What about Steve though? I think we are overlooking the illustrious presence of Steve.
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And I agreed, but have still offered zero evidence to back your claim that the free market would fix the initial problem of driving up the housing prices.
And I agreed, BUT that is simply a question of pace. It was inevitable.
The people who funded the legislation that helped form the monopolies could do so because they were already on their way. That is how they had the funds to buy politicians in the first place.
It is not that they could never do it without the politicians' regulations and such. It is simple pragmatism. Why spend the cash on "X" in your efforts to corner the market in 10 years when when you can buy a few politicians and cut the time in half?
No. You have no point because how the current monopolies is an irrelevant factor in ending them. Simply removing those benefits and letting the free market do it's job somehow fixes the situation. The playing field is already so uneven that no amount of free market competition, IF you can even be a start up at all in some fields, is going to end the existing monopolies.
You have no example because there isn't one. David cannot beat Goliath through the free market. Instead, David might do ok in the minors and then Goliath, if he hasn't already crushed David, buys him out. Expanding the monopoly further. Anyone who thinks that that is a good business model for the future generations is a moron, a mobster or both.
Again: How does the free market fix this?
This yet another way that Marxists and Libertarians are the opposite sides of the same coin: Nothing they claim works will work, if at all, until you reset to year zero again.
The libertarian's versions of the free market works fine in both pre 1800's America and Zombie Apocalypse America. Nowhere else. Same with the Marxists.
But I can at least respect that the Marxists actually do something (pretty successfully thus far too) to achieve their ends. Not that the libertarians haven't help though with open borders and open markets, just to name a couple.
Jonas I do not see a clearly enunciated thought here but thanks for bringing up military spending.
This thought has brewed in my mind for awhile and do with many former military on this board, I want to ask:
Is our military spending advantage overstated due to our higher personnel (salary and everything else) costs?
We all know that labor is MUCH cheaper in Russia and China, so I wonder what the spending comparisons look like when we strip out how much more we pay our military members compared to, for example, nuclear-armed Russia. On a steel-to-steel, brass and primer to brass and primer level, are we really outspending the others by that much? Another reason to ditch the Saudis and pick up the Russkies as allies. ;)
George is a man of 1800 who is incapable of fathoming Barack Obama becoming President of the United States in 2008.
It's the Microwaves, Nich. Russians are banned from having Microwave ovens, you know :p
Watch the full 3 hour interview. You will reach through the screen to strangle him. Steve has apologized and they are going to redo the interview to better organize the info...and put Steve on decaf.
The US defense budget was 0.7 T out of $6.5T of congressional spending in 2020. Around 10%.
You are conflating discretionary spending with mandatory spending. Discretionary spending is defense, environment, education, etc. Mandatory spending is Obama care, Medicare, social security, Covid emergency, etc.
You can argue $700B is too much. A lot of people here agree. We point this out every few months, the only difference is your point (and the
intentional misrepresentation) becomes increasingly irrelevant as spending goes up.
Seems like this fits into George's argument, in some way: It's Worse Than Even We Predicted - YouTube
New York Times Reports Andrew Weissmann and Robert Mueller Sought, Then Hid, Special Counsel Surveillance of Trump White House Attorney Don McGhan - The Last Refuge
Quote:
The headline positions Apple as the center, but the real nub of the revelation is that Weissmann and Mueller used the Special Counsel and FBI to conduct surveillance on the White House legal counsel, and his family, while President Donald Trump was in office. Think about that for a moment. Think about it carefully.
Imagine if Donald Trump allies in the DOJ and FBI were conducting surveillance on Joe Biden’s White House legal counsel? The media would go absolutely bonkers… rightfully so; yet, that is exactly what happened when Trump was in office. The intelligence apparatus was weaponized to conduct political surveillance of President Trump, through the White House legal counsel, while he was in office.
THIS IS A MASSIVE issue. Yet the media are downplaying what took place because, well, the stunning abuse of DOJ power is in alignment with their political objectives.
I feel slighted that you did not include my leftie shithole of Massachusetts. A state where my vote will never count.
But don’t worry, this should help all of us.
Danielle Allen will run for governor of Massachusetts
It’s funny, because I was just thinking that what we need is more leftie Harvard professors getting into politics.
Elizabeth Warren worked out perfectly, let’s do that again!
The confusing thing is, why would the established state Democratic machine allow these transplants who never helped build their party?
What loyalty would the lefty rank and file (state reps and state senators) have to these academic transplants?
This Democratic Party is tough for me to figure out. It acts illogically but always moves closer to socialism.
You want to bitch about your Gov. Abbott? Please, send him here. And we will send you our politicians from Mass.
I will make that trade any day.
It's not the business -- it's the people. Think about who ranchers are. Their relationship with the government, the way they try to pass on their ranches down the family line. They are exactly the kind of independently minded people that the social engineers like Gates want gone. And their presence reaches far beyond their own ranches. They keep other like minded folks in business. They remind us of our roots and that we don't need the government. They remind us of what America used to mean. They are a way of life as well as a rallying point. Crushing them does so much more than shift how we buy food.
Seems to me like manipulating the beef prices the way the corporations are doing is a way to get beef production out of the hands of those ranchers and into the hands of the social engineers and the best thing we can do is to put our money with the ranchers and farmers. Buy as directly as we can. Directly from the farmers and let them make that money.