Azelma wrote:
I laugh because I don't see what amounts to "Aestu's outrageous anti-advertising complaint" as a "problem" with advertising that needs to be fixed. I understand what you're trying to say, but it's just not a "problem" that must be fixed.
Just like that issue you had at work?
P.H.B.: "Anything I don't understand is unimportant".
Azelma wrote:
I also laugh because your solution to the "problem" is completely impractical and would destroy entire industries and put hundreds upon hundreds of companies out of business, and thousands of people out of work.
"Putting people out of work". Isn't it true that any increase in efficiency necessarily puts people out of work if it becomes possible to do more with less?
By your logic, shouldn't we encourage the proliferation of useless procedure, as removing it would "put people out of work"?
Azelma wrote:
Your insistence that "I want to make a profit = I WANT FREE STUFF NOW" is also absurd. Investment is necessary for there to be any potential for profit. How is it free if you have to spend money to get it, and you risk losing all of that money? Also, it takes time to see returns on most investments (shorting notwithstanding). If I invested every dime I have into some business venture, or the markets...it would take quite a bit of time before I ever got my money back or saw a profit unless I got really lucky.
That's the rationale for investing paying the big bucks. The tradeoff for those profits is delayed gratification.
The "Free Stuff Now" is that they want certain returns on profoundly flawed and unsustainable industries with heavy externalites, or playing games with securities that add no productive value to our economy, rather than doing what they are supposed to be doing which is planning for the future and accepting risks.
The investors want someone else - taxpayers and government - to do what they will not do which is bear the expense and delayed gratification of investment while they collect on the returns.
You say I "hate private industry" and don't understand it. Here proves you completely wrong on both points. It is because I appreciate the productive power of private industry that I believe its scope should be narrowed to the things it does well and it should be prevented from acting against its own interests by establishing certain ground rules and a level playing field. Hence I appreciate the role of politics in ensuring the integrity of the investment process.
Azelma wrote:
I say you are stupid because your ideas and theories have little practical application to the real world and are purely based the select books you've read on the subjects.
So, what you're saying is, you're ignorant and proud of it.
Azelma wrote:
You have little practical experience or knowledge in business (save your lemonade stand, eBay, and Ironforge's auction house), yet you feel qualified to condemn men who have started businesses that employ thousands of people and generate large sums of revenue for the government (both from the wages of workers and the companies themselves) as "fat cats with a GOT MINE mentality."
By that logic, you shouldn't vote for presidents, senators or governors because you've never been a politician.
Azelma wrote:
In Aestutopia, perhaps your ridiculous claims would carry weight. Perhaps your solutions would be a better way of doing things in some cases. Perhaps. But until you become supreme dictator of the entire world, it will never ever happen, and therefore it's stupid and pointless to assert such things. The systems are what they are, and while they are far from perfect,
Google the term "troglodyte".
You are ignorant in that you fail to realize the world has changed before and it will change again. The world as it is is not always as it has been, and the future will differ from the present.
Again: Libertarianism is a philosophy of ignorance.
Azelma wrote:
sweeping government regulations is not the way to fix it.
Clean Air Act, Superfund, and laws against child labor, water pollution, and a ton of other abuses prove you wrong.
Azelma wrote:
You say it's a communist party argument...but really it's just the facts of it. Without private business, without entrepreneurship, there is no tax revenue and governments cannot spend money on research, social programs, defense, and so on. There must be wealth in order for it to be redistributed by the state. The private sector is critical to generating this wealth. If you handicap the private sector to punish the immoral actions of a few, you throw the entire system out of balance.
It's absolutely a Communist argument.
If we lived in a Communist state you could just as easily argue that the Party is responsible for generating all wealth.
If we lived during the Middle Ages you could just as easily argue that the feudal system is responsible for generating all wealth.
This argument quite neatly boils down to "I Got Mine" - the status quo is fine, for you, right here, right now, so therefore, this is the best of all possible worlds.
The corollary, of course, is that you refuse to see either that the system has major problems in the here and now, that there are proven alternatives, and that it isn't sustainable - so like it or not change is coming sooner or later. But you don't want to think about that constructively. Hence, it's a philosophy of ignorance, held only by..fat cats...and useful idiots...like you.
