GENIUS FORUMS

Whether or not a tax benefits me at all is not the point. The point is I can spend my money better than any government can with the benefit being 10, 100, or 1000 times more effective. Is this simply an assumption of yours, or what? I would never question that you could spend money in a way that wo...

Now lets look at the Social Security Tax. All I have to say is that I'm taxed for a service that I will never recieve. End of story. This assumes that the only people who benefit from Social Security are the ones who directly receive money from it. And the same goes for welfare and other public soc...

Philo and Unidian, You guys miss the point that you don’t have to pay very much taxes if all services are handed over to private enterprise, which can handle them a lot better if there are more companies supplying the services. More companies equals lower prices and better service, why should the...

Moreover, the government is what makes possible the rule of law, one of the conditions needed for the existence of a free market and a stable society. What is that load of dung about you "not caring" what society provides you? LOL.

The money in my check is mine to keep and do with as I please. It's a direct tax on my person, which means it's unavoidable. My labor is also a part of my person, an even exchance of service for money, there is no gain or profit happening. Heh, are you sure you know your libertarian economics? Libe...

I found the videos (the link given is first in a series of five) pretty interesting. He made some good points about how logging works with government-owned forests: the companies merely lease the forests, giving them no incentive to engage in sustainable practices, because once the lease is up, the ...

But to give necessities to all through a welfare system, you need to steal money from working class, you need to steal money off their paychecks without their permission, as some do not agree with socialist philosophy. Why should a universal welfare system be imposed on the working class? Do you be...

I was just floating that for discussion. I wouldn't support such a thing, even if the current system of welfare causes what you call "genetic degradation" -- and there is no evidence that it does. If my main goal were to make the most economically productive society possible, then I might ...

Maybe we could just be open about it. Combine a few factors (physical health, psychological health, intelligence) into a "fitness score." When a couple has a child, you take the two scores of the parents and average them. Couples with a combined score well above average receive a large sum...

H.G. Wells and others had the same line in the early twentieth century. Too bad there is no evidence that people are actually getting less intelligent (although there is some that they are getting less educated, which is not the same thing).

Yes, Kevin is gay. He is a member of the "bear" subculture.

Of course. I was not thinking of QRS specifically. :-P

The liberal socialism movement believes that government should baby, nurse, and look after people from crib to grave. Actually, it is quite feminine in its nature compared to the freedom of total libertarianism. And that is probably why so many people fear libertarian speakers because they aren’t...

One of the interesting things about the Internet is that it makes it incredibly easy for people to find and contact a subculture of others just like them, reinforcing their own feelings and beliefs, no matter how bizarre or dangerous those may be.

Heh, yeah.

I always thought that "Worldly Matters" was for discussing things like physics, sociology, anthropology, politics, etc., not celebrity gossip and sports. :-P

I want the West to suffer more, to feel more pain, so that it becomes forced to pay closer attention to reality. Feeling lots of pain is hardly a sure catalyst to paying closer attention to reality. As often as not, when people feel pain they adopt some comforting illusion to make themselves feel b...

I saw Into the Wild. Beautiful scenery, ridiculous (and, heh, self-indulgent) subject.

There are some things governments suck at doing and other things that they are good at. If you have a government that tries to do everything, your country will suck (Stalin, Ceausescu, name your Communist dictator). If you have a government that does nothing (or have no government), then your countr...

In my view socialism occurs when government employs a system of taxation and redistribution. I would be interested to know how a government in the usual sense of the term could even exist without a system of taxation and redistribution -- at the very least, redistributing money from private citizen...

Okay. What do you mean by "socialism," then? Nationalization of industries? Things like labor laws? A lot of people use "socialism" to label any system that includes welfare, which I think is kind of inaccurate, since it's possible for a country to have a generous welfare system ...

Also, you and Unidian are both are guilty of only seeing the small picture with the problem of socialism. There is in fact an entire causal web of destruction and negative effects it produces which I can't even begin to explain without making a lesson out of it. So I'll have to leave it here for no...

The title itself frames the discussion in an insulting way. "Self-indulgence" implies that anyone who stays unemployed to pursue philosophy might as well be sitting around whacking off all day.

vicdan wrote:or mercury in the groundwater? :D

LOL.

Classical and techno.

Polar opposites: natural, dynamic music and artificial, rigid music. :-)

Some rock occasionally, too.