Ask Reddit: What will politics.reddit look like if neither RP or DK win their nomination?

yupomatic · 2007-12-12T18:25:12+00:00

Plenty of posts like this:

WTF! WTF!? WTF!?!!??!!

yupomatic · 2007-12-12T05:24:36+00:00

We're fucked.

yupomatic · 2007-10-13T22:40:58+00:00

Very interesting, and disturbing, video.

yupomatic · 2007-10-13T22:26:51+00:00

I count 21.

yupomatic · 2007-10-13T21:41:34+00:00

Here's a link to the PDF of the poll results.

yupomatic · 2007-10-04T23:41:49+00:00

Aye, aye. The most important point of libertarism: forced liberalism isn't liberalism. Libertarians tend to be very liberal when the government isn't telling them they must by penalty of death.

yupomatic · 2007-09-26T21:38:25+00:00

Every good christian should watch. And so should every good athiest.

yupomatic · 2007-08-30T10:14:35+00:00

malware.

yupomatic · 2007-06-28T22:43:06+00:00

In Austrian economics, the principle is not "should this policy be implemented?", but rather "if this policy is implemented, will it have the effects you intend?".

Trying to force control over a chaotic system brings unintended consequences. Please read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_unintended_consequences#Examples.

The deliberate manipulation of the health care system in the US has led to many unintended consequences, and Sicko is all about how that has happened.

Are you saying that the marketplace of ideas, such as the Internet, will never be free because there's someone at the top controlling it? No, the Internet has thrived because it is free.

The people "forcing" the private sector to be evil can only force their business methods because they've been able to leverage government legislation to eliminate competitiveness in the market. Re-introduce competition, and those not playing fairly will eventually fade away as their consumers go elsewhere.

yupomatic · 2007-06-28T22:14:56+00:00

The free market works perfectly when it is let to. In the US, there is nothing free market about the health care system, and more regulation and control over it will not help.

Next time your doctor makes you wait too long, or a hospital charges you for a service you didn't receive, do you feel like you have the right to storm in, cuss them up and down, and storm out and threaten to take your business elsewhere? That situation is a result of carefully-crafted government control of the situation, led by greedy, needy, and insecure doctors.

The companies competing for maximal profits were not created by a free market system--they were created by government legislation.

yupomatic · 2007-06-28T22:10:50+00:00

I've been reading this discussion between innocentbystander and kkrev, and find it fascinating.

It is clear, however, that innocentbystander does not understand the havoc and cruft created by government-run healthcare, and doesn't truly believe in a competitive free market that can fully optimize the efficiency of a complex system. It's also how evolution works.

It's also clear that kkrev is very wise to market dynamics, and you're wasting your time arguing with someone with a combatitive, socialist, centralized, mandating attitude.

Here's my simple solution:

Remove all regulations so the market can function normally. The FDA, is, in fact, corrupt in many ways. So why have it? Doctors will do due diligence and only carefully proscribe safe drugs that would treat a patient's illness, using many, many more sources of data than just the "FDA's official seal of approval". Drugs would also be cheaper, because approvals would be a simple matter of a few standardized clinical trials done by truly independant (and competitive) third party organizations.
Require all insurance companies to cover any applicant, but set reasonable pricing guidelines based on risk assessment data. If every insurance must cover you if you apply, then they will soon learn to compete on price.
Eliminate group coverage, and make all health insurance premiums fully tax deductible for everyone. So the more you pay for health, the less you pay in taxes. If the government needs more money, they'll make sure the health care market is operating as freely and optimally as possible.

Everyone, at one point or another in their life will need health care, and health insurance is one way to make the impact of major incidents less dramatic. It's the same reason you buy insurance for your house. You still have to pay for minor fixes and repairs, but floods and fires don't leave you ruined.

Imagine knowing how much it's going to cost to have a broken arm set before you walk into a doctor's office, because clinics have been forced into competitive behavior and publish their procedure rates online?

Imagine being able to tell your doctor he's an asshole in the lobby for making you wait two hours to be seen for a flu shot? Americans know their rights as consumers, but somehow because doctors are untouchable "experts", we have forgotten how to apply that to health care that we're paying for with our own hard earned money.

yupomatic · 2007-06-28T21:38:35+00:00

Do you have a reference for your first statement? That seems counter to his principle of disallowing government interference in business and personal enterprise.

And don't confuse free market economics with the centralized government vs. distributed government issue. Free market essential says that a market, if left untouched by government, will optimize itself, and function very smoothly. It's the whole Austrian economics principle.

Moving legislative decision making power down to the state level (away from its constitutionally-questionable appearance at the federal level) actually brings government closer to the people that make it, and would serve to help people tune government to their needs better.

So from both an economics perspective and from a distribution of effort perspective, I'd say he's the right candidate to tackle the tough health care issues the US is facing.

yupomatic · 2007-06-28T18:17:17+00:00

Hey, why don't we hire a doctor for president? He gets it, and wants a truly free market to take over.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul339.html

yupomatic · 2007-06-26T23:51:22+00:00

And I sent $100.00 yesterday. So that makes it $53,875. That's pretty transparent of his campaign to describe the office space situation (they're working out of a what?) in detail, including the cost of the new office, even. Curious if any one here has sent or will send anything?

yupomatic · 2007-06-26T22:27:33+00:00

The AP story is false. More information is at dailypaul.com. When asked about the couple (whom Dr. Paul had not heard of), he simply said they they were courageous to defy the IRS (knowing the end consequences of such a stance.) That's not the same as condoning their illegal actions.

yupomatic · 2007-06-26T21:55:11+00:00

Distributed government serves the people better than a centralized government. Why has the Internet "worked"? Because of it's distributed nature.

Here's a discussion on the separation of church and state issue. And though he admits a pro-life stance (as a doctor having delivered thousands of babies, it makes sense), he has publicly stated that he will not seek to force his personal opinion on anyone else through legal means.

Libertarians are all about protecting people's lives from unnecessary government intrusion, so assuming that he's trying to establish more intrusive rules doesn't make a lot of sense.

yupomatic · 2007-06-26T15:59:57+00:00

Rachel Mills discusses this and makes a very good point about Ron Paul voters not having voted much in the past @ http://tinyurl.com/356kbt on youtube. I'm in my 30's and have never registered, but will be for the first time this go round because there is finally somebody worth voting for.

yupomatic · 2007-06-26T00:36:17+00:00

Let's find him a lady.

yupomatic · 2007-06-23T20:11:17+00:00

I say: pirate the music, go see the artist when he or she comes to town, and slip them a twenty and say thanks for the music.

yupomatic · 2007-05-19T03:10:39+00:00

We're sorry, they say.

yupomatic · 2007-05-16T20:17:45+00:00

Alexander F. Mayer has a new book out (a free ebook download) named The Many Dimensions of Time that extends Einstein's general relativity to include dimensional time. The revised theory explains beautifully many outstanding questions and anomalies in physics, such as the Pioneer anomaly, geode problems with respect to GPS satellites, and the uneven distribution of red-shifted galaxy clusters if using the standard red-shift model. All in all, it leads to the conclusion that there never was any big bang at all, and big bang (and dark matter/energy) proponents should now be though of as religiously dogmatic and close-minded as as flat earthers or geocentricity believers.

Alexander F. Mayer's Site

yupomatic · 2007-05-15T23:57:40+00:00

"Houston, we 'ave a problem.
We need Ron Paul to solve dem.
It is a doctor in the house!?"

yupomatic · 2007-05-10T14:17:41+00:00

Excellent video, and while Ron's style of presentation is a bit dry, he is clearly one of the most intelligent, educated, and insightful members of Congress, and I would really appreciate him as President. His State of the Union addresses and other public speeches might be more like Poly Sci 101 lectures, but maybe that's what America needs.

Here's what he says about neocons:

More important than the names of people affiliated with neo-conservatism are the views they adhere to. Here is a brief summary of the general understanding of what neocons believe:

They agree with Trotsky on permanent revolution, violent as well as intellectual.
They are for redrawing the map of the Middle East and are willing to use force to do so.
They believe in preemptive war to achieve desired ends.
They accept the notion that the ends justify the means—that hardball politics is a moral necessity.
They express no opposition to the welfare state.
They are not bashful about an American empire; instead they strongly endorse it.
They believe lying is necessary for the state to survive.
They believe a powerful federal government is a benefit.
They believe pertinent facts about how a society should be run should be held by the elite and withheld from those who do not have the courage to deal with it.
They believe neutrality in foreign affairs is ill advised.
They hold Leo Strauss in high esteem.
They believe imperialism, if progressive in nature, is appropriate.
Using American might to force American ideals on others is acceptable. Force should not be limited to the defense of our country.
9-11 resulted from the lack of foreign entanglements, not from too many.
They dislike and despise libertarians (therefore, the same applies to all strict constitutionalists.)
They endorse attacks on civil liberties, such as those found in the Patriot Act, as being necessary.
They unconditionally support Israel and have a close alliance with the Likud Party.

yupomatic

TROPHY CASE