I quite agree - particularly when (my figure) 75% of the remaining electorate votes based upon the length of the person's name, religious affiliation or what they heard on TV 10 minutes before going to the poll. And yet, you throw your hat in the pool with them.

I agree completely - but vote for who or what? Those who don't necessarily espouse the religous dogma (something that would make me quite happy, miffed as I am by Dubya's old man saying I had no right to serve in my country's armed forces) will tend to be the same ones that embody what could be seen as the "shallowness and immorality" as well.


Which is why I try only to observe, not criticise! (yeah, right!)

Ah - so you would then favour Nader? bleeeach!

Did someone say there was? I missed that. No. 6 mentions that many congresscritters are lawyers, a theory I believe to be sound.

But you will also say the opposite when you need them the least - or they are attacking you with all the tools - nefarious or otherwise - at their disposal. Lawyers are a requirement of our society, one that I have had occasion to both appreciate and deride. More on the appreciate side though.

But let's be honest - a lawyer will use tools at hand to do what is required. If those tools can be intrepreted, they will intrepret to the side favoring their cause. There is nothing in general that places a lawyer in a position where they are required to do some undefined "good" just because of their title.

Oh - Wait! I get it! You say this:

I think you were actually addressing this to "No. 6" - but it looks like your second point to me - and it had me a bit confused! It is also possible most of your post was addressing No. 6 but has me at the top! I am all confused now. :blink:

Said to perfection by Churchill, of course!

Jack - playing with multiple quotes!

 

I think I may give you a "longest post" award if you keep this up.
Did I really quote Churchill? Didn't realize it...

There's no way I'm replying to everything you just said, so I'll sum it up. No matter how hard the decision may be, I find it pivotal to cast a vote as a sign of participation, goodwill, and a desire to aid society.

 

You didn't - I was extending a thought you gave a little and trying to make a point of it - it was vague and probably missed.

However, though I agree with the free market, I also believe that a totally free market (extension of principle again) can grow to be a very bad thing - witness history. There is no doubt that unbridled market conditions that set up the likes of Standard Oil, etc. allow monopolistic entities to benefit themselves, often at the expense of almost everyone and everything else.

Of course, the opposite where total control is exerted is worse, IMO. A balance must be reached, but that balance point is not a fixed location - it must move and shift - and we know the government is not good at doing that kind of thing.

Not being either a Rebooblican nor a Doomocrat, I would have to counter that a Republican thought would be that the rich SHOULD control everything. I don't think your position is any more defensible than mine! But where do you think "the demand" comes from? Do we REALLY "demand" a new car every 6 weeks? Do we really "demand" bigger, horsier engines? (well.... I may give you that one...)

My position on this is that for the greater part of the US consuming public, we do NOT "demand" these things - we are, essentially, told what to demand. We can witness this in cars, computers and software by a constant stream of "upgrades" not relevant to any particular advancement of the art, but by a "holding back" of available features until the next model year - for the purpose of "increasing demand".

I find that this "need" is usually in the small items - a large company will not jeapordise it's large undertakings to (usually) do something relatively small. On the other hand, a small company often does not have the resources to take on something huge. Witness much of what is being said about Halliburton and work going on in Iraq. It is said that they get most of the contracts "because there just isn't anyone else" that can do the work. Hmm... Kind of blows that theory.

We also find that small companies going over there find it not quite "as advertised" and almost impossible to obtain contracts unless associated with a larger company.

And I don't suppose you have recently tried to represent yourself individually in an application for work from any large company - such as the one I work for? It is nearly impossible to efven get in the door unless you are represented by one of the "authorised" large-scale contracting organisations used by these large companies.

We also know that many large companies will simply absorb a smaller company to do what the larger company wants to control, but finds to generally small to handle as a seperate competitor.

As to the congresscritters "knowing the best course", well - I am not certain you could get any one of them to necessarily say, honestly, that they do. You ALWAYS get them to say they are "voting their conscience", or what they believe, or what their constituents want. Maybe that sounds like it equates to the same thing, but I believe it is a political form or saying "I am taking my best guess on what will produce the most good for the group I am responsible for representing". It is said that half the people will hate you for exactly the thing that the other half love you for. Oh, if it were only exactly half.

The Caterham is an interesting beast - sort of an engine with a place to sit. Just my kind of car! Be kind of a drag with an HSD in it though - no gears and all. Hopefully, the computer would be a little more spicy than with the Prius!

Jack - getting longer and multi-quotier... :blink:

 

hehe! I keep trying!!

You almost quoted Churchill anyway - I may not have the exact wording - and for all I know it may be aprocryphal, but it goes something like this:

Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the other forms which have been tried from time to time.

If anyone ever succeeds in replying to everything I say, well, I will just have to write more then. Why do I feel like a Dorito commercial?

Jack

 

Jack,

It's a bird. It's a plane. It's Jack's new member title!

 

Cute

 

I hope Dianne gets one of those too!

Oh wait - she probably has one to my dozens...

I am a man of few words.

But many sentences.

JC

 

Jack,

She doesn't frequent here very often anymore. Haven't seen her much around Yahoo, either.

 

Not voting: If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice -- N. Peart

Power: The best way to prevent the abuse of power is to decentralize it. IOW, the more people who have an influence over something, the less likely some faction can turn it to their own benefit and the detriment of everyone else.

Even the richest of the rich can 'only' claim a few billion or so in assets and some millions per year in income (top CEO compensation was $116M, to Jeffrey Barbakow of Tenet Healthcare). While that's more than I will make barring some miracle, consider the annual budget of the federal government: $2.15 Trillion.

Divide that by 435 Congresscritters and you get $4,942,528,735, or ~$5 Billion per Congresscritter per year. That's a lot of spending power to vest in each individual even if we can take their cookie jar away with a vote.

On the other hand, consider the whole GDP, $10 Trillion or so. It's spent by everyone as a whole, about 285 Million people, averaging $35,000 per person if you just divide it out (obviously things are more complex). So everyone gets a share, and even a few rich guys' economic power is completely outweighed by the general populace.

That takes us right into:

I agree that companies produce the product choices we choose from; but just as with voting, we can choose NOT to buy from those choices. (E.g., M$ Office 2004 comes out; but my spreadsheet needs are long since met and I don't need an improved dancing paperclip, so M$ does not get my money.)

When people elect not to spend, there's an unmet demand, and another company, or even a new company, can step forward and offer the right product and earn people's money.

It's even more democratic than voting. If for example I don't happen to like the Republican or the Democrat running to be my Representative, I may choose not to vote, but one of them is going to get the job anyway. If I don't like GM or Ford or Honda's offerings, I don't "vote" for their car by buying one, and I keep my economic vote until such time as someone offers something I want.

In fact that's what I've done; I currently drive a 1990 Ford Mustang LX (155k miles, 28mph lifetime) because nobody has since offered a car that's worth giving up the Mustang and the price of the new auto for it.

Do companies use every psychological trick in the book to intice demand? Of course they do. It's their right to sell, and it's my right to buy, or not to buy.

That's the other difference between the free market and government. When Congress apportions money for something I detest (e.g., the National Endowment of the Arts; others may have other areas of government which offend them), I don't get to withhold my money. It's taken from me by law, which is to say under the threat of imprisonment.

When someone says they do support taxation to regulate behavior, don't they really mean that they support taxation to regulate other people into the behavior they'd like to see? However, it doesn't always work out that way. Sometimes (often) other people's wishes get to trample yours. Isn't government grand?

Sony or Coca-Cola or Microsoft may have their tricks, but one of them is not being able to send the police over to arrest me for not buying their product.

I am not arguing either for complete laisse-faire. Any power can be abused, and will, without checks (e.g,. Standard Oil, as in your example).

Lastly:

In that case, you should want the smallest government possible, so that the unwashed masses (so to speak) can exert the least force of government upon you.

Personally I trust the people (not every individual, but collectively). That's kind of the whole POINT of the U.S. Constitution; that power should not be vested in an elite, but is derived from the people.

 

No. 6,

First off, by eradicating power, there is no power. It is essential to have such power and government to keep the masses in line. Anarchy (though you did not use this word) is counterproductive.

In a free market society, you do indeed have the choice not to support a company or product. In government, however, it does not work the same way. No matter what you decide to do, a certain "product" will always win or loose. It will either take all of your money or none of it. In essence, you aren't being cunning by choosing not to spend money on Microsoft. Instead, you are giving your wallet to a neighbor and letting them decide who it goes to. It's gone either way. "It" being your virtual consent.

Lastly, while I do not trust the goodwill of others, I do not advocate complete decentralization for the same reason. I do not trust others to look out for me, but I also do not trust them to look out for themselves.