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9 yıl öncediscuss

I guess the people who wrote the article didn't do much investigative journalism or they would probably figure out that regulatory burden is a major reason why. I also tend to think that everybody who owns a business thinks they deserve to be millionaires for taking the risk. Also, executive pay, doctor and lawyer pay, and politician pay have grown immensely, so I guess the rest of us are just SOL.

9 yıl öncediscuss

You just pretty much defined Ponzi with what you said--you wish you had got in early and it doesn't matter as long as you get off the ride in time. Thus, Bitcoin is not investing, is it? It's Bernie Madoff.

9 yıl öncediscuss

The one who run/ran Theranos is arguably worse. And Meg Whitman? The one who did the same to HP. There's a lot of over-rated male CEOs out there, too. In fact, I think most all CEOs are over-rated and definitely over-compensated, too.

9 yıl öncediscuss

That's insane. I know that taxes are used to create disincentives, but that's why Americans think Europeans are insane--you let them rule you like that? Insane. Sorry.

9 yıl öncediscuss

I agree except for the full retail price part. How well can that work when margins are so thin? It's one thing if you bought goods in 1885 and moved them west yourself, but it's quite another these days when it's hard to find any place that isn't saturated with the same competition. All you get are the suckers who don't know the prices.

9 yıl öncediscuss

Copyright enforcement has made the Internet a lot less usable because of all the "muh movies" by the big, monied interests.

In their defense, they saw what happened to the music industry and freaked out. But still, Mickey Mouse and tons of other old things should be in the public domain by now but aren't thanks to lobbying and big money.

9 yıl öncediscuss

Interesting side note: Coleco had a version of Slither for their gaming console which shipped with a "Roller Controller" which was pretty innovative at the time. ColecoVision crashed and burned, too, of course.

A relative worked there and so my family had access to many prototype games that never made it into stores. But I know for a fact "Slither" was on the shelves as my copy was a retail package. I enjoyed playing it at the time, especially with the track ball.

9 yıl öncediscuss

I fight the left because of Venezuela, Cuba, and every place else where Marxist ideas have infected the minds of the masses to give assent to dictatorship. To me, the left will never conjure anything other than the ideas of misery, starvation, political violence, and destruction of life on a massive scale. The Soviet Union, the gulags, China, North Korea. Not one single success story.

9 yıl öncediscuss

This article is genius is the way it depends on layers upon layers of propaganda. It's freaking brilliant--the underlying assumption that only leftist ideals are "correct" and "good" and thus everyone who voted against such ideals must have somehow been manipulated into doing so or is not in their right mind. That's the too-clever communist brain right there--write an article to promote leftism by rejecting all the intellectual challenges to it and then accuse the right of manipulating technology against the only true good in the world. Never mind the true track record of leftism!

Brexit--the people have had enough of unelected EU demagogues telling them what they can and can't do in their own country. The problem is, the UK is probably 30 years too far gone, but we'll see.

US--Trump bested an ethically compromised internationalist after 8 years of Americans suffering through a different ethically compromised internationalist. There's no tricks there, it's just that Americans finally woke up to the fact they they were being sold down the river and getting zero in return. Plus, anyone who has been paying attention knows that the Clintons are like Bond villains in that they have succumbed to influence peddling via their foundation and they are implicated in many questionable deaths whose timing could only have helped their cause. In short, the Clintons are criminals, clever ones, but still criminals.

On the matter of Reddit--I don't think the centipedes are paid shills. I have no evidence to back that other than the fact that I have been involved in other grassroots movements and I can tell the difference between astroturf and the real deal. The people on The_Donald are the real deal, and they fought hard to even have a voice at all, what with the owners of reddit always manipulating the underlying tech to marginalize them. That the The_Donald even still exists on Reddit is because if it got banned, approximately half of Reddit's user base would migrate elsewhere overnight. The_Donald is followed by more people than nearly the rest of Reddit combined, although the people who run that site have done their best to cover up the facts. And yet, The_Donald doesn't get the ban hammer because to do so would put them in extremely hot water with their advertisers and investors. Reddit needs Trump supporters far more than Trump supporters need Reddit, however--and that's something that everyone in smug Silicon Valley would be wise to remember--I'm looking at you, Apple, Facebook, and Google--you know you tried to influence the election outcome, too. We all know. So beware.

As far the allegations about Jews running the world--I have no idea who runs the world. I grew up in NY State and I can say with some certainty that Jews and Jewish interests have an undue influence on politics and commerce which is outsized compared to their overall numbers. It's not some grand conspiracy, it's just that like all groups, the insiders would rather deal with like-minded folks versus non-liked minded folks because it guarantees their own success while diminishing competition. It's a mind-set as old as civilization. It's not anti-semitic to observe this, it is only anti-semitic to bring up the fact that certain Jews are far-left and that they, like Soros, are promoting a far-left agenda that runs against the political and economic interests of literally everyone else on the planet. You can't say that global internationalism is anything but anti-democratic at the local level. Just look at Agenda 21, or at any globalist initiative, and you see what I'm talking about. It all looks benign, but slowly and surely, individual rights are being removed as the ownership of everything of any real value is being trickled to the very top. All the while the left proclaims that they are doing this for the people--which is the big lie the left has always used while robbing regular people of everything.

Again, I don't think this is some Jewish conspiracy--there are plenty of good Jewish folks who are caught on the wrong side of it like the rest of us. Maybe it's an inner-circle kind of thing amongst billionaires? There are many rings, many facets and many competing interests, I'm sure. But the one common trend is the continued disenfranchisement of the regular citizens both politically and economically. We simply can't have any more of that.

9 yıl öncediscuss

Big yup! Journalism as a profession is dying/dead and with it, we have lost a major check against oppression. My city get vanishingly little news coverage and so residents are not well informed unless they attend city council meetings, which nobody does. It's a city run by real estate people, mostly.

9 yıl öncediscuss

I think you sell libertarianism short by quite a bit. After all, it is the closest description of the mechanism by which humanity operated quite successfully up until oligarchs and rent-seekers captured government and subverted the individual. I haven't experienced actual libertarian governance or free markets in my lifetime and probably never will. It's funny, everyone tries to keep installing some form of Marxism and that never goes over well and they avoid any other solutions. I don't want people all living in shanties like in Rio and Sao Paulo, but human greed knows no bounds and has not inherent ethics and no matter what system we put in place, the same outcomes seem to take place.

9 yıl öncediscuss

"Eliminate childhood poverty" is a lefty type of goal. It is unattainable. Instead, we should empower individuals economically and maybe more would succeed! Social programs only treat symptoms, and what is wrong all through rural America and around the world is the wealth never trickles down!

9 yıl öncediscuss

Oh man! I read through what is an otherwise thoughtful article and get to the end where the author attempts to tie Brexit, and the utterly failed campaign by Hillary Clinton to his main theme! What...the...hell?

Once again an elitist asshole outs themself without even trying! Look, if you want to know what is behind these populist movements, look no further than wealth inequality, Mr. $700,000 last year, snoot snoot!

I don't even know anymore. As someone who grew up pretty lower-middle-class, I can tell you that much of what he says is true about poverty being a self-reinforcing problem and how one's mental state is affected by uncertainty. I can also tell you that luck has played a part in all rags to riches stories, which is why I dislike the entrepreneur narrative--it is largely false for 99% of people. But this hasn't been any different throughout the entire history of humanity! America once may have been an exception, but not anymore. That is very unlikely to change, no matter what social program are put in place, no matter how high taxes are.

But to construe the fed up dregs of the world who are sick of globalist social-engineers and banker scum ripping everyone else off with the type of bottom-barrel risk-taking behavior of the lower classes, that is just too much. Clinton deserved to lose for so many reasons not associated with poverty and there was no time at which she was ever going to do anything positive for the American people versus the corporations, NGOs, and foreign governments that filled the coffers of the Clinton Foundation.

9 yıl öncediscuss

No, the problem with red light cameras is that there is not way to face your accuser in court when your accuser is a robot operated by a for-profit, private corporation. Full stop.

I'm tired of too low speed limits and the attendant speed traps all over the place. One road I drive on goes from 40, to 45, to 50, and suddenly down to 30 all in the span of about 2 miles. It's insane what we put up with.

And let's talk about driver training--how come we can make that better? Why does every 3rd driver I encounter absolutely suck at driving?

9 yıl öncediscuss

The same parents who complain about the 35mph limit on their street think nothing of speeding through someone else'se neighborhood.

9 yıl öncediscuss

This sentence should be challenged on the grounds that it is far worse than the sentences of many people prosecuted for violent, repeat offenses.

9 yıl öncediscuss

I don't think you understand that politically, climate change is just an issue for demagogues to demagogue with. I'm sure communists would happily take over and pass a ton of laws that will limit everyone's freedom and take away what little economic upper mobility they still have in the name of "getting something done." But here's the thing about communism--it's track record on environmental issues is abysmal. Communists were and are the world's worst polluters, from the Soviet Union, to China, Cuba, and everywhere else, dumb commies can't find their asses with both hands a flashlight and take away all ability to debate and discuss matters openly and everything just gets far, far worse.

"Strong government action" is just forcing someone to bend to someone else's will. Apply enough force and those being coerced will fight back, violently, if necessary.

It's not like people such as Al Gore are anything more than criminals making away with boatloads of money.

This is how I have viewed political environmentalism in ALL its forms--it is a dodge, a con, away to make tons of money will appearing to "care." People like Gore are the Goldman Sachs of caring about the environment to make money. There are no political solutions for this problem.

That leaves technology. If anything is going to solve our problems, it is us humans inventing our way out of them. That's it. Evolve the technology or die.

9 yıl öncediscuss

They should all be shot, hung from their toes, and left to rot in the sun so that nobody else get any ideas, just like they used to do to buccaneers.

9 yıl öncediscuss

No, unions are basically filled with assholes. Growing up, my dad was in the Boilermakers. I know firsthand what a bunch of drunken, miserable, violent, and wholly ignorant people they are. My dad made the mistake of crossing them over their crappy nepotism and broken ethics and so we ended up having death threats called in and idiots in a van driving by our house with guns sticking out the windows. Know what the cops did? Jack and shit. Know what the FBI did? Nothing. Zero.

Also, NYC is a den of misery for most of those who inhabit it and a good number of those miserable SOBs belong to unions. Honestly, if the whole place got taken out by an asteroid, we'd be better off.

Unions can fck right off. Miserable communist cnts.

9 yıl öncediscuss

That happened in Argentina--PhDs driving taxi-cabs in order to survive.