"Occupy" Protests

Alitare wrote: Who cares if I'm an uncouth, amoral skag?

The baby Jesus.

The Doctor wrote: You can be free without wealth.

Define it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I say you can.

The Doctor wrote:   But when a few people control most of the resources of a nation, they have the power to control your life.  They get to determine how much of the resources they will give you and how hard you will have to work to get those resources.  Let's put it this way, prior to government regulation of employment law, an employer could work you as many hours as he felt like working you and pay you whatever he felt like paying you and the employee had only two choices, give his life over to his employer for barely enough to survive or starve to death.

It doesn't exactly work like that though. That's why I make more than the minimum wage. If an employer could make a unilateral decision about my wage, it wouldn't be. Employment law had really nothing to do with rising wages. When workers started producing more per hour, they started to be paid more per hour.

 

The Doctor wrote: I can tell you that my definition of freedom does not include that kind of freedom.   The freedom to choose between two horrendously bad choices is not freedom at all.

I think that's strange then. To me, a person spontaneously created in a resourceless world would be presented with two options. Live for two days and die of thirst or to throw himself from a cliff before that. Both bad options, but he seems pretty free to me.

The Doctor wrote: That government, run by men, but controlled by checks and balances and a constitution, changed that situation.  I'd hate to see that situation arise again.  Although it is already starting down that path.

No it didn't. It's nonsense to think that government constrains itself. What is a Constitution? It's a piece of paper. How does that check the government. Why would people, who are greedy and work only in their self-interest as you have already said, listen to a self-imposed limit on their power?

What checks and balances? It was a nice theory. As you can see, it doesn't really pan out. Government power isn't a zero sum game. People in Congress pretty quickly learned that ceding power to other branches doesn't necessarily decrease theirs, especially when it improves the probability of their reelection.

I still have three of them.  One decided to grow in at an angle and had to go.  The dentist tried to get me to have them all removed when I was younger but I declined.  I waited until the fourth one actually became a problem.


Edited by Slartibartfast - October 20 2011 at 18:25

thellama73 wrote: I was lucky enough to be born without wisdom teeth. Although I am also missing a fair few other adult teeth, so I still have many of my baby teeth. They are working fine so far, though.

Uh.  We all were. 

I have 3 1/2 left.  One broke about 10 years ago and was capped. 

Slartibartfast wrote: Funny how this morphed into a wisdom teeth thread.  By the way, how long do you Libertarians intend to occupy this thread?   And what are your demands?

What do they want?  Nothing.  When do they want it? Never. 

Yes because everyone knows that prog is the first step to world domination.  

thellama73 wrote: Slartibartfast wrote: Funny how this morphed into a wisdom teeth thread.  By the way, how long do you Libertarians intend to occupy this thread?   And what are your demands?  Our strategy is to convert everyone at PA, thereby forever forming an association between prog and libertarianism. From there, the rest of the world will invariably follow in short order.

You know, the head of the Georgia Libertarian party wrote a column taking a position I agree with.  We used to have these HOV lanes.  Fine.  But we already paid taxes for those lanes.  Recently some bright guy decided it would help traffic to make it a toll lane instead (HOT).  And they spent a lot of money to put the equipment in place.  The justification is that it will improve traffic.  He advocates removing the tolls and even the HOV restrictions and just let everyone use them without restriction.  Let law enforcement focus on more important things than toll enforcement and for that he gets my

thellama73 wrote: Slartibartfast wrote: Funny how this morphed into a wisdom teeth thread.  By the way, how long do you Libertarians intend to occupy this thread?   And what are your demands?  Our strategy is to convert everyone at PA, thereby forever forming an association between prog and libertarianism. From there, the rest of the world will invariably follow in short order.

So far your strategy has failed miserably. One convert out of hundreds of members is not good enough.

Maybe a better strategy is to just try to buy this website from Max and spread prog and libertarianism thanks to the market.

It's tearing holes in my cheeks and gums. I can barely shut my mouth or chew. It sucks a lot worse when you've got a job like I do (sales rep, talking on a phone for eight hours a day). Why didn't I lie to the lady at the clinic and ask for a two-day off-work slip instead of one?

For the 99% you can't see.