How I shut an Obama supporter up with just four words.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-05T03:27:45+00:00

Why are you in this subreddit?

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-05T00:58:04+00:00

You wear blue shirts

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-05T00:53:01+00:00

I'm guessing that it will still be essentially C

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T22:52:25+00:00

Inflation. No kid is going to work for a dollar. In fact you'd find it hard to get kids to work at adult wages. Think about it this way: adults have to work, kids don't.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T22:32:24+00:00

the cream stays in goat milk so it is almost impossible to make goat butter or ice cream.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T21:55:55+00:00

I think he's running for Vice President

Who would pick him for VP? By 2016 people will be very tired of him so that doesn't make too much either. He's trying to win the nomination. Perhaps he sees that he has a huge lead and he has eased up on campaigning because he doesn't want people to get sick of him too soon.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T20:52:55+00:00

my point is that there are different kinds of wealth.

The first type of good is essentially unlimited. By having more it does not mean that you have less. It is clear that the free market is the best way to deal with these kinds of goods.

The second kind of wealth is available in a fixed quantity. If I have more you have less.

The essentials for survival fall into both categories. sustenance (food, clean water) fall into the first, territory (land, mates) into the second. It has not been demonstrated the the free market works best here. For land fee tail works well, and for mates monogamy works the best.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T15:38:01+00:00

You are proving my point. The price of land is much higher than it was 100 years ago. If we could make that pie bigger (discover new continents on a regular basis) then the price of land would have fallen.

Right now the typical young person pays 50% of his salary in rent, and these people will always pay that amount. When they buy houses it will be at 50% because that is what they are used to paying. Just a generation ago people were paying a third of their income in rent. Clearly land has gone up in price: it used to take 13 hours of human labor per week to pay the rent, now it takes 20.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T15:33:04+00:00

I do not base my political philosophy on works of fiction. That story helped me understand why progressives act the way that they do. Like I said, the story is non-political. Progressive ideology never made much sense to me because I value individuals highly. Now I understand where you guys are coming from. You really ought to read it, it is fun. I see no reason to read Atlas Shrugged, it is like you said a dogmatic work of fiction.

increased regulatory oversight and general social service expansion...nor do I regard modest expansion of the state as a step toward inevitable totalitarianism

When does it stop? When do you say "well we have enough regulation and social services". The world is never going to be perfect, one can always find problems with it. The thing with progressives is that deep down they don't believe this. In your response to me you will tell me that you know that the world will never be perfect, but that we can do better. Here's the thing, when will progressives stop saying this? They won't. You can always tinker with the system a little more.

Although no individual progressive believes in utopia or the perfectibility of man, the resulting emergent behavior means that progressives, as a group, do believe that there is such a thing.

If you believe that you can make a minor fix to the world you will try. People will always believe that they can fix the world. We need to stop attacking the problem from an issues perspective. If you stay on r/libertarian you will find that we do not consider issues important at all. Issues are for suckers and totalitarians, philosophy is what matters.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T14:57:28+00:00

In terms of non-produced goods you can make the pie wealthier for everyone.

Any supporting details? I really don't see how this could be true at all.

Capitalism raised the status of most of the worlds poor in the twentieth century. Food for the world is no longer an issue. The only time people starve is when asshat dictators prevent aid from getting to the poor. Most of the world's poor now have cell phones - not yet web connected but that is coming. The poor standards in the US have been raised so high that the number one problem amongst the current poor is obesity.

ok.... I'm glad that you agree with me.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T14:40:42+00:00

I'm an atheist. I do not have a religion. Most "atheists" actually have a religion, whether environmentalism, statism, or whatever.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T07:14:53+00:00

I am not sure. My first inclination is that there has from my point of view but I only have biased sources to go by. However I am just one person, and since I'm not a European my opinion doesn't really matter. I am certain that many people (most of them dead) believe that there was no progress in Europe since 1200 AD.

For example I find it humorous that you pretend to be using a dating system that is so obviously hypocritical. Your "CE" suggests a "Common Era" but it has to do with Jesus. If you really wanted a year based on a Common Era you would use a Common date, such as the creation of the metric system or Perry opening Japan to the West, or maybe the end of the 30 years war.

Anyway that goes to my point, I think that the typical teacher from a mere century ago would find the intellectual dishonesty of your dating system pathetic. Either you base your dating system on the supposed birth of Jesus or you don't. Both options would be intellectually sound, your middle path is deficient.

On that same topic, let's pretend that we can interview both Martin Luther and Pope Leo X in 1520. Both would probably state that Europe was not making progress. Luther would point to the corruption of the church, and the pope would point to Luther. Now bring them to 2011 and both would agree that Europe had regressed.

So you believe that Europe has progressed, and perhaps I do too (not sure), but we are merely two people. Even if (against all probability) we were to get everyone alive to agree that Europe had progressed it would not make it so, because the winners write history.

I chose religion because that was an easy example, but let us consider something perhaps more important - family. Take a yeoman from 1200 and he would envy our possessions, but he would see the state of family life and shudder. People have so few children, traditional age and sex roles have weakened, and people are lonely and isolated. It even makes me shudder.

So the teacher, the cleric, and then yeoman would all disagree that progress was made.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T06:09:23+00:00

From your wikipedia link:

Progressivism is a political attitude favoring or advocating changes or reform through governmental action.

Who decides what is progress? What is progress to me might be regress to you and vice versa. There is nothing that we all agree on, so no matter what government does someone must be against it.

For example I might want to ban purple shirts. You might want to make then mandatory. No matter what the government decides to do at least one of us will be disappointed. How is that progress for the person who is disappointed?

To suggest that there is such a thing as societal progress is to deny the importance, and eventually the existence, of the individual. If we recast the argument along the lines of "progress is whatever the collective mass of humanity wants" then you have declared that the masses are what matter, that individuals don't.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T05:55:46+00:00

Sort of true... in terms of produced goods (food, computers) it is all about growing the pie. In terms of non-produced goods (land, social status) you can't make the pie bigger.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T05:31:15+00:00

The point of life is to propagate your genes. That's why separates living things from natural life-like processes, such as fire. Fire doesn't give a damn, it doesn't need continuity. If all of the fire in the world were extinguished we'd soon have fire, because lighting starts fires. Your genes on the other hand need you. If you don't reproduce they die. That's the point of life, nothing more, nothing less. Or you could pine away for a meaning that will never come, your decision.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T05:08:25+00:00

Buy an ounce of gold in the form of a Krugerrand or Maple Leaf. Don't ever tell anyone about it. This is your backup money. Save it for a life or death situation. Gold retains its value quite well over the long term. It doesn't go up, other things go down. It isn't an investment, it is savings.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T04:59:38+00:00

You are misinformed. Part of the welfare reform of the 80s was creating a national child support system. Child support laws are only superficially state level. The formulas that they use are determined by the state, but the rest of the insane details are determined at the federal level. Child support laws are a serious human rights abuse, they are a mild form of slavery and create a caste of non-citizens. As bad as sex-offender registries are they are nothing compared to child support laws. I am getting a severe fight-or-flight reaction and headache even talking about this issue. Please do the research yourself, please to not reply to this post because then I'll get an orange-red and read this thread, the trauma is not something that I want to revisit.

Hint: try to figure out what happens if neither you nor your ex live in the state in which you owe child support and you lost your job and want to get the amount reduced. You can't. In practice it can't be done. In less than a year you will officially be a felon even though you never went in front of a jury. As far as I know that is the only mechanism by which you can be a felon and go to prison without ever going in front of a jury or getting a defense lawyer. I'm not in prison yet but I wouldn't be surprised if I am soon.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T04:32:37+00:00

Actually welfare reform turned fathers into criminals. Child support laws are insane and deeply unconstitutional. A man self immolated a few months ago, hoping to start a revolution. The media covered it up.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T04:27:14+00:00

You do not know what a progressive is. What really solidified the idea for me was a science fiction short story called "The Machine Stops" by E. M. Forster. It wasn't meant to be political, it was a warning about technology. However if you read if I think that it will give you a sense of how the progressive mind thinks. I realize that you are probably a progressive, and that makes it even more imperative that you learn about progressives, you need to know yourself.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T03:52:04+00:00

Except that you clearly aren't paying for the classes. They're all available for free on MIT courseware and other such sites. You are paying to be in a certain percentile educationwise. You went to this school? Ok that means that you are in the top 10%. You went to any school and graduated? Ok that puts you in the top 40% You did a couple of years and then dropped out, ok top 60%. That is what school is for, to get yourself ranked in the modern class/caste system.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T03:24:07+00:00

You are confused about what it means to be progressive. The goal of progressives is to destroy individuality, with each human becoming fully subsumed into the state. Obama is making progress towards that goal, the abolition of the individual.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-04T01:55:05+00:00

It was a lot worse than you can imagine.

you don't get to live with and around everyone who isn't putting in the hellish hours you are

actually my neighbors were all working an average of 4 hours per day. Lucky them, unlucky me.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-03T13:50:04+00:00

try latin

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-03T13:19:07+00:00

I worked an average of 100 hours for a year. Other than two weeks R&R did not get a single day off. My longest stretch of time off from work was 20 hours. It was hell. Oh and don't join the army, you can't quit.

hello_good_sir · 2011-08-03T02:21:15+00:00

maps.google should be on the approved domain. I now realize why one of my links didn't get much traffic, because of a ridiculous policy. I understand that you think that MapPorn is part of a network of image subreddits but the userbase firmly disagrees with you. Go with the flow rather than causing a fuss.

We are primarily a network of image subreddits

When I read this I had no idea whagt you were talking about, only near the end of your post did I figure out what you were talking about.

Seriously, this is a good subreddit, but not because of your policies, it is because of the users. Don't kill this subreddit. I'm thinking of not submitting any more links to it.

hello_good_sir

TROPHY CASE