly champion a lifestyle that has been universally considered abnormal, shameful, & immoral.
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