angelofdeath

i have thought about it and that is why i have come to the conclusion that even if the federal government were reduced to constitutional boundaries, (not your characterization of having no govt) there is nothing to lobby. thinking that a few more laws can eliminate any influence on the biggest most powerful coercive organization on earth that has the power to do anything is naive at best. if the corporations have all this power and control the government, how can you control the corporations with government? sure i went crossfire on crossfire. if we have people presenting opposing views in the ron paul thread, you are going to get opposing views in the OWS thread. if RP people are defending positions in that thread, you should be prepared to defend OWS type positions in this thread. just sayin

very well may be, but its not a legitimate actual threat of force. because the employee has no right to force themselves on the employer in the first place. the both parties must agree. there is a divide on what is force and what it isnt with many people. force is rape, murder, theft, fraud, initiated aggression. force is not someone ceasing a voluntary association or having to pay a high price for prescription drugs, gas, etc.

i merely trying to show you that when you pay someone with a 1$ productivity rate per hour a wage of 10 per hour instead, you are overpaying for the labor, just like if you buy a 50$ pair of shoes for 100$. you are losing money. you lose less, but you are still losing money. now there may be ways to off set this. perhaps you can figure these ways out in your own business. perhaps you can pay all your 50$ an hour employees 50 cents an hour less and then you can shift this money to low productivity worker. or perhaps you can just really be a benevolent person and just give the non productive worker all of your wages you receive as the owner. the way people 'get by' in society is to increase their productivity. people who make minimum wage are a small portion of the population. and they dont normally make it for long. most minimum wage earners are teenagers. they have little productivity. the funny thing is, there are exemptions to the minimum wage. such as hiring teenagers during the summer. if a law needs an exemption, it shouldnt be law. their are no exemptions to my laws.... if you murder someone you go to jail. the reason they put in an exemption in the min wage for teenagers and training purposes and the like was because no one would hire those people. typically as people get older, they make more $$$. its not because employers are just more benevolent. its because as you get more experience your productivity increases.

i think it is perfectly fine for people to contract at whatever rate they want. if everyone agreed to said arrangement, fine. it could never happen, but hey, whatever dreams float your boat. since you openly stated you would pay me the least amount possible, you successfully demonstrated your inner capitalist pig. that is, dun dun dun.... self interest. my basic philosophy is people can do whatever they want so long as they do no harm to anyone else. if 'everyone' wants to pay no less than 10$ an hour that is fine, but dont come trying to throw me in jail or my employer in jail if i want to work for 9.99$ and my employer wants to pay me that amount.

haha, i love it. you concede the point, then try to take the moral do gooder high ground. well, what if i cant live on minimum wage? you have to pay me 40$ an hour when my productivity is 2$. there is hope for you decy, you seem to accept the arguments, but your hardwiring of leftism cant concede it all the way. yet. give it time

i might be splitting hairs, but every time you interact with someone in an economic transaction you are contractually bound. when i was hired at certain jobs, i never signed a piece of paper stating my hours, but of course we talked hours, pay, etc etc. we shook hands and i started working and they started paying. now, you say that if an employer breaks a contract, by threatening you with job loss for not working extra-contract hours (and it is) but i'd imagine if you or your buddies get together, break the contract and demand to make 100 an hour instead of 10, that this is not 'worker tyranny' forced on the employer. it is 'justice.' you cant have it both ways. its quite simple. if a job pays 2$ an hour and that is equal with productivity, someone who has a productivity of 1000 per hour would not work it. lets go out on a limb and say that digging a house foundation with a teaspoon has a productivity of 2$ an hour. and thats a stretch. what would happen? well, what did happen? EARTH MOVING EQUIPMENT. CAPITAL INVESTMENT. workers can then use these tools, which were brought onto the scene by evil money grubbing capitalists to boost worker productivity. now instead of the worker using a teaspoon to dig a house foundation, he can make 30$ an hour and work in an air conditioned bull dozer cab. but another effect of the minimum wage is that what is someone really wants to work for said amount? why should we interfere with this contract? what if some grandma wants to be paid 2$ an hour to knit socks. who are you to forbid this transaction? i must of missed your point on this one. what about all the taxes, insurances, mandates, regulation compliance costs, expenses, employer matching taxes, FICA withholdings, medicare, workmans comp etc, costs? what if the 'mark up of 50%' is to much? what if people wont pay it? say i hire to you to fix my house. you own a company. you pay your employees $100 per hour. their productivity is 5$ an hour. 2 employees do the job. the job takes 8 hours. the market puts a price of 20$ total on this job. for all 8 hours. the taxes and regulatory compliance, along with their benefits and vacation packages cost you atleast 50$ more an hour per employee. you lose hundreds or thousands of dollars a day. you say this is a working business model. i say its a failure you cannot pay a worker more than their productivity. i'll say it again, next time you hire a plumber, pay them 10 times as much so you are doing your part in paying people MORE than their productivity. but then again, you'd view the plumber as ripping you off anyway. so you are just like everyone else, wants to pay the cheapest amount possible for a good or service and receive the highest for your own goods and services. and what balances this out is the market place and prices. i'd love to see you run a business. you can hire me, pay me 1000$ an hour when my productivity is 30-40$ and we'll see how long you stay in business.

YES! we are in agreement! private associations are better than government oppression and your rights CAN be protected in a free society/situation! as for the minimum wage... if you concede that wages are determined by productivity, you by extension also then believe the minimum wage acts as hurdle instead of a floor. and that if one has a productivity of 5$ an hour, if an employer pays him 50$ an hour, he is losing money, and will go out of business. phrased differently, if a person, say a person who just broke one of their arms and has no other skills than that of a carpenter, and has a productivity of lets assume 5$ per hour now instead of 25$... the minimum wage just outlawed his job. if the minimum wage is 10$ per hour, and a persons productivity is only 5$ per hour, how can you as an employer pay him more than what he his is capable of producing? if you pay his more than he is worth, you are losing money. if this is kept up, you will be in trouble financially. i ask you to use your logic the next time you hire someone to say fix your plumbing or fix your roof. just go ahead and pay 10 times what the market rate is, and then come on here and tell us how good you feel for now 'exploiting' the workers and how much better off you are financially.

could you survive on 3$ an hour? i doubt it. if i had to make 3$ an hour, i wouldnt work. i'd stay home and twiddle my thumbs all day if that was my only choice. and if you leave the welfare state in tact, everyone would simply 'work' for the govt, as in collect a check. as you can make much more than 3$ an hour and get to stay home. assuming it was even possible for a brain surgeon to make 3$ an hour in the insane never-would-ever-happen situation you are talking about. wages are determined by productivity. it does make for a nice tale though. lets not forget it is perfectly legal to pay brain surgeons minimum wage right now. if your theory was actually true, that without a minimum wage law, everyone would make 1 cent an hour, everyone in the entire country that works, would be making the minimum wage, RIGHT FREAKING NOW. yet some how brain surgeons make much more than minimum wage, even though it is perfectly legal to pay someone just minimum wage and no more. why do they and everyone else with a productivity higher than minimum wage, make more than minimum wage? because the value is determined by the market place by ones productivity. its basic econ decy.....very simple stuff. even though parroting back some marxist mantra is more fashionable these days. sounds like a contract, a private association agreement works pretty good, eh? its because of this free association that you 'have a leg to stand on,' yet from your arguments you act as though you only have it because of some government edict. in america it is perfectly legal to hire someone without a written contract. and they are on the same footing. if they dont like what goes on, they leave i think franktronics example was just misunderstood, his was the bare bones basic gist of the matter.

in that you are right. but there was no talk of any contract in the original example. most people when they get a job, dont sign any contract saying they only work certain hours. there might be an implicit contract. but i thought for brevity's sake, my take was the author wasnt including contracts in the argument to simplify it. but this is implicit in the argument, or so i thought. of course any contractual obligations trump this discussion. in the same manner if you sign a contract that says you must work 100 hours a week, you voluntarily take the job, you cant cry foul play after the second week and start crying about working to much. as stated, if an employer BREAKS THE CONTRACT, he has indeed violated the agreement and is in the wrong. he can then be prosecuted, dealt with, etc etc. besides the original article was about unsafe working conditions, not wages. which can also be solved via contract, which is a free association. if a private agreement like a contract can fix working hours, why cant it fix unsafe working conditions? this is all just part of a free association. in a free society, an employer couldnt force you to be a slave, because, unlike a slave you have a right to leave. and because competition exists, wages would be determined by the market. just like any other price. the same reason why a gas company cant charge 100,000,000$ for one gallon of gas, is the same reason why an employer cant pay your negative infinity in wages. would you work for negative infinity? or 3$ an hour when your productivity level is 50$ an hour? i think not. and before you respond with...'but if we had freedom, employers would all collude and make it so the only jobs were 3$ an hour.' you would then find yourself with NO ONE that will work hence they have to raise the pay to a market level. every business would like to pay labor negative infinity an hour, just like every employee would like to make positive infinity hour. the market determines the actual value of a certain service you didnt state that, but it really doesnt matter. most people consider that if an employer asks am employee to work an extra hour and be paid accordingly is tyrannizing the employee. so i must take the charges with a grain of salt.

its because the employee doesnt have a right to work on/at someone's business/property. and in the same manner a boss cannot force the employee to stay/work/etc. both have the right to cease the association. that is the one part most people dont get. the people who make such arguments as you did, typically believe that underlying the entire situation is that an employee has a certain right to force themselves on someone or some business whether the other party agrees or not. a boss setting various requirements is no different than you setting requirements for people to come to your house. what if a bunch of neo nazis came in your living room and you said 'get out or im going to call the cops.'' according to your logic, you are making threats against them. i say you are ending an association and protecting your rights/property.

in an abstract way there shouldnt be lobbying in the sense you are talking about. however my preferred method of achieving this is much different. i say the government shouldnt have the power to dole out. and you dont trample peoples rights to say....make movies about statist political candidates before an election. you guys say the government should be able to do anything it wants and its powers be unlimited, just a corporation cant lobby for it, but unions, welfare queens, and liberal groups or whatever can get their share of the pie. i say get rid of the pie. and that the regulations that, for centuries, havent effectively created your economic utopia (because of the unintended consequences and market distortions) will effectively be able to limit a corporation from lobbying government. the only way these laws can create the effects you want is if you take them to the logical conclusion and just make government own everything. lets face it, the soviets were very good on regulation, there wasnt any. they owned everything, people didnt. this is a fundamental difference in the leftist critique of lobbying and mine. lets not forget that the first amendment guarantees the right to petition ones government for a redress of grievances. in effect 'lobbying.' there is nothing wrong with telling the government (or lobbying if you will) to leave people alone. this is essentially 'constitutional.' the problem comes when you lobby government to do things it doesnt have the power constitutionally to do. despite the flawed constitution, but as it was written, it did effectively limit the lobbying power of X groups until the 20th century because it had very little favors to hand out if any. because you can flap all you want about getting some privilege from government, but if they dont have the power, they cant give it to you. although the internal improvement debates started when the ink was still wet. big government types wanted govt to pay for internal improvements. small government constitutionalists didnt. this was effectively the first acts of both corporate welfare and extra constitutional powers being used by the government. the very act of being able to speak freely and say ask your government to do something is actually the mark of a free society. the difference being in the ideal case, government doesnt have the power to dole out said favors. for instance a free society allows people to advocate for socialism and they can even set up voluntary socialist arrangements, they just cant force others into their arrangement. a socialist society doesnt allow one to advocate or engage in capitalism.

your post simply displays that you lack any comprehension of what a free market is. your problem is you think the current economy in america is a free market. basically ideological leftist concludes that anything that a corporation does through government or any government power given (think extra rights) to a certain group is 'the free market.' america is not a free market. america has had mixed economy for well over a century if not longer. the current system is economic fascism with a good dose of ideological socialism thrown in to round things out. government even having the power to grant extra rights, privileges, immunities and limited liability to various groups of people (rights that they do not even possess in a free society) is all that is needed to show that the examples you tout are not examples of a free market economy. they are examples of a corporatist economy. in a free market there are no bail outs, no favorable regulation, no favors, no privileges and THERE IS NOTHING TO LOBBY. if you are really against lobbying government you should favor a free society with bare bones to no government at all. then all the problems you hate, that have been created by government do not exist.

to me this is on the same level of discussion as 'what if we have murderers?' or 'what if some rich guy buys up all the food and starves the entire world? no system creates utopia nor is there any way possible for the worlds population to all agree on an issue or have every single person on the planet live the same way as ________ wants us to. its absolutely impossible. i dont know the specifics of this 'funneling money into african war zones to access to minerals' but on its face it seems no different than if someone pays you 1 million dollars to enter the ground under your property to get minerals. im supposed to believe that over 100 regulatory agencies that couldnt correct market fascism are going to be able to if we just pass a few more laws? its the same mantra that has been going on for centuries. 'we need just one more law...' and hear we are centuries later with the same mantra. the reason? every law creates unintended consequences which then requires 10 more laws to fix. which then for each of those 10 laws, requires 10 more laws. its a self licking ice cream cone. the leftist argument fails. why? for this simple fact. why wasnt there a housing bubble before the 2000-2008/09 bubble? there was less regulations. why not a housing bubble in 1900 when there was hardly any financial regulations? the only theory that successfully explains this is the ATBC. nothing else explains the cluster of errors. the reason derivatives came about was because of the federal reserve credit which made money cheap and the government regulatory apparatus which implicitly if not encouraged banks to make risky loans. imagine if you had someone telling you that you could make trillions but you would have absolutely no risk at all, would you act on this? i'd venture to say most people would. without government, a derivative as we experienced in the housing boom could not exist. government set the stage to create 'the products.' without it, they wouldnt exist. if a free market simply would result in this, i'll beat the dead horse again, why did it take the greedy capitalists this long to figure out how to create derivatives? whey didnt they do it back when they had hardly any regulations to deal with? the lefts answer is always just a 'few more sensible stronger' regulations. i say its all a self licking ice cream. market regulations are much stricter. no free market would allow banks to make such loans as they did. no free market would bail out investment banks that made bad bets. no free market would prop up failed businesses. no free market would guarantee solvency of institutions no matter how they behaved. the market would of let wall street collapse for acting in this matter. but more to the point, without the federal reserve, there would of been no cheap inflation to coercively pour the alcohol for the drinking binge. hence, without government, you had a sound free market that never could create the fed induced credit bubble.

if this stuff is going down, i'd love to see all the dead bodies, raped women and stolen loot. the root of the entire issue isnt corporations controlling government, its governments having the power in the first place to do bad things. think about it. a corporation isnt lobbying angelofdeath. why? because i have no legal power to do things im otherwise restricted in doing like the government does. they lobby the government because it grants them extra legal powers, privileges, immunities, handouts, etc. if you are serious about getting rid of a government that is accountable to special interests, you must then join me in saying that if we are to have a government, it must do one thing, protect rights. NOTHING ELSE. you must also support getting rid of the welfare queens, israeli lobby, and whatever other lobbying organizations are demanding more special favors. if you concede government has the power to grant powers to people and groups that individuals dont possess, dont get mad when a group that you dont like, uses it. thats the root of the problem.

what does legality have to do with someone if it is ignored? if someone steals from me, i have a right to get my stuff back. one way or the other. if someone hasnt stolen from me, i dont have a right to go after the same guy because he hasnt committed aggression against me. if you think that a law of some sort isnt effective, and that corporations are not held accountable if they murder someone, why do you think more regulations can create an economically socialist utopia? if there was indeed fraud on wall street over the past years it is because of two things. government granted this power to them. or government is impossible of preventing it and/or has chosen not to prosecute it. in fact, govt implicitly guaranteed EVERYTHING that happened on wall street. it is because of government that it could of even happened. but i'd venture out on a limb and say that most people who believe that 'wall street' 'caused' the housing crash and that government had nothing to do with it, do not understand what exactly fraud is and what it isnt. in 1950, there was DRASTICALLY fewer housing regulations. why didnt the crash happen then? why werent there no doc loans? when my great grandfather bought his land with a mortgage in the 1940, i am told the entire process was done in 1 week. including settlement. fast forward, in 1980, no one could get a loan. it took my parents 6 months to get a loan. with perfect credit. your ilk said no one could get a loan because capitalists were against the poor and wouldnt loan money. your belief set on these issues makes no logical sense. first they were to stingy, then in 2000 they are too loose. the only thing that caused the housing collapse was artificial manipulation of money and credit and the federal regulatory apparatus that created moral hazard which ultimately privatized profits and socialized risks. this is not capitalism, this is economic fascism.

i think yall are grasping at straws here. if a corporation (a group of people) murders, kills, rapes or commits fraud, they are liable and accountable, just like any other person in a free society. if they do get away with 'dirty deeds' in todays age, it is because of govt privileges. if a government exists, it is supposed to protect rights. which means, if your rights are infringed upon, they are supposed to make sure the offenders are held accountable. liberals have this fantasy that the current system of corporatism in the US is a free market. logical implication of fists' original analogy was that corporations some how today are raping, murdering and stealing and that in todays society or a freer society, they are allowed to do this. that is why the analogy is wrong. if someone tries to murder or steal from me, first they have to deal with my own defenses. they that fails, they will then have to deal with the authorities that are supposed to protect my rights and prosecute such infringements. if you think because it is humanely possible that someone acting under corporate authority can murder someone, that we should abolish corporations, you must also seek to abolish every person on the earth

what does legality have to do with it? are you serious? mala in se law is the only just law. fine, i'll reword. corporations, unless acting under govt auspices CANNOT lie, cheat, steal, murder or rape. no one is allowed to do this. unless of course you are the government or a person or entity hired under said government 'authority' maybe im missing something, but i dont see walmart and apple computer running predator drones over top of people, bombing countries, and being given the authority to throw citizens in jail without trial forever.

haha, that is plain distortion. corporations, unless acting under govt auspices cannot legally lie, cheat, steal, murder or rape. complete false line of thought on your part. but nice try

fist has a point... 100 winchester white box .40's are 31$ at walmart currently. you can get decent surplus .45 for pretty cheap. not as cheap as 9mm, but...... anyway you look at it, you are going to be spending lots of money on ammo, unless you are shooting .22's

for what its worth, i consider this a well framed argument even if it is slightly off base. at first glance i thought this was going to be about the fact that RP is not in favor of using an extra constitutional powered federal government to intervene in state affairs. the part the author is leaving out is this. the 'local' bully is voluntary. the 'government' bully, isnt. the article mentions an HOA. this is a form of voluntary government. when the developer built the neighborhood, they developed an association to govern it and as a requirement of moving into that neighborhood, you had to abide by those rules. its no different than you setting up rules to enter your own house or setting up rules as to what people at your bbq can do. the argument about someone buying up something and refusing to admit entry is a common argument. except they forget one thing. it is perfectly legal to do this right now with a myriad of things. why arent rich people buying up all the food and refusing to sell it to poor people? racial hatred is another common example. but it just doesnt jive. first the underlying assumption is that people who value freedom are capitalist pigs seeking to exploit people at whatever cost and seeking to make money at any cost. yet in the next breath we are to believe that these same greedy people are also going to eliminate a portion of their customer base because of their skin color. "In other words, the local bullies are free to revoke the freedoms of individuals, using methods more subtle than overt violent coercion." that is the cause of most of the confusion. if a person owns a beach, owns a business or owns a house, first and foremost, the owner controls it. there is no right to trespass. therefore, the statement that ones freedom is being reduced by having private property rights or private rules to govern it is blatantly false. no one has a right to enter anyone elses property in the first place. to claim that ones freedom is being infringed upon by not being served at a restaurant for instance is to also claim that this person has a right to another persons life, labor, or property. which they dont. to use an analogy. if you believe that freedom is being infringed upon by these 'local' bullies, you must therefore be forced to leave your front door open. why? because bums need a place to sleep. by keeping your door closed and a fence around your yard, you are restricting the 'freedom' of the bum. you must also keep your wifes legs spread open, so as to further increase the bums freedom. its not your freedom that is being infringed by these 'local bullies,' its just that you dont like what they do with their property and associations. it would be valid for you to not like their property ownership rules or associations, but ones freedom isnt being infringed in those situations described in the article

i think the different permit requirements are hilarious. alot of the differences between may issue and shall issue states is govt ultimately decides who can have the permit on their whim in the may issue states. in the shall issue states, as long as you pass the background checks and jump through their hoops, they have to give you a permit. my dad had a permit in a may issue state. after the finger printing, the interviews, the references, the paper work, the 3 trips to the passport photo takers because the state police required an odd ball size picture and the extortion fees, he got a permit. he had to prove that he dealt in X amount of cash bank deposits per day. and after all the BS, the permit was restricted to 'normal business hours' essentially voiding it because he never worked 'normal hours.' the funny thing was the draconian gun laws of this state required no training for the permit. where they made up for the no training requirement is the fact that no one could get a permit unless you had credible threats against your life and/or you dealt in large sums of cash and were a business owner. in another words, virtually no one in proportion to the population at large. its funny, the areas with these requirements are the exact areas where people need to be armed to defend themselves. another thing about 'permits' is something that alot of people dont think about it. for instance in NC to buy a handgun you have to go to the sheriffs office and apply for a 5$ 'purchase' permit. you must then present this permit to the FFL or to the private party when purchasing a handgun to purchase it legally. never mind the fact that the dealer already does the same background check on you that the sheriffs office does. where did this permit come from? the jim crow legacy. the sheriff still retains the right to deny a permit for a pistol purchase for whatever reason he wants. used to be sheriffs never signed off on permits for blacks. alot of the whole 'permit' thing has its roots in state racism. marriage licenses are another example.

‎"Calling Ron Paul an isolationist is like calling your neighbor a hermit because he doesn't come on your property and break your windows."

well, thats because most people who hit people with cars dont do it on purpose. difference between murder and manslaughter is mens rea. but all this is a tangent. fact is you can murder or kill someone with a car or a gun. both are equally as deadly.

to an extent. they'll cover property damage, and injury to the specified limit. however, if you murder someone, its not covered. an insurance contract cant limit the liability of a murderer. if this was the case, all one would have to do is use their insured car to run people over they want to kill.

im with you on most of this. id go a step further and say if roads were sold to private industry, they would have an incentive to decrease death rates to increase their profits. govts have no incentive to please customers. because people are 1. forced to fund them. 2. forced to use them. imagine if any other private company had this power? but we are not given a choice, we are given a socialist road system and have to deal with that. because government administers them, there is no way to properly allocate resources, which is why socialism fails. if you think a drivers license lowers the death count, i dont know what to tell you on that one. if a 90 year old woman with no reaction time, half blind and upper body articulation can drive on the roads, with a legally held license, the license essentially means nothing. it means you can answer a few questions mostly about dui's and penalties and driving laws that dont really pertain to safety and can parallel park. thats about it. it doesnt mean you really know anything about the actual mechanics of driving on the roads. i've long had a theory. the best way to handle things like speeding and reckless driving is not to levy fines, but to allow insurance agencies to levy market based fees to your premiums. they are only marginally allowed to do this at present. thats just it. in a free society, you have some people who might seem 'scary.' however, there is no right to not be 'scared.' most feel that the fact that someone can own a gun in america that their rights are being infringed on because they feel scared. i'd submit you can only enact something to infringe on ones liberty if they commit actual mala in se against someone else. otherwise, they should be free to do as they wish. lets also remember politicians and police are just people. if people are irresponsible, then so are these people acting under state authority, as i think you know. i'd urge all gun owners to at least train every week and/or attend as many classes as possible. this is in their best interest as it limits their chance screwing up.