View Full Version : foreign opinion - US trapped in depression, this really is starting to feel like 1932
Hopper
08-07-2010, 05:20 AM
I think that they are symbolic as much as anything. They are entered into in the hope that all parties will implement them, but as I said, they lack the force of law. No one can sue the United States for its breach of the Geneva Convention, for instance. The government of one sovereign nation has no jurisdiction over the government of another sovereign nation.
All of those conferences, all those organisations with full-time salaried staff and buildings, all that expense. all that paperwork, just for a symbol? A symbol of what? First threlayer tells me it is of practical necessity, now you say nobody even obeys it.
I think it is more than a symbol. I think it is law, as all treaties are law, and our elites just treat it like they do any other law: They obey it and disobey it when it suits them, but when the time comes for them to hold we the people to it, or it suits the world order for some country or another to be held to it, it will be enforced. It has already been enforced at times when it suited them.
eagle2
08-07-2010, 06:57 AM
Maybe so but not in most of the areas it actually does legislate now. The income tax is unconstitutional. So is the Federal Reserve Act and the whole system of banking and currrency manipulation which has arisen from it. The Civil Rights Act is unconstitutional too.
How can you possibly say the income tax is unconstitutional when the Constitution specifically states that Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes?
If you weren't allowed in certain restaurants, hotels, and other public places because of the color of your skin, I'm sure you would feel differently about the Civil Rights Act.
jimboe7373
08-07-2010, 10:22 AM
Not true. The government deregulated certain things, but left by far most of the regulation in place and also created a lot of new regulations in other related areas which directly worsened the problem. Read the book by Thomas Woods I posted the link to above. Or just read the first chapter online.
Not sure if that's the case but even if it is, the industries that we know were deregulated surely had a lot of problems and needed intervention.
There is a market for them because people have been deceived into thinking they are necessary and because a lot of it is or soon will be required by "climate change" law.
There is a market for them in large part because they can also be more economical. My nieghbor installed solar on his house and in two years it's paid off and he has no electrical bill.
The U.S. won't be the only country with such an industry so won't have the global monopoly for exporting and will possible be importing too.
No but we can and will certainly lead the way. Noone else is set up as we are for research and development. It's the same thing that happened with the IT revolution in the 90's
Solar power systems are very expensive. That is why governments are heavily subsidising them with rebates. They profit from selling power into the grid only because the government artificially increases the selling price with tariffs, to one much higher than what those same people buy it for from coal-fired power stations.
The price is coming down further and further and demand and research increases
Not everybody has heated swimming pools but I guess those who can afford them can afford solar power systems too and perhaps power consumption in that range makes the purchase of one economical.
They have developled little mats that float in the pool when you're not using it and raise the temperature by as much as 20 degrees.They cost about $25 per mat with 3 all you need for the average pool. This is but one of the technological improvements that are going to make "green" economically viable and desirable.
This is a major economic fallacy. The money they spend on the community comes from the community in the first place. You are taking water out of one end of the pool and putting it back in at the other end and claiming you are raising the water level.
Umm....that's what they call an economy. Please tell me how this is any different from manufacturing cars, barbecue grills or vacuum cleaners?.
We have far more oil than just enough to last 19 more years. Read those articles I linked to. The figure you stated is probably based on the fact that environmental restrictions prohibit us from recovering oil from many of the deposits that actually exist. They could also be based on wrong projections of oil use, wrong population increase projections, etc.
We will explore other technologies when we need to. When the oil really does start to become scarce it's price will go up and it will become less viable. This will be a natural incentive to find alternatives as well as to economise on usage..
This is short sighted and stupid. We have the technology now to replace oil with things that are much more cleaner, efficient and eventually cheaper. It makes no sense to bury our heads in the sand and continue using this ancient technology. Why wait till we run low or the price goes through the roof because of scarcity?. Let's get new stuff now ASAP and still have all the oil we need as a back-up. Despite what you say about Global Warming- there are many, many signs of damage from all the carbons we realease to the atomosphere. If we can create the new technologies and they can be cheaper and more efficient AND don't pollute-why not?
Alternatives may already have been found and have been suppressed by oil interests. This is due to the power of the oil cartel, which is easily removed by removing the government powers which are exercised in favor of them. Then we may see some serious research into other, better technologies.
Wow! How do you propose to easily remove the government powers that exercised favor on them?. They control too much of the media and far too many voters or ignorant and will beleive whatever is told to them. Just like you, global warming is real. The glaciers are melting at unprecidented rates and there are dozens of frog species going extinct in Costa Rica because of higher temps. There are hundreds of other indicators. But because some convservative power bases are able to make stories questioning the validity of climate change the whole thing becomes controversial and a moot point.
Hopper
08-07-2010, 05:55 PM
How can you possibly say the income tax is unconstitutional when the Constitution specifically states that Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes on incomes?
The income tax is constitutional, but the way in which the IRS. The constitutions permits only two kinds of federal taxes: direct and indirect. The Supreme Court ruled in 1915 and again in 1916 that the income tax (enacted in 1913) is an indirect tax. The IRS today administer the income tax illegally as a direct tax.
If you weren't allowed in certain restaurants, hotels, and other public places because of the color of your skin, I'm sure you would feel differently about the Civil Rights Act.
Which is more important: (1) Being allowed into restauarants whose owners don't like the color of your skin or (2) being able to say what you like about people of any and all colors; being able to choose whether or not to associate with people of any and all color; being able to choose whether or not to do business with people of all color; all without some bureaucrats telling you that according to some government code, written by them, according to their interpretation of it, you are making your decision based on the color of the other person?
Faced with that choice, I would prefer just to go to another restaurant.
The point is not that I condone racism, but that in a free society, a person has the right - the freedom - to be wrong with his own property, as long as it doesn't interfere with another person's free use of his own property. So a person has the right to be racist as long as he is not imposing his racism on other people. That way his racism remains nothing but his own private neurosis.
The alternative is for the courts and tribunals to be forever deciding in each individual case whether the defendant's action was based on racism and deciding also where to draw the line between racism and reasonable opinion and behavior. Wherever it is drawn, the bureaucrats, being the ones with political power, will be the ones drawing it for us, which is a restriction on the right to think and act according to our own opinions.
Hopper
08-07-2010, 06:57 PM
Not sure if that's the case but even if it is, the industries that we know were deregulated surely had a lot of problems and needed intervention.
Well that's not deregulation is it. Regulation was just taken away from one area and added to another area. But the legislation - regulation - which is the root of the whole banking crisis, the legislation which has made possible the irresponsible bank credit and led to inflation and the artificial housing bubble, has not been removed. Without this main banking legislation, the deregulation of loans would not be a problem.
There is a market for them in large part because they can also be more economical. My nieghbor installed solar on his house and in two years it's paid off and he has no electrical bill.
A man I work with is into solar power. He has solar panels and battery storage. Both the panels and the batteries are expensive to buy. He tells me that with his present installation, he can only power some appliances but not others which consume more power - such as oven and hotplates, hot water system. He would have to buy additional panels and batteries to do that.
The reason it is economical for people today is that instead of using batteries, people with solar power systems put power into the grid during their off-peak times (during the work day and during sleeping hours) and are paid for this, and in return they draw energy from the grid during their peak times. They are not using storage batteries and relying totally on their own solar power system - they are drawing it from the grid during their peak times. And the tariffs are artificially set up so that they get paid more for the power they put into the grid than what they would pay a power company for it if connected to a coal-fired power station.
Solar power users are presently relying on the existence of coal-fired power.
Solar power is essentially a very inefficient and unreliable method of power generation. Inefficient because the conversion devices are themselves inefficient at converting solar energy to electrical energy and unreliable because the sun does not shine all the time on any given location on the earth's surface, and when it does the strength varies with it's height in the sky. For two thirds of each day there is no sun in the sky and often the sky is overcast. In some parts of the world, it is often overcast.
No but we can and will certainly lead the way. Noone else is set up as we are for research and development. It's the same thing that happened with the IT revolution in the 90's
Maybe. The U.S. is not the only technically advanced country in the world. And don't forget a lot of plants and jobs are moving off-shore to countries where labor is cheaper.
The price is coming down further and further and demand and research increases
You are still going to need a lot of panels and batteries.
They have developled little mats that float in the pool when you're not using it and raise the temperature by as much as 20 degrees.They cost about $25 per mat with 3 all you need for the average pool. This is but one of the technological improvements that are going to make "green" economically viable and desirable.
I'd like to see how you cook with something like that.
Umm....that's what they call an economy. Please tell me how this is any different from manufacturing cars, barbecue grills or vacuum cleaners?.
Economy is not just money changing hands and moving around. We could make it do that without manufacturing anything. An economy depends on transforming resources into products which give some advantage to the users. Cars save us time by reducing travel time and increase our capacity to transport items. Barbecue grills save us the effort of gathering, chopping and storing wood. Vacuum cleaners are labor-saving devices - as many housewives will attest.
What does "green energy" do for us? It is only an advantage if the savings in energy it allows exceed the total cost of buying, installing and maintaining it. But saving money is not the aim of "green energy" - it's aim is reducing fuel consumption and emissions. That only saves us money if the cost of the devices is less than the cost of the fuel conserved.
This is short sighted and stupid. We have the technology now to replace oil with things that are much more cleaner, efficient and eventually cheaper. It makes no sense to bury our heads in the sand and continue using this ancient technology.
You mean wind and solar, tidal and wave, geothermal? You're having a laugh. None of them (except perhaps geothermal) are more efficient. Because of their inefficiency all of them have their own environmental impacts: you need to build massive installations (wind farms, solar panel areas, miles of tidal and wave devices along the coasts) which would displace enormous areas of usable land or "wilderness". They are certainly not cheaper for the amount of energy obtained.
Again, the only thing justifying these is the global warming scare. The only people who will benefit from them are the people who manufacture them and that will be achieved only with heavy government subsidisation, i.e. at our expense.
Nuclear power is superior to oil, but it has been buried so far in cost-increasing government regulations that it is not as competitive with coal and oil as it could be. And it has been falsely built up in the public mind as a threat to public health and safety.
Why wait till we run low or the price goes through the roof because of scarcity?. Let's get new stuff now ASAP and still have all the oil we need as a back-up. Despite what you say about Global Warming- there are many, many signs of damage from all the carbons we realease to the atomosphere. If we can create the new technologies and they can be cheaper and more efficient AND don't pollute-why not?
On the other hand, why panic? By panicking, we only cause economic hardship to ourselves, and the burden of this - along with all the legislative controls that will accompany the "global warming" panic - will restrict and slow technical progress so that we may never advance at all.
Wow! How do you propose to easily remove the government powers that exercised favor on them?. They control too much of the media and far too many voters or ignorant and will beleive whatever is told to them.
Some guys in America did that in around 1789. It is easier for Americans now because the legal framework they created - the Constitution - is still officially in force. It is lying at the bottom of a toilet in the White House waiting to be flushed, but it could still be retrieved.
Just like you, global warming is real. The glaciers are melting at unprecidented rates and there are dozens of frog species going extinct in Costa Rica because of higher temps. There are hundreds of other indicators. But because some convservative power bases are able to make stories questioning the validity of climate change the whole thing becomes controversial and a moot point.
The conservatives in government support environmentalism as much as the left. It is bipartisan now, except for some hedging to keep voters in line and to calm active opposition. Why is it that opposition to "global warming" is characterised as originating with "conservatives power bases".
As for all the claims about glaciers, polar bears, extinctions, NASA and the IPCC, you really need to go to the links I gave in an earlier reply post to you in this thread.
If the corporations have all that control, then how is it that the global warming movement, an enormous threat to oil interests itself, has achieved such wide publicity and acceptance, from the government down to the working man (or as I prefer to say, up to the working man)? This must mean that it is in the interests of the big corporations and the political elites. It is, because it serves as a pretext for creating more extensive and universal controls on individual activity which can be wielded in the interests of big business - not for protecting the environment.
So the opponents of global warming do not originate with "conservative power bases" and corporate interests. If the corporations opposed global warming, they would be trying a lot harder than they are now to suppress it. If global warming were true, then those "conservative power bases" would have the run of the media and be convincing everyone it is either scientific fraud, exaggerated phenomenal or an as yet unproven hypothesis.
Hopper
08-07-2010, 07:52 PM
In theory, yes, this is true. In reality, there is more frequently a job shortage than a labour shortage. Employers also have greater resources at their disposal and usually a choice of numerous people eager to fill the role. At the entry level, it's unusual for someone seeking work to be able to cherry pick offers.
In a free market, where business is not restricted by heavy government taxation, regulation and other intervention, a shortage of jobs would not be likely. The option of starting one's own business instead for working for somebody else's would also be more attractive.
Businesses have greater resources but they are also in competition - for employees - with other businesses also with greater resources. It is not a competition between businesses and employees, it is a competition among businesses for the best employees. Poor working conditions will not attract the best employees. Any business which pays it's employees a pittance, perhaps because it can only attract employees which are not worth paying more, will not survive long.
I'm not sure that's true. Your idea is quite extreme and untested. I don't see the common sense there.
It's a big subject, but one which has been competently - brilliantly - adressed by some of the best economic and political minds. Who of course are almost completely ignored. Here is a very good free market website if you have the time for it. Reading it will be faster for you than talking to me here on the subject. http://mises.org/
Again, an article of faith. There were already few, if any, restrictions on business during the industrial revolution.
Direct regulations perhaps, but indirect regulations were many and huge. I already listed some of them. England was not a free market economy or a libertarian society. One of the major controls was the control of the currency and credit and banking through the Bank Of England. This is an enormous control since it gravely affects the whole economy of a country.
This assumes a favourable labour market and flexibility on the part of the employee. If you're paying off a mortgage and trying to feed and educate four kids, that flexibility and mobility isn't there.
The fact is that if you want a good job, you have to shop around. You can't just pick one and stay with it. If you can't rely on being able to pay off a mortgage, you don't enter into one - or you choose one you can comfortably afford. This, by the way, is another factor heavily affected by government controls - of banking, currency, housing and land use among many other things. Government really gets in the way doesn't it?
It's easier to afford kids if you cut down your material lifestyle a tad. Peole buy a lot of unnecessary, even useless, items these days.
It's incredibly wide. There's very little you can't buy in America, and usually for a reasonable price to boot.
A lot of alternatives in many areas are hard or expensive to get. Alternative health treatments and organic foods immediately spring to mind. How many car manufacturers are there? The number of major companies in most industries are very small.
It's true that democracy does not create an utterly free society. But it does create a relatively free one. The United States, for instance, compares very favourably to, say, China in terms of liberty.
Democracy creates a totally unfree society. In theory, socialism is democracy: the people decide collectively what all individuals must do. Democracy is the dictatorship of the majority over the minority. It is entirely conformist.
The difference between a free and unfree society is not the degree of democracy but the degree of government control. Socialism is total government control - totalitarianism. Libertarianism and free market are minimal government control. This is the true political spectrum. Less free = more control, more free = less control. Could it be simpler?
The US compares favorably to China, but it is still very heavily regulated.
You've expanded the definition of slavery to a point where it carries no meaning. Yes, it's possible to illegally enslave somebody, but essentially slavery means the ownership of one human being by another.
Slavery is what it is, regardless of what the law says. Slavery is coercion of one person by another - it's that simple. However you achieve it and whatever other label people put on it the principle is the same. You are either living and working for yourself or for someone else.
This would be a process more complex than you'd think, even if the company allowed you to access their financial records. The records may not be complete and would likely be complex.
Most things in business are complex, especially at the major corporate level. The question is whether it is worth the expense. Luckily big corporations employ whole floors of accountants and lawyers.
Contract law is civil law, not criminal. Breach of contract gives rise to damages, not charges of theft. Loss of bargain damages are a far better remedy from the point of view of the innocent party than it would be to have the contract breaker locked up and pay nothing. Also, it is possible to break a contract in ways other than non-payment. There can, for instance, be non-delivery of goods when the other party has not yet paid for them (in a payment on or some time after delivery agreement), or delivery of unsuitable goods. No confiscation or unjust enrichment is involved here, but it is still brutal for the affected business.
I termed it wrongly in the legal sense but the fact remains that if those "damages" are not paid, they have to be enforced somehow - the threat of jail is still used, even if the person is not immediately locked up.
This ignores the fact that business has the resources to be mobile, while individuals often don't, and may be responsible for children and a mortgage or paying the rent. Taking a different train to work sounds simple, yes, but finding work may involve relocating oneself if there is no other suitable job within the vicinity.
It's unlikely a person cannot find suitable work in the area he lives in. But many people have moved house in that event. All they have to do is sell their house and buy another with the proceeds.
An employer has the resources to weather a lawsuit, and often public liability insurance to boot. An individual can't compete in financial terms.
Maybe one lawsuit - which is still an expense they want to avoid - but not many lawsuits, which is what wholesale pollution of an area is likely to provoke. Insurance companies don't provide easy insurance to companies that tempt circumstances under which they will frequently make use of it.
Any individual who has a case, regardless of the relative size of the defendant's resources, is likely to be recompensed just the same. It's not a competition, it's a straight legal matter.
So, you're going to turn tort law, contract law and the Trade Practices Act into criminal law? That's just putting old wine in new bottles. More suspect bottles, I might add. With respect to all these fields of law, the plaintiff is put in a far better position by receiving monetary damages than by the imposition of criminal penalties on the defendant. It's hard to lock a corporation up in any event.
Regardless, this would create less freedom rather than more. The same legal restrictions exist, but now instead of the defendant having to make good by compensating the plaintiff, he/she/it is locked up. So much for liberty.
Again, I was using the wrong legal terms but the principle is the same - laws which protect rightful property and liberty are the only just ones. Laws which interfere with liberty and private property are unjust.
That doesn't mean that a business that finds it more profitable to pollute than not will stop.
The point is that even if it is in the interests of a business to pollute a surrounding area, it is not in the interests of his neighbours, who may also be businesses with the same legal resources.
Enacting pollution controls will not necessarily stop it either - it may be more profitable for the bureaucrats in charge of it not to enforce them for a given business.
Melonie
08-07-2010, 07:59 PM
I don't want to butt in on this debate because you seem to be doing just fine on your own. However, I would like to clarify some facts about the true economic situation re solar power.
From the git-go, prices for solar equipment purchase are ~20%+ subsidized by other taxpayers in the form of federal and state tax credits
Beyond that, 'feed in' prices paid out to solar equipped homeowners who feed excess energy back into the local power grid, are far above the 'replacement cost' of an equal amount of power generated by conventional sources. Thus solar equipment operation is further subsidized by every electricity customer paying higher prices for their grid purchased power than would otherwise be the case.
There is also an issue that solar equipped homeowners are not being required to fully pay for the electrical system 'capacity' that they use every night and on cloudy days but not on sunny days ... with the difference in 'capacity' cost also being subsidized by overcharging every other electricity customer.
Beyond that, the initial purchase cost of solar panels has not fallen due to major increases in quantity production or improving technology. It has fallen because China has virtually taken over production of solar panels ... thus passing on their extremely low costs of semiconductor processing thanks to low / no environmental compliance costs re arsenide doping of the solar panel crystals on top of <$1 an hour worker pay rates.
And to finish up, solar panels have a finite life estimated to be in the 20 year ballpark ... with their electrical output dropping with each passing year. All of the solar cost comparison studies rely on the fallacy that solar panel installations will continue operating forever, when in point of fact a cyclical replacement cost factor exists.
I have no problem with the concept of solar power. In fact it is increasingly popular down here 'south of the border' where there is plenty of solar radiation available and where local electric utilities are ... to put it kindly ... flaky ! But down here, in the absence of direct gov't subsidies and the absence of 'stealth' subsidies resulting from cost shifting to non-solar electricity customers, we get to see the REAL purchase cost and ongoing cost scenario. We also get to face the 'capacity' issue ( i.e. battery purchase and replacement cost ). Even so, some locals consider a 40 cent/kWh 'all in' cost for solar power to be a good deal versus an unreliable electric utility ... and especially so if the nearest local utility power line is half a kilometer away !
flickad
08-07-2010, 09:05 PM
Maybe so but not in most of the areas it actually does legislate now. The income tax is unconstitutional. So is the Federal Reserve Act and the whole system of banking and currrency manipulation which has arisen from it. The Civil Rights Act is unconstitutional too.
It is 10% civil rights and 90% extension of Federal executive power. If this legislation becomes law and is upheld by the Courts–It will, in fact, extend Federal control over business, industry and over individuals (with a corresponding destruction of State power) in a degree that exceeds the total of such extensions of power by all judicial decisions and all Congressional actions since the Constitution of the United States was adopted.
–It will, in fact, destroy the Constitutional checks and balances between the Federal Government and the States; and
–It will, in fact, destroy the Constitutional checks and balances between the Executive branch of the Federal Government and the Legislative and Judicial branches.
–The "civil rights" aspect of this Legislation is but a cloak; uncontrolled Federal Executive power is the body.
If it is enacted, the states will be little more than local governmental agencies, existing as appendages of the central government and largely subject to its control.
This legislation assumes a totally powerful National Government with unending authority to intervene in all private affairs among men, and to control and adjust property relationships, in accordance with the judgment of Government personnel.
It is impossible to prevent Federal intervention from becoming an institutionalization of special privilege for political pressure groups.
This must lead eventually, not to greater human freedom, but to an ever-diminishing freedom.
John C. Satterfield and Lloyd Wright, "Blueprint for Total Federal Regimentation" (Washington, D.C., The Co-ordinating Committee for Fundamental Freedom, n.d.).
Lloyd and Satterfield were past presidents of the American Bar Association. Civil Rights or Human Rights legislation, so-called, actually takes away rights. The basic rights we have are liberty and private property, and "human rights" legislation serves as a pretext for the government to have unlimited control over both of these.
Unconstitutional how? The federal government's power to levy taxation and be involved in banking and finance is plenary.
Where is the Supreme Court case striking down such unconstitutionality, Civil Rights Act included? There isn't one because the listed powers in the constitution are plenary and there is an equal protection clause.
I didn't mean that we should have no civil law, I meant that we should only have laws which relate to prtoection of liberties and property. Contracts relate to property - i.e. the terms under which individuals agree to exchange things.
Okay. Name a society in which your ideal was implemented in its entirety and worked better than the system of laws we have had for hundreds of years, as I asked you before.
flickad
08-07-2010, 09:08 PM
All of those conferences, all those organisations with full-time salaried staff and buildings, all that expense. all that paperwork, just for a symbol? A symbol of what? First threlayer tells me it is of practical necessity, now you say nobody even obeys it.
I think it is more than a symbol. I think it is law, as all treaties are law, and our elites just treat it like they do any other law: They obey it and disobey it when it suits them, but when the time comes for them to hold we the people to it, or it suits the world order for some country or another to be held to it, it will be enforced. It has already been enforced at times when it suited them.
Some do abide by them, but they are also frequently honoured in the breach, quite lawfully as it happens. Consider the fact that there is and can be no writ issued over breached international treaties. As an LLB I can tell you that they do not carry the force of law thanks to the sovereignty issue. If you don't believe me, do some reading as to the meaning of sovereignty. You'll find that no federal government has jurisdiction over the federal government of another country.
flickad
08-07-2010, 09:32 PM
In a free market, where business is not restricted by heavy government taxation, regulation and other intervention, a shortage of jobs would not be likely. The option of starting one's own business instead for working for somebody else's would also be more attractive.
There is only the room for so many new businesses. Each business needs to employ people to do the ground work. Starting a business also takes plenty of capital, and most people who are employed don't possess those resources.
Businesses have greater resources but they are also in competition - for employees - with other businesses also with greater resources. It is not a competition between businesses and employees, it is a competition among businesses for the best employees. Poor working conditions will not attract the best employees. Any business which pays it's employees a pittance, perhaps because it can only attract employees which are not worth paying more, will not survive long.
When it comes to menial work, the best employees aren't necessary. Business will hire whoever is available at the lowest rate. Desperate people will accept the lowest rate. It's the same race to the bottom that you see happening with globalisation.
It's a big subject, but one which has been competently - brilliantly - adressed by some of the best economic and political minds. Who of course are almost completely ignored. Here is a very good free market website if you have the time for it. Reading it will be faster for you than talking to me here on the subject. http://mises.org/
Looks very much like propaganda to me.
Direct regulations perhaps, but indirect regulations were many and huge. I already listed some of them. England was not a free market economy or a libertarian society. One of the major controls was the control of the currency and credit and banking through the Bank Of England. This is an enormous control since it gravely affects the whole economy of a country.
Perhaps so, but working conditions were not regulated and that led to a race to the bottom in order to cut costs.
The fact is that if you want a good job, you have to shop around. You can't just pick one and stay with it. If you can't rely on being able to pay off a mortgage, you don't enter into one - or you choose one you can comfortably afford. This, by the way, is another factor heavily affected by government controls - of banking, currency, housing and land use among many other things. Government really gets in the way doesn't it?
It's easier to afford kids if you cut down your material lifestyle a tad. Peole buy a lot of unnecessary, even useless, items these days.
What about rent? Or being stuck in a lease? Should people stay homeless until they find a job they like?
A lot of alternatives in many areas are hard or expensive to get. Alternative health treatments and organic foods immediately spring to mind. How many car manufacturers are there? The number of major companies in most industries are very small.
This is because these things are less profitable for the farmers and business involved in supplying them, not because the government has banned organic foods and alternative treatments.
Democracy creates a totally unfree society. In theory, socialism is democracy: the people decide collectively what all individuals must do. Democracy is the dictatorship of the majority over the minority. It is entirely conformist.
The difference between a free and unfree society is not the degree of democracy but the degree of government control. Socialism is total government control - totalitarianism. Libertarianism and free market are minimal government control. This is the true political spectrum. Less free = more control, more free = less control. Could it be simpler?
The US compares favorably to China, but it is still very heavily regulated.
A totally unfree society would be one like Nazi Germany, China or North Korea. A democratic society restricts liberty to some degree but is still a fairly free one.
Slavery is what it is, regardless of what the law says. Slavery is coercion of one person by another - it's that simple. However you achieve it and whatever other label people put on it the principle is the same. You are either living and working for yourself or for someone else.
Any and all restrictions on liberty are not slavery. Again, you have stretched the term to the point at which it is meaningless. Slavery is specifically the ownership of other human beings. Not even a prisoner - despite his or her lack of liberty - is a slave.
I termed it wrongly in the legal sense but the fact remains that if those "damages" are not paid, they have to be enforced somehow - the threat of jail is still used, even if the person is not immediately locked up.
Actually, it isn't. When a judgement debt is not paid, a warrant of seizure and sale or notice of bankruptcy is issued against the judgement debtor.
It's unlikely a person cannot find suitable work in the area he lives in. But many people have moved house in that event. All they have to do is sell their house and buy another with the proceeds.
This involves a lot of upheaval, including that of children with regard to schooling. Moving also involves many hidden costs.
Maybe one lawsuit - which is still an expense they want to avoid - but not many lawsuits, which is what wholesale pollution of an area is likely to provoke. Insurance companies don't provide easy insurance to companies that tempt circumstances under which they will frequently make use of it.
Any individual who has a case, regardless of the relative size of the defendant's resources, is likely to be recompensed just the same. It's not a competition, it's a straight legal matter.
Legal expenses invariably blow out massively in any contested manner. A business is in a far better position to field even multiple claims than an individual is even one, thanks to the resource gap and public liability insurance.
Again, I was using the wrong legal terms but the principle is the same - laws which protect rightful property and liberty are the only just ones. Laws which interfere with liberty and private property are unjust.
How do you decide what is rightful property and liberty? Does tort law, for instance, fall under this rubric? What about director's duties in corporations law?
The distinctions you are making look awfully arbitrary.
The point is that even if it is in the interests of a business to pollute a surrounding area, it is not in the interests of his neighbours, who may also be businesses with the same legal resources.
Enacting pollution controls will not necessarily stop it either - it may be more profitable for the bureaucrats in charge of it not to enforce them for a given business.
Who says that this will stop the polluters, particularly is fighting a court battle is less of a financial hit than switching to cleaner business practices?
The neighbours are also just as likely to be individuals with few resources.
Bureaucrats choosing not to enforce legislation will be subject to criminal penalties.
eagle2
08-07-2010, 09:41 PM
The income tax is constitutional, but the way in which the IRS. The constitutions permits only two kinds of federal taxes: direct and indirect. The Supreme Court ruled in 1915 and again in 1916 that the income tax (enacted in 1913) is an indirect tax. The IRS today administer the income tax illegally as a direct tax.
No, it is legal. Every challenge to the income tax has been rejected by the courts.
Which is more important: (1) Being allowed into restauarants whose owners don't like the color of your skin or (2) being able to say what you like about people of any and all colors; being able to choose whether or not to associate with people of any and all color; being able to choose whether or not to do business with people of all color; all without some bureaucrats telling you that according to some government code, written by them, according to their interpretation of it, you are making your decision based on the color of the other person?
Being allowed into any restaurant or business establishment open to the public, regardless of the color of your skin, is far more important than worrying about offending some racist business owner.
Faced with that choice, I would prefer just to go to another restaurant.
That's easy for you, since you have the right skin color. I'm sure you'd feel different if you had dark skin. What if there's only one hotel or restaurant in the town? Should blacks be deprived of eating out or staying in the hotel? What if there is only one hospital, which is privately owned? Should blacks not have access to medical care because the owner of the hospital is a racist? You're really disgusting to defend something so abhorrent.
The point is not that I condone racism, but that in a free society, a person has the right - the freedom - to be wrong with his own property, as long as it doesn't interfere with another person's free use of his own property. So a person has the right to be racist as long as he is not imposing his racism on other people. That way his racism remains nothing but his own private neurosis.
No, you do condone racism. He is imposing his racism on other people.
The alternative is for the courts and tribunals to be forever deciding in each individual case whether the defendant's action was based on racism and deciding also where to draw the line between racism and reasonable opinion and behavior. Wherever it is drawn, the bureaucrats, being the ones with political power, will be the ones drawing it for us, which is a restriction on the right to think and act according to our own opinions.
They're not forever deciding in each individual case whether the defendant's action was based on racism. It's very rare that I here of someone taking a business to court for refusing to serve blacks. It's not rocket science to serve blacks who enter your establishment. I really find it amazing there are people who still think this way.
eagle2
08-07-2010, 10:00 PM
Hopper,
You don't find anything wrong with this?
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ed1APDoErv8/S_-qJxAV5_I/AAAAAAAAAYM/xEVD7k9EKgg/s320/white-only.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QfVWU-2pVL4/Sxwh0nU3PbI/AAAAAAAAKRQ/uH46Q1T-UGk/s1600/image006.gif
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.bvblackspin.com/media/2010/06/whitesonly.jpg
http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_dan/nodogsorchinese.jpg
Hopper
08-08-2010, 01:45 AM
I don't want to butt in on this debate because you seem to be doing just fine on your own. However, I would like to clarify some facts about the true economic situation re solar power.
I'm glad you think so. However I don't think you would be butting in.
From the git-go, prices for solar equipment purchase are ~20%+ subsidized by other taxpayers in the form of federal and state tax credits
Beyond that, 'feed in' prices paid out to solar equipped homeowners who feed excess energy back into the local power grid, are far above the 'replacement cost' of an equal amount of power generated by conventional sources. Thus solar equipment operation is further subsidized by every electricity customer paying higher prices for their grid purchased power than would otherwise be the case.
There is also an issue that solar equipped homeowners are not being required to fully pay for the electrical system 'capacity' that they use every night and on cloudy days but not on sunny days ... with the difference in 'capacity' cost also being subsidized by overcharging every other electricity customer.
Beyond that, the initial purchase cost of solar panels has not fallen due to major increases in quantity production or improving technology. It has fallen because China has virtually taken over production of solar panels ... thus passing on their extremely low costs of semiconductor processing thanks to low / no environmental compliance costs re arsenide doping of the solar panel crystals on top of <$1 an hour worker pay rates.
And to finish up, solar panels have a finite life estimated to be in the 20 year ballpark ... with their electrical output dropping with each passing year. All of the solar cost comparison studies rely on the fallacy that solar panel installations will continue operating forever, when in point of fact a cyclical replacement cost factor exists.
Thanks. I forgot to mention the limited working life of solar panels and batteries. It makes the initial cost vs. savings comparison a lot worse. Because of that and all of the other things you describe it's obvious that solar power is really very uneconomical. If it were used by everybody, we would be severely burdened. Energy is a basic economic necessity.
I have no problem with the concept of solar power. In fact it is increasingly popular down here 'south of the border' where there is plenty of solar radiation available and where local electric utilities are ... to put it kindly ... flaky ! But down here, in the absence of direct gov't subsidies and the absence of 'stealth' subsidies resulting from cost shifting to non-solar electricity customers, we get to see the REAL purchase cost and ongoing cost scenario. We also get to face the 'capacity' issue ( i.e. battery purchase and replacement cost ). Even so, some locals consider a 40 cent/kWh 'all in' cost for solar power to be a good deal versus an unreliable electric utility ... and especially so if the nearest local utility power line is half a kilometer away !
You fled from the U.S. regime to Mexico?
Hopper
08-08-2010, 02:59 AM
Hopper,
You don't find anything wrong with this?
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ed1APDoErv8/S_-qJxAV5_I/AAAAAAAAAYM/xEVD7k9EKgg/s320/white-only.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QfVWU-2pVL4/Sxwh0nU3PbI/AAAAAAAAKRQ/uH46Q1T-UGk/s1600/image006.gif
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.bvblackspin.com/media/2010/06/whitesonly.jpg
http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_dan/nodogsorchinese.jpg
Where did you glean those example from, and which decade were they photographed in? Do you see that kind of thing wherever you go? Were those signs placed there by some klansmen? Racism will always be with us to some degree. Like drug use and sexual immorality, you can't legislate it out of existence.
I think it is wrong, but it's nothing to do with me or necessarily even any blacks, spanish or chinese in those areas - wherever those areas are. As long as society remains free, so the racist cannot impose his ideas on anyone else, racism remains a neurosis inside his head.
Hopper
08-08-2010, 03:00 AM
There is only the room for so many new businesses. Each business needs to employ people to do the ground work. Starting a business also takes plenty of capital, and most people who are employed don't possess those resources.
Only so much room but room enough for enough businesses to employ non-businessmen. Not everybody wants to start a business and not all people who do will own one their whole life. Most businessmen would first be employed in order to save the capital for a business. The capital would be a lot less if all manner of government intervention were out of the way.
When it comes to menial work, the best employees aren't necessary. Business will hire whoever is available at the lowest rate. Desperate people will accept the lowest rate. It's the same race to the bottom that you see happening with globalisation.How much paid menial work have you done? In my experience it's no slouch. The people with me were not desperate. Even for menial tasks the fastest employees with the most attention to detail turn the most profit. Even for the most repretitive jobs quite a bit of intelligence and common sense is required, since such work requires more than just the main repetitive task. Such employess are required to be all-rounders. There are machines to set up and employees must work in with people doing other tasks, etc etc.
Looks very much like propaganda to me.
Much of what you are saying also sounds like propaganda and ideology. Your previous paragraph an example. It sounds like it is straight from a Communist tract or propaganda film. The reality is not so bleak. Not fun, but not bleak.
The reason you think I sound idealistic and propagandist is that what you are defending has become the status quo. But it took a lot of propaganda and progressive conditioning of the public to get there. My view wasn't just propaganda in George Washington's time, and he was the President. He's the one who wrote the U.S. Constitution, which is still officially on the books.
Perhaps so, but working conditions were not regulated and that led to a race to the bottom in order to cut costs.In economics, you have to look at the whole picture. When you push it in on one side, it comes out on the other side.
What about rent? Or being stuck in a lease? Should people stay homeless until they find a job they like?I would hope that before anyone ventures out into the big bad world they get some savings behind them rather than live from week to week, one paycheck from the street.
This is because these things are less profitable for the farmers and business involved in supplying them, not because the government has banned organic foods and alternative treatments.
It's a lot to do with government protection of big agribusiness and big food manufacturing cartels and government protection of the medical and pharmaceutical industry. Read Kolko and you will see some of why. An excellent book documenting government protection of the medical and pharmaceutical industry is "World Without Cancer" by G. Edward Griffin (1974), which is still in print and also still circulating second-hand - even in Australia. It's a lot worse than you think - or can even imagine.
A totally unfree society would be one like Nazi Germany, China or North Korea. A democratic society restricts liberty to some degree but is still a fairly free one.
Right about communism and Nazism - socialism is democratic, and both of these are socialist. There is no limit to how much a democratic society limits freedom. It depends on the size of the government, and a truly democratic system, where all activity is decided by vote, requires a big government to field and enforce all of those diverse decisions.
Any and all restrictions on liberty are not slavery. Again, you have stretched the term to the point at which it is meaningless. Slavery is specifically the ownership of other human beings. Not even a prisoner - despite his or her lack of liberty - is a slave.I don't know, the U.S. government is very intrusive. Even slaves have some degree of freedom - their owners aren't watching them and moving their legs and arms for them at all times, or thinking their thoughts. There is no such thing as total government control or slavery, since man is by nature an individual, in whatever political system he lives. There is always some degree of freedom. So as I said before - if you are part free, you are all slave.
Actually, it isn't. When a judgement debt is not paid, a warrant of seizure and sale or notice of bankruptcy is issued against the judgement debtor.I stand corrected on the jail part, but still, the laws are basically protecting property, however it is done. Still I imagine if the offender resisted enforcement of his contract long enough he would eventually wind up in jail.
This involves a lot of upheaval, including that of children with regard to schooling. Moving also involves many hidden costs.It's pretty common. It has happened to me as a child and I suffered no psycological harm. Just made some new friends. Yes, there are costs, but it need not happen often.
Legal expenses invariably blow out massively in any contested manner. A business is in a far better position to field even multiple claims than an individual is even one, thanks to the resource gap and public liability insurance.
How do you decide what is rightful property and liberty? Does tort law, for instance, fall under this rubric? What about director's duties in corporations law?
The distinctions you are making look awfully arbitrary.Rightful property is anything you are born with or worked to produce, or worked for the money to buy, or somebody formally agreed to give you. Liberty is the freedom to do anything with your own property as long as it does not interfere with that same right of others.
Maybe there are some blurry areas but that's real life. There are plenty of areas we are sure of. Like me breaking into your car and backing it out of your driveway - I'm sure you wouldn't argue that is wrong.
Who says that this will stop the polluters, particularly is fighting a court battle is less of a financial hit than switching to cleaner business practices?
The neighbours are also just as likely to be individuals with few resources.
Bureaucrats choosing not to enforce legislation will be subject to criminal penalties.If a polluter is prosecuted and continues to pollute, the law would probably shut him down or lock him up, just the same as if you or I harm somebody. If we drive under the influence, we are locked up and our car is impounded. Same could go for a polluter and his business. I don't know - I'm not a lawyer.
Other bureaucrats enforce those penalties.
Hopper
08-08-2010, 03:01 AM
No, it is legal. Every challenge to the income tax has been rejected by the courts.
Didn't they tell you? http://www.givemeliberty.org/RTPLawsuit/Update08-09-03.htm
Being allowed into any restaurant or business establishment open to the public, regardless of the color of your skin, is far more important than worrying about offending some racist business owner. Depends on whose definition of racist is being imposed. Recently a backpacker inns in Australia were accused in the press of racism for not allowing locals to stay at them. They are backpacker inns and many of the locals were of course white, who are the racial majority in Australia.
That's easy for you, since you have the right skin color. I'm sure you'd feel different if you had dark skin. What if there's only one hotel or restaurant in the town? Should blacks be deprived of eating out or staying in the hotel? What if there is only one hospital, which is privately owned? Should blacks not have access to medical care because the owner of the hospital is a racist? You're really disgusting to defend something so abhorrent.
How many towns have one restaurant and one hotel? I wouldn't even want to go to one of them. Racism punishes business, since it limits the number of customers he will serve and sends them to his competitors.
I'm not defending racism, I am defending people's right to act and think as they please. Agaiin, the definition of racism being imposed may not even be reasonable, and not even all non-racists would agree on a fair definition. Go to the following thread where by many peoples standards a lot of strippers are admitting to being racist and racially profiling their customers.
http://forum.stripperweb.com/showthread.php?t=131759
No, you do condone racism. He is imposing his racism on other people.I don't condone it, I just recognise other people's freedom to be racist. It's nothing to do with me. In a free country, he can't make it a problem for other people by imposing it on them.
They're not forever deciding in each individual case whether the defendant's action was based on racism. It's very rare that I here of someone taking a business to court for refusing to serve blacks. It's not rocket science to serve blacks who enter your establishment. I really find it amazing there are people who still think this way.Then how is it decided? If no racists are taken to court, why have the Act? I have heard of many such cases.
Think what way? I'm simply saying you can't regulate racism, any more than you can regulate other types of immorality.
Hopper
08-08-2010, 03:01 AM
Unconstitutional how? The federal government's power to levy taxation and be involved in banking and finance is plenary.
Where is the Supreme Court case striking down such unconstitutionality, Civil Rights Act included? There isn't one because the listed powers in the constitution are plenary and there is an equal protection clause.
I'm not sure what you mean by "plenary". The Constitution states the powers Congress may have and it's true it does not state what it may not do, but that does not mean that it is automatically allowed to do more than what the Constitution specifically allows.
Why should I take your opinion over that of the U.S. judges I quoted?
Okay. Name a society in which your ideal was implemented in its entirety and worked better than the system of laws we have had for hundreds of years, as I asked you before.The only one I know of is the U.S. early in it's history and even that was not for a long uninterrupted period. Freedom is hard to hold onto. It was a new concept, a radical experiment for which there was no historical tradition or precedent for the people to hold to. But while it existed, it resulted in miraculous improvements.
It sounds like you are appealing to tradition - we had a lot of things for "hundreds of years" which you are probably glad we no longer have. Horse and wagon is one that comes to mind.
Hopper
08-08-2010, 03:03 AM
Some do abide by them, but they are also frequently honoured in the breach, quite lawfully as it happens. Consider the fact that there is and can be no writ issued over breached international treaties. As an LLB I can tell you that they do not carry the force of law thanks to the sovereignty issue. If you don't believe me, do some reading as to the meaning of sovereignty. You'll find that no federal government has jurisdiction over the federal government of another country.
As I understand it, international agreements work the same way as treaties, and in the U.S. at least a treaty overrides all U.S. law, including the Constitution, which would effectively displace sovereignty.
Melonie
08-08-2010, 04:31 AM
You fled from the U.S. regime to Mexico?
Actually, a bit farther south ... where it's actually legal for a non-citizen to truly own property, and where 'foreigners' have a realistic path towards a ( second ) citizenship / passport. However, a good portion of my area's power is 'imported' across the Mexican Border from CFE since 'local' generation capacity has severely lagged behind the rising electrical demand caused by recent increases in local economic development.
As a result, local electric utility service has grown increasingly 'flaky' ... leading to a situation where every local establishment that needs to conduct serious business must also have their own backup generator. Against that scenario, i.e. competing against the fuel and maintenance costs of a backup generator operating 1000+ hours per year, the price premium for solar electric equipment is worth considering.
I would add that, down here, your example of 'rule of law' is also acted out. Yes there is some degree of 'law enforcement' by the local gov't - when it suits them. And then again there is 'enforcement' by various local 'groups' ... which fortunately includes a sizeable group of very well armed ex-pats ! This amounts to a very effective real world example of 'an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure' ... or more accurately an ounce of lead shot prevents a pound of goods from being stolen !
... we now return you to your regularly scheduled debate ...
~
flickad
08-08-2010, 05:27 AM
Only so much room but room enough for enough businesses to employ non-businessmen. Not everybody wants to start a business and not all people who do will own one their whole life. Most businessmen would first be employed in order to save the capital for a business. The capital would be a lot less if all manner of government intervention were out of the way.
There's always capital involved in starting a business, regulations or no. You must hire or buy a premises, hire staff, buy supplies, pay utility bills - the list goes on.
How much paid menial work have you done? In my experience it's no slouch. The people with me were not desperate. Even for menial tasks the fastest employees with the most attention to detail turn the most profit. Even for the most repretitive jobs quite a bit of intelligence and common sense is required, since such work requires more than just the main repetitive task. Such employess are required to be all-rounders. There are machines to set up and employees must work in with people doing other tasks, etc etc.
I worked at Safeway for six years when I was a student and also worked as a seasonal law clerk for three or four years before I did my law degree. I also spent some time delivering pizzas and washing dishes for an Italian restaurant. None of it required too much brainpower. After learning the ropes as a cashier, I spent much of my time letting my mind wander while doing the work on automatic pilot.
Much of what you are saying also sounds like propaganda and ideology. Your previous paragraph an example. It sounds like it is straight from a Communist tract or propaganda film. The reality is not so bleak. Not fun, but not bleak.
You obviously have no idea what communism actually is. I'm strongly against it, mainly because in the real world it is totalitarianism.
I would hope that before anyone ventures out into the big bad world they get some savings behind them rather than live from week to week, one paycheck from the street.
Easier said than done for low wage workers.
I don't know, the U.S. government is very intrusive. Even slaves have some degree of freedom - their owners aren't watching them and moving their legs and arms for them at all times, or thinking their thoughts. There is no such thing as total government control or slavery, since man is by nature an individual, in whatever political system he lives. There is always some degree of freedom. So as I said before - if you are part free, you are all slave.
There is a middle ground between total anarchy and slavery. Slavery has a specific meaning, and that meaning is not government regulation.
I stand corrected on the jail part, but still, the laws are basically protecting property, however it is done. Still I imagine if the offender resisted enforcement of his contract long enough he would eventually wind up in jail.
Nope, he would wind up bankrupt and with a sheriff seizing his property in order to satisfy the judgement debt.
It's pretty common. It has happened to me as a child and I suffered no psycological harm. Just made some new friends. Yes, there are costs, but it need not happen often.
That isn't the point. The point is that individuals tend to lack the same resources that companies do, as well as having responsibilities in their personal life, which make relocation more difficult.
Rightful property is anything you are born with or worked to produce, or worked for the money to buy, or somebody formally agreed to give you. Liberty is the freedom to do anything with your own property as long as it does not interfere with that same right of others.
Maybe there are some blurry areas but that's real life. There are plenty of areas we are sure of. Like me breaking into your car and backing it out of your driveway - I'm sure you wouldn't argue that is wrong.
If a polluter is prosecuted and continues to pollute, the law would probably shut him down or lock him up, just the same as if you or I harm somebody. If we drive under the influence, we are locked up and our car is impounded. Same could go for a polluter and his business. I don't know - I'm not a lawyer.
Other bureaucrats enforce those penalties.
But under your ideal system, there are no environmental laws.
In the current system, a polluter would be prosecuted in civil court (under the law of negligence, most likely, or under a statutory regime). If the polluter lost the case, he/she/it would be required to compensate the plaintiff. If the polluter did not satisfy the judgement debt, the plaintiff would take steps for enforcement proceedings to occur. These consist of things like warrant of seizure and sale, garnishee of wages and notice of bankruptcy. No jail time or other criminal penalties are involved with civil matters. The consequences are purely financial.
ETA - in practice, democratic societies are comparatively free, even though theoretically there may be scope for them not to be.
flickad
08-08-2010, 05:42 AM
As I understand it, international agreements work the same way as treaties, and in the U.S. at least a treaty overrides all U.S. law, including the Constitution, which would effectively displace sovereignty.
Not true. Think about the fact that the US has breached the Geneva Convention without being sued. Why is that? Because it has sovereignty and is not subject to the jurisdiction of foreign governments.
Switzerland breached the extradition treaty with the US in relation to Roman Polanski. The US has no recourse and will not be suing Switzerland (not that any court would have jurisdiction anyway). Why is that? Because the Swiss government isn't subject to US jurisdiction.
Sovereignty can not be displaced by any agreement, and nor can the constitution, which is higher law.
flickad
08-08-2010, 05:44 AM
I'm not sure what you mean by "plenary". The Constitution states the powers Congress may have and it's true it does not state what it may not do, but that does not mean that it is automatically allowed to do more than what the Constitution specifically allows.
Why should I take your opinion over that of the U.S. judges I quoted?
Plenary means broad, in constitutional law terms. The income tax has not been declared unconstitutional or it would no longer exist. It is likely that you have quoted judges in dissent (I noticed you provided no links to the actual decisions) or simply obiter dicta. The ratio of the case is what is binding, not obiter. If these were majority rulings, the federal government would have no power to levy income tax in its current form. The article you did link to did not state that federal income tax is unconstitutional. The article indicates that the decision was based on the legislation, not the constitution.
The only one I know of is the U.S. early in it's history and even that was not for a long uninterrupted period. Freedom is hard to hold onto. It was a new concept, a radical experiment for which there was no historical tradition or precedent for the people to hold to. But while it existed, it resulted in miraculous improvements.
The early US was not completely unregulated, nor was it without its abuses.
Melonie
08-08-2010, 05:57 AM
again not wanting to meddle in this debate, but the following is the most rational explanation of the true nature of the US income tax that I have ever been able to find ...
(snip)"In 1989, the Congressional Research Service revised and updated its report and discussed the nature of an excise tax:
What does the court mean when it states that the income tax is in the nature of an excise tax?
An excise tax is a tax levied on the manufacture, sale, or consumption of a commodity or any various taxes on privileges often assessed in the form of a license or fee. In other words, it is a tax on doing something to property or on the privilege of holding some property or doing some act, not a tax on the property itself. The tax is not on the property directly, but rather it is a tax on the transaction.
When a court refers to an income tax as being in the nature of an excise, it is merely stating that the tax is not on the property itself.
According to the Congressional Research Service, the federal income tax is not a tax on income. It is a privilege tax measured by income. In other words, Congress is taxing some government-defined privilege and income is merely the measuring stick to determine the value of the privilege. Nowhere in this report does CRS identify the so-called privilege that is the basis for the tax.
If the income tax is an excise or privilege tax, then what’s the privilege? The nature of this “privilege” has been one of the most closely guarded secrets in American history. Neither the Internal Revenue Service nor members of Congress will identify the privilege. Instead, in letters and publications they have asserted that the Sixteenth Amendment granted the federal government a new power to impose a non-apportioned direct income tax on the people of the several States. As shown above, this position is contrary to the Sixteenth Amendment that limited, not expanded, the taxing power of the federal government. If Congress is imposing federal income taxes on the erroneous assumption that the Sixteenth Amendment granted it the power to tax income directly without apportionment among the several States, then the tax is being unconstitutionally applied because it violates the restriction placed on the taxing powers of the federal government by the Amendment.
There are two irrefutable facts, however, that foreclose any possibility that the income tax is a direct tax. In 1943, an analysis of the federal income tax was published in the Congressional Record. This compilation of information was written by a former legislative draftsman in the Treasury Department and entitled, “The Income Tax is an Excise Tax, and Income is Merely the Basis for Determining its Amount.” This commentary stated in part:
The income tax is, therefore, not a tax on income as such. It is an excise tax with respect to certain activities and privileges which is measured by the income they produce. The income is not the subject of the tax: it is the basis for determining the amount of the tax.
Footnote: If the tax should be construed as a tax on income as a specific fund the disappearance of the fund before the date of assessment would prevent the collection of the tax.
In other words, if Congress was imposing a direct tax on income, then the tax liability would be based on the amount of income still in the individual’s possession on April 15th of the following year. If all of the individual’s income from the previous year had been spent as of the assessment date of April 15th, then, as stated above, there would be no tax liability. The analysis went on to state:
Hitherto the previous year’s income has been used as the basis. But the basis, as well as the rates, may be changed at any time.
Footnote: If income is merely the measure of the tax, it is clearly quite immaterial whether the income that is adopted as a measure is that of the past, or the present, or of the future, provided only that it is practically ascertainable.
The retroactive feature of the income tax further verifies that the tax being imposed on the American people is not a direct tax. Since the tax is an indirect privilege tax and income is merely the measure of the tax, Congress can change the value of the privilege at any time and make it retroactive to the beginning of the tax year."(snip)
from
flickad
08-08-2010, 06:06 AM
^^
If that is all so, why have there been no successful challenges striking out the income tax as unconstitutional?
Melonie
08-08-2010, 06:13 AM
^^^ because the true nature of the US income tax is in fact legally interpreted to be an excise tax or transaction tax or 'privelege' tax on economic activities ... with income level merely serving as a 'yardstick' for the assessment of this 'privelege' tax ... there isn't any constitutional question in regard to the gov'ts constitutional authority to levee such an excise or transaction or 'privelege' tax. Because the US income tax is NOT legally interpreted to be a tax on income earned, but instead an excise or transaction or 'privelege' tax on economic activity, all of the 16th amendment / direct versus indirect / apportioned versus uniform arguments are in reality moot points !!!
If there is any real controversy, it revolves around exactly what 'privelege' actually exists that supposedly serves as the basis for the tax. This was in fact the 'heart' of the successful tax court case posted by Hopper ... i.e. the defendant had officially requested that the IRS provide documentation of this supposed 'privelege' which legally empowers them to collect tax based on income level, and that the IRS had failed to do so.
However, the 'gold foil hat' crowd would tell you that, as the result of recent increase in IRS investigations into the offshore accounts and offshore business activities of Americans, a future court case involving US constitutional authority to tax offshore economic activities of us citizens and corporations is highly probable !!! The central point of course will be that whatever 'privelege' that is serving as the actual basis of the US income tax arguably does not exist for persons living and/or doing business outside of US borders - thus there is no US constitutional authority to collect tax based on offshore income which is not 'repatriated' back into the USA. The higher US individual and corporate tax rates rise, and the more important the offshore business activities of US corporations become, the more likely such a constitutional challenge to US taxation of offshore economic activities will become as well.
... we again return you to your regularly scheduled debate ...
~
flickad
08-08-2010, 06:22 AM
^^^ because the true nature of the US income tax is in fact legally interpreted to be an excise tax or transaction tax or 'privelege' tax on economic activities ... with income level merely serving as a 'yardstick' for the assessment of this 'privelege' tax ... there isn't any constitutional question in regard to the gov'ts constitutional authority to levee such an excise or transaction or 'privelege' tax.
If there is any real controversy, it revolves around exactly what 'privelege' actually exists that supposedly serves as the basis for the tax. This was in fact the 'heart' of the tax court case posted by Hopper ... i.e. the defendant had officially requested that the IRS provide documentation of this supposed 'privelege' which legally empowers them to collect tax based on income level, and that the IRS had failed to do so.
The ultimate point is that it's not unconstitutional, then, at least not as long as it rests on the power that it purports to rest on.
The link Hopper provided did not refer to the constitution at all. It referred to the Tax Code.
Hopper
08-08-2010, 06:24 AM
There's always capital involved in starting a business, regulations or no. You must hire or buy a premises, hire staff, buy supplies, pay utility bills - the list goes on.
Of course but the cost of all that would be less without the obstacles government creates.
I worked at Safeway for six years when I was a student and also worked as a seasonal law clerk for three or four years before I did my law degree. I also spent some time delivering pizzas and washing dishes for an Italian restaurant. None of it required too much brainpower. After learning the ropes as a cashier, I spent much of my time letting my mind wander while doing the work on automatic pilot.
Much of the time yes but automatic or not it still requires ability and frequently thought as well.
You obviously have no idea what communism actually is. I'm strongly against it, mainly because in the real world it is totalitarianism.
Totalitarianism is what I think communism actually is. Are you saying there is a difference between what something actually is and what it is in the real world? What do you think communism actually is? What have I said about it that you think is wrong?
Easier said than done for low wage workers.
Isn't everything? It wasn't hard for me and again, it would be easier if the government would stay out of business and business stayed out of government. Seriously, you don't know the half of how much economic hardship government regulation of business, the economy and everything else causes. It's ironic that you are studying to be a lawyer and you don't see how massive and intrusive all of this legislation is and what effects it has - that all you see is a harmless little safety net.
There is a middle ground between total anarchy and slavery. Slavery has a specific meaning, and that meaning is not government regulation.
Yes, slavery has a narrow dictionary definition, but more enlightened political and economic thinkers long ago recognised that all that government is is what the word says it is: control by a minority of individuals of all other individuals. Whatever the dictionary says, that is the principle of slavery - one person telling other people what to do.
Nope, he would wind up bankrupt and with a sheriff seizing his property in order to satisfy the judgement debt.
And if he hid the property from the sheriff, or refused to hand it over?
That isn't the point. The point is that individuals tend to lack the same resources that companies do, as well as having responsibilities in their personal life, which make relocation more difficult.
Of course a business has more resources than an individual. But businesses don't hold all the power. They are competing with other businesses to stay in the market. There is a lot of risk and responsibility involved and longer hours for management than for an employee. That is one thing regular employees are not tied down by. If it were easier than employment, more employees would be doing it.
There are hardships on both sides. That's just the real world. Bringing the government in doesn't make it any better for either party. It hasn't made things better for most of us. Most people are struggling financially - individuals and businesses (except for the favored ones at the big end of town).
But under your ideal system, there are no environmental laws.
In the current system, a polluter would be prosecuted in civil court (under the law of negligence, most likely, or under a statutory regime). If the polluter lost the case, he/she/it would be required to compensate the plaintiff. If the polluter did not satisfy the judgement debt, the plaintiff would take steps for enforcement proceedings to occur. These consist of things like warrant of seizure and sale, garnishee of wages and notice of bankruptcy. No jail time or other criminal penalties are involved with civil matters. The consequences are purely financial.
No environmental laws are needed if people merely sue for damages when pollution affects them or their property in some way. That's ultimately the point of environmental laws - to protect us from environmental harm. It could be either a criminal or civil matter, depending. All of what you say above happens under the present system, with environmental legislation, could happen without it.
It's pretty comic that you dismissed the Ludwig von Mises site as propaganda. Although you have probably never heard of him, he's one of the greatest economic thinkers of all time. I have met economics graduates who had not heard of him. Try reading just one article there and see how easy it is to dismiss.
Melonie
08-08-2010, 06:51 AM
again more quasi-off topic footnotes
Although you have probably never heard of him, he's one of the greatest economic thinkers of all time. I have met economics graduates who had not heard of him. Try reading just one article there and see how easy it is to dismiss.
^^^ and don't leave out Mises' proteges Hazlitt and Rothbard
it would be easier if the government would stay out of business and business stayed out of government. Seriously, you don't know the half of how much economic hardship government regulation of business, the economy and everything else causes
Actually, american independent contractor dancers are about to receive a lesson in this regard. The new National Health Care law requires them to document any and all payouts to other businesses after January 1st ( i.e. tipouts to DJ's, bouncers, bartenders - house / stage fees paid the club etc.) and to generate IRS 1099-misc forms listing the total amount of annual payout made to each of these 'businesses'.
Hopper
08-08-2010, 06:54 AM
The income tax itself is not unconstitutional. The way in which it is adminstered is unconstitutional. It is administered as a direct tax when it can only constitutionally be administered as an indirect tax, which would be so much harder to do that the people would not tolerate it, except in emergencies and for short periods.
Also, the Code or Act defines "income" for the purpose of this specific legislation differently to the normal use of the word, which is the amount of money we make. The special legal definition of "income" stated is "income derived from earnings" - in other words, not the income you earn, but income which is derived in some way from earnings.
This is another way in which the IRS falsely collects income tax. This would be one reason why Vernice Klugin did not get a response from the IRS and was not convicted in court. The IRS simply did not want to tell her in writing or in court (where it would be recorded) why she was not required to pay the tax.
The IRS have deceived people into understanding "income" for income tax purposes to mean what it normally does and file their tax reports accordingly. The IRS merely takes them at their word that that is the amount of "income derived from earnings" they made that year. That may not be unconstitutional, but it is a scam.
Hopper
08-08-2010, 07:03 AM
again more quasi-off topic footnotes
^^^ and don't leave out Mises' proteges Hazlitt and Rothbard
http://ezinearticles.com/?Ludwig-Von-Mises,-Henry-Hazlitt,-and-Murray-Rothbard---Three-Men-of-Integrity&id=3188894
And the great Frederich A. Hayek.
Actually, american independent contractor dancers are about to receive a lesson in this regard. The new National Health Care law requires them to document any and all payouts to other businesses after January 1st ( i.e. tipouts to DJ's, bouncers, bartenders - house / stage fees paid the club etc.) and to generate IRS 1099-misc forms listing the total amount of annual payout made to each of these 'businesses'.
They shouldn't complain though - it's all just part of the safety net.
flickad
08-08-2010, 03:43 PM
Totalitarianism is what I think communism actually is. Are you saying there is a difference between what something actually is and what it is in the real world? What do you think communism actually is? What have I said about it that you think is wrong?
Communism is, in theory, a system in which the state controls all wealth and means of production and theoretically distributes it equitably. That in itself is fairly totalitarian. But in practice, it is even more so. In practice, it is a bloodbath and wealth is concentrated at the higher party echalons. Every aspect of life is controlled by the state. But there are forms of totalitarianism besides communism. It is also possible to have a totalitarian fascist state, for instance.
You've said that my views looks like an advert for communism, which they most assuredly are not. I don't oppose private enterprise, nor have I said anything to indicate that the economy should be entirely state run.
Isn't everything? It wasn't hard for me and again, it would be easier if the government would stay out of business and business stayed out of government. Seriously, you don't know the half of how much economic hardship government regulation of business, the economy and everything else causes. It's ironic that you are studying to be a lawyer and you don't see how massive and intrusive all of this legislation is and what effects it has - that all you see is a harmless little safety net.
I finished my degree, actually. Excuse my French, but you don't know shit about my experience.
Yes, slavery has a narrow dictionary definition, but more enlightened political and economic thinkers long ago recognised that all that government is is what the word says it is: control by a minority of individuals of all other individuals. Whatever the dictionary says, that is the principle of slavery - one person telling other people what to do.
Then children and employees are slaves. The word has no real meaning under your revised definition. I could say that any word has a narrow dictionary definition and start using it in a way to suit my ends. I could, for instance, decide that the meaning of person is too narrow and call my dog a person and demand he receive the right to vote. Doesn't change the real meaning of that word, nor does it make my dog a person.
And if he hid the property from the sheriff, or refused to hand it over?
Thatn would be contempt of court, which is a separate thing in itself. Imprisonment is used as a coercive rather than punitive measure in contempt cases, but is only one of many options.
There are hardships on both sides. That's just the real world. Bringing the government in doesn't make it any better for either party. It hasn't made things better for most of us. Most people are struggling financially - individuals and businesses (except for the favored ones at the big end of town).
Government regulation can and does prevent egregious abuses, though I agree that we are currently over-regulated.
No environmental laws are needed if people merely sue for damages when pollution affects them or their property in some way. That's ultimately the point of environmental laws - to protect us from environmental harm. It could be either a criminal or civil matter, depending. All of what you say above happens under the present system, with environmental legislation, could happen without it.
But I thought you ditched tort law?
It's pretty comic that you dismissed the Ludwig von Mises site as propaganda. Although you have probably never heard of him, he's one of the greatest economic thinkers of all time. I have met economics graduates who had not heard of him. Try reading just one article there and see how easy it is to dismiss.
Says who?
flickad
08-08-2010, 03:45 PM
They shouldn't complain though - it's all just part of the safety net.
By safety net, I was referring to measures taken to keep the poorest members of our society from starving and bleeding to death. I wasn't referring to over-regulation to the point of nanny statism.
Hopper
08-09-2010, 06:48 AM
Not true. Think about the fact that the US has breached the Geneva Convention without being sued. Why is that? Because it has sovereignty and is not subject to the jurisdiction of foreign governments.
Switzerland breached the extradition treaty with the US in relation to Roman Polanski. The US has no recourse and will not be suing Switzerland (not that any court would have jurisdiction anyway). Why is that? Because the Swiss government isn't subject to US jurisdiction.
Sovereignty can not be displaced by any agreement, and nor can the constitution, which is higher law.
Whether or not treaties can actually be imposed upon nations by one another, if it is in the interests of national governments to obey them, they can use the formal obligations the treaties present to justify doing so to the people of the nation they run. If some internationalist or globalist politicians get into power, they can use the treaties as a pretext to follow their agendas. The NATO attack on Kosovo, the First World War, Vietnam, Korea, the Congo, Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda etc. were all done in obedience to treaties.
Compare the UN to a national government. It has a court, a police force, an army, a parliament, a legislature, a judiciary, departments for particular areas of government, a bank etc. If it is not now a government on paper, it's a few steps to being made one if our leaders so wished. Question: Why does the UN have it's own "peacekeeping force" and criminal court, if not to enforce it's human rights charter, which covers not only international activity, but domestic activity?
Consider also that if the treaties were enforceable, it would be unwise for the UN or national leaders to actually enforce them at present, since it would make people aware that their nations' sovereignties are in danger and they would oppose the UN altogether. Softly, softly catchy monkey.
Hopper
08-09-2010, 06:49 AM
The early US was not completely unregulated, nor was it without its abuses.
That's basically what I said. For one thing, they set up a few national banks in the early decades - and each time learned it was a mistake. There will be abuses under any system. The only absolutely safe place is in the arms of Jesus. Outside of that there are only varying degrees of safety. The question is which system allows the least abuse.
Hopper
08-09-2010, 06:50 AM
^^
If that is all so, why have there been no successful challenges striking out the income tax as unconstitutional?
These cases ruled that the income tax can only be administered as an indirect tax.
Brushaber v. Union Pacific (240 US 1) 1915
Stanton v. Baltic Mining (240 US 103) 1915
They rule that the income tax is legal, but may only be administered as direct taxes. If administered as direct taxes, they would be required to be administered by apportionment, which is a huge and difficult task. This was written into the constitution to discourage income taxes being enacted except for emergencies and for brief periods, since the people would only tolerate apportionment in those circumstances and for a short time.
Note that the income tax was raised during WW2 "temporarily" and never restored to it's original level. Is this constitutional?
This article gives some more relevant court cases and information.
http://www.supremelaw.org/sls/email/box047/msg04767.htm
Hopper
08-09-2010, 07:05 AM
Communism is, in theory, a system in which the state controls all wealth and means of production and theoretically distributes it equitably. That in itself is fairly totalitarian.
No, that's socialism. In theory communism is a stateless society based purely on cooperation. Marxist theory says that to reach communism, a socialist state ("the dictatorship of the proletariat") must take control of the means of production and the people after the demise of capitalism, as a transitional phase, i.e. to prepare society for (stateless) communism. Communism itself (in theory) is a stateless system in which people naturally and voluntarily cooperate for the common good. This idea has been in existence since the middle ages - it predates Marx.
In practice, Marxist communism results in socialism simply because in the real world people don't cooperate and dictators don't let go of power - we would be stuck in the socialist phase and never make it to a communist society. No kind of communism could be set up, because people simply don't cooperate for the greater good. Any attempt would actually result in totalitarianism, since to make it work in practice some sort of democratic system, run by a representative council, would need to be set up and the extensive powers required by such a council would enable it to dispense with democracy altogether.
Communism was tried by early Christian pilgrims to America (communism began in Christian Europe) and it failed tragically, even with religious belief behind it. People simply did not produce, because there was no incentive to produce. They almost starved. The maxim "from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs", when applied, resulted in laziness and malingering. They abandoned it and replaced it with private ownership and the resulting incentives made everyone hard-working and well again; and production shot up. In reality, the only alternative to the profit motive is the lash or forced starvation.
The purpose of "social democracy" or "socialist reforms" in our capitalist countries is to exert control over the means of production and redistribute wealth. That is how the "safety net" works. So how is it not socialism?
But in practice, it is even more so. In practice, it is a bloodbath and wealth is concentrated at the higher party echalons. Every aspect of life is controlled by the state. But there are forms of totalitarianism besides communism. It is also possible to have a totalitarian fascist state, for instance.
And the "safety net", despite being the same thing, would not be put to any of these uses?
You've said that my views looks like an advert for communism, which they most assuredly are not. I don't oppose private enterprise, nor have I said anything to indicate that the economy should be entirely state run.
I said that your characterisation of the workplace sounds like a communist tract. In reality workers are not under the heel of business. That is not my experience as a worker.
I finished my degree, actually. Excuse my French, but you don't know shit about my experience.
I wasn't criticising your experience. I didn't mean to single you out either - it surprises me that most lawyers, despite their knowledge of that field, don't recognise the enormity of the power of the state and the effect it has on public life.
I recommend you read "Economics In One Lesson" by Henry Hazlitt. It is a short and simple but brilliant book. He explains clearly how "safety nets" hugely distort the economy to everyone's disadvantage. You can read it online. Every lawyer should read it. It's still in print and probably in the book stores. It is also many places online.
http://fee.org/library/books/economics-in-one-lesson/
http://www.hacer.org/pdf/Hazlitt00.pdf
Then children and employees are slaves. The word has no real meaning under your revised definition. I could say that any word has a narrow dictionary definition and start using it in a way to suit my ends. I could, for instance, decide that the meaning of person is too narrow and call my dog a person and demand he receive the right to vote. Doesn't change the real meaning of that word, nor does it make my dog a person.
Children are necessarily under the authority of the power since they do not have the experience, education and maturity to care for themselves or even decide how they are to be cared for. Employees are not slaves, since they are free to decide who they work for and what terms they will accept and they are paid for their work.
I am not playing dictionary games, I am likening two things on the basis of principles. You can't reason only on the basis of dictionary definitions or common usage of words. If dogs were similar to humans, you could expand "person" to mean dogs, or liken dogs to people.
Thatn would be contempt of court, which is a separate thing in itself. Imprisonment is used as a coercive rather than punitive measure in contempt cases, but is only one of many options.
Okay. The issue is not whether an offender is locked up but whether rightful property is protected.
Government regulation can and does prevent egregious abuses, though I agree that we are currently over-regulated.
Yes it does but it also results in abuses, and can be abused itself just as businessmen can abuse their power. But my point there was the way in which regulation distorts the market to overall economic harm.
But I thought you ditched tort law?
No.
Says who?
Opinions differ of course, depending on ideology; but it's not propaganda. Read and decide for yourself. It will only take one book.
Hopper
08-09-2010, 07:06 AM
By safety net, I was referring to measures taken to keep the poorest members of our society from starving and bleeding to death. I wasn't referring to over-regulation to the point of nanny statism.
Well any strippers who happen to be that poor will be required to pay more of their meager takings in income tax to avoid bleeding to death.
threlayer
08-09-2010, 12:16 PM
Wow this debate has really progressed. Maybe I can catch up. But I have three points now.
International alliances have probably stopped as many wars as they have started, and likely more. And likely alliances with objectives other than defense have been even more productive. When you talk about these, you have to talk globally, not just about the ones you didn't like.
Solar and wind energy, once costs are brought down, as well as some storage means, will help transform this country into the post-industrial age with less pollution and almost inexhaustable supply of energy (though with strong limits on the power available, it still will be very useful). Note though, that almost all large-scale technologies we have to day were initially subsidized by the government with risks also taken on by industry. This even applies to electric power. And yet the development was successful, the needs were met, and industries were started. Why do you think this is any different?
Second, Hopper is an obvious anarchist. Is this an extreme form of libertarian?
Melonie
08-09-2010, 03:17 PM
Note though, that almost all large-scale technologies we have to day were initially subsidized by the government with risks also taken on by industry. This even applies to electric power. And yet the development was successful, the needs were met, and industries were started. Why do you think this is any different?
Because #1 - from railroads to electric lights to cars to radio to aviation to television to desktop computers, each of these developments brought something fundamentally new to the consumer that did not previously exist. Solar and wind power do not do this ... all they bring is a higher 'bill' (in one form or another) to replace 1 for 1 something which is already available ( and at a lower price ).
Because #2 - from railroads to electric lights to cars to radio to aviation to television to desktop computers, each of these offered the opportunity to generate real added value profits from ( at the time ) unexploited new markets with tremendous growth potential. Instead of a new market, Solar and Wind are competing in an already well established market of existing electricity users. And instead of growth potential, the electricity market is already the official target of efforts to 'shrink' it instead ( via conservation mandates / energy efficiency standards etc. ).
Did you ever see the movie 'Other People's Money' ? 20 years ago, Danny DeVito's character explained the issue rather well re companies garnering 'an increasing share of a shrinking market'. Of course, it seems to be the human condition to refuse to learn from history !
~
Deogol
08-09-2010, 07:50 PM
OK - this is not Dollar Den stuff
Hopper,
You don't find anything wrong with this?
http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_Ed1APDoErv8/S_-qJxAV5_I/AAAAAAAAAYM/xEVD7k9EKgg/s320/white-only.jpg
http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_QfVWU-2pVL4/Sxwh0nU3PbI/AAAAAAAAKRQ/uH46Q1T-UGk/s1600/image006.gif
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.bvblackspin.com/media/2010/06/whitesonly.jpg
http://shanghaiist.com/attachments/shang_dan/nodogsorchinese.jpg
flickad
08-09-2010, 11:05 PM
No, that's socialism. In theory communism is a stateless society based purely on cooperation. Marxist theory says that to reach communism, a socialist state ("the dictatorship of the proletariat") must take control of the means of production and the people after the demise of capitalism, as a transitional phase, i.e. to prepare society for (stateless) communism. Communism itself (in theory) is a stateless system in which people naturally and voluntarily cooperate for the common good. This idea has been in existence since the middle ages - it predates Marx.
In practice, Marxist communism results in socialism simply because in the real world people don't cooperate and dictators don't let go of power - we would be stuck in the socialist phase and never make it to a communist society. No kind of communism could be set up, because people simply don't cooperate for the greater good. Any attempt would actually result in totalitarianism, since to make it work in practice some sort of democratic system, run by a representative council, would need to be set up and the extensive powers required by such a council would enable it to dispense with democracy altogether.
Communism was tried by early Christian pilgrims to America (communism began in Christian Europe) and it failed tragically, even with religious belief behind it. People simply did not produce, because there was no incentive to produce. They almost starved. The maxim "from each according to his ability and to each according to his needs", when applied, resulted in laziness and malingering. They abandoned it and replaced it with private ownership and the resulting incentives made everyone hard-working and well again; and production shot up. In reality, the only alternative to the profit motive is the lash or forced starvation.
No, that's how communism has been in practice. It has differed considerably from Marxist theory when put into practice, but those sorts of states have still been called communism. But you are right in a strict terminology sense that it is technically socialism.
The purpose of "social democracy" or "socialist reforms" in our capitalist countries is to exert control over the means of production and redistribute wealth. That is how the "safety net" works. So how is it not socialism?
Social democracy does not necessarily involve state ownership of the means of production and when it does it is only some of them. It differs from socialism in that it exists alongside capitalism. It's capitalism with the odd modification, essentially.
I said that your characterisation of the workplace sounds like a communist tract. In reality workers are not under the heel of business. That is not my experience as a worker.
Workers need to accept the employer's terms if they wish to stay employed in that particular job. You do what you're told in the workplace or you are eventually fired.
I wasn't criticising your experience. I didn't mean to single you out either - it surprises me that most lawyers, despite their knowledge of that field, don't recognise the enormity of the power of the state and the effect it has on public life.
Actually, I do, being aware of the plethora of law relating to business, and also both my parents are in business for themselves, as were both my grandfathers. I come from the quintessential petit bourgeois family. Hence my statement that you don't know shit about me. I also agree that things should be made easier for business in some respects (taxation, for instance, can be overly complex), but don't advocate total deregulation.
Children are necessarily under the authority of the power since they do not have the experience, education and maturity to care for themselves or even decide how they are to be cared for. Employees are not slaves, since they are free to decide who they work for and what terms they will accept and they are paid for their work.
I am not playing dictionary games, I am likening two things on the basis of principles. You can't reason only on the basis of dictionary definitions or common usage of words. If dogs were similar to humans, you could expand "person" to mean dogs, or liken dogs to people.
The two things you are comparing differ by their very nature and also in terms of degree, dictionary or no dictionary.
flickad
08-09-2010, 11:09 PM
Well any strippers who happen to be that poor will be required to pay more of their meager takings in income tax to avoid bleeding to death.
Not too many strippers are especially poor. The ones I know make in excess of hundreds of dollars per shift.
flickad
08-09-2010, 11:11 PM
Second, Hopper is an obvious anarchist. Is this an extreme form of libertarian?
Nah, Hopper's just on the far end of the libertarian scale. An anarchist would advocate the repeal of all law, including criminal law, and the state itself.
flickad
08-09-2010, 11:21 PM
OK - this is not Dollar Den stuff
This thread hasn't been dollar den stuff for pages.
Hopper
08-10-2010, 05:03 AM
Wow this debate has really progressed. Maybe I can catch up. But I have three points now.
International alliances have probably stopped as many wars as they have started, and likely more. And likely alliances with objectives other than defense have been even more productive. When you talk about these, you have to talk globally, not just about the ones you didn't like.
Flickad says that treaties are not binding and therefore don't restrict sovereignty of states, i.e. the parties don't have to abide by their agreement. I still don't know what the point would be of making it in the first place - flickad says its symbolic - but I agree that whether or not they are obliged to abide by the treaty, they don't obey it, because (as flickad says) there is no way for the other party to enforce it - except by going to war.
So what is the difference between that and having no treaty and each party doing whatever they like? The difference is that the treaty is one more thing for them to have a war over and, if the treaty requires it, siding with the other party when he goes to war against somebody else.
Solar and wind energy, once costs are brought down, as well as some storage means, will help transform this country into the post-industrial age with less pollution and almost inexhaustable supply of energy (though with strong limits on the power available, it still will be very useful). Note though, that almost all large-scale technologies we have to day were initially subsidized by the government with risks also taken on by industry. This even applies to electric power. And yet the development was successful, the needs were met, and industries were started. Why do you think this is any different?
Who cares if the energy supply is inexhaustible if it the power is strongly limited? How useful could a strongly limited power supply be? It probably will bring about a "post-industrial age", since it won't be able to power industry and industry won't be able to pay for it. So we will have to go back to a pre-industrial society.
The technology we have now wasn't successful because it was subsidised, it was successful because it works. The method of energy transformation is efficient enough that a small amount of the source of energy delivers a relatively large output, making it economical and practical. There was no risk involved - it was adopted because it was better than what they had already. If it was subsidized it didn't need to be subsidised as much as solar now is. Solar wont't just need an initial subsidy, it will always need to be subsidised, which will be impossible if everyone uses it because then we will just all be subsidising each other.
Solar energy transformation is inefficient and inherently expensive. You need an area of solar panels larger than the area of the city it powers. That's like needing a gasoline tank twice the size of the car. Same goes for wind, tidal and wave power.
But nuclear power could be good for electical supply and hydrogen could be developed as a substitute for vehicle fuel. But oddly the opponents of fossil fuels don't want to consider them, using false or petty criticisms to dismiss them.
Second, Hopper is an obvious anarchist. Is this an extreme form of libertarian?
The term "anarchist" is used to mean different things; often something else entirely. Left-wing anarchism is really the opposite of anarchy; it is some form of cooperation, usually with some sort of council. In order to have an organised, collectivist type of cooperation, there must be some system of government in place to maintain and direct it.
That's different from libertarianism, which is simply individual freedom, from government and also from all other individuals. In a cooperative society individuals are not free and independent, they must conform to the system by which that cooperation is organised. They are obliged to work for the interests of others as well as their own. There is cooperation in individualist society, but it is free and voluntary and usually for the sake of overlapping self-interest, not organised by society at large.
Left-wing anarchists are kidding themselves. You can't have cooperation without some sort of government in place. Since people are naturally self-interested, a government would also be required to police selfish activity and any outbreaks of capitalism in the community. In reality left-wing anarchists are comminists, i.e. they believe in stateless cooperation but will actually deliver socialism.
Left-wing anarchists also call themselves "libertarian socialists", to distinguish themselves from "authoritarian socialists", but that's just a contradiction in terms, since socialism is only authoritarian. This then is really an admission that they are totalitarians and not anarchists at all. "Libertarian" socialists have always - right back to before Marx - been part of the same movement as Marxists and other socialists, distinguishing themselves as an intellectual faction but working right alongside "authoritarian" socialists nonetheless. Their ideologies about economics and society are basically similar.
Left-wing anarchists always support "public" services, ownership and regulation, which are really government or state services, ownership and regulation. Left-wing anarchists are involved in every movement, issue and protest the communists and socialists conduct and communists and socialists promote the anarchist movement in their own publications. I have seen books by Marx in anarchist book and leaflet racks.
The only real differences are in the labels.
There are also "free market anarchists", those who oppose socialism and genuinely want no government. A libertarian society can have a government - it is not necessarily anarchist. All that it requires is that the government function only to protect individual liberty and property, not regulate individual activity, which itself violates liberty and private property. However, libertarianism can also have no government, since protection of liberties could be undertaken by other agencies than government ones.
Is this extreme? Have you heard of George Washington? Thomas Jefferson? Patrick Henry? Your country was founded on "extremism". It's not extreme, it's merely just. You can't have too much liberty.
Hopper
08-10-2010, 05:20 AM
No, that's how communism has been in practice. It has differed considerably from Marxist theory when put into practice, but those sorts of states have still been called communism. But you are right in a strict terminology sense that it is technically socialism.
Just because the movement is labelled "communist" does not mean they are practising communism at present. They are "communist" in the sense that they are aiming to acheive communism, which is the stateless, cooperative (and entirely imaginary) system I described. But what they practise is socialism, because they have not made it past the socialist phase which they believe will lead to communism. They are communists in the sense that they believe - or promise - that they are working toward communism, and in the sense that they believe communism to be the only just system. They are socialists in the sense that they are promising communism but actually delivering socialism.
Socialism in communist countries does not differ from Marxist theory. Marxist theory says that to get to communism, you have to pass through socialism, and that is what the communists are doing - passing though socialism (they just don't know, or don't let on, that it's going to be forever).
Social democracy does not necessarily involve state ownership of the means of production and when it does it is only some of them. It differs from socialism in that it exists alongside capitalism. It's capitalism with the odd modification, essentially.
What is ownership? Ownership is the recognition of the right to control something. Therefore, if you don't control something, you don't really, practically, own it. It might be written down somewhere that you own it, but if you don't actually control it, you effectively don't own it.
Illustration: I sell you a car. I sign it over to you - the paperwork now says it is yours. But I make a condition that whenever you drive it, you must okay it with me first. Whose car is it really? Does it make you any happier that you have a piece of paper with your name on it? Your immediate response on hearing my terms would be an indignant "Who owns the fucking car then?', meaning that you recognise that ownership means control - full control. Would it make you happy if I said "yours - with an odd modification"?
So in the U.S. the state does not own your property on paper but it does extensively tell you what to do with it - what you may or may not do. The state does control the means of production - industry - to a great extent. "Social democracy" does not exist alongside capitalism, it displaces it. When private property comes under the control of the state, you don't have private property any more and therefore you don't have capitalism (i.e. free market capitalism). If it's not free, it's not free market.
Workers need to accept the employer's terms if they wish to stay employed in that particular job. You do what you're told in the workplace or you are eventually fired.
Right, because it's the employer's workplace. But they are not forced to work for him. They are not dependent on him. If they are fired, they go to work for somebody else.
Actually, I do, being aware of the plethora of law relating to business, and also both my parents are in business for themselves, as were both my grandfathers. I come from the quintessential petit bourgeois family. Hence my statement that you don't know shit about me. I also agree that things should be made easier for business in some respects (taxation, for instance, can be overly complex), but don't advocate total deregulation.
Glad to hear that but going by the way you were talking about social democracy and the affect on the economy as a whole, which includes employer-employee relations, of government regulations in their entirety, it seemed you did not. I'm still not sure.
Most socialist and communist leaders came from bourgeois families. The workers were never interested.
The two things you are comparing differ by their very nature and also in terms of degree, dictionary or no dictionary.
So interventionist governments don't control people, or owners don't control their slaves?
Hopper
08-10-2010, 05:35 AM
Not too many strippers are especially poor. The ones I know make in excess of hundreds of dollars per shift.
I thought so. Yet government health care is available to them regardless of income. And they are not billion-dollar corporations whose profits require redistribution, yet they are being scrupulously taxed.
threlayer
08-10-2010, 09:34 AM
Note though, that almost all large-scale technologies we have to day were initially subsidized by the government with risks also taken on by industry. This even applies to electric power. And yet the development was successful, the needs were met, and industries were started. Why do you think this is any different?Because #1 - from railroads to electric lights to cars to radio to aviation to television to desktop computers, each of these developments brought something fundamentally new to the consumer that did not previously exist.Gasoline engines brought something to transportation that old-fashioned electric and steam autos (eg Stanley Steamer) were not able to do, even though transport is still transport. At this point that transformation is limited by pollutants controlled only by inefficient and costly distributed abatement devices (platinum catalytic converters etc). Further developments of electricity production and distribution have the potential of transforming us into a much cleaner and efficient society.
Solar and wind power do not do this ... all they bring is a higher 'bill' (in one form or another) to replace 1 for 1 something which is already available ( and at a lower price ).My stated premise for my post is "once costs are brought down" as they will be by development of advanced production techniques that the industry is developing, assisted by the seed money provided by governments, as discussed in my post. We are in the beginning stages of the commercialization phase of these technologies. How long do you think nuclear power was in this stage; France has successfully developed their nuclear power capability. Solar and wind are vastly simpler technologies. Siting issues are a prime issue in fossil fuel electric generation, not just for these technologies.
Because #2 - ...each of these offered the opportunity to generate real added value profits from ( at the time ) unexploited new markets with tremendous growth potential. Instead of a new market, Solar and Wind are competing in an already well established market of existing electricity users. And instead of growth potential, the electricity market is already the official target of efforts to 'shrink' it instead ( via conservation mandates / energy efficiency standards etc. ).You may not realize just how important electricity is in manufacturing processes, where much of the polluting fossil fuels are used. There is not a much more efficient source of power than electricity. We will not find a better alternative than that product. So anything that transforms our production, distribution, and costing of electricity will also be transformative to society. Of course I'm talking in the long term because all new technologies must be viewed in the long term and in broad scope. Not many people do not benefit from the space program, though in 1957, the public certainly could not foresee the benefits that came out of the technologies that were necessary to develop for that program. Looking only into the short term will shortchange our ability to innovate and improve society.
Did you ever see the movie 'Other People's Money' ? 20 years ago, Danny DeVito's character explained the issue rather well re companies garnering 'an increasing share of a shrinking market'. Of course, it seems to be the human condition to refuse to learn from history !That's just Hollywood; no relation to reality. Just a coincidence that that quote fits your purpose this time.
threlayer
08-10-2010, 10:01 AM
The majority of individuals have little choice of employers or working conditions.This is only true for really talented individuals whose talents/experience/knowledge corporations need; this does not apply to 99% of individuals. so how can you even imagine that as a default statement? Since when did individuals have any chance of standing up for their rights against big federally empowered corporations?
Quote:
Regulation is required for corporations, given tremendous rights well above rights given to individuals, in order to keep them from obvious explotration and acts that would be criminal if committed by an individual.
So take away the federal empowerment - the legislation.
Who gives corporations those rights? Government. That is one of the reasons I oppose regulations - many of them directly favor corporations. Others indirectly favor corporations.
I say that there should be no income tax -for both individuals and corporations. I also say there should be no corporations. What were the American revolutionaries fighting? ...Therefore when the revolutionaries were planning their constitution, they wanted to abolish the government's power to create corporations. That is how corporations are created, by government charter. They used to be created by act of parliament.
The revolutionaries later decided to allow corporations, but only for limited purposes, for limited durations, and only for clear public benefit. But those restrictions soon fell by the wayside - like everything else in the constitution. Ironically, you seem to be defending the loss of the "everything else".
I'm saying that legislation of all businesses and all other individuals activity be reduced, not just legislation of corporations. That includes - especially includes - legislation which directly favors corporations. The free market itself will restrict corporations more than the government ever has. It is only government legislation which has made it possible for big corporations and to even exist and dominate the market as much as they presently do.
I have a whole series of posts on US presidents and new directions they have taken the country in. Corporations are briefly discussed there. There are advantages to corporations for the country's economic system, but they do need to be heavily regulated. And you want to eliminate corporations. What a reactionary thought. Do you also want religions to dictate laws of a country also, as in the past?
Are we learning yet?Yeah, learning about you maybe.
Melonie
08-10-2010, 11:14 AM
You may not realize just how important electricity is in manufacturing processes, where much of the polluting fossil fuels are used. There is not a much more efficient source of power than electricity. We will not find a better alternative than that product. So anything that transforms our production, distribution, and costing of electricity will also be transformative to society.
In fact I DO realize very well how important electricity is to manufacturing processes, as well as to raw materials processing. And indeed anything that transforms our production, distribution, and costing of electricity will be transformative to US society. Arguably this transformation is already occurring due to the effects of wind and solar - but not in the way most people imagine.
Case in point is of course the fact that China is bringing on line two new un-scrubbed coal fired power plants every single week to provide rock bottom priced electricity to an increasing customer base of manufacturers and raw materials processors, whereas US electricity continues to become more expensive due in part to the rising embedded costs of solar and wind power subsidies charged to all US electricity consumers in the form of unneccessarily high electric rates. And with every additional solar or wind installation, the net need for subsidies to cover the newly generated 'capacity' costs, newly generated capital equipment costs for interconnection, the cost premium for purchasing 'feed in' solar and wind power at 'above market' prices ( compared to coal, oil or even gas fired electric generation) etc. needs to be shifted onto a declining base of regular electricity customers.