big_dave wrote:

The point is, it's naive to expect the positive when history shows where a bigger government leads.

And you choose to ignore half of the equation for the sake of argument.

And you choose to ignore my point.

big_dave wrote:When this metaphorical King is a thousand public servants working to public benefit, I don't mind them getting my tax money.

That's your problem, your belief that the government works for "public benefit". They give only as much is needed to preserve stability, and reassert their legitimacy.

big_dave wrote:Exactly what scary thing are you expecting the government to do, that good public service and free speech might just be the "illusion" to blind to this Scary Thing?

This attitude - sure they'll give you health care, rights, equality, schools, and everything. But it's just a trick! They'll just use it to do something bad. What bad could it do?

Anything they damn well please, that's the scary thing. A growing government is less and less able, from our end, to be held accountable for it's actions. Look at the administration and the war, for example.

So Americans can't speak out about their troubles because the UK has had harsher things to deal with? Our government is definitely more dangerous than whatever the IRA could bring.

big_dave wrote:No, I'm saying that the language and the perspective is jarring considering the difference in background. Americans have every right to speak about their troubles, but when you speak about hypothetical troubles people who have had more immediate experience might not take it the way you intend. Good example: the BNP in the UK claim that Whites are victim of systematic prejudice and their heritage is being corrupted, Muslims go batshit at the insensitivity of the claim. The same way that countries with real, local terrorist activity may react strongly to American pundits claiming that hypothetic terrorism against American citizens must take priority.

In any case, discourse shouldn't be shelved because someone else's sensibilities might be hurt. Terrorist talk by the media here is constant and irritating, but shouldn't be silenced because someone's offended.

big_dave wrote:You say your government is dangerous, I'm saying "where?". There is no blood in the streets, no ghettos, and fairly decent living. If you have to point to Chemtrail and 9/11 Conspiracies to prove that point, I'm not really interested.

I can point to the Patriot Act. I can point to massive corruption, and lobbists. How about imperialism? I can also point to the near theocratic fascism that has a giant foothold in our government. There doesn't need to be blood in the streets for a dangerous government. But for some it's all good if you can get your teeth cleaned for free.

big_dave wrote:

Don't for a minute equate my talk of an apocalypse to "George Bush". I don't paint societal ills on whatever the television throws at me, even if it's a fitting figurehead.

Again, where? Amero, ID chip implant? What have you got to lose?

You're obviously not paying attention.

big_dave wrote:

Skronk wrote:More like over zealous 'journalists" selling entertainment than actual news. It's no surprise when the media here glosses over or ignores the government actions. They're bought and paid for.

Would you count discussing terrorism, Hitler and Ron Paul on this board as entertainment or actual news?

What do you think?

wiki wrote:Hayek’s central thesis is that all forms of collectivism lead logically and inevitably to tyranny, and he used the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany as examples of countries which, in his view, had gone down “the road to serfdom” and reached tyranny. [...] For Hayek “the road to serfdom” inadvertently set upon by central planning, with its dismantling of the free market system, ends in the destruction of all individual economic and personal freedom.

Yeah, Hayek's thesis is soooooo laughable.

Laughable when we enter the most intrusive periods of wastrel government under administrations (Reagan, Bush I and BushII) that ostensibly worship Hayek. Thatcher proudly brandished a copy when she began dismantling what personal liberties the working people of England had come to enjoy.

Hayek is cover for the tyranny of those already in possession of great power. Dismantle social programs and government services in the name of "privatizing" them and ownership naturally cedes to oligarchs. This ensures that poor people have to pay rich people for pretty much everything that the government ought to be doing.

And if they can't pay? Well, then they'll be in debt and won't be much trouble in the workplace, because they'll be desperate to keep their jobs, at whatever wages the employer oligarch deigns to grant them.

This transfer of state-and-common infrastructure to the already-wealthy is the sickness, and the cure isn't more of it.

big_dave wrote:You say your government is dangerous, I'm saying "where?". There is no blood in the streets, no ghettos, and fairly decent living. If you have to point to Chemtrail and 9/11 Conspiracies to prove that point, I'm not really interested.

I'd just like to point out that there are ghettos (as well as the annoying tendency for people who've never been in a ghetto to declare something "Soooo ghettoooo", but that's beside the point) and areas of staggering poverty in the US, but I do agree that there is, for the most part, a lack of blood in the streets (though cops did blow away an 18 year old armed with a hairbrush over in Brooklyn earlier this week) and the possibility of making a decent wage. Of course the devaluation of the dollar will make the making of a decent wage more difficult, and the fact that we produce very little in the country and instead only provide service will not help it (much of the provided services also seem, to me at least, to be declining in value recently. Plus the services are getting outsourced too). But you do have a valid point in that things are not that bad here, we are not living under conditions nearly as horrible as those that have been endured by the populaces of most other countries of the world at one point in time (even the populaces of this country, when taking Native Americans into account).

I do think the potential is here for things to get very bad though, given the relative apathy of your average American and the feelings of disempowerment the non-apathetic may be inclined to feel as we see one possibility for positive change crushed after another. The fact that a large number of Americans voted for Bush (no matter that both elections were stolen, a lot of people still did vote for the idiot) is also disheartening as it shows a lack of independent, critical thought and a sense of responsibility on the part of those large number of people.

I think the danger of our government is, at present, more of a concern for the citizens of other nations than for the citizens of the US. However, I do not believe this danger is inherent to governments in general, or to our form of government in particular. Instead, it has to do with the present administration, the lack of civic involvement of the populace, and a lack of oversight by the public. The government works for the people, is their tool, not the other way around, but this seems to have been forgotten by a large number of people.

I do think the US government is a danger to its citizens as well, but so far more in the powers it is granting itself over the citizenry than the actual assertion of those powers. Many of them are like the wiretapping and collecting of web traffic data; dangerous by the fact of their existence, but infinitely more dangerous are their possible (and certainly by this point actual) applications. And though there has certainly been no situation comparable to the aftermath of either of the World Wars in the US, there have certainly been situations in which the government has abused the rights and lives of the citizenry in unequivocally reprehensible ways: McCarthy, Japanese internment camps, Jim Crow laws, the throwing away of lives in unnecessary wars, etc. The present methods have lead to the last of these, and I think it is foolish not to see the potential for other abuses to surface as well. Martial law has certainly been made easier to declare, and the lack of resistance to the Bush administration from the media or the rest of the government makes me wonder how strong he will be stood up to should he employ more oppressive measures domestically.

big_dave wrote:Again, where? Amero, ID chip implant? What have you got to lose?

Are you arguing here that these things do not need to be feared, or that they do not need to be feared because they are not here? On an ID chip implant, I think the possibility of something like this and the actuality are both things to worry about. But I don't think it's something to be worried about specifically in relation to the US government, or specifically to any government. It's more a general worry that any government might decide to use it to track its citizens.

On the Amero, I'm not exactly sure if it should be feared, whether it is actual or potential. It would depend on whether it fairly benefited all of the countries converting to it, it would, I think, depend on the implementation whether it is something to be feared or not. The Euro seems to have done well for the EU member states that use it, at least in leveling their buying power against the dollar. This is the only evidence I have to base that on though, I haven't read up on the economic effects of the Euro.

On an impending apocalypse, I think the greatest danger of that lies in the fact that politicians (from any country) actually contemplate the use of nuclear weapons. That is the height of stupidity and I cannot understand why anyone would entertain the idea, even as posturing.

Rick Reuben wrote:
What all the cultish devotion to bigger government really proves is this (although liberals will never say it, because they know it's racist )- in their subconscious minds, a voice is screaming at them: "The poor are weak." "The poor are dumb." "The white man has all the advantages in a competive world." "There can be no fair economy that pits the savvy whitey against the sluggish colored folks."

Oh yes, liberals- that's the real message behind your constant warnings to fear the rich: 'pity the poor, for they are helpless and only a nanny state can get them through their day'.

Fuck you.


Do you remember our bet on Iran? Only a few more weeks left, Bob. Are you going to pay the agreed sum to the charity of your choice? Will you feel like a nanny boy getting somebody through their day?

There's a short interview with Ron Paul in the newest issue of Rolling Stone.
It's right after a very funny article by Taibbi about Huckabee.

Rick Reuben wrote:

nihil wrote:Do you remember our bet on Iran? Only a few more weeks left, Bob. Are you going to pay the agreed sum to the charity of your choice?

Refresh my memory on the sum. I think about you about 1/100th as much as you think about me, so I've totally forgotten what I'm supposed to give. I'll give double to Ron Paul, whatever it was. Does your rehab count as a charity? I'll sponsor you.

If you give anything, it would be a miracle. Bob, you are obviously a tightwad. Oh yeah...you were also wrong about the U.S invading Iran. It's not gonna happen chief. Pay up. Oh, by the way, fuck RP. You both can eat a dick.

Big Love-

Nate

Rick Reuben wrote:Why does it need to happen 'in the states'?

Rick Reuben wrote:A disaster can take a century to unfold: a prime example is the Federal Reserve Act.

Skronk wrote:I can point to the Patriot Act.

You said that "about to hit them", and various other talk about government-induced catastrophe at home makes me think specifically of disastors that American citizens have to deal with at home. After all, a lot of the conspiracy/Paul language is made up of talk of impending doom and I'm just asking what the precident is for this.

A lot of people on the same line are asking people to take situations that have yet to happen as proof of their ideas. I think that is foolish.

Skronk wrote:And you choose to ignore my point.

I don't like addressing arguments that aren't consistent in themselves. If you were talking about monopolies and government inevitably being run by the same people, out of the same pocket. I disagree. If you think less government/corporate regulation is going to cure this, I also disagree.

We need to foster a global climate of self-regulation and values in our corporations. They are not as much "ours" as the roads or the water, but they are still involved with the public for most of their existence. I'm not so much of a leftwinger that I believe self-regulation impossible, but obviously more than half of it should come from a centralized government.

We need to set this up urgently. The longer we leave it, the harder big business will find it operate under new regulation and more resistant and hostile they will be, and the markets will be more chaotic and harder to control.

earlier I wrote wrote:ghetto

When I shouldn't have. I was using the word literally. I didn't mean to deny extreme poverty in the states. Fuck you, Atlantic divide!

It's amazing how far right/free trade Bob has gone has the board left have become more vocal, considering the first time he read my points he flung a bunch of Ayn Rand-orientated insults at me. Now he loves Hayek.

Skronk wrote:

big_dave wrote:Wikipedia's article glosses over the meat of it. There is a lot of gloss. No offense Skronk, but considering your political thesis are usually of the "Government never works, take a look at Stalin" variety it seems to be appeal to the same mindset. Read the book first and see if you still think it means what you think it means.

I haven't been proven wrong about government yet.

The GI Bill, Rural Electrification, Student Aid Programs, The Interstate Highway System, to name a few.
All abject failures, right there, huh?
Oh wait, maybe not. Does that count as proving you wrong?

[edit - I see Big Dave has already hit on some of these]

You know what else *was* great? FEMA. A truly fantastic, effective government agency that was considered top heavy, so it was massively downsized under GW Bush.
No need to recap what happened as a result.
The fact is, conservatives set up government to fail so they can point to it later and say "see what a failure it is?"

-A

alex maiolo wrote:The fact is, conservatives set up government to fail so they can point to it later and say "see what a failure it is?"

-A

Which brings us to Hayek yet again, and the privatisation of british energy and public services after a process of private investment and wearing down.