> I had 50 employees, and I had to think about them and the money they would make from this sale.
You know if you just scale up the numbers above, Mark could justify what he's doing the same way Acton justifies his actions yet somehow Acton thinks there's a difference. You just have to laugh at that.
This is what I have a problem with; one cannot even share a simple poem without it degenerating into a virtue signalling debate. Now you're forced to defend something that you had nothing to do with. Yuck.
> If you deal with Alcoholism, there's no "final" cure.
This is precisely it. You fight it continuously and always assume you are going to mess things up even when you think you're 'finally' strong enough. Just being constantly paranoid about slipping back into old habits. It's no joke and there's no panacea.
Not sure if you've tried this but it helps me when things get out of hand; check out /r/stopdrinking
Just talking about it with other people going through the same thing helps a lot. It's almost always worked for me and I tend to get a hold of things before the spiral further out of control.
I've done the same but for a proxy I needed to circumvent geofencing restrictions. I got a local(non-US) VPS provider and installed squid on it. I found it more affordable than the paid services out there and it's immensely better than free options that are prone to abuse and are rendered essentially unusable.
Anytime you get an opportunity to reduce the overreaching powers of the state, that's a good thing! Today, we on the right have Trump, tomorrow there'll be someone on the left as president and that won't make us happy and vice-versa.
This Rousseauian vantage point on the general nature of people is something that's debatable to me. I think that under specific conditions this rings truer (or more false depending on how you look at it) than in other conditions. This whole debate leads to an even deeper rabbit hole that entails things such as the necessity of religion(not to be conflated with fundamentalism / fanaticism). I am more of a Maistrean in my view of humans i.e. that people aren't good at first but under the right conditions, people can behave in a desirable manner that ensures chaos is staved off.
> Cato
I no longer believe Cato represents true conservative ideology and it is not necessarily the most authoritative source on matters conservative policy. It is weak on a lot of issues and infiltrated by people who don't necessarily embody its founding principles. When it was formed by the Kochs, they eventually broke away from another group who thought that they(Kochs/Cato) had sold out their mission for more mainstream appeal. This group was led by Murray Rothbard, and I guess I could say I left with them(Miseseans).
Just concluding the book, Sons of Wichita, and despite the Kochs being viewed as the embodiment of conservative/libertarian ideology in America, I don't think they take it far enough. They're weak on immigration. Very weak. They've built an amazing corporation that their father, Fred, would have been proud of (despite the family feuds) but he most certainly would have disapproved of their politics. He of course came up in the era of communism and saw it as the greatest threat that existed at the time.
Anyway, Tempestn, been a great discussion. I'd like to continue this later via mail as per your profile so I'll be reaching out. You've been great; typically these discussions tend to get out of hand with a lot of name calling but there was none of that here. Kudos for the survivalist initiatives you've undertaken - I don't even know what to say about that except I hope you never need to employ them. :)
> You’re American until you travel to Iran then you’re subhuman?
That's obviously very ill informed (I'd like a link to this or a pointer to such incidents if you don't mind).
However, could there be more to the story? If there's a threat that the individual(s) might have been radicalized (and there are enough instances where this has been the case), then Americans might have to be smarter about whether they can allow you back into society without severe scrutiny or even detainment where evidence supports it (curious if there's sufficient legislation to resolve this though).
> Even people fleeing from countries like Iraq, because their lives were in danger due to helping the US.
Well obviously this isn't very useful and may need to be rethought if true. I don't know much about this claim though so I'll read more on it.
> Trump employed a policy sledgehammer
Look, these things aren't easy. May be it is a disproportionate response but I've lived through a period of fear when muslim terrorists bombed/shot up malls and universities in my country. In one incident, two armed civilians (an Israeli and a native) were able to shoot some terrorists and save some innocent lives. A once safe country ended up with us having to lock our offices during the day when business should be conducted. I am a lottle biased on the issue and that's why I took such a hardliner position on it.
> Trump starts rounding up “illegals” and shooting them if they refuse to leave our country
I'd say that that's a valid I'd concern even as a Trump supporter. All governments are capable of copious amounts of nastiness. Today, my guy could be in power, tomorrow someone else's will be. Therefore, systems that take this into account would perform better than those that don't.
> I don't think it's fair that you're getting down votes here without replies.
Why, thank you!
> Currently there are over 30,000 gun deaths in the US every year.
Interesting stat. I'll look into this more and see where the rabbit hole leads me. But as I gather so far, the data supports my claims more than yours. Case in point from Wikipedia:
In 2012, 64% of all gun-related deaths in the U.S. were suicides.
This again points to mental health issues more than guns being the problem. These obviously unwell individuals would have found other ways to exit a world they no longer could bear being in. Sad affair but true. So unless the mental health is addressed, if your goal was to prevent deaths, you would not solve much by taking guns away.
> It is incredibly unlikely that the US government would morph into a murderously tyrannical regime.
Funny that you say that because these same words echo what I heard a holocaust survivor said in a WWII documentary I was watching less than a week ago. The Jews did not think that nazi Germans would ever do what they did to them. They kept saying that Hitler was a passing fad and that in no time (3-4 yrs), he'd be out of power and normalcy would resume. I'd like to think that at the rate with which polarization is happening today, it isn't unfathomable that a murderous regime COULD take power. Even if they weren't murderous, there are other ways to exercise tyranny making death seem a more befitting (or may be even noble) endeavor as opposed to living on one's knees, so to speak.
It never seems dangerous at first. I'd posit that that's why we get insured; we assume that things can be calamitous even when there's little evidence to suggest the same.
That's the difference between my view point and yours. I have a theory on how this ties in to why most preppers are right leaning as opposed to left leaning i.e. perception of risk but I won't get into that right now. The point is, even if there's a small chance of that occurring, because the downside of not being ready is so huge, we must pull all stops to remain safe.
> opposing any restrictions on ownership whatsoever seems an untenable position to me.
I'm glad you see it that way, but a non-trivial number of anti-gun proponents don't see it that way and instead want guns taken away from the bulk of current owners if not all(civilians that is).