GGniner Wrote:[quote=Fo Shizzle]
I will agree...This man is dangerous for our nation. He is running an ad here in NC touting his plan to steal profits from the oil companies...I simply cant support this type of direct governmental interference in the free market...He is simply pandering.

I saw this ad, there is atleast one outright lie in it. his claim of not taking any donations from 'lobbyist' and oil companies. he has, just very little because they never thought he'd get this far last year and bet on Hillary. He has alot worse contributers that than to his campaign to worry about.

that said, the ad is effective politically. rising gas prices are never good for a political party perceived to be in power.

Obama will be torn to shreds in the general I think, starting with an all out blitz from the 527's on stuff the media has been keeping from the news and what little bit has come out. In the end it'll be a questionable unexperienced far-left liberal vs. a 'maverick' who positioned himself well for this election cycle.

Quote:all the Dems had to do was nominate a moderate southern Dem and they would hold all 3 branches at same time again given the political cycle we are in.

Yep...I agree..That would have been a winner.

Fo Shizzle Wrote:I will say though...That Im sure that McCain is supported by equally dangerous terroristic organizations that make up the industrial military complex....One mans security is another mans threat.

If true, and that's a mighty big "if", our military will be on our side of the wall shooting out while the terrorists will be on the outside shooting in. At least McCain is supported by people not hell bent on killing all of us.

smn1256:wingedeagle: Wrote:

Fo Shizzle Wrote:I will say though...That Im sure that McCain is supported by equally dangerous terroristic organizations that make up the industrial military complex....One mans security is another mans threat.

If true, and that's a mighty big "if", our military will be on our side of the wall shooting out while the terrorists will be on the outside shooting in. At least McCain is supported by people not hell bent on killing all of us.

smn1256 Wrote:

Fo Shizzle Wrote:I will say though...That Im sure that McCain is supported by equally dangerous terroristic organizations that make up the industrial military complex....One mans security is another mans threat.

If true, and that's a mighty big "if", our military will be on our side of the wall shooting out while the terrorists will be on the outside shooting in. At least McCain is supported by people not hell bent on killing all of us.

Man...When you talk about "Walls"...you make me think that you want us to become a big "gated" nation. Free men dont need gates,borders or boundries. I advocate an evolution of our nation to one based on voluntary interaction among free people... A nation were people would live free, without the force of government, to live their lives unhindered in a total free market society...A NEW example for the rest of the world.

Fo Shizzle Wrote:[quote=smn1256]


Free men dont need gates,borders or boundries.

A great sounding ideal... but if you think about it, we don't have gates borders or boundaries to keep us in... it is to keep those who might try and TAKE our freedom out.

You don't need a passport to leave the US... you only need one to come back in.

Hambone10 Wrote:

Fo Shizzle Wrote:[quote=smn1256]


Free men dont need gates,borders or boundries.

A great sounding ideal... but if you think about it, we don't have gates borders or boundaries to keep us in... it is to keep those who might try and TAKE our freedom out.

You don't need a passport to leave the US... you only need one to come back in.

I hear people say..."The terrorists are just after us because we are free." The fact is, they are after us because we are involving ourselves in the affairs of their countries..How would we like it another country decided to meddle in our affairs?...Lets just stop being so arrogant and thinking that we are the "worlds savior" and mind our own business...Then we wont need to worry about those that might want to come into our country to find and make a better life for themselves.

Hambone10 Wrote:

Fo Shizzle Wrote:[quote=smn1256]


Free men dont need gates,borders or boundries.

A great sounding ideal... but if you think about it, we don't have gates borders or boundaries to keep us in... it is to keep those who might try and TAKE our freedom out.

You don't need a passport to leave the US... you only need one to come back in.

He didn't say that the gates,borders or boundries were for keeping people in. I'm guessing Fo Shizzle would like free flow both ways back and forth across the border. Just saying.

Fo Shizzle Wrote:Man...When you talk about "Walls"...you make me think that you want us to become a big "gated" nation. Free men dont need gates,borders or boundries. I advocate an evolution of our nation to one based on voluntary interaction among free people... A nation were people would live free, without the force of government, to live their lives unhindered in a total free market society...A NEW example for the rest of the world.

When I used the word "wall" it was just an expression. I could have easily used the phrase our side and their side.

The fact is we do have walls although they're not actaully physical and those walls are called customs, the border patrol, visas, ICE, and others. And on a more practical scale, my house has physical walls. Does that make me less free? No. It just keeps out those who would pry into my business or take my stuff.

Our mexican wall is made out of styrofoam.

smn1256 Wrote:

Fo Shizzle Wrote:Man...When you talk about "Walls"...you make me think that you want us to become a big "gated" nation. Free men dont need gates,borders or boundries. I advocate an evolution of our nation to one based on voluntary interaction among free people... A nation were people would live free, without the force of government, to live their lives unhindered in a total free market society...A NEW example for the rest of the world.

When I used the word "wall" it was just an expression. I could have easily used the phrase our side and their side.

The fact is we do have walls although they're not actaully physical and those walls are called customs, the border patrol, visas, ICE, and others. And on a more practical scale, my house has physical walls. Does that make me less free? No. It just keeps out those who would pry into my business or take my stuff.

You bring up an interesting subject. Your person,home,land and possessions are your private property and you certainly have the right to control them. It is that ability that makes you free....But...What if you own private property on one of these imaginary borders?...Should you not have the same right to control your property and decide who you allow to come and go?...If not..Do you own your property at all?
Also...If you decide not to pay taxes on your property and the government comes with weapons and removes you from your property and confiscates its..or they just come and take it "for the common good" and build a shopping mall on it. Do you own your property?..or are property rights just a sham.

ETSUfan1 Wrote:Our mexican wall is made out of styrofoam.

And it's shaped like a funnel injecting their poor, uneducated and gang bangers into our country.

Fo Shizzle Wrote:What if you own private property on one of these imaginary borders?...Should you not have the same right to control your property and decide who you allow to come and go

Yes, you should.

Fo Shizzle Wrote:If not..Do you own your property at all?

In the limited context of your example I'd have to say no.

Fo Shizzle Wrote:Also...If you decide not to pay taxes on your property and the government comes with weapons and removes you from your property and confiscates its..

We are a tax based country and we all need to pay to keep up the public infrastructure and, arggggggg, social programs....

Fo Shizzle Wrote:or they just come and take it "for the common good" and build a shopping mall on it. Do you own your property?..or are property rights just a sham.

Eminent domain. This could be a whole new thread but in most cases I'm against it. Especially when private land is taken away so developers can profit from it. If they were building a school or a bridge I'd have to weigh it on its individual merits. A good example of this is the border wall along Mexico. The government/country has to build a wall to stop the invasion of drugs, illegal aliens and, possibly, terrorists. For the national good if land needs to be taken for the wall then so be it.

smn1256 Wrote:[quote=ETSUfan1]
Our mexican wall is made out of styrofoam.

And it's shaped like a funnel injecting their poor, uneducated and gang bangers into our country.

Fo Shizzle Wrote:What if you own private property on one of these imaginary borders?...Should you not have the same right to control your property and decide who you allow to come and go

Yes, you should.

Fo Shizzle Wrote:If not..Do you own your property at all?

In the limited context of your example I'd have to say no.

Fo Shizzle Wrote:Also...If you decide not to pay taxes on your property and the government comes with weapons and removes you from your property and confiscates its..

Quote:We are a tax based country and we all need to pay to keep up the public infrastructure and, arggggggg, social programs....

This is the sticking point for almost everyone brought up in a statist society(myself included)...The society I advocate could do the same thing using the power of the free market(those in search of profit) and private charity for the poor...without the immoral theft of our wages...The beautiful thing about a total free market paradigm is that you do not have to know all the details of how things would work...The market would handle all situations by responding to signals from the consumers....Im not delusional enough to believe this will ever happen...I just know it will work.

Fo Shizzle Wrote:This is the sticking point for almost everyone brought up in a statist society(myself included)...The society I advocate could do the same thing using the power of the free market(those in search of profit) and private charity for the poor...without the immoral theft of our wages...The beautiful thing about a total free market paradigm is that you do not have to know all the details of how things would work...The market would handle all situations by responding to signals from the consumers....Im not delusional enough to believe this will ever happen...I just know it will work.

Interesting, but without the immoral theft of our wages how would we pay for our infrastructure? Would every road we drive on be a toll road? Will we be forced to pay-per-flush? Who would inspect our bridges and food supply? Would our military and NASA rely on charity? Who will be there when another Katrina hits us? Who would pay for our justice system?

smn1256 Wrote:

Fo Shizzle Wrote:This is the sticking point for almost everyone brought up in a statist society(myself included)...The society I advocate could do the same thing using the power of the free market(those in search of profit) and private charity for the poor...without the immoral theft of our wages...The beautiful thing about a total free market paradigm is that you do not have to know all the details of how things would work...The market would handle all situations by responding to signals from the consumers....Im not delusional enough to believe this will ever happen...I just know it will work.

Interesting, but without the immoral theft of our wages how would we pay for our infrastructure? Would every road we drive on be a toll road? Will we be forced to pay-per-flush? Who would inspect our bridges and food supply? Would our military and NASA rely on charity? Who will be there when another Katrina hits us? Who would pay for our justice system?

Ok...You ask great questions. All can be answered by the free market....Unfortunately, We dont have enough leisure time to hash out all the answers on this forum....If you are really interested in this topic and have time to spare.....I suggest you go to the following website....freetalklive.com....scroll down to the 12/26/07 entry that has a great audiobook ...The Market For Liberty..by Morris and Linda Tannehill. It can be downloaded for mp3 or Itunes for free.
Im not trying to dodge your questions...and will be happy to parce them over a period of time...I simply cant do that in a short timeframe...What you are asking is the crux of Classical Liberialism,Objectivism and Libertarianism....Questions that I explored myself over a period of several years.

I will start with your question of who would inspect the food supply.
In a free market paradigm...This would be handled by independant organizations...like UL...that would inspect the various businesses throughout the human food chain....Grades would be given much like todays system. No one would be forced to submit to grading...But it is unlikely that you our I would consume food that was not properly inspected and graded...Thus...It would be in the businesses best intrest to contract with these inspectors to recieve their grade or rating.....You may ask...What if the inspectors just give them a good grade without really doing the inspection?...Well.. they may get away with that....but...If someone gets sick from the food that they were supposed to certify as wholesome...Then the consumers would stop eating products that they inspected and therefore eliminate that inspection agency and vendors market share due to market signals...Likely they would no longer exist in business.
In a free market...the consumer insures quality..not the government...and all without the theft of wages to do it.

Bourgeois_Rage Wrote:

Hambone10 Wrote:

Fo Shizzle Wrote:[quote=smn1256]


Free men dont need gates,borders or boundries.

A great sounding ideal... but if you think about it, we don't have gates borders or boundaries to keep us in... it is to keep those who might try and TAKE our freedom out.

You don't need a passport to leave the US... you only need one to come back in.

He didn't say that the gates,borders or boundries were for keeping people in. I'm guessing Fo Shizzle would like free flow both ways back and forth across the border. Just saying.

Obviously... but I stand by the comment that free men STILL need gates, borders and boundaries... to protect their freedom from those who would take it. The entire purpose of things like NAFTA is to extend the "free" zone. When it becomes global, THEN we won't need borders... but until then, you do. We can eliminate borders, but what if Mexico doesn't? If no other reason, borders are set up for tax and benefit purposes. You want to eliminate ALL government and all public services (including waste, water and power)?? I don't think so.

Fo Shizzle Wrote:hear people say..."The terrorists are just after us because we are free." The fact is, they are after us because we are involving ourselves in the affairs of their countries..How would we like it another country decided to meddle in our affairs?...Lets just stop being so arrogant and thinking that we are the "worlds savior" and mind our own business...Then we wont need to worry about those that might want to come into our country to find and make a better life for themselves.

While that is certainly PART of it... I don't believe that when we create a great system of higher education that people in other countries want to avail themselves of... so they send their best and brightest here... and IF they return, they want a McDonalds in their home town, or satellite TV so they can watch shows that they enjoyed while they were in the US, is an example of US Imperialism. Blame capitalists if you want, but if there is no demand, there will be no supply.

Should we be sending nets, missionaries, doctors, food, medicine etc. to Africa?? Are we allowed to put "strings" on those donations, like you can't divert all of the food to the military that you are using to supress the very people we are trying to help?? If we send food to a country enduring a civil war, and allow the government to feed THEIR army, thus defeat the insurrection... would you be surprised if the "people" there don't like us very much?? Should we just let them kill each other?? I'm not saying you agree or disagree with those things... just that no good deed goes unpunished... the definition of meddling depends upon your perspective.

Not comparing it to anything, other than an example of our sticking our noses in... Were we wrong to enter WWI and WWII?? I suspect we could have let them divide Europe/Asia/Africa/Australia and left the Americas mostly alone... at least for a few decades. They attacked because we were already indirectly involved.

Idealistic arguments are fine... but they are abstract. They support no conclusion, and offer no solution... they are thus, to me, of very little value other than an opportunity to waste time.

Can't we all just get along?? Apparently not... so what do we do??

Fo Shizzle Wrote:

smn1256 Wrote:

Fo Shizzle Wrote:This is the sticking point for almost everyone brought up in a statist society(myself included)...The society I advocate could do the same thing using the power of the free market(those in search of profit) and private charity for the poor...without the immoral theft of our wages...The beautiful thing about a total free market paradigm is that you do not have to know all the details of how things would work...The market would handle all situations by responding to signals from the consumers....Im not delusional enough to believe this will ever happen...I just know it will work.

Interesting, but without the immoral theft of our wages how would we pay for our infrastructure? Would every road we drive on be a toll road? Will we be forced to pay-per-flush? Who would inspect our bridges and food supply? Would our military and NASA rely on charity? Who will be there when another Katrina hits us? Who would pay for our justice system?

Ok...You ask great questions. All can be answered by the free market....Unfortunately, We dont have enough leisure time to hash out all the answers on this forum....If you are really interested in this topic and have time to spare.....I suggest you go to the following website....freetalklive.com....scroll down to the 12/26/07 entry that has a great audiobook ...The Market For Liberty..by Morris and Linda Tannehill. It can be downloaded for mp3 or Itunes for free.
Im not trying to dodge your questions...and will be happy to parce them over a period of time...I simply cant do that in a short timeframe...What you are asking is the crux of Classical Liberialism,Objectivism and Libertarianism....Questions that I explored myself over a period of several years.

I will start with your question of who would inspect the food supply.
In a free market paradigm...This would be handled by independant organizations...like UL...that would inspect the various businesses throughout the human food chain....Grades would be given much like todays system. No one would be forced to submit to grading...But it is unlikely that you our I would consume food that was not properly inspected and graded...Thus...It would be in the businesses best intrest to contract with these inspectors to recieve their grade or rating.....You may ask...What if the inspectors just give them a good grade without really doing the inspection?...Well.. they may get away with that....but...If someone gets sick from the food that they were supposed to certify as wholesome...Then the consumers would stop eating products that they inspected and therefore eliminate that inspection agency and vendors market share due to market signals...Likely they would no longer exist in business.
In a free market...the consumer insures quality..not the government...and all without the theft of wages to do it.

But UNTIL those people go out of business, people die... and in honesty, poor people die first because they were willing to cut the cost corner to eat. When your father dies from uninspected food, is there any recourse? Who will help you determine if it was grown wrong, or transported wrong, or cooked wrong, or brought from the kitchen wrong? What about unsafe cars? They aren't only unsafe for the drivers, but for the innocent people on the roads with them as well. YOU might be willing to drive a liquid nitrogen car, but if/when it explodes and kills my daughter who was sitting at the light next to you, we're going to have a problem... oh wait... there won't BE any roads, or any lights.

Lets not even start TALKING about clean air/water etc. The dry cleaner by YOUR house is cheaper than the one by mine because he dumps his fluid into your backyard... which I don't care about... and you don't care that the cheap oil change guy is dumping HIS waste in mine... and even if we got them to stop, who would clean up the mess?? So... how do we solve our individual problems?? It's called a government.

Sure, its become incredibly inefficient and wasteful over the centuries, but don't act as if the elimination of government or the way we pay for it (taxes) is a solution of any kind.

While I generally support your ideals, a little touch of practicality would be nice.

Unions, in my mind... while they still serve a limited purpose, are as much a waste of personal resources and productivity as our government... but at ONE point, they were absolutely necessary before the government took over most of their function.

Funny, you mention MP3 downloads... If the government didn't defend the individual copyright laws of musicians, would many people write music if they couldn't get paid for doing so?? Where is the profit motive (free market) in saving the victims of Katrina? I'm not talking about the humanitarians in Houston who took care of the people who could get there... I'm talking about the people who had to cut holes in their rooftops to get out of their homes. Where is the profit in saving them if there is no deduction for charity?

Fo Shizzle Wrote:I hear people say..."The terrorists are just after us because we are free." The fact is, they are after us because we are involving ourselves in the affairs of their countries..How would we like it another country decided to meddle in our affairs?...Lets just stop being so arrogant and thinking that we are the "worlds savior" and mind our own business...Then we wont need to worry about those that might want to come into our country to find and make a better life for themselves.

Wrong! They are after us for 2 reasons. 1st, we support Israel. 2nd, The USA is not an Islamic nation.

GrayBeard Wrote:

Fo Shizzle Wrote:I hear people say..."The terrorists are just after us because we are free." The fact is, they are after us because we are involving ourselves in the affairs of their countries..How would we like it another country decided to meddle in our affairs?...Lets just stop being so arrogant and thinking that we are the "worlds savior" and mind our own business...Then we wont need to worry about those that might want to come into our country to find and make a better life for themselves.

Wrong! They are after us for 2 reasons. 1st, we support Israel. 2nd, The USA is not an Islamic nation.

Either way, they are not after us because we are free.

That wasn't the entirety of the post... I don't remember anyone here saying they were after us because we are free. It was a quote attributed to "people", and an alternative explanation was offered (basically that we meddle in others affairs)... which depends upon what your definition of meddling is, and which side you are on.

I suspect the Germans thought we were meddling in WWII, but I doubt the Brits felt that way... and if creating a country with qualities/features that their own people want to emulate is causing them a problem, then I suggest they blame themselves... not us.

ETSUfan1 Wrote:

GrayBeard Wrote:

Fo Shizzle Wrote:I hear people say..."The terrorists are just after us because we are free." The fact is, they are after us because we are involving ourselves in the affairs of their countries..How would we like it another country decided to meddle in our affairs?...Lets just stop being so arrogant and thinking that we are the "worlds savior" and mind our own business...Then we wont need to worry about those that might want to come into our country to find and make a better life for themselves.

Wrong! They are after us for 2 reasons. 1st, we support Israel. 2nd, The USA is not an Islamic nation.

Either way, they are not after us because we are free.

Wrong on a technicallity. Because we have "Freedom to choose" not to be Muslim, they hate us.