"Freedom" thread or something

The Doctor wrote: As to point two - I disagree.  The minority does have the opportunity to sway the majority to its side.  It also has basic protections afforded it by the Constitution and by the system of checks and balances.  I do not believe in tyranny of the majority and more than I believe in tyranny of the corporations.  Minorities (and by this I mean political minorities not racial ones) have to have some inviolable rights and must still have the opportunity to petition the government for a redress of greivances.  And sometimes the minority can and should win.

I'm not saying the majority does dominate the minority, I'm saying it can. I would also say that democracy is more prone to this to any other system, where it's usually the minority that dominates the majority.

JJLehto wrote: Dean wrote: Every decision in a democracy is made by an minority. The majority are invariably silent or indifferent. Indeed. Sooo NJ is planning to pass a bill (or maybe they did already?) saying that any unused $$ on a gift card is to be collected by the state. Not to company issuing...the state. Sheesh any way to squeeze any dollar eh? I give kudos to the bureaucrat who came up with that one. Really getting creative now

Are you implying that the company issuing the card should be entitled to the unspent cash?

How do you justify it going to the state? And that usually means a few cents, but they can add up to something I guess.

HarbouringTheSoul wrote: So if you can't afford to pay for security, you have no guarantee that your rights will be enforced? What kind of useless rights are those? In your "system" (or lack thereof), people can do whatever they want because the "rights" you grant everybody are a meaningless concept that only exists in theory and can be disregarded without harm. If my security firm is more powerful than yours, what stops me from stealing your money? What stops people from hiring others to kill their enemies? It seems kind of odd to me that you hold the principles of life, liberty and property so high, yet you advocate a system in which these rights aren't guaranteed at all and anybody who is more powerful than you can take them away from you.

Nobody has any guarantee of anything inn this world. Do you think there is a guarantee that your rights will be enforced in the current system? Ha!

I find it odd that you assume that people are itching to war with each other. If your security firm is more powerful than mine, they would still be foolish to try to impose their will by force because every other security firm would rise up against them in order to protect their clients, and therefore their profits. Much more money can be made by cooperating and ensuring that justice is done, since everyone has an incentive to pursue justice.

I also don't accept your premise that the poor would not see their rights protected. First, since this is a private property society we're talking about, anyone who owns a street would be wise to insure that street against theft and murder in order to encourage people to use it, so the poor would be protected on streets. Any landlord would be wise to insure his property, so the poor would be protected in their homes.

I understand your skepticism, as it took me a long while to arrive at this point. However, I operate under the principal that it is wrong to forcibly deprive innocent people of their property. The system I advocate is the only one consistent with that principle. If you support taxation of any kind, you deny that principle and I cannot in good conscience endorse any system that legitimizes theft.

The Doc, The T and Dean are all right. The money should not go to the company. It should remain with the consumer. And the 99 cent pricing system is stupid.

I like the sales tax system we have, because it's easier to tell how much you are paying in taxes versus the actual price of the product. It makes it harder to sneak sales tax hikes past the public.

The T wrote: ^Correct. The pricing thing is so stupid. They do it even when it's not necessary. I have worked retail and even when a customer is going to buy something and the price is changed for any reason, they still want the stupid ".99" instead of the ".00" there even though there's no need anymore to "fool" the customer. A lot of fraud is done with gift cards though I agree they should be able the change should be able to be cashed out. It's stupid to have 73 cents left in a card that are useless in a particular store and on top of that make your wallet thicker and heavier.

Edited by Dean - January 28 2013 at 18:58

Dean wrote: thellama73 wrote: I like the sales tax system we have, because it's easier to tell how much you are paying in taxes versus the actual price of the product. It makes it harder to sneak sales tax hikes past the public. Then the price tag should show all the taxes and duties that have been incured on each item, and the retail profit and distributors mark-up and all the other value-added price hikes the products go through on their journey from manufacturer to shopping basket. Why not include a breakdown of the production costs, transport costs and a proportion of the cost of the CEO's LearJet.

Because all the other things you mention are part of the costs of making the product available. The tax is not. It's an arbitrary appropriation by the state simply because I am making a trade, and I would like to know how much they're taking.

State and local sales taxes (calculated together) are the only taxes on goods, aside from cigarettes, beer and gas where there are some hidden taxes. 

But it is pretty easy Logan.  Here in this part of Texas it's 8.25% state and local combined.  I'd like to know how much of the sale price is going to the CEOs bonus. 

There are others, but I don't know how relevant they are to the discussion that I'm not a part of. For example, there's a rental tax for renting a hotel room.