Wal-Mart.

[ClueTwo]

Wal-Mart to stop harassing help

The United Food and Commercial Workers union stated that the decision conveyed the world's largest retailer, Wal-Mart that it could not transgress workers' fundamental rights without facing the music.

The company earlier this month aired its idea to close the Jonquiere, Quebec, store this spring but Wednesday the province's labor minister appointed a conciliator to preside over negotiations for a first contract at the outlet. The store was the first Wal-Mart outlet in North America where employees won union certification.





The United Food and Commercial Workers union is trying to organize workers at more than a dozen of Wal-Mart's 235 stores in Canada.



The union represents workers at a Wal-Mart store in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, southeast of Montreal and has asked the Quebec government to certify a union at another outlet in Brossard, a Montreal suburb.



Wal-Mart, which has resisted efforts to organize workers at its stores, recently embarked on a publicity and marketing blitz to counter critics of its labor practices in Canada and the United States.



Tire shop workers at a Wal-Mart supercenter in Loveland, Colo., voted against forming a union on Friday.

Source. (http://news.google.com/nwshp?hl=en&gl=us&ncl=http://www.whyinsure.com/news-number-2943.html)

[fect_9]

[SIZE=14]DONT RACK FROM WAL-MART TRUST ME ITS NOT WORTH IT!!!! :five-o: :five-o:

[Dick Quickwood]

it is if you do it right.

[Cracksmoka]

fuck those greedy anti-worker unionbashing scumbags....
i hope bill walton chokes on his fucking money....
bush and conglomerates like walmart are systematically removing all workers rights, period. its not just the blue collar anymore either... you better wake the fuck up america, because its alot easier to lose yourr rights than gain them...
those guys in colorado voted no because they are either
a. uneducated and mislead about unions and or labor rights
b. they are scared of retaliation from there employer

and yes if you know what your doing its rather easy and worthwhile to rack from walmart....

[Ferris Bueller]

Nader is probably having a serious breakdown about this.

<SOUTH PARK>
Did you know that when you die, you crap your pants?
</SOUTH PARK>

[SeYnO9]

I never understood in my youth, why a portion of humanity would oppose a workers union. I then remembered by pal jurgis. Long live the proleteriat.

THE RULES FOR ENTERING PARADISE HAVE CHANGED. Carnegie and Walton will share an eternal place with lucifer. Regardless of their bullshit charity work.

[ODS-1]

A lot of unions can be racist shitbags. Fuck walmart.

[SeYnO9]

Ods-1, could you index your remark?

[Edika]

last month a Wal mart in Québec got their union ( the first in n.America i think). Its weird, because 1 week afters that, the good Wal Mart bosses announced the closing of this store ( for starnge reasons like they were doing no profits and shit...), but everyone know its bullshit.

Since then theres an anti wal mart here in Quebec (where 40 to 45% of the workers in the provinced are in a union), everywhere in the medias, even in the goverment who called for boycott.
It made a big scandal.

[knuckle_game]

Originally posted by ODS-1@Mar 3 2005, 10:15 AM
A lot of unions can be racist shitbags. Fuck walmart.
Quoted post


agreed.

[MY ROTTING LIVER]

I'm watching Wal-Mart: The High Cost of Low Wages. It has a strong message that I have yet to here a rebut too that was significant. It might not be a true documentary, but it doesn't hide its position...anyway, heres a recent bit of news:


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/10/12/AR2006101201608.html


Wal-Mart Workers Win Wage Suit
Retailer Forced Overtime Without Pay, Jury Finds

By Amy Joyce
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, October 13, 2006; Page D02

Wal-Mart Stores Inc. violated Pennsylvania labor laws by forcing hourly employees to work through breaks and beyond their shifts without overtime pay, a jury decided yesterday.

Lawyers for the employees said the decision could result in $62 million or more in damages.

The lawsuit, brought by two employees on behalf of almost 187,000 current and former Wal-Mart employees, claimed that the company made workers in Pennsylvania miss more than 33 million rest breaks from 1998 to 2001. At least 57 other wage-and-hour cases have been filed across the United States against the world's largest retailer, and many of them are awaiting class-action certification, according to company filings.

"I think this proves that Wal-Mart's sweatshop mind-set persists," said Chris Kofinis, a spokesman with WakeUp Wal-Mart, a United Food and Commercial Workers Union-backed group. "There is some point where Wal-Mart will have to listen and it's got to treat its workers with respect and fairness."

Michael Donovan, a lawyer for the employees, would not comment until damages are awarded. He expects that to happen today. In court, the lawyers argued that the company denied breaks to cut labor costs and increase productivity.

"We take matters very seriously when associates say they have been mistreated in any way. However, because the jury is still in deliberation, it would not be appropriate to comment on the matter until a final decision has been made," said Sarah Clark, a spokeswoman for Wal-Mart.

Neal Manne, Wal-Mart's attorney, argued that the company properly paid its employees and that the lead plaintiffs were among a small group of disgruntled workers, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer's coverage of the trial.

Company officials said records appeared to show that workers who did not have breaks did so because they chose not to, or did not sign out, according to news reports.

The company has been trying repair its image after critics cast negative light on the company, claiming it pays poverty wages and offers few benefits.

The case is one of several class-action wage-and-hour suits against the company to go to trial. In December, a jury awarded $172 million to about 116,000 current and former Wal-Mart and Sam's Club workers in California who claimed that they were illegally denied lunch breaks. Wal-Mart is appealing the verdict.

In 2002, a federal jury in Oregon found that Wal-Mart employees were forced to work off the clock and awarded back pay to 83 workers. In 2004, Wal-Mart settled a similar lunch break case in Colorado for $50 million.

One of the pending cases, which accuses the company of paying men more than women nationally, is the largest private employer civil rights class action in history. Wal-Mart has asked an appeals court to overturn the class-action status of the case.

The Pennsylvania case is larger than the California case in that it covers more employees and involves off-the-clock work, missed rest breaks and missed meal breaks. The jury in the six-week trial in the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia found in favor of Wal-Mart on the missed-meal claim.

Employees said they were pressured by managers to cut meals short and skip breaks. Two cashiers said they were locked in the store after it closed to restock merchandise.

[MY ROTTING LIVER]

http://www.catawbariverkeeper.org/wal-mart

This was mentioned in the movie, but the proceeding of these were won by the states but not updated on the site...

In 2001, the Justice Department & the EPA brought enforcement action against Wal-Mart for Clean Water Act violations at 17 locations in Texas, New Mexico, Oklahoma & Massachusetts. Wal-Mart was fined $1 million in civil penalties as a result of this case.

The State of Connecticut & the Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection have also taken legal action against Wal-Mart for water quality violations. Richard J. Blumenthal, the Connecticut Attorney General prosecuting the water quality violations at Wal-Mart stores across Connecticut issued a statement saying,

[MY ROTTING LIVER]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-j5_socpd5Q

[angelofdeath]

i bid farewell to walmart.
actually, unions probably wont destroy one of the greatest stores on the planet, like they destroyed GM, Ford, and all the rest. atleast i hope im right. meaning as walmart is the greatest aid to the poor on this whole planet.

[russell jones]

i bid farewell to walmart.
actually, unions probably wont destroy one of the greatest stores on the planet, like they destroyed GM, Ford, and all the rest. atleast i hope im right. meaning as walmart is the greatest aid to the poor on this whole planet.


Here's an article that refutes the claim that Walmart is good for the poor.

http://www.dollarsandsense.org/archives/2006/0106miller.html

[angelofdeath]

collectivism kills.

here is an article that takes on these rediculous claims and actually comes up with a new economic 'law' if you will.
woods law:
"whenever the private sector introduces an innovation that makes the poor better off than they would have been without it, or that offers benefits or terms that no one else is prepared to offer them, someone — in the name of helping the poor — will call for curbing or abolishing it."

http://www.mises.org/story/2279

[russell jones]

I don't see Walmart in that article

[angelofdeath]

its not about walmart, its about the war against institutions that help the poor, one of them is walmart.

[russell jones]

Like I said, I don't see Walmart in that article.

[MY ROTTING LIVER]

Angelof....

Wal-mart is often subsidized one way or another by local governments under the guise of stores bringing economic growth. Likewise, thousands of employees and their families receive state assistance because while they work full time, yet they do not make enough to (nor does Wal-mart provide) afford health insurance or other essential services. Wal-Mart won't support its employees families health - would you have taxes remain and used for children without medical coverage OR would you support Wal-Mart providing health care as it's provided by other big box companies throughout the country? Even ODB was for the children - are you? Perhaps you're just for loop hole subsidies...

[angelofdeath]

it is not the states obligation or walmarts obligation to provide health insurance. both involve coercion. would you like it if the government decided one day that forfeit your car and house so it can be given to the 'poor?'
instead of crying about how much walmart employees are getting paid, how about giving them a high five for employing wheel chair bound people who cant hardly talk, to hand out stickers. how about bringing a decent store to areas that are economically bad off providing an ass load of jobs and providing low priced goods?

if you are going to make a case for insurance for lifes necessities... why dont you start pushing for food insurance or water insurance. after all people need that to survive, and they might not get it, and the state should provide it, right? hell, why not subsidize food? eveyrone needs it. its essential.
shit, no one has food insurance.
you pay for your burger for lunch, you should pay for your healthcare.

want to help the poor with health insurance, get hte government out. if the govt was not involved in health insurance, competition would be king and there would be a walmart of medicine that provides cheap medical service.
if the govt was out of hte medical insurance field, 80% of people could afford the doctors bills, and private insurance, usually for major problems would be a fraction of the cost it is today. this would help EVERYONE.

when you have 'free' anything... it will be abused. if the government gave out free milk to live, because babies need it, what would happen? kids would be using it in water guns. its the same with health insurance if it is free, alot of people are all of a sudden going to be come 'sick.' which will ruin service for people who really need it.

and yes im for 'aid to the poor' and 'children.' it is not benevolence to take other peoples property at gun point to give to someone. so i am totally against it. im for private charity, low prices and low to no taxes. that is aid to the american people. want to help the poor even more? quit outlawing thier jobs through minimum wage, quit supporting unions whose sole purpose is the exclude people from jobs henceforth raising the wages of the priviledged union members, and instead of giving the poor a bucket of welfare, and no incentive to produce or get ahead, rather to stay in the handout system, the free market answer is to give the poor a ladder. they can then rung by rung, climb thier way out of the hole they are in. and before you start talking about bed ridden, mentally retarded or otherwise incapacitated individuals who cant work, private charity and community aid, and family will take care of this just fine.

statistics show that the poor in rich countries are oustandingly richer than the poor in non free and non prosperous countries. the poor people in the US, have cars, color tv and cable, cellphones, etc. the poor in soviet russia, didnt have food. the poor in the US with low skills can work at mcdonalds, or WALMART and be able to afford a car, and a decent apartment or house. in russia you would of needed to be upper middle class to afford a car and small apartment.

[!@#$%]

whether or not a government has a responsibility to care for the health of its [taxpaying] citizens
is simply a matter of opinon
not fact.

i myself have witnessed walmart's transgressions in small communities in vermont and new hampshire because i guy i used to date lived there,
things are hardly ever as cut and dry as saying "they are fucked" or "they are not responsible"
walmart did not help those communities, and in fact the communtities tried to fight to keep them from expanding.

also, if you think 'competition' in health care will help it, hahaha look whathappened to phone bills, cable bills, and utility costs post de-regulation.

it's not free, it's a service provided by oour taxes: the government will look out for the physical and financial well being of it's citizens, because many of them are too stupid to do it for themselves, or too greedy to do it for others.

the poor in the us do ok, for sure. i am not sure if this is capitalism's fault or just the fact that our democracy worked well for so long, and social programs were not forgotten when there were some desperate people in our midst (great depression for example)

honestly, i should stay out of crossfire.
thank you and goodnight

[angelofdeath]

"also, if you think 'competition' in health care will help it, hahaha look whathappened to phone bills, cable bills, and utility costs post de-regulation.
"

the problem was created by government, not by a market. the traditional scenario was the government decided no one needs competition in these fields, so lets monopolize it. lets control it and regulate it. lets freeze it. then when the regulations expire, lets blame evil capitalists because they are 'gouging' consumers.
you can thank government for creating more problems than it fixes. if competition would of been allowed, instead of granting controls and monopoly to certain business, the shock wouldnt of been as bad as the bge increase, for example. every where there is a price control, there is a shortage.

if i had some more time, i would respond properly, but you disappointed me on this one symbols. not in teh reply, but in the quality of the argument. usually you have one hell of an argument, even though i most likely disagree.

im telling you, my goal is to not make you take my side, but to understand it. why are you a good candidate? because you totally understand imperial adventures and thier bad side. you know the wrongs of foreign intervention. you are half way there. i started the opposite. i thought foreign adventures were alright. you may not believe or choose not to hear the case, or discredit it, but the same applies to domestic interventionism as it does to foreign interventionism.

[!@#$%]

oh of course i understand where you are coming from
especially as a lifelong resident of this city, where i get to see citizens bilking the goodwill of the government on a regular basis, and i've watched the deregulation mess.

i'm not sure the monopoly was created by government, because many of those businesses are traditionally difficult to start and maintain. we have had plenty of scandals in the energy sector recently.
i'm no economist, but i just don't think it's not as simple as say, selling goods. people always want to look out for their bottom line, and because these services have become so necessary for the maintenance of society, they can charge whatever they want for them. as you see, gas does not seem to be falling below $2.
we'll see if it does. but natural gas prices have gone up a good deal as well, and there are more than a few providers out there, plenty since deregulation, and the prices have only gone up.

i simply don't trust people and the corporations they run to not start a veritable mafia of price control
i don't think there is going to be one company that decides to undercut the fuck out of their own profits to beat the competition.

but you're dissapointed right? i am too. i'm still hoping for the meteor that annhilates the planet.

i am likely always going to be halfway to your opinion, because i'm more of a centrist. i am ok with changing my opinions, i don't think they define me.
i came around a bit on guns. but i still don't think people need 50cals. and years ago i changed my mind and decided i was against the death penalty. but i'll always be a one issue voter on abortion rights, and stem cell research, i still like social welfare programs in government, federal funding of education and research etc, and i will for the foreseeable future.

[Smart]

i don't think there is going to be one company that decides to undercut the fuck out of their own profits to beat the competition.

WalMart around here started offering $4 prescriptions... this is known in the business world as a 'loss leader'.

[angelofdeath]

"'m no economist, but i just don't think it's not as simple as say, selling goods. people always want to look out for their bottom line, and because these services have become so necessary for the maintenance of society, they can charge whatever they want for them. as you see, gas does not seem to be falling below $2.
we'll see if it does. but natural gas prices have gone up a good deal as well, and there are more than a few providers out there, plenty since deregulation, and the prices have only gone up.

i simply don't trust people and the corporations they run to not start a veritable mafia of price control
i don't think there is going to be one company that decides to undercut the fuck out of their own profits to beat the competition."

i know im arguing with a special case, because you dont have a car, so i cant use the car and gas example, of simply not using a car because you dont need to survive and there fore wouldnt be subjected to high gas prices... so i must find another way to explain it.

lets look at electricity or phone service. obviously, one does not need electricity to survive. to maintain a modern lifestyle, you do. but for survival, you dont need it. it is simply not true to say that companies can charge what they want for something because people need it. it is just a touch of populist angst coming out, most people have it. its no big deal. in the economy, if you dont benefit from something, you wont buy it. if i sell you 5 cans of paint for 20 bucks, and you complete the transaction, you do so because you value the 20 cans of paint more than your 5 bucks.

the same is true for electricity. if power companies charged 9000 times more for electricity, people simply would do with out it. therefore the exchange of dollars for electricity is beneficial for both parties involved.

the most basic market factor is supply and demand. in the gas business, the price is very dependent on supply and demand, mainly because we have such a limited supply and any disruptions in supply or rapid increases in demand send the prices crazy. there are alot more elements, such as the criminal cartel that is OPEC, etc. the problem is, if gasoline was put under a price control, we would immediately have long lines at the pump. there would be shortages, not a scarcity, but shortages. it would take an hour to get gas, and gas stations would be shut down or work short hours. this is because there is no incentive to make a profit off of gas that is controlled. if the government were to give away gas for 'free' then we would waste alot more than we need. socialism cant calculate, which is why prices are needed.

the same is true for health care, if it is free, long lines abound. shitty service would be frequent. long waits would be the norm, as proven in canada, with sometimes 13 week waits for people with heart problems. in america, you get instant treatment, but you pay more. which would you rather have for your mother? instant service, or a 3 month wait?

"but natural gas prices have gone up a good deal as well, and there are more than a few providers out there, plenty since deregulation, and the prices have only gone up"

naturally, if one source of heating fuel is going up, the rest go up. this is similar to a house and trailer on the real estate markets, trailers might be cheaper, but they will still go up in value when houses go up. the problem is the market was capped in our area for so long because of our wonderful state assembly, and totally ruined the business climate in the state. of course there are other factors... inflation, being one.

more on prices.. in a free market, when we had a gold standard in the 19th century, prices FELL dramatically until the central bank was created. the same is true about the electronics sectors today... prices are falling and it is a very unregulated area, and is competitive in world markets. areas where the government is highly involved, the prices are close to 50% higher than CPI! shit is rediculous. it is not because of lack of regulation, but because of too much.

one way to reduce gas prices, immediately, would be to cut taxes. the price would drop from $2 to almost $1.60 immediately. and what do we get for these taxes? pot hole infested roads and public sector workers who eat bean sandwiches all day.

prices are needed to calculate. for instance when prices went up in post hurricane N.O., it is a signal that there is a shortage and more supplies need to sent down. if hotel prices go up, it is not out of hatred, it is out of humanity. for instance, if a hotel price doubled after katrina, it would allow more people who needed a hotel to get a room, and let the people who didnt need one, (think people who could stay with relatives, or have another house, etc) to think twice about it. it also helps eliminate people getting 5 rooms, one for each family member. it would force a family to all fit into one room, therefore having more rooms for people who need them to have a place to stay. this is why gouging laws are economic suicide. if you have a house, and you want to sell it. you paid 100K for it 1995, and its worth 440K now. are you gonna sell it for 104K so as not to 'gouge' anyone? i would hope not. the same is true with any commodity. if a gas station gets 2000 gallons at 1.00 a gallon, and doesnt pump it for a week, and the price suddenly spikes up to 3.00 a gallon. if you sell your gas for 1.05, you will be dry in an hour, and be out of business.

adam smith once said....
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest"

sorry for the unorganized ramble.

by the way... that is a good signature symbols, i heard it was a fake quote for a long time, but i checked up on it.
its real.

[!@#$%]

our health care system is shit though really
you will learn that unfortunate fact if you ever get really sick.
that is one of those things we have repeated in this country so many times people believe it
but really, no, i would NOT say we have the best health care in the world.
especially when you ask my coworkers, people who have actually been able to compare it by living in different countries.
and my poor ma, who has been relying on a sytem that has fucked her for the past twenty years. i swear these people have made her sicker. and yes, she often has to wait for weeks on end for an appointment or an MRI.
i remember when robbie had to go for an 'urgent' follow up and his appointment couldn't be made any sooner than three weeks away.
i've sat in an ER with a bleeding head for hours myself.
health care here is also crazy fucking expensive, even with plenty of competition
as well as scientific research
companies hardly have a monopoly on shit, and we can get them to cut prices based on what a competitor charges, but it is still a bit gouged.


also, some people do need electricity to survive.
remember all those nursing home victims of katrina?
anyone on any kind of health support system literally needs it for survival
and if our society stopped operating with electricity, things would get INSANE in an inner city like baltimore. lights out on millions causes chaos. so yeah, i think they can charge whatever they want. to me it seems obvious based on their profit margins, the lining if their executive pockets, and the sorry state of electricity infrastructure in the us

i'll stop because you make some good points there.
but we are just coming from two different places of mistrust.
i trust the individual even less than i trust the government (although i wouldn't say i trust either)
i think it's probably the opposite with you.

[angelofdeath]

"so yeah, i think they can charge whatever they want. to me it seems obvious based on their profit margins, the lining if their executive pockets, and the sorry state of electricity infrastructure in the us'

allow me to pull a walter block on you... ( he is a loon ball austrian economist that i listen too alot... i think i posted one of his articles on the abortion 'compromise' a while back.)

anyway.... i would argue, that the electricity companies cant charge whatever they want, for several other reasons. you make a very good point about nursing homes. alright, they do need electricity. but what is stopping them from getting those huge industrial generators and producing thier own power? that is a hell of a threat to a power company.

they also cant charge whatever they want, simply from the fact of competition. it is the nature of capitalismt to lower prices, not raise them. which is why the predatory pricing scams in the early 20th century are myths. the biggest so called 'monopoly' back in the day, Standard Oil, cut oil prices at unimaginable rates. they also took the 'muck' that was left over and put it to 300 more uses. in a market, you want to try to lower the price, to get more customers. if you start to price yourself out of the market you are banking on gullible consumers, with this practice you cant make money for long.

of course, i guess you could come up with a conspiracy, and say that all the power companies got together, said, we are gonna fuck the consumer, and charge super high prices. they could have some sort of hit team that went out and kill entreprenuers that tried to lower prices. but soon enough, someone would come in and under cut them all, and put them out of business.

there is an example of a bromean (sp??, some kind of chemical, i forget what it does) salesman from the 20th century. he was making a killing selling bromean. he decided to go to europe to sell his product. he got over there, and the bromean cartel in europe, told him to stop, it was thier territory. the guy said no. so they got mad, and thought, well, we are gonna beat his price in america of 30cents, and sell ours at a loss, at 15cents a gallon to put this guy out of business, because the american was undercutting them in germany. so how did the american beat the germans? he had all his buyers in america, buy bromean for .15 agallon from the germans in america, he took this to europe, sold it for .25 cents a gallon, beating the germans .35 a gallon in germany. he ended up smashing the hell out of the germans, and they ended up coming to an agreement. the american could sell all in europe, but just not germany.

this is why i dont buy into the whole argument of corporations set thier own prices. because in a free market, with lack of government coercion AND priviledges granted by government to businesses, you must compete to survive. you wont survive trying to raise prices.

but back to the original argument, your right, i mistrust the government way more than i mistrust individuals. but not really in the sense, that i sense you are coming from. i think everyone should be able to do what they want, as long as they dont violate my life, liberty or property, which is where the only JUST laws come into play. protection of life, liberty and property. i guess i simply just dont want the same people who run the MVA, running my health care, or my food supply. it seems like sure set up for a soviet style take over and impoverishment of the citizens.

"health care here is also crazy fucking expensive, even with plenty of competition"

healthcare sucks in this country. i cannot argue with that... but it is because of government involvement, and there is definately not enough competition. my mom visited the doctor the other day, and she is closing down her practice of 20 years because she cant pay the overhead that the state is trying to nail her with. hmo's, medicare, medicaid, and on down the line, in the long run, is a bad thing for america. a free market medicine approach would allow faster patient treatment, better service, and prices that most people can manage, with possibly insurance for catastrophe, which would be a fraction of the cost of today's.

check it:

Free Market Medicine



by Rep. Ron Paul, MD



Last week the congressional Joint Economic committee on which I serve held a hearing featuring two courageous medical doctors. I had the pleasure of meeting with one of the witnesses, Dr. Robert Berry, who opened a low-cost health clinic in rural Tennessee. His clinic does not accept insurance, Medicare, or Medicaid, which allows Dr. Berry to treat patients without interference from third-party government bureaucrats or HMO administrators. In other words, Dr. Berry practices medicine as most doctors did 40 years ago, when patients paid cash for ordinary services and had inexpensive catastrophic insurance for serious injuries or illnesses. As a result, Dr. Berry and his patients decide for themselves what treatment is appropriate.



Freed from HMO and government bureaucracy, Dr. Berry can focus on medicine rather than billing. Operating on a cash basis lowers his overhead considerably, allowing him to charge much lower prices than other doctors. He often charges just $35 for routine maladies, which is not much more than one’s insurance co-pay in other offices. His affordable prices enable low-income patients to see him before minor problems become serious, and unlike most doctors, Dr. Berry sees patients the same day on a walk-in basis. Yet beyond his low prices and quick appointments, Dr. Berry provides patients with excellent medical care.



While many liberals talk endlessly about medical care for the poor, Dr. Berry actually helps uninsured people every day. His patients are largely low-income working people, who cannot afford health insurance but don’t necessarily qualify for state assistance. Some of his uninsured patients have been forced to visit hospital emergency rooms for non-emergency treatment because no doctor would see them. Others disliked the long waits and inferior treatment they endured at government clinics. For many of his patients, Dr. Berry’s clinic has been a godsend.



Dr. Berry’s experience illustrates the benefits of eliminating the middleman in health care. For decades, the U.S. healthcare system was the envy of the entire world. Not coincidentally, there was far less government involvement in medicine during this time. America had the finest doctors and hospitals, patients enjoyed high quality, affordable medical care, and thousands of private charities provided health services for the poor. Doctors focused on treating patients, without the red tape and threat of lawsuits that plague the profession today. Most Americans paid cash for basic services, and had insurance only for major illnesses and accidents. This meant both doctors and patients had an incentive to keep costs down, as the patient was directly responsible for payment, rather than an HMO or government program.



We should remember that HMOs did not arise because of free-market demand, but rather because of government mandates. The HMO Act of 1973 requires all but the smallest employers to offer their employees HMO coverage, and the tax code allows businesses – but not individuals – to deduct the cost of health insurance premiums. The result is the illogical coupling of employment and health insurance, which often leaves the unemployed without needed catastrophic coverage.



While many in Congress are happy to criticize HMOs today, the public never hears how the present system was imposed upon the American people by federal law. In fact, one very prominent Senator now attacking HMOs is on record in the 1970s lauding them. As usual, government intervention in the private market failed to deliver the promised benefits and caused unintended consequences, but Congress never blames itself for the problems created by bad laws. Instead, we are told more government – in the form of “universal coverage” – is the answer.



We can hardly expect more government to cure our current health care woes. As with all goods and services, medical care is best delivered by the free market, with competition and financial incentives keeping costs down. When patients spend their own money for health care, they have a direct incentive to negotiate lower costs with their doctor. When government controls health care, all cost incentives are lost. Dr. Berry and others like him may one day be seen as consumer heroes who challenged the third-party health care system and resisted the trend toward socialized medicine in America.



May 5, 2004


Diagnosing Our Health Care Woes



by Ron Paul
by Ron Paul


No one disputes the diagnosis: American health care is in lousy shape. As a practicing physician for more than 30 years, I find the pervasiveness of managed care very troubling.



The problems with our health care system are not the result of too little government intervention, but rather too much. Contrary to the claims of many advocates of increased government regulation of health care, rising costs and red tape do not represent market failure. Rather, they represent the failure of government policies that have destroyed the health care market.



It’s time to rethink the whole system of HMOs and managed care. This entire unnecessary level of corporatism rakes off profits and worsens the quality of care. But HMOs did not arise in the free market; they are creatures of government interference in health care dating to the 1970s. These non-market institutions have gained control over medical care through collusion between organized medicine, politicians, and drug companies, in an effort to move America toward “free” universal health care.



One big problem arises from the 1974 ERISA law, which grants tax benefits to employers for providing health care, while not allowing similar incentives for individuals. This results in the illogical coupling between employment and health insurance. As such, government removed the market incentive for health insurance companies to cater to the actual health-care consumer. As a greater amount of government and corporate money has been used to pay medical bills, costs have risen artificially out of the range of most individuals.



Only true competition assures that the consumer gets the best deal at the best price possible by putting pressure on the providers. Patients are better served by having options and choices, not new federal bureaucracies and limitations on legal remedies. Such choices and options will arrive only when we unravel the HMO web rooted in old laws, and change the tax code to allow individual Americans to fully deduct all healthcare costs from their taxes, as employers can.



As government bureaucracy continues to give preferences and protections to HMOs and trial lawyers, it will be the patients who lose, despite the glowing rhetoric from the special interests in Washington. Patients will pay ever rising prices and receive declining care while doctors continue to leave the profession in droves.









September 26, 2006

[ASER1NE]

Wal mart is awesome.
If you dont want to work there, then dont. If you dont want to shop there, then dont.

All I know is that a million motherfuckers try to take as much of my paychecks as they possibly can, so I Wal Mart wants to sell me shit for cheaper than everywhere else then thats where im going to buy my goods.

[Qawee]

Wal Mart has a sexist health insurance policy that doesnt cover mamagrams, pap smears, or birth control.

And on that shit about waiting 3 months to see a doctor in canada, whatever, I tried to make an appointment to see a dermatologist, they said it would be a six month wait.
Fuck Wal Mart, I'd rather be unionized.

[angelofdeath]

good call. dermatologists are a 6 month wait in 'free' market america, imagine what they will be when we fully socialize medicine. i can see it now, dermo appointments are operating on a 1 year backlog. take a number, please!!

our government is also sexist, racist, classist and age-ist because they dont give us free food! oMG! we need it for teh survival!@!!

[Qawee]

The point is that the instant visits to the doctor you earlier spoke of arent the rule. But really, i'm very happy to be able to go to the doctor, and pay $250 - half of my paycheck, to get some immunizations. That's fantastic.

[angelofdeath]

i did not say it was immediate care in america, but in a free market it would be. of course, the waits are less in america because we arent totally socialized yet. want cheap healthcare? get the government out.

[!@#$%]

i can tell you with certainty
we have horrinle mental health care in this country
of which i have seen little to no involvement from either the government or the private sector
now why is it that i know people who are unemployed in europe who have access to mental health counseling?

thiing is, what you never seem to understand about my point of view, is that there is not always ONLY ONE right way to get things to work.
sure, maybe free market was the best way to get to where we needed to be
but that's not what happened
so instead of trying to get back to that
there might actually be another way to solve the health and mental care crisis

as well as the energy crisis

it's funny that so many people would argue for a free market economy when that is what we have
and blame every problem we have incurred during it's tenure as the fault of government involvment
it is a convenient way to dismiss all the difficulties in a market
such as greed and the need for regulatory oversight
since obviously corporations cannot be trusted to run the in the 'best interest' of people but instead in the best interest of their profit margin.

to think that pharma would miraculously lower the prices of their medications..that are patent protected mind you...when govt got out..shit, that's just unthinkable to me, especially when i think of it in the context of their tidal waves of profits. thanks to dubya, the goverment pretty much has gotten out..and just look at the astronomical costs of some medications

why would you just write off every decently operated health care system in the world that is not free market? they do exist yknow.

[russell jones]

to think that pharma would miraculously lower the prices of their medications..that are patent protected mind you...when govt got out..shit, that's just unthinkable to me, especially when i think of it in the context of their tidal waves of profits.

exactly, and this fact is almost impossible to argue against. Single payer systems reduce the cost of medications, the patent system combined with a free market provides absolutely no motivation to reduce the cost of medications to the consumer. In fact, it encourages the development of treatments rather than cures, and of products rather than medications.

If someone wants to say that a free market health system increases the health of the citizenry, then show me the evidence.

[angelofdeath]

sorry, russell, i wish i had evidence of a country today that had a free market medicine system. i base my opinions on the workings of every other market. the consumer is sovereign. they can bring any market to its knees, by simply refusing to buy. try that with a government. it is by the very nature of the free market, as shown throughout the 19th century in america that in a free market, PRICES FALL! its that simple. technology, efficiency, etc all get better, and prices fall. prices did not begin to routinely rise across the board until the federal reserve was born. america had a great health system, one of the greatest in the world by some accounts, arguably until LBJ created medicare.
i do know that historically medical care was reasonably priced, service was fairly efficient, and there wasnt a 'crisis.'
prices are also not determined by some ceo, president bush, or any other such nonsense. prices are objective expressions of subjective judgements of consumer wants and needs, now and in the future. they are not simply thought of out of no where, and soley raised so high as the screw the consumer straight up the A-hole. supply and demand are the most basic market laws. i'll submit that i believe prices will fall if the government gets out of medicine for various reasons, but perhaps the easiest to predict is that with out 'free' healthcare, the demand will shrink, and only people who need healthcare will seek it. you arent doing anyone any good by simply throwing more money at the problem, you are covering it up. it may be 'right' mentally, but it isnt getting anything accomplished other than bogging down the health system, bringing inefficient service, and destroying the very foundation of freedom... ones right to do what they want, so long as it doesnt hurt another human being.

you know, i was watching the medicine man the other week. it was basically saying that the capitalists destroy everything, even the cure for cancer, by destroying the rain forests, etc etc.. this doesnt sound like any capitalist i i can think of. you can bet your bottom dollar if there is a possibility for a cure for cancer in those rainforests, some miniscule lumber profits would halt, for the cure for cancer.
but i digress.

a side note on patents, they are actually theft. allow me to illustrate. if you and I both simultaneously come up with the same idea, and you patent it before me, it is wrong. now im not allowed to make create my own idea without paying you something, even though we both came up with the idea at the same time.

i try to think of ways of maximizing liberty in my life. i want to fight all encroachments on freedom. i want to fight the nanny state, the health nazi state and every other state that is trying to steal my liberty. i want to maximize choice. history is a struggle for liberty. i do not want the same people who are running the MVA, running my health care, and i will fight it. i do not want the state in charge me in any way. i just see one small problem with the general leftist ideology that the state can be the peoples savior, it simply defies reality. it is like wishing for a lion that just purrs and loves to patted on the head. or wishing for a rattle snake that simply plays a good back up to a mariachi band. my reality is that state seeks to control us in every way it can. some people cant see the difference between the wrongful nature of violence or coercion, and inequality of result or circumstance.

i guess i should also point out as an after thought, that if there is any doubt that market prices would not fall, if the government stopped intervening into areas it doesnt belong, you are simply ignoring economic fact.

[angelofdeath]

i think these 2 articles pretty much smash everything...



Subsidizing Sickness


by Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr.



This speech was delivered before the annual convention of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, St. Louis, Missouri, October 26, 2000.

Throughout the 19th century, socialist ideology gained ground among intellectuals attempting to revive ancient dreams of a total state that managed every aspect of people's lives. The critics, too, weighed in to explain that socialism has ethical and practical limitations. If you abolish private property, which socialism proposes to do, you abolish economic exchange, which is a source of social peace. In addition, you eliminate the profit motive, which is a major factor in spurring people to work and produce.

The major limitations to this dominant mode of criticism is that it was narrowly focused against the idea of completely eliminating private property. In addition, the 19th century economic criticisms of socialism did not get to the heart of the matter, which is that any attempt to curb the workings of economic exchange forces resources into uneconomic uses. An economy is defined as a system in which human energies and resources are employed toward their most productive purposes. Not only socialism, but all interventions in the free market redirect resources in ways that are counterproductive – away from the voluntary sector of society and into the state sector.

The history of socialist theory is bound up with policies toward the medical marketplace. To control people's access to medical care is to control their very lives, so it is no wonder that this is the goal of every state. In the course of a century we have taken a long march from a largely free system of medical provision to one dominated by unfree programs and mandates.

And yet, I'm sorry to report, the US, despite huge interventions on a scale unimaginable in an era of free markets, remains freer than most places in the world. Privatization of medical provision isn't on the radar screen of the world's politicians, even after manifest failures. Even after the collapse of all-out collectivism in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, there has been precious little movement towards reform in the medical sector.

We are a long way from clear thinking on the subject of medical care and the realization that the provision of medical services of every kind is best left to the forces of the market economy and the charitable sector than placed in the hands of the regulating, taxing, intruding state.

Ludwig von Mises was socialism's greatest critic, having written the decisive attack in 1922. His book is usually credited for proving why Soviet-style socialism could never work. But less known is the fact that he attacked the entire panoply of what he called "destructionist" policies, which included the medical policies of the social welfare states in the German-speaking world at the time. Mises has a way of getting to the heart of the matter, so his comments on socialized health insurance apply to our own situation. Reviewers at the time noted his opposition and decried them as the ravings of an extreme classical liberal. If so, I am happy to rave myself.

Allow me to quote his remarks in full:

"To the intellectual champions of social insurance, and to the politicians and statesmen who enacted it, illness and health appeared as two conditions of the human body sharply separated from each other and always recognizable without difficulty or doubt. Any doctor could diagnose the characteristics of 'health.' 'Illness' was a bodily phenomenon which showed itself independently of human will, and was not susceptible to influence by will. There were people who for some reason or other simulated illness, but a doctor could expose the pretense. Only the healthy person was fully efficient. The efficiency of the sick person was lowered according to the gravity and nature of his illness, and the doctor was able, by means of objectively ascertainable physiological tests, to indicate the degree of the reduction of efficiency.

"Now every statement in this theory is false. There is no clearly defined frontier between health and illness. Being ill is not a phenomenon independent of conscious will and of psychic forces working in the subconscious. A man's efficiency is not merely the result of his physical condition; it depends largely on his mind and will. Thus the whole idea of being able to separate, by medical examination, the unfit from the fit and from the malingerers, and those able to work from those unable to work, proves to be untenable. Those who believed that accident and medical insurance could be based on completely effective means of ascertaining illnesses and injuries and their consequences were very much mistaken. The destructionist aspect of accident and health insurance lies above all in the fact that such institutions promote accidents and illness, hinder recovery, and very often create, or at any rate intensify and lengthen, the functional disorders which follow illness or accident.

"Feeling healthy is quite different from being healthy in the medical sense, and a man's ability to work is largely independent of the physiologically ascertainable and measurable performances of his individual organs. The man who does not want to be healthy is not merely a malingerer. He is a sick person. If the will to be well and efficient is weakened, illness and inability to work is caused. By weakening or completely destroying the will to be well and able to work, social insurance creates illness and inability to work; it produces the habit of complaining – which is in itself a neurosis – and neuroses of other kinds. In short, it is an institution which tends to encourage disease, not to say accidents, and to intensify considerably the physical and psychic results of accidents and illnesses. As a social institution it makes a people sick bodily and mentally or at least helps to multiply, lengthen, and intensify disease."

Thus spake Mises. He is observing that there is a moral hazard associated with socialized and subsidized medicine. Because there is no clear line between sickness and health, and where you stand on the continuum is bound up with individual choice, the more medical services are provided by the state as a part of welfare, the more the programs reinforce the conditions that bring about the need to make use of them. This one insight helps explain how socialized medicine takes away the incentive to be healthy, and maximizes the problem of overutilization of resources. Hence, socialized medicine must fail for the same reasons all socialism must fail: it offers no system for rationally allocating resources, and instead promotes overutilization of all resources, ending in bankruptcy.

And now consider the presidential campaign of the year 2000. The most medically dependent group in the country are seniors, who also happen to be, at once, the most government-addicted and financially well-off members of society. Their medical care is largely paid through public dollars. And yet this group is nearly united in the claim that it is not enough. They demand that their drugs be free or at least be as cheap as fruits and vegetables at the grocery store. And the candidates respond not by pointing out the unreality and illegitimacy of their demands, but by competing to see who can provide free drugs more quickly through one or another central plan.

Can anyone doubt that Mises was right, that socialized medicine has led to a sickly frame of mind that has swept and now dominates the culture? The habit of complaining is endemic to this sector of society. Never have so many rich people who have been given so much by government demanded so much more. And the politicians are not pilloried for pandering to them but rewarded to the degree that they can dream up central plans that accommodate the complaining class through ever more freebies.

And when does it stop? When the coffers run dry. Until then, the subsidies work to distort the market and distort people's sense of themselves. And no one has pointed out during this presidential campaign what this program would mean for drug manufacturers. It would essentially nationalize them by mandating that they work first for the government that is subsidizing drug purchases and only second for the consumer. But this is the path that all steps toward socialized medicine take: instead of physicians and patients engaging in cooperative exchange, we get government standing between them and dictating medical care.

Now, it is sometimes said that medical care is too important to be left to the market, and that it is immoral to profit from the illnesses of others. I say medical care is too important to be left to the failed central plans of the political class. And as for profiting from providing medical care, we can never be reminded enough that in a free society, a profit is a signal that valuable services are being rendered to people on a voluntary basis. Profits are merely a by-product of a system of private property and freedom of exchange, two conditions which are the foundation of an innovative and responsive medical sector.

In the recent century, however, these institutions have been attacked and subverted at every level. In the medical-care market, the process began in the late 19th century with the policies of Germany's Otto von Bismarck, who sought a third way between the old liberalism and communism. As the originator of national socialism designed to foil international socialism, he claimed credit for being the first to establish a national health care system – thus adopting the very socialism he claimed to be combating.

Politicians ever since have followed this lead, continuing with Emperor Francis Joseph of Austria-Hungary, William II of Germany, Nicholas II of Russia, Lenin, Stalin, Salazar of Portugal, Mussolini of Italy, Franco in Spain, Yoshihito and Hirohito of Japan, Joseph Vargas of Brazil, Juan Peron of Argentina, Hitler, and FDR. What a list! As individuals, most have been discredited and decried as dictators. But their medical care policies are still seen as the very soul of compassionate public policy, to be expanded and mandated, world without end.

In each case, the national leader advertised the importance of centralized medical welfare for the health of the nation. But what was always more important was the fact that such policies reward the politicians and parties in power with additional control over the people, while dragging the medical profession – an important and independent sector that is potentially a great bulwark against state power – into a government system of command and control.

Before coming to power, Hitler's party, for example, made statements condemning socialized medicine and compulsory social insurance as a conspiracy to soften German manhood. But once in power, they saw the advantages of the very programs they condemned. As Melchoir Palyi argued, Hitler saw that the system was actually a great means of political demagoguery, a bastion of bureaucratic power, an instrument of regimentation, and a reservoir from which to draw jobs for political favorites. By 1939, Hitler had extended the system of compulsory insurance to small business and tightened the system in Austria. One of his last acts in 1945 was to include workers from irregular types of employment in the system, socializing medical care even in his last days.

After the war, the Social Democratic Party charged with de-Nazification immediately expanded his system to further centralize the medical sector. On the medical care front, Hitler may yet achieve his 1,000-year Reich.

The Soviet Union adopted a more radical course. This was the first country to adopt all-round socialized medical care – the dream of the Democratic Party in this country. In 1919, Lenin signed a decree that said every Soviet citizen had a right to free medical care. By 1977, this right had dramatically expanded to become the right to health itself – language now regularly employed by US politicians.

In the in-between years, the Soviet Union became host to one of the most backward, murderous, and coercive systems of medical provision ever concocted. The country trained more doctors than any in the world, but the vital statistics showed a more complete picture. Lifespans averaged 10 to 20 years less than in western countries. Infant mortality was twice as high. By the time of the collapse of socialism, 80 million people were said to have chronic illnesses, and up to 68 percent of the public was health-deficient by international standards. Mental retardation afflicted nearly a quarter of the children – a consequence of serious deprivation.

It was impossible for ordinary people to have access to decent drugs. Stores carried only the most primitive medicines. However, the country was flooded with penicillin, as ordered in the central plan, a plan which was not altered even after the citizens became resistant to it. The hospitals housed 12 to 16 patients per room. More than a third of rural hospitals had no running water. Syringes were reused an average of 1,000 times. To keep up with the planned death rate, hospitals routinely threw people out before they died so that the hospital wouldn't go beyond its quota.

Of course most real care went underground, where bribing for anaesthesia was common. Former Soviet economist Yuri N. Maltsev points out that this method was even used in the case of abortion, which was the most common surgical procedure in the Soviet Union. After Maltsev emigrated to the US, he was astonished to see that the US was adopting many of the principles that drove the old Soviet system. But in the US, it is not called socialism or communism. It is called insurance.

All Western systems have been based on a deeply flawed notion of insurance. After Hillary's outrageous medical plan came out in 1993, I appeared on panels at National Review and the Claremont Institute on the subject, and explained what insurance is and what it is not. Hillary's plan was not insurance. It was regimentation through welfare. Other panelists were aghast that I was criticizing not just Hillary's plan but the very principle of government insurance, dating back to Bismarck. So that we are not confused, let me explain.

The world is full of risks, among which are those that are inherent in the nature of things, and those which can be increased or decreased according to human will. The risks against which you can insure yourself are those over which you can have no control. You can't stop a hurricane from destroying your house. The chances of this happening are random. Hence you can be protected against losses through insurance with reasonable rates, set according to the risk factor. If you take actions that bring about the destruction of yourself and try to collect, however, you are committing insurance fraud. That is because outcomes that can be directly controlled are not random and thus are not insurable.

The risk of getting sick combines random and nonrandom variables. Catastrophic illnesses can be randomly distributed and thus insured against. But routine maintenance follows many predictable lines that must be reflected in premiums. The most cost-effective way to pay for medical care is the same way car maintenance is paid for: a fee for service. In a free market, this would be the dominant way medical care is funded. Prices would be aboveboard and competitive, and there would be a range of quality available for everyone. There would be no moral hazard. This was largely the system before the Blues, of course.

What is called health insurance in the US consists of two types: one provided by employers in which the insurer is not permitted to discriminate too severely in light of individual risks. The other is not insurance at all but a straight-out welfare payment mandated by the state: this is Medicare, Medicaid, and the huge range of programs delivering aid to individuals. None has much to do with a free-market provision of medical services.

As a result, the consumer has fewer rights than ever. Physicians are caught up in an awful web of regulations and mandates. Business is saddled with huge burdens that have nothing to do with satisfying consumer demands. And innovation is limited by an array of penalties, subsidies, and regulations. The failures of the present system create constant pressure for ever more legislation that further socializes the system, which produces more failure and so on and so on.

For the most part in the US, the long march toward medical socialism has taken the path of least political resistance. Public outrage at the Hillary Clinton health-plan of 1993 was a beautiful thing to behold, and with the help of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS), this outrage forced the administration to back down. But in the meantime, the regulatory state has taken steps toward imposing some of the mandates Hillary favored.

In some ways, the Republicans are as bad as the Democrats. For instance, throughout the 1990s the GOP has backed legislation that can best be described as Hillary-lite, complete with restrictions on the ability of insurers to discriminate, premium caps on some groups, penalties for noncompliance, mandatory portability, and on and on. As bad as the legislation passed in the 1990s has been, we can be thankful that gridlock prevented a comprehensive plan from passing.

Government intervention in the US medical market began in the late 19th century, first in form of government regulations on medical schools. No one dreamed where this would eventually lead. Moreover, no one would have thought to call such interventions a species of socialism. Socialism, it was believed, was Plato. It was Marx. It was not the American Medical Association. The AMA is about insuring quality, not equalizing wealth or expropriating the expropriators.

In fact, the empowerment of this physician cartel was the original sin of American medicine. Through its ability to limit supply and outlaw competition, organized medicine has punished its customers, although the word is never used so as to disguise what is, after all, an economic relationship.

Competition among providers leads to rational pricing and maximum consumer choice. But this is exactly what the AMA has always sought to prevent. The AMA, organized in New York City in 1848, advanced two seemingly innocent propositions in its early days: that all doctors should have a "suitable education" and that a "uniform elevated standard of requirements for the degree of MD should be adopted by all medical schools in the US." These were part of the AMA's real program, which was openly discussed at its conventions and in the medical journals: to secure a government-enforced medical monopoly and high incomes for mainstream doctors.

Membership in the new organization was open only to "regular" physicians, whose therapies were based on the "best system of physiology and pathology, as taught in the best schools in Europe and America." Emphatically not included among the "best" were the homeopaths. How the "regulars" came to crush the homeopaths and other competitors, and penalize patients in the process, is a story of deception and manipulation, of industry self-interest and state power. The organization knew it needed more than persuasion to secure a monopoly, so it also called for a national bureau of medicine to oversee state licensing and other regulations.

In those limited-government days, however, the idea went nowhere. But in the statist Progressive Era after the turn of the century, anticompetitive measures became respectable, and the AMA renewed its drive for a cartel, spurred on by the popularity of self-medication and the increasing number of medical schools and doctors. Then the AMA's secretary N.P. Colwell helped plan (and some say write) the famous 1910 report by Abraham Flexner. Flexner, the owner of a bankrupt prep school, had the good fortune to have a brother, Simon, who was director of the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research.

At his brother's suggestion, Abraham Flexner was hired by the Rockefeller-allied Carnegie Foundation so that the report would not be seen as a Rockefeller initiative. AMA-dominated state medical boards ruled that in order to practice medicine, a doctor had to graduate from an approved school. Post-Flexner, a school could not be approved if it taught alternative therapies, didn't restrict the number of students, or made profits based on student fees.

The Flexner Report was more than an attack on free competition funded by special interests. It was also a fraud. For example, Flexner claimed to have thoroughly investigated 69 schools in 90 days, and he sent prepublication copies of his report to the favored schools for their revisions. So we can see that using lies to advance political goals long predated the Gore campaign.

With its monopoly, the AMA sought to fix prices. Early on, the AMA had come to the conclusion that it was "unethical" for the consumer to have any say over what he paid. Common prices were transmuted into professional "fees," and the AMA sought to make them uniform across the profession. Lowering fees and advertising them were the worst violations of medical ethics and were made illegal. When fees were raised across the board, as they frequently could be with decreased competition, it was done in secret.

Then there was the problem of pharmacists selling drugs without a doctor's prescription. This was denounced as "therapeutic nihilism" and the American Pharmaceutical Association, controlled by the AMA, tried to stamp out this low-cost, in-demand practice. In nearly every state, the AMA secured laws that made it illegal for patients to seek treatment from a pharmacist. But still common were pharmacists who refilled prescriptions at customer request. The AMA lobbied to make this illegal, too, but most state legislatures wouldn't go along with this because of constituent pressure. The AMA got its way through the federal government, of course.

By the end of the Progressive Era, the AMA had triumphed over all of its competitors. Through the use of government power, it had come to control education, licensure, treatment, and price. Later it outcompeted fraternal medical insurance with the state-privileged and subsidized Blue Cross and Blue Shield. The AMA-dominated Blues, in addition to other benefits, gave us the egalitarian notion of "community rating," under which everyone pays the same price no matter what his condition.

The rest of the story wrote itself. A cartelized profession is one that is easier to control and nationalize. Thus the New Deal brought us massive national subsidies. The Great Society brought us the disastrous welfare systems of Medicare and Medicaid. There were also the HMO subsidies from the Nixon administration's monstrous Health Care Financing Administration. The employer-mandates that make life so difficult for small business and led to the creation of more HMOs resulted from the lobbying of large corporations wanting to impose higher costs on their competitors, and labor unions attempting to cartelize the labor force and keep out low-price labor services.

And today, both major parties say all this apparatus is wonderful and should be protected and expanded until the end of time. It is true that there are some wonderful efforts afoot to resist further socialization of medical care. But there are no active political movements alive that are making any progress toward a fully free market in medicine, toward a full de-Nazification, a complete de-Sovietization, and a total de-AMAization.

What kind of program should we adopt?

Several years ago, in the midst of the early 1990s medical care battles, UNLV economist Hans-Hermann Hoppe developed a plan that is extreme in its simplicity and radical in its implication. Let me present that plan to you today.

1. Eliminate all licensing requirements for medical schools, hospitals, pharmacies, and medical doctors and other medical-care personnel. This would cause the supply to increase. Prices would fall, and a greater variety of medical care services would appear on the market, many provided the way they are now but others provided through innovative new techniques. Many underground treatments would appear above ground.

And, yes, quackery would thrive. But as with other professions, competing voluntary accreditation agencies would take the place of compulsory government licensing, because consumers care about reputation, and are willing to pay for it. Consumers can make discriminating medical care choices, just as they make discriminating choices in every other market.

2. Eliminate all government restrictions on the production and sale of pharmaceutical products and medical devices. This means no more Food and Drug Administration, which presently hinders innovation and increases costs. Costs and prices would fall, and a wider variety of better products would reach the market sooner, particularly through online delivery sources. The market would force consumers to act in accordance with the market's risk assessment. And competing drug and device manufacturers and sellers, to safeguard against product liability suits as much as to attract customers, would provide increasingly better product descriptions and guarantees.

3. Deregulate the medical insurance industry. A person's health or lack of health lies increasingly within his own control, thanks to the proliferation of health information. Instead of subsidizing uninsurable risks, "insurance" would involve the pooling of individual risks. "Winners" and "losers" are distributed randomly. There would be unrestricted freedom of contract: a health insurer would be free to offer any contract whatsoever, to include or exclude any risk, and to discriminate among any groups of individuals. On average, prices would drastically fall, and the reform would restore individual responsibility in medical care.

Also, patients would be free to sign contracts with their doctors agreeing not to sue except in the case of real negligence, and never for a less-than-happy outcome.

4. Eliminate all subsidies to the sick or unhealthy. As Mises said, subsidies create more of whatever is being subsidized. Subsidies for the ill and diseased breed illness and disease, and promote carelessness, indigence, and dependency. If we eliminate them, we would strengthen the will to live healthy lives, and to work for a living. In the first instance, that means abolishing Medicare and Medicaid. Because medicine is an economic service, rules of demand and supply apply to it as they do to everything else.

So long as those choices are made in an unhampered market, and as long as people needing medical care can freely choose among alternatives, the system will work as smoothly as any other market. The so-called crisis in medicine stems not from any peculiarities in the service itself but rather in the way that politicians have decided that medical care will both be produced and distributed.

We need to reject the principles that drive socialized medicine. These include the ideas of equality and universal service as mandated by the state, as well as the view that it is the responsibility of business and not that of the individual to pay the costs of medical care. Above all, we need to get beyond this idea that medical care is a right. It is not. It is service like any other.

What about those who cannot afford much needed services? During the campaign, George W. had finished his speech and a hand shot up from a young lady who proceeded to complain that she could not afford a special device that would permit her to overcome her visual disability. Still relatively new to the campaign trail, Bush asked her how much the device would cost. She responded that it would cost about $400. W. then asked for someone in the audience to help this girl with the expenses, and in a few minutes, there was enough money pledged to make it possible for the girl to purchase the device.

The national press hooted and howled at the incident. They claimed that he missed the point, which was not to provide for the girl's particular need but rather to develop a national plan using the girl as a political prop. Actually, I liked Bush's idea better. He was suggesting that the girl had no natural right to the device. He believed it ought to be provided in the way all such luxuries are provided in a free market – through purchase or charity.

The Future

Judging from his more recent behavior, I don't believe we are justified in being optimistic about his plans for medical care. Neither do I believe that there is much hope in reforms that pretend to use market principles to better distribute medical care in the present system. Realistically, the best we can hope for is legislative gridlock, based on the principle that, first, do no more harm. To live by this principle means that you must ignore the partisan slogans that dominate the rhetoric of any proposed reform. Instead, you must live by this rule: carefully read any legislation before you offer your support.

Quite often some reforms sound great in principle – and I'm thinking here of gimmicks like educational vouchers and social security privatization – but once you look at the details, you find that the legislation would make the present system even worse. This was the case with the Republican health bill of the mid 1990s, which the AAPS fought so valiantly. I have no doubt the same is true of various proposals for Medical Savings Accounts. The power elite love nothing better than to turn a good reform idea into a cover for an increase in state power. Keep a watchful eye, and never believe the rhetoric until you see the bill itself.

So, yes, I am pessimistic about the legislative process. However, in the long term, I am cautiously optimistic about our overall situation. The exploding power of the market economy, and its ability to outrun and outperform the planners, is as evident in medical care as in every other industry. We've already begun to see the way in which the web has presented serious challenges to conventional forms of medical-care delivery.

The future will offer other opportunities. And we should seize each one, on the principle that all forms of welfare and state regulation deserve to be tossed in the dustbin of history along with the ideological system that gave them birth.

Llewellyn H. Rockwell, Jr. [send him mail] is president of the Ludwig von Mises Institute in Auburn, Alabama, editor of LewRockwell.com and author of Speaking of Liberty.

Copyright © 2000 LewRockwell.com











Hurrah! Healthcare Communism!

by Christian Sandström



DIGG THIS

In Sweden, healthcare is just fantastic. At least best in the world, according to ourselves, that is. If our miraculous welfare system would change only slightly, then we'll approach a turbo-capitalist disaster. The doors of hell will open, people will die on the streets, the hospitals will be destroyed by greedy Wall Street capitalists and the nurses will be exploited beyond recognition. This is very well known, among Swedes, that is.

The fact that the government produces, pays for (with our own money) and regulates the healthcare is something Swedes are proud of. But wait a minute, isn't this the very definition of a planned economy? Yes, indeed. What is wrong in a country where people love the fact that the rescuing of life and the treatment of ill people is organized in a way which history has proven to be the most stupid, incompetent, arrogant and bureaucratic system mankind has ever tried out?

Actually, when taking a closer look at Sweden's healthcare system, it becomes evident that it really works as a Soviet economy. One of the most obvious symptoms of communism is queuelines. The demand for a good becomes significantly larger than the supply of it. A good which is priced at zero will be overused, at the same time, the supply side will be reduced since there are no incentives to rationalize or move into the market. You know the scenery: empty shelves, people queueing up for rotten bread. Or rotten healthcare. In Sweden, our enchanted, beloved communist healthcare system lets people wait for more than two years before they can get certain surgeries. Welfare state? Hardly, except for the politicians and bureaucrats of course, who somehow manage to pass by the queues and enrich themselves at the expense of others. It almost sounds too Soviet to be true.

Bureaucracy is another characteristic of the planned economy. In Sweden, public doctors spend about 80 percent of their time dealing with administrative issues instead of curing patients. Division of labour is something the government has never understood, nor cared about. Healthcare bureaucrats and politicians have never been particularly keen to change things to the better since it may risk the status quo in which they enjoy their precious power and status. More money is the only thing the bureaucrats care about whereas the politicians love to steal it from people and coddle the bureaucrats with it. And of course, the scam is carried out in the holy name of "the general welfare".

Since the planned economy is not exposed to any economic control mechanisms the system will rot from inside. A black hole in the economy has been created, more and more money is thrown into darkness and nobody really knows what happens to it. The system will produce less and less, until one day, it will collapse, simply because people realize that it is useless. There are some indications of this in the Swedish healthcare. Private doctors in Sweden (there are a few, actually!) treat three times as many patients as public doctors. The amount of people who buy a private healthcare insurance in order to get decent healthcare is increasing rapidly, year after year.

So, are there any differences between a Soviet economy and the Swedish healthcare? Well, one difference is that we get to choose which shrewd, incompetent and arrogant central planners that should run our healthcare. How awesome! But the biggest difference is of course that the Soviet Union has collapsed and been thrown into the trashcan of history. The main reason for this is that the system created nothing but misery, oppression and starvation. These kinds of organizations will always die, sooner or later. Why would the Swedish healthcare communism present any exception to this experience?

August 14, 2006

[fermentor666]

Fuck Walmart, end of discussion.

[!@#$%]

haha.
no wonder i don't bother anymore.

[El Mamerro]

the consumer is sovereign. they can bring any market to its knees, by simply refusing to buy.



This always makes me laugh, because it's always uttered with such straight-faced conviction. While in theory true, any cursory glance over the real current state of consumer affairs will lead to the conclusion you interestingly enough arrive to about leftist ideology:


it simply defies reality.


I find it very hard to believe that in the current state of corporate and media influence it would even be remotely possible for consumers to exercise such power.

[!@#$%]

when you live in a world of ideals, anything is possible.

unfortunately, reality is pretty far away from such narrow minded and callous idealism as : cease subsidies to the ill.
as though ending subsidized health care for the genetically mutated would compete genetic mutations out of our gene pool.

[angelofdeath]

This always makes me laugh, because it's always uttered with such straight-faced conviction. While in theory true, any cursory glance over the real current state of consumer affairs will lead to the conclusion you interestingly enough arrive to about leftist ideology:





I find it very hard to believe that in the current state of corporate and media influence it would even be remotely possible for consumers to exercise such power.

the one flaw i see is that i dont see business owners, corporate elites, or the media holding guns to peoples heads forcing them to buy thier products or watch thier propaghanda. want to stop dependence on corporations? follow symbols example, dont use a car and dont use gas. its simple really. one cannot simply refuse to be governed. you cant refuse to pay taxes. etc. you will be shot. i see this as a huge difference between the people and the government.
but americans would rather complain about being fucked by ceo's, about wage gaps, about inequality, and worry about the latest tv show, than actually to do anything about anything or even learn about things. there is a huge huge difference between inequality of result, and outright violence/coercion.

just sayin'

[El Mamerro]

I know what you mean, but it's really naive to think that the only way corporations would make people buy their products is by gunpoint, or forcing them somehow. Your goal of free market success rests on the assumption that people would somehow miraculously wake up from their corporate-induced consumer stupor, which would require companies to radically change their marketing efforts. With total market freedom I can see the exact opposite happening; companies intensifying their efforts to keep a consumer base through even more subversive and dependence-forming means.

The day corporations consciously and legally redefine themselves to hold human benefit equal to profits, then I'll throw my vote in for total market freedom. I am aware that profits-above-all is a government mandated goal and companies technically don't have much choice, but I seeeeeeeriously doubt removing that legality through deregulation would prompt corporations to shift their priorities to a more humanitarian ideal.

I don't agree nationalization is the answer for the same reasons you posted. But there needs to be a serious revision of corporate law along with a period of adjustment to a new paradigm of corporate goals before letting the animal free. Otherwise it'll consume its new habitat while convicning everyone else in it that it's OK.

[angelofdeath]

"serious revision of corporate law"

the biggest change might include dropping that loose ass interpretation of the 14th amendment, giving corporations these stupid ass legal protections they get. that would be gone in a free market as well as corporate welfare, state sanctioned monopolies, etc etc. citizens would also be able to sue companies real easy, etc etc.

[Smart]

It's totally out of touch to think that a 'buyer's strike' is a legitimate attack on big business. Sure, it CAN be effective (and it is on a small scale) but when you want to talk about REAL boycotts then the effective word isn't 'buy'; it's 'sell'.

[seashell]

go walmart

[crews]

wal-mart umm ther aint one over in england wher im from but what does it ment to sel£$£$£$???...
:D

[HardyHarHar]

the one flaw i see is that i dont see business owners, corporate elites, or the media holding guns to peoples heads forcing them to buy thier products or watch thier propaghanda. want to stop dependence on corporations? follow symbols example, dont use a car and dont use gas. its simple really. one cannot simply refuse to be governed. you cant refuse to pay taxes. etc. you will be shot. i see this as a huge difference between the people and the government.
but americans would rather complain about being fucked by ceo's, about wage gaps, about inequality, and worry about the latest tv show, than actually to do anything about anything or even learn about things. there is a huge huge difference between inequality of result, and outright violence/coercion.

just sayin'

That's easy enough to do when you live in a city. But there are towns out there (from what I've heard) where A. you can't do shit without a car B. WalMart = everything that you used to be able to get on main street C. There's now no alternative, and if walmart leaves, the town will be even more fucked.

[HardyHarHar]

wal mart is to the great open spaces in the middle of he country, what crack was to housing projects in the 80s. A bunch of low-paying jobs and some crappy product that muscles all other business out of the area.

[ASER1NE]

I still love you wal mart.

[angelofdeath]

wal mart is to the great open spaces in the middle of he country, what crack was to housing projects in the 80s. A bunch of low-paying jobs and some crappy product that muscles all other business out of the area.

if they dont have a car, then they can take a horse or just good ol fashion walk to walmart.... but seriously fuck all this. just because self sufficient, and live in a log cabin, grow your own food and use indian remedies when you are sick. personally, im a nut job is sort of attracted to this kind of idea, but to the vast majority of the people in america, it is highly out of the question for them.
think about it. some of these mom and pop stores every one seems think are great, without flaw and indestructable, are far from it. being a conservative, im all about locality and localism, etc. i would much rather support a mom and pop place, but they hardly serve the good of the community as does a walmart. when a walmart opens up in appalachia, hundreds of jobs are created, and goods are provided at super cheap prices, in vast quantities, with reasonably good service. people come from miles around to shop at the store. the mom and pop store sold a fraction of what walmart does, at way higher prices, and employed hardly anyone from the community.

essentially what walmart is doing is beating everyone is a race. they are weeding out the inefficient and replacing the inefficient with a better way of serving customers. sure it sucks for mom and pop, but now thier standard of living has risen, and they can now move into more productive sectors of employment.

by hating walmart, what you are hating on is freedom.in particular economic freedom, which in a sense, without this type of freedom, no other freedom exists. you want to legislate walmart away. i want to have freedom to choose.

[soulkillers]

the sad thing is that some people dont see that wal mart does some good, or they see it but there judgement is clouded by the bad.where i live now walmart employs over 1000 people in a small county in nor cali and, that is just one of 4 wal mart centers between two smal countys no clue what the total number is. and it is not all low paying jobs. they are acutally some of the highest wages around. they do offer medical benifiets and a pretty low wages. not the best but it is better then nothng. they raise a large sum of money for local non profit groups and the money stays local. i am not saying that makes some of there b.s. ok but there is good sides to them. they are pretty strict on the meal and break polices now at least, heck you cant even talk to anyone in hr without having to be on the clock.
how i know this is i have fam that work there

[KARTOONKILLA]

JUST DON'T GO TO WAL-MART
BECAUSE ITS DIRTY NASTY AND
PLAIN OUT DISGUISTING OR JUST
GO THERE AND STICK IT TO THEM
BY RACKING ALL THIER PAINT

[fermentor666]

the sad thing is that some people dont see that wal mart does some good, or they see it but there judgement is clouded by the bad.where i live now walmart employs over 1000 people in a small county in nor cali and, that is just one of 4 wal mart centers between two smal countys no clue what the total number is. and it is not all low paying jobs. they are acutally some of the highest wages around. they do offer medical benifiets and a pretty low wages. not the best but it is better then nothng. they raise a large sum of money for local non profit groups and the money stays local. i am not saying that makes some of there b.s. ok but there is good sides to them. they are pretty strict on the meal and break polices now at least, heck you cant even talk to anyone in hr without having to be on the clock.
how i know this is i have fam that work there



How many small businesses had to close because Wal-Mart came into town?

[soulkillers]

How many small businesses had to close because Wal-Mart came into town?some have closed yes but more small family type shops open in the shoping centers around where a wal mart is built. but can any one prove that wal mart caused the bussniess to close. word of mouth is the best marketing around, if theses small family owne shops have a soild customer base they wont close. i myself would rather spennd a little more mone on something that if it has a problem the sales person can help me from a small buss. then go to walmart o buy the item and have the counter have no clue what it even is.
i see storees like michaels takeing out mom and pop stores.Malls take more out more small businessses than wally world.zuiemz,wet seal,safeway,the list goes on.wal mart provides more to the local econmy and job market then people give them credit. a lot of bias agaisnt wal marts has been started by union backers, due to wal marts lack of unions.

[tabloid-]

Walmart provides health insurance???? how can some one makeing minimum wage afford h.i.?

[angelofdeath]

walmart puts small businesses out of business. in a typical rural community, say maybe 5 small, family owned type businesses are displaced. what is walmart bringing to the community? hundreds of jobs, loads of cheap merchanise and food that helps the poor, and boosts everyones standard of living. the people in small business who are put out of business by walmart are now free to find another sector to produce in or compete with walmart on different grounds. for instance, walmart might sell wiper blades close to the cost that a local gas station might pay for them. but the gas station provides instant service and installs them for free. so you might pay 6.00 for a wiper blade at walmart, and its 12.95 at the gas station.
competition is good for everyone.

"how can some one makeing minimum wage afford h.i.?"

so, everyone who works at walmart, makes minimum wage? isnt the whole 'no one has healthcare that is poor," a myth? dont most of the people have a spouse or family member with coverage? arent most in good health, in high school, in thier early 20s' and just starting out? and dont they within 2 years make significantly more money than minimum wage, on average? i mean that is just what i have heard. of course, this puts a wrench in the gears of the mainstream media.

if you ask me walmart should get a medal... wheel chair bound folks who cannot produce anywhere else, are given jobs and have a chance to actually make a living.

if an employee doesnt like the terms of the contract in working for walmart, they are free to leave.

look, if i am at your house, and you have certain rules that are to be abided by, is it proper for me to form a union to put the government on my side to step in and and tell you that i want you to change the rules of your domain?
that is what people are trying to do. tell walmart how to run thier business. if people dont like the terms, they dont have to work for them, plain and simple. no one has a gun to the employees at walmart's heads to stock shelves without health insurance.


you must learn to look at the long term effects of economics and on all groups, not certain groups an short term effects.

[fermentor666]

walmart puts small businesses out of business. in a typical rural community, say maybe 5 small, family owned type businesses are displaced. what is walmart bringing to the community? hundreds of jobs, loads of cheap merchanise and food that helps the poor, and boosts everyones standard of living.




Right, so everything should look exactly the same? One big box-store community. Wal-Mart should just start building apartments inside their stores so that everyone can just live there, then they could eliminate the greeter job to save some precious money to install that new jacuzzi in the Walton family's billion dollar underground, Armageddon bunker.

Wal-Mart is not a better standard of living. Box stores, strip-mall communities, and mega-malls are not the answer to America's problems.

[soulkillers]

Walmart provides health insurance???? how can some one makeing minimum wage afford h.i.?wal mart doesnt pay minum wage for the most part. mal marts stores near reno nv where min wag is 5 15 start out around 8.00 plus some of there insurance plans cost as low as 30 dollars a month for one person

[soulkillers]

Right, so everything should look exactly the same? One big box-store community. Wal-Mart should just start building apartments inside their stores so that everyone can just live there, then they could eliminate the greeter job to save some precious money to install that new jacuzzi in the Walton family's billion dollar underground, Armageddon bunker.

Wal-Mart is not a better standard of living. Box stores, strip-mall communities, and mega-malls are not the answer to America's problems.true i is not the answer to americas problems but do you enjoy paying a higher price for a item that can be bought for a lower price? today it is all about shopping around for the best deal. the dollar is no longer a big sum of money. when you have a family of lets say 5 like mine it is more economical to shop at wally world then it is sally joes towels and like 3 others places to get the same same styuff from wal mart in one trip for less money less useae of gas and oil and less smog created.

[fermentor666]

Yes, low prices are good. But at what cost? And if Wal-Marts and Best Buys and all the other national boxes drive every small, independent out of business, then it would be the same as big government (argument applies mainly to AOD).

[angelofdeath]

who has a gun to peoples heads making them shop at strip malls, walmarts and best buys?

the consumers have a choice, and they have spoken.
plain and simple.

[soulkillers]

wal mart is big brother.

[fermentor666]

who has a gun to peoples heads making them shop at strip malls, walmarts and best buys?

the consumers have a choice, and they have spoken.
plain and simple.



Who has to hold the gun up when there's no alternative choice? It's the same as your fear of an omniscient, all-powerful government.

By your logic, since the people spoke when they voted in every president since whenever it was that you think was the last good American president, then all those presidents since then have been amazing leaders.

People are stupid, and they do not always choose what is best for themselves.

[angelofdeath]

"Who has to hold the gun up when there's no alternative choice? It's the same as your fear of an omniscient, all-powerful government."

you dont understand the difference between voluntary institutions and governments, which is why i sound like a broken record all the time. there is NOTHING forcing people to shop and work at walmart. NOTHING. it is VOLUNTARY CHOICE!!!!! there is no such thing as voluntary government. if you dont like it, you will be shot. if you dont pay taxes, you will be shot if you forcibly resist. if you dont follow EPA wetland laws you will be sent to jail. if you dont want to shop at walmart, you simply dont have to. no one is going to shoot you. the minute businesses begin using coercion, i will not support them, just like i dont support the government.

the left hates monopoly... there is no such thing as a monopoly in the free market. if someone drives people out of business with 'predatory pricing' the minute they try to raise up to 'monopoly' prices you are inviting competition back in.
the real monopoly is government, with the force of coercion right behind them. they dont have to satisfy anyone, they get thier money reguardless. if walmart doesnt satisfy customers, they are out of business.

try to abolish a government. its pretty hard and you basically have no choice. abolishing a voluntarily institution is comparatively easy. a market can be brought to its knees by refusing to buy, a church goes belly up with no interest in faith, etc. the priest insnt going to shoot you and the ceo isnt going to try to hang you if you dont shop at his place.
think about it... what makes slavery so bad? was it the work? the singing of songs? the living on the plantation? no it was not being allowed to leave and being FORCED by a whip to work.

[yumone]

I think the reason most people hate walmart and have these baseless rants and grievances against it is because they can't accept that people are responsible for their own actions. Fuck walmart wouldnt exist if MOST people didn't want ti buy their goods. The fact is that most people do want the cheapest prices possible and if buying shit from walmart is going to relocate a small business owner to a different part of the economy i dont give a shit.

The way i see it is people have two choices
1. They either live in a free market system and accept that the fundamentals of the system wont change for the interests fo a small minority.

2. They grow some balls and stop wasting the money they earn on shit they dont need and if they really dotn want to take part in a free market economy then they become self sufficient or start a collective. People are so soft these days they sit in their urban or suburban computer rooms crying abotu how unfair society and life is yet they are too scared to change their lifestyle and buy a property where they can grow food and hunt and live sustainably. Seriously im a student earning 20 dollars an hour doing abotu 20 hours a week and just because i dont buy all the latest tv's, trendy clothes and other useless shit like that I am never in want of money and save enough to easily afford holidays and the like the few times a year i want them. Whereas one of my workmates who is earning about 200 dollars a week more than me is broke at the end of every fornight because hes always got to buy some gay pair of jeans or a fuckign xbox game.

ANYONE can earn enough money to live and save as logn as they dotn waste what they get. And the best thing is there are always prospects for advancement for hard workers and the fact is if your situation is unbelievably fucked liek you are a single mother supporting kids then the government actually DOES help you.

[fermentor666]

You're both missing the bigger picture, and AOD you're missing the point.

[yumone]

what's the bigger picture?

[fermentor666]

I've laid it out, already. Go read some books, some science fiction, some non-fiction, connect the dots yourselves. What you are defending is a soulless monster that eats up anything in it's path. And any attack of this monster is labelled as communism by you guys, or socialism. It's the exact fucking thing you attack the government for doing.

Don't you see that the government and corporations have long since merged together?? This is old fucking news, so yeah, pretty soon people will be holding a gun to your fucking head and telling you to shop at Walmart.

[angelofdeath]

the current corporate state merger is not capitalism. it is mercantilism/corporate capitalism/fascism. whatever you want to call it. you see, businesses generally want handouts, monopoly priviledge, protectionism, tariffs and subsidies. the free market does not support any of this. under laissez faire, walmart has no power to force anyone to do something they dont want to do. the consumer is sovereign and controls everything. under government, they use coercion to tell you to do stuff.
as explained before. try to abolish a government. destroying a business is relatively easy and it happens all the time. you simply refrain from buying. you can destroy a church because people dont want to worship God.
you have no choice in the matter of living under government, unless you take arms to forcibly resist. and you will most likely be killed.

[fermentor666]

Again, missing the point. Our president and his father are fucking oil barons. Bush II was in the corporate world for years. People are electing guys who run cable giants and investing firms. It's the product of capitolism and BY YOUR LOGIC, it means that capitolism is bad. It's not what I personally think, but BY YOUR LOGIC, it is a failure. Look at our country and the direction in which it is turning. All Sam Walton has to do is RUN for office, and he'll win because he will have the most money. Your arguments, which I do read now, have lost all credibility by your defense of corporatization. "Just don't buy there and they'll be destroyed"... yeah fucking right dude, yeah fucking right.

[angelofdeath]

capitalism is not state/corporate capitalism/business state merger.
the free market offers no preferences to anyone. it doesnt just eliminate welfare hand outs to the poor, it eliminates welfare handouts to the rich companies. businesses are just as much against the free market as any lefty.

capitalism is a system in which all property is privately owned, and the government stays completely out of it. what we have now is a system of endless interventions into the economy, from the left and from the right. the more capitalism you have, the more freedom you have. private property is essential to freedom because it gives you a domain to be free from the state.

in short, AMERICA HASNT HAD CAPITALISM IN EFFECT FOR A CENTURY! the reason why americans are so much more prosperous than jsut about everyone else in the world is because we waited so long until we started intervening in the economy.

i am not defending 'corporatization' i am defending freedom. how is walmart hurting you if they cant coerce you? why was slavery bad? its not the work that was bad, its the fact that they couldnt leave the plantation or work voluntarily.
walmart is not coercing you to do anything. it isnt destroying anything. it is increasing everyones living standards. the poor today are richer than most of the rich people a century ago. these 'rich' barely had running water and electricity, now the 'poor' today have electricity, multiple cars, hot tubs, etc. all thanks to capitalism, and capitalism alone.

[Blood Feast Island Man]

ANYONE can earn enough money to live

not true.
my 2 cents:
the multi-conglomerates(sp?) in argentina offer people 20 centavos for every glass bottle they return. As a direct result of this, gun crime has decreased because the people that were previously out robbing tourists at gunpoint now rip open binbags to find glass bottles.
Wal mart/etc are truly ruthless regarding how they treat staff but the reality is there are a lot of people in this world that can't afford to live in an area dominated by small family run business.
whatevs.

[angelofdeath]

allow me to get in on the walmart bashing......
i dont like walmart because the lines are usually long, the staff is horrible and most are horribly trained, and the stores are always crowded. its getting to the point where i would rather pay a little extra and get good service and go to target.

if everyone still lived in areas ran by family run businesses, im sure someone would be saying how the family run businesses are paying employees to little, and how the selection of goods is horrible. family run business is a hard hard thing. i know first hand. its not easy.

im sure people would be coming out against the 'inhumane' hours small business owners are 'FORCED' to work, because of that greedy profit incentive and to simply have enough income to pay the bills to keep the store open another day. lefties in america today are already yammering about 40 hour work weeks being to long, what if we went back to all family owned businesses where people are working 60+ hours every week just to get by??
why not just stop being hypocrites and come out against any sort of trade or barter at all, because after all it 'exploits' people. history has proven how the living standards were under self sufficient lifestyles or under socialism.

[russell jones]

lefties in america today .



I'm ambidextrous.

[yumone]

I've laid it out, already. Go read some books, some science fiction, some non-fiction, connect the dots yourselves. What you are defending is a soulless monster that eats up anything in it's path. And any attack of this monster is labelled as communism by you guys, or socialism. It's the exact fucking thing you attack the government for doing.

Don't you see that the government and corporations have long since merged together?? This is old fucking news, so yeah, pretty soon people will be holding a gun to your fucking head and telling you to shop at Walmart.

Haha mate I don't know a single person who reads more than i do and i've been reading GOOD books of all genres for many years. Don't try to school me and pidgeon hole me without responding to a single thing i said. i've never labelled anyone a communist or socialist for hatign wallmart. I fucking loathe wallmart as much as i do every business that puts profits over people and the environment.

Read what i said man its completely unconducive with the principles of coproratism. All i said is i'm sick of hearing cowards whigne about the state of the world without extracting themselves from the problem and making a solution on a personal level. It seems like you want to have your cake and eat it too. You can't have personal liberty without allowing individuals to choose what they want to buy and where they want to buy it from. If people want to buy cheaper useless crap from one place instead of another why the fuck do you care? ANd if pople dont want to work for crappy supermarket wages they can get a different job (thats what i did) or go and hunt wild animals and live off the land.worry about your own life instead of tryign to tell everyone else what to do. If people wise up they will change the entire way they live not just change from shopping in one shithole to a smaller one.

[soulkillers]

wal mart is a "american dream" in a sense. it was at one time a mom and pop 5 and dime.it has grown over the last 30 yrs to be a very large company.until the last few yrs it was the fastest growing comp in usa, and the world. wal mart has sold off parts of itd european operations because it was getting to big for itself. alot of negative wal mart publicty is from union backed orgiantions(sp).Unions want a peice of the wal mart pie. 1.6 millon are employed by wal mart.so if they all paid unions dues do the math. at the store level is the lowest paid in the wal mart chain, but genarly get paid over min wage and offered medical benifts.75 percent of wal mart managment is hired from within so for some joe blow without a degree from collage can make themselves a better life. wal mart is one of the lagrest contributers to the united way and childrens miracle network, both are non profit orgiantions(sp). how many large corps do that. yes i have been to bad walmarts and good ones but that is like any company. for people like my self it is more cost effecitve to shop at wal mart having 3 kids then it is to go to small more expensives bussiness to get all the needs for my family. i

[angelofdeath]

dont forget about all the people in wheelchairs, and with mental and physical retardation that are given the opportunity to work. you cant say that about most other places of employment.

[fermentor666]

You're just not getting it. AOD, please don't explain capitalism to me, I know what it is. What we are living in is the result of capitalism, just like Stalin's cold, icy grip on Soviet humanity was the result of communism. There's no proof that capitalism is the right way, and it has clearly failed to large regard in this country. If you don't recognize the merger of corporations and government you're a fool, I'm not even talking about capitalism. When the apocolypse hits, the Waltons and their ilk will emerge from their bunkers and they'll be the new government, along with whatever other billionaires have emerged from de-regulation and corporate tax cuts. I'm not advocating the forced closing of all Wal-Marts, they have the same right as everyone else to open up a store, I'm talking about putting up some metaphorical levees to prevent these situations where one city of about 100,000 people has four Wal-Marts. If you can't see the parallels between corporations and government of our era and the church and monarchies of the middle ages, then you have no right talking politics.

I'm singling Wal-Mart out as an easy example, but I'm also referring to the likes of Clear Channel, McDonald's, etc. It's not just physical damage they do but mental damage. It's all a blight on culture and a complete step backwards. The forefathers of our country did not envision a place where this entire great land would be filled with the same exact handful of stores and five companies would own 98% of the media outlets along with stores and brand names to boot. In 1983 there were fifty companies that owned the mass media in America, now there are five. That's how capitalism has failed this country.

I'm for capitalism. I believe if you work hard, you deserve the spoils. But like a lot of other philosophers, I believe that no one deserves all of the spoils. The arguments you are putting out for Wal-Mart are useless and ignore the actual, complicated reality. An argument like "they're not holding a gun up to your head, the people can just go shop somewhere else" is so broadly ignorant of the past, present, and future that it holds no water at all. And you still can't offer a real response to how that argument directly contradicts your arguments on modern government. Saying that "the government can arrest you, blah blah" is on some conspiracy level, since you won't get shot or imprisoned for voting in this country.

[fermentor666]

http://www.walmartmovie.com/


Watch that movie.


When I went up to rural Maine over the summer, I didn't see a chain store for some thirty or so miles at least. It was the most refreshing thing I've felt in years. What happens when a Wal-Mart store gets opened in a place like that? What do we lose mentally, culturally, and naturally? A lot.


What America is doing by spreading these corporations and "democracy" all around the world is the same shit that Marx believed should happen with communism. In fact, he believed that by doing what "capitalism" has done, industrializing third world countries, it would lead to a global "unity", aka global communism, the final philosophical solution. So using YOUR arguments: "You're a communist!" Of course, I'm making a very simplistic statement but then again, so are you. AOD, what happened to you? Did you get so mad about how piss-poor this country has been run since the slaves were freed that you lost all sense of reality and pretend that we're all still living in the 19th century, and that your arguments are fresh ones that are completely relevant when it comes to corporate monoliths?

[yumone]

I agree with you fermentor
I think the point where we differ is the teleology of the matter. I Think that big corporations and homogeny are a result of how pathetic most humans are. From what you've said i gather that you think the causation originates from the corporations and rich folk. I'm a firm believer that each man is the maker of his own destiny. People create corporate entities and support their agendas, corporate entities cater to the lowest common denominator in people which would seem to be greed.

[soulkillers]

fermentor is there any unbiased movies bashing wal mart?there was one on nova/pbs that was a farce(sp). i asm not baking wal mart i just want to be better informed. wal mart issued rougly every 15 mins.

[angelofdeath]

you dont know what capitalism is. capitalism is absence of state power. there is no state involved in capitalism. capitalism never 'failed' it only 'failed' when the socialist progressives said it did. they intervened, which is leading to the 'failures' of today. capitalism isnt a failure, socialism is, which is what we are dealing with. we are dealing with a capitalism that is mixed with socialism.

surely i recognize the merge of government and companies. this is just as wrong as the merging of government and unions. big corporations are just as much against a free market as a union is.
COMPANIES HAVE NO COERCIVE POWERS! governments do. if a company tries to kill you because you dont shop at walmart, they go to jail and are punished. if a government kills you because you didnt properly fill out your 1040 form, they get a free pass and are given more money and more power to 'combat' the problem of not filling out 1040's right.

"nd you still can't offer a real response to how that argument directly contradicts your arguments on modern government. Saying that "the government can arrest you, blah blah" is on some conspiracy level, since you won't get shot or imprisoned for voting in this country."

democracy is the god that failed. it is no better than a monarchy or a totalitarian regime. democracy is the tyranny of the majority. allow me to illustrate in a subject you would understand. in the 18th century, a majority decided that a certain class of human beings were not allowed to enjoy liberty. these were slaves. a majority, can easily vote away your rights. a majority can easily impose its will on you. we are a nation of laws, not men. we had a republican government set up for us after the american revolution, not a democracy. there was a written constitution to check the people. various other checks were also included. so with this peice of paper, the legislators arent supposed to be able to abridge free speech or gun ownership. i would also submit, that our constitution is a gigantic failure. how can you actually expect a government to limit its own power, when the government itsself decides how much power it has? democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb voting on whats for dinner. liberty is a well armed lamb contesting the vote.

the difference between political democracy and economic democracy is that in a political democracy, you are COERCED to do things you dont want to. individual rights are not protected, because unless there is a 100% unanimous vote, some may not consent to a law or action. a economic democracy, is different because no one forces you to do anything. there is always an out. you are not coerced, every thing is voluntary. the market simply allocates goods and services and satisfies its sovereign consumers. the market is the ultimate individualism, because 'evil corporations' CANNOT EXIST WITHOUT CONSENT OF THE CONSUMERS. they will fail.
the moment the government becomes voluntary, then your argument you are trying to pull will make sense, otherwise, you are to distorted by your liberal ideology to understand the truth.

" What America is doing by spreading these corporations and "democracy" all around the world is the same shit that Marx believed should happen with communism"

american shouldnt be coercing anyone to do anything. democracy is the original liberal wilsonian vision to be spread around the world. it is not a 'conservative' thing. i despise democracy. no one is spreading 'corporations' around the world at gun point. last time i checked local people in 3rd world countries were LINING up to work for the evil capitalist pigs who pay 3 times as much as in country business.
its not that im against socialism, democracy, corporatism or communism or even statist liberalism, its a matter if you are forcing someone to do something with threat of violence or not. if it is voluntary and you are not forcing someone else to do something, then it is fine in my book. families, local tight knit communities, monasteries, communes, are all basically socialist, but they are not the COERCIVE socialist variety. you advocate coercion in a number of areas. this is bad.

as i said before, it wasnt the picking cotton, singing songs or the working that made slavery bad, it was the fact that someone was cracking a whip on your back FORCING you do to it.

its called the non aggression axiom. you are only justified in using force if your life, liberty or property are in danger, and aggression is totally forbidden.

[yumone]

man how can you say it is the fault of democracy that there was slavery when it was under your revered republican system that slavery was perpetrated? what is a republic system but a democracy of states? laws are changed just as easily and the states themselves function on a democratic level

[angelofdeath]

yum, thanks for pointing out a fault in republicanism. as i said in my argument, a republican government protects individual rights way better than a democracy or a monarchy or anything else. no government is perfect. anarcho capitalism has its downsides/weaknesses. so i see no such thing as a perfect government. my argument is democracy has led to more violence and tyranny than our brief history of quasi republicanism.
which is why private property is so important to preserve liberty.

[Hullucination]

fuck wal mart

[fermentor666]

you dont know what capitalism is. capitalism is absence of state power. there is no state involved in capitalism. capitalism never 'failed' it only 'failed' when the socialist progressives said it did. they intervened, which is leading to the 'failures' of today. capitalism isnt a failure, socialism is, which is what we are dealing with. we are dealing with a capitalism that is mixed with socialism.




Are you kidding me? The only socialism seems to be going towards the military and corporations these days. People are getting less and less of the pennies that go towards social programs. There's no FUCKING SOCIALISM IN THE US!! I know what capitalism is. Here is the definition of "capitalist":

American Heritage Dictionary (http://dictionary.reference.com/help/ahd4.html) - Cite This Source (http://dictionary.reference.com/cite.html?qh=capitalism&ia=ahd4) cap·i·tal·ism (kāp'ĭ-tl-ĭz'əm) \ (http://cache.lexico.com/help/ahd4/pronkey.html)
n. An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development is proportionate to the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.

Like I said, I DO NOT ARGUE WITH THIS METHOD. I believe it works, but it is dependant on the good will of those who make the money to take care of the rest of the people in society. Most of them don't! Certainly not proportionatly. Business executives are walking away with $50 million severance packages after getting FIRED!!! This is why capitalism doesn't work and BY YOUR LOGIC it's the same reason that government doesn't work. I'm not sure why you keep ignoring this issue.

[fermentor666]

What you want is a complete abolition of democracy, and since you don't want a totalitarian state or a dictatorship or a fascist state or communism or socialism, the only thing you could possibly want now is anarchy. WELL THAT'S NOT GOING TO FUCKING WORK DUDE!! That shit worked back before the Sumarians, when we were all living in caves and the woods. The Indians had an anarchist-like society. Anarchy will never have a place in society unless there is a nuclear holocaust. Then it will be all we have. It's like the end of Fight Club (the film), where he comes to terms with the inevitable conflict between his lifestyle and his complete infatuation with his alter-ego's ideology declares destruction as the answer. Anarchy is achieved.

But that doesn't explain why you lapdog onto the Wal-Mart chain. It's not about Libertarianism, it's not about free markets. Wal-Mart works to end free-markets, by shutting down all the other markets. Watch the documentary.


"fermentor is there any unbiased movies bashing wal mart?there was one on nova/pbs that was a farce(sp). i asm not baking wal mart i just want to be better informed. wal mart issued roughly every 15 mins."

Nova is unbiased, generally. I haven't seen that one and I wouldn't be surprised if it was completely non-biased. The "liberal conspiracy" bullshit is a myth and has been disproved in research studies. If you think it's biased it's because you're don't like the answer they came up with. That's your problem, not theirs. The documentary I posted has a bias, but it is not accusatory, it is investigatory/advocacy. Plus, Wal-Mart didn't really want to comment on camera just like McDonald's refused to participate in "Super-Size Me".

[angelofdeath]

":I believe it works, but it is dependant on the good will of those who make the money to take care of the rest of the people in society. "

when you keep saying this stuff, you keep showing me you dont understand what laissez faire is.
then you keep saying that 'by my logic' its the same reason why govt doesnt work. which makes absolutely no sense. you act as if you simply smashed every free market economists work since adam smith. its just getting laughable.

as ayn rand points out: "captialism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned."

free market: "Business governed by the laws of supply and demand, not restrained by government interference, regulation or subsidy."

our market has more interventions in it than one can count, this is NOT laissez faire capitalism. we had a good picture of laissez faire before the constitution was written and up until the progressive era, except for a few brief periods in the 19th century.


"the only thing you could possibly want now is anarchy. WELL THAT'S NOT GOING TO FUCKING WORK DUDE!! That shit worked back before the Sumarians, when we were all living in caves and the woods. The Indians had an anarchist-like society. Anarchy will never have a place in society unless there is a nuclear holocaust. Then it will be all we have. It's like the end of Fight Club (the film), where he comes to terms with the inevitable conflict between his lifestyle and his complete infatuation with his alter-ego's ideology declares destruction as the answer. Anarchy is achieved.

But that doesn't explain why you lapdog onto the Wal-Mart chain. It's not about Libertarianism, it's not about free markets. Wal-Mart works to end free-markets, by shutting down all the other markets. Watch the documentary.
"

sorry man, i already expressed my disdain for anarchy. i said that republicanism/classical liberalism is the way to go, and that anarchy wouldnt work.
walmart isnt shutting down any market, they are satisfying thier customers. look dude, you simply dont understand economics so i dont know why i try. IF WALMART DOESNT SATISFY ITS CUSTOMERS AND PEOPLE DONT BUY FROM THEM, THEY GO OUT OF BUSINESS. no one is forcing people to go there, people are choosing to go there. your objective is to get rid of walmart. by doing this you will eliminate economic liberty, for both walmart and the consumer, and you will have successfully intervened for the worse.
you hate freedom. you cant stand the fact that people control the market, and not the government. you hate the free market because it offers cheap goods, everything is done on a voluntary basis and it increases the prosperity of everyone.

competition is good for everyone. predatory pricing is a total myth. monopolies are non existent in the free market, but some how the left always comes out in favor of government sponsored monopolies, like in power companies, cable companies and phone companies.

[El Mamerro]

Angelofdeath, you're still on the "nobody's holding a gun to their head" mindset, which you and I and everyone knows is fucking horseshit. People are constantly being manipulated in a variety of different ways to make decisions that don't favor them as customers.

[yumone]

ANd that's their fault for being idiots of course a company is going to try to trick people through advertising to buy their useless crap. It's up to people to be intelligent and possess enough self control to not fall into that trap. If a person is dumb enough to continuously waste their money on shit they dont need then it's their own fault that they are debt ridden wage slaves.

why is it so impossible for most people to accept responsibility for their own actions? Its because of people with this mindest that its always someone elses fault that society is as fucked up as it is on so many levels today.

[angelofdeath]

"It's up to people to be intelligent and possess enough self control to not fall into that trap. If a person is dumb enough to continuously waste their money on shit they dont need then it's their own fault that they are debt ridden wage slaves."

you make very good points yum. you understand the voluntary action of it all. i laugh when im at walmart and low income people are walking out with 2 tv's, 3 grills, nine dvd players and another cart full of toys. but hey, where is it my place to criticize them or talk trash on thier lives.

people just cant realize that people are doing it to themselves, that thier choices are voluntary, etc.
hell, alcohol wrecks an amazing amount of homes, it is perfectly legal, but im smart enough to not drink at all, becuase i know the possible ramifications. blowing your whole paycheck on the lottery and a new tv instead of buying your family something to eat, it simply retarded.

people feel the need to blame peoples own choices on something, something that FORCED them to be that way. when in fact, it was simply voluntary choice.

[El Mamerro]

It's up to people to be intelligent and possess enough self control to not fall into that trap. If a person is dumb enough to continuously waste their money on shit they dont need then it's their own fault that they are debt ridden wage slaves.

Oh come-the-fuck-ON. I'm waiting for some scientist to find the magic Intelligence Switch in our brains so we can get over this minor obstacle. And they say liberals are idealists...

If it turned out that English was bad for you, and you weren't aware of it, would you learn another language? Of course not, cause you still think English is perfectly fine, and everyone around you speaks English and tells you it's fine. And even if you were aware, English permeates your life to such an extent it simply isn't a realistic option to completely do away with it and start from scratch. Even the companies that sell "Learn to Speak Italian!" tapes want you to speak English. How the fuck are you supposed to leave English behind? It's impossible to get rid of English in your brain, even if you speak a different language for the rest of your life, you're still gonna think in English.

It's fine and dandy to believe one is completely in control of one's decisions, but when a certain way of life and culture is ingrained into your way of thinking and decision-making from the moment you were born (when you AREN'T in control, and when information settles into unwavering compartments of objectivity), that level of control doesn't seem so well-defined. It's like asking a computer to go against it's own architecture without providing the necessary code. Education is geared towards continuing this mode of thinking, and here you are, saying with a straight face that everyone, no matter what the circumstances they've lived in, can just switch it off with no outside influence whatsoever. That "code" will just magically appear in their brains.

C'mon man, be realistic here. The world and it's influence on people is a very, very complex relationship that can't be dismissed with a simple "If you don't like it, don't do it" mentality.

[yumone]

that's bullshit mate how do you explain all the people that have grown up in exactly those conditions and see the circumstances for what they are? Your analogy with a computer is ridiculously flawed, are you tryign to say that a human being is completely incapable of creative thought and action?

I was taught plenty of things as a child that i see as fallacious now that im older and slightly wiser. Just because you accept information without criticism when you are younger doesnt mean that you retain that information when you are older and continue to exempt it from critical examination.

I'm sorry but I was raised by a mother who just loves to buy useless crap in a household where we played video games and watched tv till the cows came home and through my own self education, by looking at the world around me, i've developed a moral code through which i take responsibility for my own actions and don't blame some obscure corporate or government entity for my woes.

If as you claim people aren;t aware that the way they are living is wrong, which i agree with you they dont, then how else are they going to realsie this and ammend their ways if not through their own actions? you want another entity to impose its will on them by forcing it down their throats that what they are doign is wrong? having them as useless receptacles just waiting to be told how to live?

i'm sorry but the only way out of a conundrum that affects society is through change in its lowest common denominator, the individual. WHen people start taking responsibility for the shit they do instead of blaming it on an obscure entity you'll see real progress in the way we live and altruism, until then theyre just sheep whether for good or evil

[El Mamerro]

that's bullshit mate how do you explain all the people that have grown up in exactly those conditions and see the circumstances for what they are?

Outside influence. They didn't just one day wake up and say "Oh, wait a second!"

Your analogy with a computer is ridiculously flawed, are you tryign to say that a human being is completely incapable of creative thought and action?

Dude, pick up a psychology book one of these days. There is plenty of research that shows that information that you receive and is reinforced as a very young child becomes hardwired into your brain. Removing said information and behavior is a VERY difficult endeavour.


you want another entity to impose its will on them by forcing it down their throats that what they are doign is wrong? having them as useless receptacles just waiting to be told how to live?


No, I want corporations to be held accountable for their effect on society. I want the current legal definition of corporations to be revised so that they are NOT considered individual human beings. I want corporations to have by legal definition a double bottom line, one that has accountability both for shareholders and society, and not a definition that legally FORCES them to only act in the interest of profitability.

WHen people start taking responsibility for the shit they do instead of blaming it on an obscure entity you'll see real progress in the way we live and altruism, until then theyre just sheep whether for good or evil


This

will

never

happen.

You place way too much faith in the individual, which is fine when talking about things on the individual level, but when talking about society as a whole, it's a whole different story. As much as you want to believe that society is a group of individuals, society IS an individual, subject to many of the same characteristics and behaviors that make up ant colonies, however more complex human beings are than ants. To change the behavior of a colony of ants, you don't affect them individually. It's practically next to impossible to achieve significant change this way. It's like saying you can aleviate traffic congestion by putting better brakes on every car. If you redefine the environment the colony lives in, individuals have a much easier time adjusting to it. It's the natural way colonies react to the environment in an efficient manner, on a massive level, not individual.

[AllTheWrongWords]

Just kinda throwing this out there...

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/10/politics/main2344643.shtml

The House voted to raise the federal minimum wage Wednesday for the first time in a decade, to $7.25 an hour, as majority Democrats marched briskly through their 100-hour agenda at the dawn of a new Congress.

Ebullient Democrats stood and cheered as the final vote - 315-116 - was announced.

"For 10 years the lowest-paid Americans have been frozen out," said Rep. George Miller of California, berating Republicans who had refused for years to allow a vote on a stand-alone minimum wage increase.

"The little guy is not going to be forgotten any longer," said Rep. Bill Pascrell, whose district includes gritty Paterson, N.J. He estimated the increase would mean an additional $4,400 a year for a family of three.

"The small businessmen we are trying to help for the most part are little guys," countered Rep. Howard McKeon, R-Calif. He said Republicans favor an alternative coupling a minimum wage increase with tax breaks for small businesses.

Other Republicans argued that raising the minimum wage would hurt employment chances for the lowest-paid workers.

The legislation, which now goes to the Senate, would raise the current $5.15 minimum to $5.85 effective 60 days after the measure became law. The minimum would go to $6.55 a year later and $7.25 a year after that.

How will this affect Wal-Mart?

[angelofdeath]

"No, I want corporations to be held accountable for their effect on society. I want the current legal definition of corporations to be revised so that they are NOT considered individual human beings. I want corporations to have by legal definition a double bottom line, one that has accountability both for shareholders and society, and not a definition that legally FORCES them to only act in the interest of profitability."

sounds like a 1930's soviet propagandha poster... :)

[yumone]

"Dude, pick up a psychology book one of these days."
hahaha i'm a psychology major buddy. Extinction of behavioural patterns goes hand in hand with learning. Rats behaviour can be extincted by simply replacing the conditioning however over the past decades theories of conditioning as the be all and end all in human learning have been refuted heavily and COGNITIVE psychologists believe that insight plays a large role in learning. So no we are not just bland products of our environment we effect it like it effects us. And it is a lot mroe complex than simply growing up in a certain environment. One single instance of influence can be mroe powerful than a long period of indoctrinisation if you have a logical and inquisitive mind.

"No, I want corporations to be held accountable for their effect on society. I want the current legal definition of corporations to be revised so that they are NOT considered individual human beings. I want corporations to have by legal definition a double bottom line, one that has accountability both for shareholders and society, and not a definition that legally FORCES them to only act in the interest of profitability."

Hey me too but thta would be the removal of an institution rather than its replacement.



"You place way too much faith in the individual, which is fine when talking about things on the individual level, but when talking about society as a whole, it's a whole different story. As much as you want to believe that society is a group of individuals, society IS an individual, subject to many of the same characteristics and behaviors that make up ant colonies, however more complex human beings are than ants. To change the behavior of a colony of ants, you don't affect them individually. It's practically next to impossible to achieve significant change this way. It's like saying you can aleviate traffic congestion by putting better brakes on every car. If you redefine the environment the colony lives in, individuals have a much easier time adjusting to it. It's the natural way colonies react to the environment in an efficient manner, on a massive level, not individual."

Its very true that it is much easier t oeffect people hwen doing it broadly across society but the question is what method could be used for this in the face of something as insidious as consumerism? I dont think anything could be done in terms of a government role that wouldnt be a gross infringement on individual rights and that also wouldnt be open to plenty of abuse. I'm a big fan of the phrase 'think globally act localy', I dont think any such change could sweep across our deluded western society unless its in the form of each individual person wanting a more fulfilling and sustainable lifestyle. OF course i think this should be facilitated through MUCH better public education but not through any legislation. Maybe i;m naieve and jsut think that if people are educated better they will automatically be more moral people but hey its better than any of the alternatives that i can see.

[fermentor666]

":I believe it works, but it is dependant on the good will of those who make the money to take care of the rest of the people in society. "

when you keep saying this stuff, you keep showing me you dont understand what laissez faire is.
then you keep saying that 'by my logic' its the same reason why govt doesnt work. which makes absolutely no sense. you act as if you simply smashed every free market economists work since adam smith. its just getting laughable.

as ayn rand points out: "captialism is a social system based on the recognition of individual rights, including property rights, in which all property is privately owned."

free market: "Business governed by the laws of supply and demand, not restrained by government interference, regulation or subsidy."

our market has more interventions in it than one can count, this is NOT laissez faire capitalism. we had a good picture of laissez faire before the constitution was written and up until the progressive era, except for a few brief periods in the 19th century.


Dude, you are a fucking joke. You really are. Here it is, let me explain your logic again to you:

You say: People have the right to decide where they want to shop. They have chosen Wal-Mart, and therefore it is the best choice.

Your say: America's political system has been corrupted ever since Abraham Lincoln forced all the states to end slavery by federal power, and every politician since has been working against the people.

The United States of America = Governed by Democracy. The people vote for their representatives on state and federal levels, both for excutive and legislative positions. The individual with the majority vote becomes elected to such positions.

Your logic on Big-Box retailers (Wal-Mart/Target/Best Buy/etc): People shop there, and because enough people do it to make the store a successful business, there is nothing wrong with that store because the people have spoken.

Your logic on Politicians: Enough people voted for, say, a Democrat who believes in free health care but those people are wrong and it is bad for the country. Even though it is clear that the majority of the people wanted this politician in power, they are wrong and don't understand politics.

However, the fat shits that shop at Wal-Mart obviously know what is best for them and their country, what's best for their environment, what's best for their psychological state.

YOU ARE A HYPOCRITE!



"the only thing you could possibly want now is anarchy. WELL THAT'S NOT GOING TO FUCKING WORK DUDE!! That shit worked back before the Sumarians, when we were all living in caves and the woods. The Indians had an anarchist-like society. Anarchy will never have a place in society unless there is a nuclear holocaust. Then it will be all we have. It's like the end of Fight Club (the film), where he comes to terms with the inevitable conflict between his lifestyle and his complete infatuation with his alter-ego's ideology declares destruction as the answer. Anarchy is achieved.

But that doesn't explain why you lapdog onto the Wal-Mart chain. It's not about Libertarianism, it's not about free markets. Wal-Mart works to end free-markets, by shutting down all the other markets. Watch the documentary.
"

sorry man, i already expressed my disdain for anarchy. i said that republicanism/classical liberalism is the way to go, and that anarchy wouldnt work.
walmart isnt shutting down any market, they are satisfying thier customers. look dude, you simply dont understand economics so i dont know why i try. IF WALMART DOESNT SATISFY ITS CUSTOMERS AND PEOPLE DONT BUY FROM THEM, THEY GO OUT OF BUSINESS. no one is forcing people to go there, people are choosing to go there. your objective is to get rid of walmart. by doing this you will eliminate economic liberty, for both walmart and the consumer, and you will have successfully intervened for the worse.


"Disdain for anarcy"? I believe you used the term anarchist mixed with some other political belief to describe yourself. A "capitalist-anarchist-libertarian" or some such shit. "Wal-Mart isn't shutting down any markets"? Watch that documentary, in particular there is one segment about Wal-Mart buying the land used by a farmer's market in England in order to put up one of their stores. They shut down that fucking market right there, guy. They're shutting down a whole lot of markets. But all you can use to think with is your Wal-Mart hard-on.

My objective is not to get rid of Wal-Mart, for the four thousandth time! Would you fucking read what I'm typing instead of inserting your predisposed words into my rantings? My objective is to deny their complete dominance over the American market! To stop them from building up a huge gigantic box store in a small town that just happens to be inbetween two large towns, so that all the fuckwad consumers can pollute the small town with their traffic and garbage. Then a McDonald's opens up right nearby, and several gas stations. THAT IS NOT THE AMERICAN DREAM YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!! THIS IS NOT WHAT WAS WANTED FOR THIS COUNTRY!!! AND I AM NOT A FUCKING SOCIALIST FOR PROTESTING CONSUMER EXCESS!!!

you hate freedom. you cant stand the fact that people control the market, and not the government. you hate the free market because it offers cheap goods, everything is done on a voluntary basis and it increases the prosperity of everyone.

What the fuck are you talking about? I hate freedom? How can you seriously say that after all the shit that we've discussed? I can't stand the fact that 1% of the people control the market. The rest just shop in it. Shopping is not "controlling the market". That's why people develop shopping addictions because they are simply not in control. I do not have control of how many Gap stores go up in one neighborhood. The government, actually, has that control. It's only when the people stand up and say "we do not want this Wal-Mart here", like they did in the Roxbury district of Boston, that the government is pressured into revoking the permit. THE PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY ARE THE FUCKING GOVERNMENT YOU IDIOT.

Nobody had a gun held to their head to vote for Nancy Pelosi or Pat Buchanan!!! But if someone wants to build a McDonald's right next to your farm house, YOU'RE FUCKED PAL! You just don't get that the founders of the US did not come here to get rich, they came here to live free and die free. Not, to paraphrase pop culture, "get rich or die trying". They wanted FREEDOM. Freedom of choice. Corporate chains have slowly eroded this choice in the consumer realm and you, of all people, should be able to see that. This is why I keep saying "by your logic", because what you preach on government directly correlates to corporations and you just don't see that. You really want Barnes and Nobles to be the only book store around, just because they happened to have opened up a few bookstores in areas without any and made a few hundred million dollars and can now open them up wherever? Or do you want to keep the independant stores open that sell those hard-to-find books by authors you quote on here or authors you probably think I read.

Do you want Staples and Office Max to be the only places you can buy computer supplies? Because of their exclusive deal with Belkin, they only sell Belkin accessories. That means you'd be forced to pay $40 dollars for 25 feet of ethernet cable. And that store down the street that charges $15 dollars for the same length and quality of cable will go out of business because they don't have the money to advertise during the Superbowl and because they don't have the nation-wide customer base that Office Depot or Max or whatever has. Do you think like that? Do you have any inherit sociological and economical logic or is it all taken from opinion columns? Go ahead, tell me I hate freedom. Freedom to you, apparently, is a dystopic, corporate-owned world without government. Without any ability for the people to decide what they want other than through shopping. Yeah, that sounds real "free" to me (/sarcasm).

competition is good for everyone. predatory pricing is a total myth. monopolies are non existent in the free market, but some how the left always comes out in favor of government sponsored monopolies, like in power companies, cable companies and phone companies.

Hahahahahahahahaha. Monopolies are non-existent in the free market? HELLLLOOOOO?????? Viacom! News Corp! AOL-Time Warner! Disney! Sony!

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/cool/giants/


... it would have been difficult to imagine in 1983 that the corporations that owned all the country's dominant mass media would, in less than twenty years, shrink from fifty separate companies to five.

If however one looks at the properties of the dominant five, it provides some insight into how it could have happened. Their steady accumulation of power in the world of news, radio, television, magazines, books, and movies gave them a steady accumulation of power in politics. Political leaders and parties know that the news media control how those politicians are depicted to the voting public; the more powerful the leading media, the more powerful their influence over politicians and national policy. Prudent politicians treat the desires of all large corporations with care. But politicians treat the country's most powerful media corporations with something approaching reverence.

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Bagdikian/Big_Five_TNMM.html


From fifty to five in a span of less than twenty years.

How about the music industry? Let's forget about the fact that four corporations now make up for 82% of the world's music market (look up "world music market" on Wikipedia), let's think about Clearchannel. Clearchannel "owns over 1,200 full-power AM, FM, and shortwave radio stations, nine satellite radio channels on XM Satellite Radio, and more than 30 television stations in the United States, among other media outlets in other countries." Let's also think about Ticketmaster. You're in a band and you piss off either, there goes your chance at airplay, TV-play, and your chance to play hundreds of concert venues. You run an independant station or venue? Not anymore, Ticketmaster and Clearchannel just bought you out. Or if they couldn't do that, they just opened up another venue next door and used contracts and connections with the big four record labels to force the big name acts to play at their venues. Or you're a politician, and the person you're running against caters to Clearchannel lobbyists. Even if you support de-regulation, you're still fucked, buddy. Memo goes out to all the stations to talk shit about you, there goes your chances at representing the people. Watch "Outfoxed", watch the Wal-Mart movie I linked. Watch "Rich Media, Poor Democracy".

That's your fucking monopoly. You stare at it everyday. That's what the English ex-patriots came over to this country in the 18th century to escape. That's why they had their revolution. Just because it takes a different form doesn't mean it takes a different ideology. I'm not a fucking socialist, I'm not a fucking communist. I want freedom, and I don't want my generation to be owned by fucking News Corp, Inc because they've bought into the whole "Myspace as an expression of freedom" thing and hand over their personal information and the inner-workings of their minds into the hands of Rupert Murdoch.

You like that sort of thing? You're the fucking communist. Because they don't want you to have the ability to choose. That's why they keep buying out company after company, website after website, station after station. They want you to think the same exact thing, they want you to buy, fuck, and have babies so they can buy more shit. I don't want that to happen. I want someone to be able to open up their own radio station from scratch and not be forced to sell to Clearchannel. I want someone to be able to start a movie studio and not be forced to stop production because Viacom owns all the contracters and Sony owns all the theaters (Landmark theaters, for instance). But you don't want that. You want to point fingers? YOU are the one who hates freedom. You are the one who hates that the people still have that ability to express themselves.

This internet you're using right now, it was the GOVERNMENT that created it, and the GOVERNMENT that opened it up to the public. It's also the GOVERNMENT that made sure that "net neutrality" still exists, instead of handing over the reigns to Verizon and Comcast to create a class system in a classless digital world. It's the GOVERNMENT that stopped the internet from becoming an aristocracy.

But you're just worried about shooting your guns off in the woods and not going to the doctor. You just want a big ol' Wal-Mart so you can get bullets more easily.

[fermentor666]

competition is good for everyone. predatory pricing is a total myth. monopolies are non existent in the free market, but some how the left always comes out in favor of government sponsored monopolies, like in power companies, cable companies and phone companies.


Again, your ignorant stereotype of this imaginary "left" is wrong: http://www.savetheinternet.com/

NET NEUTRALITY, MOTHERFUCKER. You wouldn't be here if it weren't for the military infastructure you are transmitting from. And that wouldn't be here if it weren't for the MIT hackers who created it for the military. You wouldn't be here if it wasn't made open by the government for the world public by way of HTML (the World Wide Web), a GUI that allowed even the dumbest of persons to communicate with the world at light-speed.

Maybe you just don't read every word of my post, but I'm reading every word of yours so return the respect or get lost.

[angelofdeath]

" You say: People have the right to decide where they want to shop. They have chosen Wal-Mart, and therefore it is the best choice.

Your say: America's political system has been corrupted ever since Abraham Lincoln forced all the states to end slavery by federal power, and every politician since has been working against the people.

The United States of America = Governed by Democracy. The people vote for their representatives on state and federal levels, both for excutive and legislative positions. The individual with the majority vote becomes elected to such positions."

you get to vote in politicians. you have no choice to live under thier rule. if 99.9% of people vote to kill you, what do you think about democracy now? you dont have an out. voting isnt a savior. look, you can vote in even a good politician and he can come out against you. the founders gave us a republic. if we had a democracy we wouldnt of had a constitution. where does democracy show up in the constitution? i'll answer it for you, NO WHERE. but republic and republican does. laws were supposed to be passed to protect life liberty and property and the few enumerated things in the constitution. what has happened in our 'democracy' is the politicians have turned the republic into a democracy so they can get more power. hitler was democratically elected. so was george bush. how can you say that democracy is the savior to humanity? democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb voting on whats for dinner.

" Your logic on Big-Box retailers (Wal-Mart/Target/Best Buy/etc): People shop there, and because enough people do it to make the store a successful business, there is nothing wrong with that store because the people have spoken."


the difference is no one is forcing you to shop at walmart. you can cast your 'vote' to not go there, and you wont have too. if you cast a vote against a politician, and he is elected you have to live under him. in the market, you can simply go somewhere else. GET IT? if you try to secede from the government rule, you will be shot. just because your next door neighbor says he shops at walmart, doesnt mean you have too. but if your whole neighborhood votes for a fascist, and you dont, you MUST live under his rule. GET IT?? my guess is you dont.


"Your logic on Politicians: Enough people voted for, say, a Democrat who believes in free health care but those people are wrong and it is bad for the country. Even though it is clear that the majority of the people wanted this politician in power, they are wrong and don't understand politics."

its not that they are wrong, its just that a democracy doesnt protect the individual. your argument would make total sense, and i would be a hypocrite, if you elected politicans to enact sovietized medicine, i voted against them, but they were elected. then if you could live under sovietized medicine, but i could live under free market medicine. this is the same with the market 'democracy' i was talking about. you can have your way, i can have mine. under the government you are forced to live with the outcome even if you cast your vote against a politician. in a market, you can cast a vote against a business and never be forced to go there. GET IT!??

"Watch that documentary, in particular there is one segment about Wal-Mart buying the land used by a farmer's market in England in order to put up one of their stores. They shut down that fucking market right there, guy."

did walmart have a gun to the farmers head to buy his land? who owned the land? the government? who FORCED the land to be sold to walmart?
exactly.

"HAT IS NOT THE AMERICAN DREAM YOU FUCKING ASSHOLE!! THIS IS NOT WHAT WAS WANTED FOR THIS COUNTRY!!! AND I AM NOT A FUCKING SOCIALIST FOR PROTESTING CONSUMER EXCESS!!!"

why the slander. cant you handle a debate?

protesting consumer excess? how do propose to end this consumer excess? my guess is from all your posts, you want to end it by passing a myriad of laws trampling economic liberty. you want to make choices for people. got ya.

"he rest just shop in it. Shopping is not "controlling the market"."

the consumer controls the market. a business cannot exist without someone buying from them. PLAIN AND SIMPLE. the consumer is sovereign. if all consumers decide that they hate walmart, walmart will not make money and will shut down. try that with a government.

[angelofdeath]

" That's why people develop shopping addictions because they are simply not in control. I do not have control of how many Gap stores go up in one neighborhood. The government, actually, has that control. It's only when the people stand up and say "we do not want this Wal-Mart here", like they did in the Roxbury district of Boston, that the government is pressured into revoking the permit. THE PEOPLE IN THIS COUNTRY ARE THE FUCKING GOVERNMENT YOU IDIOT."

i see no need to for the name calling, but you cant handle a debate. you resort to childishness.
in a free market, the people have control. because no one is forcing someone to go to a walmart or a gap store, people are voluntarily walking into the store to buy jeans and tv's. if people dont want to shop at walmart, they dont have too. why the need for a government mandate?
the people in the country were the government in 1788, not in 2006. if we are the government... then why is george bush still in office? why was clinton still in office in 98?
the only way to have people control the government is through decentralized political power. it cannot work in a central state. and you know it. that is why GW is still in office. if your theory was right.. 'the people' would of removed him a long time ago.
i rest my case on this subject.

"Freedom of choice. Corporate chains have slowly eroded this choice in the consumer realm and you, of all people, should be able to see that."

yup. you are right. you are proposing abridging that choice because you are totally shit scared of the choices that people have already made. they chose the big companies over the small companies. why? because of price. the bigger guys beat out the competition.

"Monopolies are non-existent in the free market? "

yup. are you saying sony has no other competitors? if so, you need to pull your head out of the sand. a monopoly is only created when a government restricts entry, otherwise competition is free to enter.

[RIVEROCK]

STEAL FROM WAL-MART!!!!! I GIVE U PERMISSION!!!!

[russell jones]

AND I AM NOT A FUCKING SOCIALIST FOR PROTESTING CONSUMER EXCESS!!!"
.


I am.

[fermentor666]

You are completely mis-representing my argument and mis-interpreting it, once again, AOD. YOU are the one who repeatedly makes allusions to my political believes as being socialist, communist, or even worse, fascist. I am just repeatedly telling you that you are wrong in your categorization in capitol letters.

Clear example of your mis-representation of my argument: You asked me "how can you say that democracy is the savior to humanity? democracy is 2 wolves and a lamb voting on whats for dinner." I clearly did not call democracy the savior of humanity. For the last time, I will once again repeat myself.

You say that because the people have chosen Wal-Mart over small business, the system works. I say, BY YOUR LOGIC--NOT MINE--the same would apply to politics, where the people have chosen and therefore the system works. I understand that at the moment you still have the choice to shop at Wal-Mart or Johnny Smalltown's Hardware Store, while you cannot choose between having Bush as president or Buchanan as president once one or the other is elected.

Stop talking to me like I'm an idiot and stop ignoring the reasoning behind my comparison. There is a growing monopoly in the supposed free-market. It is getting to the point where you will not be able to choose any other station than Clear Channel or any other television station that is not owned by Viacom. And it is directly related to politics, with the doors opened in the 1996 Telecommunications Act and the further, immense damage that Michael Powell has done under the Bush Administration as head of the FCC. The free-market has already been monopolized. You seem to only think in absolutes: "BMI isn't the only record label so it's not a monopoly", but they hold patents to the album format, a non-tangible idea. They get money from every album sold. It is a tax, and it is not a government tax.

Ideas have been monopolized, "Fair and Balanced" becomes a trademark, words are trademarked. The media has been monopolized. Your idea about "not shopping at Wal-Mart to make a protest" equates to this: about 70,000 people subscribe to the largest underground hacker society magazine, 2600, while millions read Maxim. Hitler was elected because he controlled ideas, and when you control ideas you control the people who can't think for themselves--the majority. You want to make Hitler comparisons then that's about it. Hitler won because of advertising--propaganda.

You're not making these connections, and then you respond with some irrelevant, derogatory statement about "what I think" and that's why I type out negative insults. I'm trying to get you to focus on the words around them, but you can't do that.

Wal-Mart (the free-market) and American politics are the exact same thing. People think they have an choice but it is generally the lesser of two evils, and what goes on in the back room remains the same. I'll repeat it again: not only are they the exact same thing, but they are lovers intertwined.


"did walmart have a gun to the farmers head to buy his land? who owned the land? the government? who FORCED the land to be sold to walmart?
exactly."

The FREE MARKET held the gun to the farmer's head. Sanctioned by the government, peas in the pod. WATCH THE FILM.

"the difference is no one is forcing you to shop at walmart. you can cast your 'vote' to not go there, and you wont have too. if you cast a vote against a politician, and he is elected you have to live under him. in the market, you can simply go somewhere else. GET IT? if you try to secede from the government rule, you will be shot. just because your next door neighbor says he shops at walmart, doesnt mean you have too. but if your whole neighborhood votes for a fascist, and you dont, you MUST live under his rule. GET IT?? my guess is you dont."

The difference is nothing. If 99% percent of my neighborhood shops at Wal-Mart and Abercrombie and Fitch, then I must live under their market. It is the same thing, except for as of yet, Wal-Mart doesn't cart people off to gas chambers. Have you ever studied communication theory, or sociology, or psychology? The effects of these stores have turned the American youth into near-clones. Maybe you don't see it working at the auto shop, but I just started school and I'm years older than the rest of the kids in my class because I worked for a long while before college, and I see it as clear as day. What is the difference between national retailers and communism, really? Everyone is forced to buy the same outfit, everyone is forced to buy the same goods. It's not happening right NOW, but it is moving in an exponential rate, perhaps too fast for you to understand. GET IT? I guess not.

"yup. are you saying sony has no other competitors? if so, you need to pull your head out of the sand. a monopoly is only created when a government restricts entry, otherwise competition is free to enter."

Sony has far fewer competitors than they did 20 years ago, and they are just buying out more and more. Sony does more than make hardware, you know that right? What are you talking about "restricting entry"? The government is doing the complete opposite and now Clearchannel owns over 1,000 stations. UHF channels are obsolete, local programming is relegated to your local NBC/ABC/CBS/UPN/FOX news. Everything has been bought out. The same people that create the entertainment (General Electric owning NBC, for instance) are the same ones who create the technology. Monopolies are forming and have formed all around you and I guess you are just not noticing because you live in a world of "always" and "never".

Like this: "if you elected politicans to enact sovietized medicine, i voted against them, but they were elected. then if you could live under sovietized medicine, but i could live under free market medicine." -- Who says that "free healthcare" eradicates choice? All it would do would allow people to have AN OPTION! And so instead of having to pay off a $4,000 dollars in medical fees from a couple of trips to the emergency room and a broken arm, they can take the free, national healthcare to get them into a clinic. Then they can use that saved money towards better healthcare. Do you not GET IT? Is that what you are not GETTING? It's the living-in-absolutes with you, the minute you hear "national healthcare" you think the U.S.S.R.

"protesting consumer excess? how do propose to end this consumer excess? my guess is from all your posts, you want to end it by passing a myriad of laws trampling economic liberty. you want to make choices for people. got ya."

You should stop making guesses and start making conversation. I call you an idiot because you still think that I'm some sort of proto-anarcho-commie-socialist-fascist dictator despite everything to the contrary that I have posted. The only laws I would support that would control the market would be to repeal all the FCC laws that turned FM radio and television from an internet-like free market into what it is now. Then maybe Joe Dipshit wouldn't sit there and watch 100,000 commercials a year telling them that Wal-Mart has the best prices and that Wendy's is fine dining. That way, when the 200,000 college students that swarm into Boston every September think of what they want to buy, they won't demand that a Staples super-store demolish and replace the only theater in town that showed Indian and Asian cinema, or demand that The Rathskeller, the place that birthed Boston punk rock, along with the Dollar Sock Store, packie store, and the breakfast diner be demolished and replaced by Blockbuster, Blaine's Beauty School, Dunkin' Donuts, and a luxury hotel for their parents to stay at.

I want people to wake up and appreciate differences, not to drool for a melting pot of generic plastic broth. Stop calling me a fucking fascist, stop calling me a fucking communist, stop calling me whatever. I'm a human being and an independent mind, I write graffiti and it's not for fame, and I've been through the shittiest of shit in the city and I know what is happening, not to mention I am educated. I'm not a fucking poll number, so there's a lot more deciphering you need to do if you're going to seriously come at me with an argument like this one.

[angelofdeath]

i may decide to respond to this later, but right now, i think i'll just leave it like this...

i see where you are drawing your points and conclusions from, however flawed they may be. you just dont understand that the free market is not the system of socialist regulation and corporate/government merged 'fascism' we have in america. laissez faire isnt what we have today. business government mergers are not the free market!
you also dont recognize the huge difference between physical coercion/threat of violence and voluntary exchange in the market. you dont have to 'live under a market' you dont have to buy anything from anyone, this is impossible with a government. this is a HUGE difference.
so i'll just leave it right there for now. that is why i sould like a broken record, because you keep saying that america has free market. it doesnt. markets dont have coercion, governments do. liberty- markets. governments - coercion.

[fermentor666]

Ummm, I thought you were the one defending the proliferation of corporate retail giants and media giants under the defense of "free market", not me. Again, you are mis-understanding my arguments, ignoring the bulk of what I am typing, or twisting my words around to create arguments out of discussion to make me look "wrong" or to look like I don't "GET IT". I get it, my friend, I get every little bit of it. But no one gets it all at once, not you, me, casek, theo, or any of the other blowhards populating this little section of the internet--calling it a "corner of the internet" would give 12oz way too much credit.

"you also dont recognize the huge difference between physical coercion/threat of violence and voluntary exchange in the market. you dont have to 'live under a market' you dont have to buy anything from anyone, this is impossible with a government. this is a HUGE difference."

I consider mental violence on par with physical violence. It is just a slower erosion of liberty. Being forced to live in a world where I pass by about three hundred advertisements and logos on a walk through a couple of city blocks is mental violence. I see people breaking under the pressure already. It's not as fast as a gas chamber or a firing squad, and what is dying is individual, free thought, not human beings. I am just as forced to live in it as you are forced to live in this country when automatic weapons are outlawed. We can always leave.

If you want to bring up the argument that a fascist state would not allow it's citizens to leave, then I would counter that by saying the proliferation of corporate, consumer lifestyle is permeating into every aspect of the world. I could move to Palestine and there will be a McDonald's there. Maybe you've seen some films and if I list some to you and you've seen them, you can better understand the threat I am exposing and stop trying to argue with me like I'm some sort of "Honk if you hate Bush" sign-waver: "Bladerunner", "Videodrome", "Brazil", "Logan's Run", "Alien", "The Terminator". Books: the "Neuromancer" trilogy, "Snow Crash", "The Diamond Age", "A Scanner Darkly", and most recently "Haunted".

Those some big names, but I also educate myself in non-fiction so don't try and write me off as a pop-culture grandstander like you try to write me off as a fascist. My family tree could have had a lot more branches if it weren't for fascism. And observing the pop-worship, "ironic" lifestyles contributes to my daily mental issues. But if you've seen any of those films or read the books and are able to analyze the metaphors beneath the action or the social commentary behind the fantastic future worlds, then maybe you've got a real shot at fixing that broken record you keep speaking of in this conversation.

A large difference between you and me is that you look at what has already occured and I look for what might occur. There is more truth to be found in science fiction than there is in any political opinion column or conspiracy rant. And you can't go back to the past, you can't change it and you can't bring it back to the present. We're all headed for the future, however.

You want to label me with something? Try something a little less tired in modern-culture, a little less pundit-like. Maybe a "futurist", a "hacker", an "independist" (not a real word, but figure it out), a "mind that wants to be free", or "open-minded". Don't call me a fucking liberal, a conservative, a communist, a fascist, a socialist. They all have appealing aspects, but are altogether too based on sociology and sociology doesn't work well to describe political views in single-word catchphrases.

So just leave it right there if you want, but your record is gonna stay broken whereever you go. My record is one of those cool ones that plays through and then lets you turn it over for some more noise.

[angelofdeath]

"Being forced to live in a world where I pass by about three hundred advertisements and logos on a walk through a couple of city blocks is mental violence. "

you cannot own a view. this is a conflicting 'right.' if this were the case, you could argue that... a woman you see everyday... you like her hair. she cuts it, then you would (in your view) have the right to tell her fix it because you dont want to look at her short hair. you cannot legitimately tell someone what to do with thier property and you cannot homestead a view, so you dont own the view.

"I consider mental violence on par with physical violence. It is just a slower erosion of liberty. "

this is the main difference. someone saying... "im going to f'ing kill you!!" with a gun to your head. is a totally different matter than a kid being 'mentally coerced' into killing someone.

" I could move to Palestine and there will be a McDonald's there"

its kind of like the abortion argument... if you dont want one, dont have one. you cannot live in a private property oriented capitalist society and want to rid the world of corporations because you dont want to look at advertising or because you dont want to 'live under them.' atleast in a market you have an out. you dont have to shop at mcdonalds. you can abstain from buying. you are not forced to buy. just like you are not forced to go to a church. would it be right if you someone decided you hated religion and wanted to rid the world of all religions and churches because it is 'mental violence or mental coercion??" i think the whole premise is wrong and you have to learn to more accepting of things. i you dont like corporations, you should not be advocating elimination of them because you have to look at them all day, you should move to a place where you can be self sufficient or live in a community that also hates corporations and doesnt allow them in. this is why decentralized government and self rule is so important. just because you dont like corporations, doesnt mean other people do too. i think human beings should be more in tune with liberty and freedom and not telling other people how to live thier lives.

"My record is one of those cool ones that plays through and then lets you turn it over for some more noise."

i feel it necessary for you to know the basics before you move onto an advanced study. that is why my record is on repeat.

[holy roller.]

It seems that the problem feeds unto itself in the sense that both the customer and the franchise Wal Mart exist because the other exists. The people that patronize wal mart are going to keep doing so because from their point of view, why shouldn't they? They cant see past the low prices and mass quantities of poor quality merchandise.

These people shop here or work here because THEY ARE NOT EDUCATED! Walmart only capitalizes on this weakness, which technically, is perfectly legitimate business practice. However it is not 'sound' practice. A lot of the things walmart does are'nt humane and that is why I despise it. Over seas manufacturing, low pay/ benefits, but what I hate most is the over development. Walmart seeks new building locations each year with ruthless determination, and when people get together and protest a new Walmart store in their town, walmart will persist until, more times than not, they succeed. There aren't moral considerations and that's what makes it so frustrating because it is all legit.

Walmart is something that society could definately have done without, but like most things now that it's here, it would be really hard to get rid of. Like many other modern "advancements", a certain population becomes dependant. And as long as there are lower, middle, and upper classes in society; there will be businnesses marketing to draw them in.

[angelofdeath]

i dont like walmart for a couple reasons, none of them economically based. i dont like the crowdedness. sometimes the service sucks. but i know one thing, i can spend 20 dollars on food and it will last me 2 weeks. walmart spanks the pants off of any other grocery store.

walmart is great for offering cheap imported goods. because not everyone can afford top quality stuff.

free trade is essential to prosperity. for instance, (hypothetically) if canada didnt practice free trade, then they wouldnt be able to get tropical fruits at good prices. how would they get them? they would have to build big green houses to produce banana's. and places like costa rica, people are up to thier arm pits in banana's. people in costa rica would have a hard time producing cheap maple syrup. how would they? i dont know, large refridgerated maple tree forests. what im saying, costa rica and canada benefit from the trade.

it makes absolutely no sense to protect american industry that SUCKS at making TV's, when you can get an imported TV from japan that is way better quality and half the price. what this tariff does is subsidizes inefficiency in the market and gives us higher prices. NO one likes higher prices.

walmart pays the market price for the skills of thier employees. if the employees thought it was so horrible, they wouldnt still be working there. they are engaged in a voluntary association.

[russell jones]

It may be that way down South, but in the land of the Yankees we have lots of grocery stores that compete with Wal Mart.

BTW, Wal Mart wants eat your children.

Also the TV's aren't made in Japan, they're made in Taiwan and China and Southeast Asia.

[fermentor666]

"Being forced to live in a world where I pass by about three hundred advertisements and logos on a walk through a couple of city blocks is mental violence. "

you cannot own a view. this is a conflicting 'right.' if this were the case, you could argue that... a woman you see everyday... you like her hair. she cuts it, then you would (in your view) have the right to tell her fix it because you dont want to look at her short hair. you cannot legitimately tell someone what to do with thier property and you cannot homestead a view, so you dont own the view.


That's your best response? C'mon, get real. Respond to my actual comments and my personal expressions with something other than the canned responses you usually spit out defending your "property-first" ideology. We're not talking about right to property anymore, remember? We're talking about cultural and mental effects.


"I consider mental violence on par with physical violence. It is just a slower erosion of liberty. "

this is the main difference. someone saying... "im going to f'ing kill you!!" with a gun to your head. is a totally different matter than a kid being 'mentally coerced' into killing someone.
Remember when we were talking about legalizing drugs, and we both agreed that cigarettes and alcohol have the same basic effect as heroin in that they will both eventually kill you? Dispite what we then said about legislation, that is the point I am trying to make between mental and physical violence. I'm not talking about "video games making people kill someone". I'm talking about the psyche, the mind, the thought being aggresively attacked and bullied by a thousand propaganda ads for different products. Again, sit in a fucking English lit class at a college today and you will get an idea of what I am talking about when I say that this generation is becoming mentally corrupted and incapable of paying attention. That's what I'm talking about, mental violence. And these kids are supposed to be the future leaders of the free world. Fuck, just browse around on Myspace for a little while.

Where is your humanity, when you can't even recognize these issues?

" I could move to Palestine and there will be a McDonald's there"

its kind of like the abortion argument... if you dont want one, dont have one. you cannot live in a private property oriented capitalist society and want to rid the world of corporations because you dont want to look at advertising or because you dont want to 'live under them.' atleast in a market you have an out. you dont have to shop at mcdonalds. you can abstain from buying. you are not forced to buy. just like you are not forced to go to a church. would it be right if you someone decided you hated religion and wanted to rid the world of all religions and churches because it is 'mental violence or mental coercion??" i think the whole premise is wrong and you have to learn to more accepting of things. i you dont like corporations, you should not be advocating elimination of them because you have to look at them all day, you should move to a place where you can be self sufficient or live in a community that also hates corporations and doesnt allow them in. this is why decentralized government and self rule is so important. just because you dont like corporations, doesnt mean other people do too. i think human beings should be more in tune with liberty and freedom and not telling other people how to live thier lives.


Yes, yes, yes, the whole "if you don't like it move" thing. I've thrown the same argument at you about gun control and social spending so don't even bother with it. More and more, I'm realizing you're not truely reading what I am writing and I'm a little dissapointed when I return and see that you have passed over the more difficult issues I've raised in favor of repeating your standard same old, same old. In fact, you've missed the whole point of even that one sentance, by responding with "I could just move" when I said "I could just move, and pretty soon there would be a McDonald's there".




"My record is one of those cool ones that plays through and then lets you turn it over for some more noise."

i feel it necessary for you to know the basics before you move onto an advanced study. that is why my record is on repeat.I could say the same to you. You apparently know nothing about the current state of media ownership and have absolutely nothing worth contributing to anything techno-related. You're apparently have no knowledge of science fiction and perhaps that is why you do not understand the human element of your arguments and instead think just like a machine. Like you said, your record is broken, not on repeat. Fix it.

[angelofdeath]

"We're not talking about right to property anymore, remember? We're talking about cultural and mental effects."

you simply have to be more tolerant of other peoples property. what you are talking about is taking away peoples liberty, to supposedly give you more liberty. this is a twisted view. you think that you can legitimately legislate away a persons choice (freedom) and say that you are giving people more freedom.
this is the same as smoking or drugs. i despise them both. i know the kind of drug culture that is going on now. but you'll see this straight edge dude defending the right of a property owner or a smoker to smoke on his own property whenever possible. i'll be defending resturaunt owners rights to do what they want with thier property. you must learn to respect the right of other people to do what they want with theirs.

"I'm talking about the psyche, the mind, the thought being aggresively attacked and bullied by a thousand propaganda ads for different products."

i'll take a pass on sitting in a leftist dominated college english lit class. been there, done that.
i dont buy this argument one bit. there is no coercion involved in advertising and there is no intiation of force against your life liberty or property. so all these things you see as corrupting people should all be legalized. markets and thier evil advertising and corruption should be legalized just like crazy sex and drugs should be. i 100% reject these type of arguments you are making, so i guess we are gonna have to leave it at that.

"In fact, you've missed the whole point of even that one sentance, by responding with "I could just move" when I said "I could just move, and pretty soon there would be a McDonald's there"."

i have read and read your arguments. if this is really how you think... then just come out and say you are against free choice. mcdonalds is only going to pop up if people will buy food from them.
you want to limit a persons choice, you want to invade property rights and you want to regulate things under the guise of protecting humanity from the dangers of mcdonalds, walmart, and advertising that makes people turn into werewolves.
thats cool. just atleast admit that you are limiting human choice rather than maximizing it.

[soulkillers]

Just kinda throwing this out there...


http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/01/10/politics/main2344643.shtml




How will this affect Wal-Mart?
it will effect everything you buy and every retailer. when min wage goes up so does everything eles.but it will effect small bussines more then wal mart. wal mart does not pay min wage.

[fermentor666]

Wow, all this time and the best you could come up with is "leftist dominated college english lit class"? Sorry, buddy, but you haven't been there or done that and the English classes I took were not "leftist dominated", but whatever. I found a new term for you, and I think it fits: "oil-pig libertarian".

Oh, and Wal-Mart DOES pay minimum wage to their retail employees.

[Larry Pubes]

i can't believe how i missed this discussion completely...
i only read a few posts on this page, mostly mamerro's and yum's...and from yum's points i'd say you have absolutely no understanding of corporate propaganda. don't worry, it's not your fault, almost nobody knows anything about the history of corp. propaganda(or if you like, today's pc term for it, 'public relations'). if you look, you will see how incredibly persuasive and critical corp. propaganda has been in shaping western society, right down to what some call 'created wants', apathy, you name it, much of it originates from the corporation. i suggest you hit your local library and look for a book by a fellow national(you're aussie right?), it's called 'taking the risk out of democracy' by alex carey. after that you can look for books by john stauber and sheldon rampton, namely 'toxic sludge is good for you'.

[fermentor666]

Oh I know all about corporate propaganda.

[russell jones]

I think Larry was referring to Mr. Death.