NY Times Story on Pilot Population Decline

Larry Dighera wrote:

Yes. Recently consumers have begun so have the choice of buying the
at the lowest price, or buying the best or most responsibly produced
product. I would like to find a way to reward those producers who
want to produce quality, responsibly produced goods made with US
labor, so that impact of their reduced market share is mitigated.

There is a way. Buy from them, ask your friends and neighbors to buy from
them and tell them why they should.

Bob Noel wrote:


and
I don't see how the situation has fundamentally changed from that
time.


"I don't see how the situation..." no kidding that you don't see it.


The definition of irrational is not being able to accept or even
see things as they really are.

Mxsmanic wrote:
Unfortunately, in a democracy, there is no requirement that the voters be
right. In fact, very often there are no competency requirements at all,
although age and (sometimes) gender restrictions are common enough (and
ironically these often have nothing to do with competence).


And this is why the founding fathers did not want a true democracy
for this nation, rather a Democratic Republic. Starting with FDR,
liberals have been struggling mightly to slowly and inexhorably
convert it to a Democracy, AKA 'Mob Rule'.

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 17:06:52 GMT, kontiki
wrote in :

Larry Dighera wrote:



Wouldn't you characterize streets awash in homeless retirees a burden
on society?


Again Larry, if you were to be intellectually honest you would find
that 'homeless' people are largely that way because of decisions
they have (or have not) made.

Apparently I'm not nearly as familiar with what the homeless do as you
must be to make that statement, but those homeless that I have seen,
appear to be _innately_ unemployable to me.

It is not my responsibility to comphensate [sic] others for their failure
to be responsible.

That seems like a reasonable statement. But it isn't humane to just
let them freeze to death in the streets. Surly our great nation is
better than that, isn't it?

For some reason you do... and so does socialistic governments.

I don't think it is our _responsibility_, but I do think caring for
the unemployable and/or cripples is desirable if not beneficial to
society by reducing crime, making the streets safer and more pleasant,
if not down right ennobling for our nation. And I believe that paying
ahead for the inevitable is prudent.

THIS is where we differ.

For example, if I, as a respinsible parent were confronted by my
child wanting to quit school, I would let them do it only if they
signed a legal document that stated they could make no claim
against me for future benefits. They voluntarily decided to
SQUANDER a free education for themsleves and I do not feel
responsible for the consequences of their actions.

While I might not agree with that, I can understand your reasoning in
arriving at that decision.

This is never required of welfare recipients in this country...
but it should.

Even if it were, they'd just not honor such a document, and we'd be
faced with a lot of frozen corpuses and streets that would be even
less safe to walk than we are currently. The problem of what to do
with cripples isn't going to go away by getting them to sign a
contract.

Most of the ones I see drive a car (albeit an old
gas guzzler [which we subsidize]) and have a cell phone and several
children, more than likely cable or satellite TV etc. etc. They
are NOT poor.

Welfare is a difficult issue. I don't pretend to have a solution to
the welfare issue.


People who live on the street CHOOSE that life Larry.

Some may. Some may also be so mentally unstable as to be forced into
homelessness. It's probably not fair to intimate that ALL street
people are capable of joining the majority of society.

How can you
argue that they can not find work when ILLEGALS who can't even speak
english risk their lives to cross a border to come here work?

If they are crazy, would you employ them?

I'm sorry, but your bleeding heart liberal-socialist ideas do NOT
work and do NOT hold water. They are not rationally justifiable.


Our opinions differ.

-----
"In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as
possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other."

-Voltaire (1764)



The true Axis Of Evil in America is our genius at marketing
coupled with the stupidity of our people. -- Bill Maher

Larry Dighera wrote:

Unfortunately, I seem to not have made myself clear at all. I'm
describing the shortcomings of pure capitalism. I'm not advocating
any particular system or remedy. I'm just interested in discovering
how those shortcomings a of capitalistic system I mentioned might be
mitigated, so that ALL benefit, producers and consumers alike. After
all, producers are victims of ever decreasing prices just as consumers
are victims of the loss of US jobs.


_All_ can never benefit. That is not how life works. Though people
have tried mightily over the years to force outcomes with legislation,
governmental fiat or physical force. It is not sustainable.. any more
than trying hold the steam inside of a tea kettle.

As it is, the producer who is able to offer a product at the lowest
prices in the marketplace, regardless of the consequences to society
and the environment as a result of the methods used to achieve that
price reduction, effectively dictates the quality and ethics for ALL
producers of that product if they want to remain solvent.

That's not true. Look at Toyota... walking all over American car
makers. Better overall quality and customer satisfaction and NOT
the lowest prices.


Free market and capitalism at every price is not always the best way to go.


I have no problem with free-market capitalism if it doesn't drive
better and more responsibly produced products from the marketplace and
export US jobs to other countries.

We've already covered all of this, its boring to repeat the reasons
why this occurs and whether it is good or not.


As you stated, in some cases
it might make sense to buy local (for different reasons: to save jobs and
generate money locally, to cut transportation, to cut down emission on
transport, ...). Some people go directly to the farmer and buy their
products off the farm at higher prices than the 'same' product would cost
in the supermarket. There are different reasons for doing so.


Yes. Recently consumers have begun so have the choice of buying the
at the lowest price, or buying the best or most responsibly produced
product. I would like to find a way to reward those producers who
want to produce quality, responsibly produced goods made with US
labor, so that impact of their reduced market share is mitigated.

"responsibly produced" ? What does that mean? WHo determines whether
something is 'responsibly produced'... Al Gore? Sheesh...

The free market is always the best arbiter.

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 17:51:16 GMT, kontiki
wrote in :

Larry Dighera wrote:

Larry Dighera wrote:


Why isn't profit motive sufficient encouragement to produce things?

Because it lacks long-range vision, and encourages sleaze and planned
obsolescence rather than durable, high quality products.

Oh, I see. If it isn;t something that "government' envisions as
a 'good" thing then it lacks long range vision.


I am at a loss to understand why you insist on bringing government
into the discussion. You were talking about PROFIT MOTIVE, not
government.


In the absence of government mandating the taking of money from
people who work and giving it to people who do not, what other
entity would we be discussing?

Huh? In the absence of the "taking" to which you refer, we probably
wouldn't be having a discussion at all.


You think Hillary or someone like that *really* cares about people, or that her
"long range thinkin" is about anything other than getting elected?


I have very little esteem for today's Congressional representatives.
And I have no clue how that is germane to the subject of PROFIT
MOTIVE.


You say that as if 'profit motive' were a HORRIBLE thing.

I do? Are you able to quote the part of what I said that supports
such an counter-intuitive notion? Capatolism without a profit motive
is ridiculous.

You would still be using candles and crapping in a hole in the ground if it
were not for profit motive Larry. Businesses that make profits
benfit _all_ that work for or invest in that business.


I have no argument with that.


You have just factually illustrated your irrational thinking.


Or you have just demonstrated your inability to comprehend the written
word. :-)

Irrationality is difficult to comprehend Larry.

Are you able to cite my specific words that cause you feel my
reasoning is not rational? Lacking that, I'm completely unable to see
how you arrived at that conclusion.



I rest my case.


For some unknown reason, we seem to be talking past each other.


I know the reason.

Well, you've not successfully expressed it.


There is no expedient to which a man will not resort
to avoid the real labor of thinking.
-- Sir Joshua Reynolds

"ktbr" wrote in message
...
Mxsmanic wrote:
Unfortunately, in a democracy, there is no requirement that the voters be
right. In fact, very often there are no competency requirements at all,
although age and (sometimes) gender restrictions are common enough (and
ironically these often have nothing to do with competence).


And this is why the founding fathers did not want a true democracy
for this nation, rather a Democratic Republic.

No, they wanted (and got) a Representational Constitutional Republic.

Starting with FDR,
liberals have been struggling mightly to slowly and inexhorably
convert it to a Democracy, AKA 'Mob Rule'.

Try at least 40 years earlier.


--
Matt Barrow
Performace Homes, LLC.
Colorado Springs, CO

Matt Barrow wrote:


And this is why the founding fathers did not want a true democracy
for this nation, rather a Democratic Republic.


No, they wanted (and got) a Representational Constitutional Republic.



I stand corrected. What my mind is thinking and what gets typed
is sometimes at odds. It is, as you stated, a Representative
Republic.

;^0

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 18:06:51 GMT, kontiki
wrote in :

Larry Dighera wrote:

On Sun, 29 Apr 2007 11:42:39 GMT, kontiki
wrote in :


Larry Dighera wrote:


You feel that way despite the fact that Halliburton earned their
income from the US government?


Larry, your fixation with 'Haliburton' demonstrates
you can't think rationally.


I'm not fixated on Halliburton. I've just used Halliburton's fleeing
to an Arab country to escape paying US income taxes as an example of
how _unrestrained_ competition causes both buyers and sellers to
become victims.

I would say, your failure to address my question, and attempt to
divert the discussion away from it displays your lack of a credible
argument.


It's a valid question that illustrates what you are advocating.

You're dismissal of it in a thinly valid personal attack demonstrates
very clearly, that you are unable to respond to it without admitting
that it is your reasoning that is faulty, and emotionally based on
subjective self-interest.


The reason is that I do not want to engage in a tit-for-tat
regurgitation of government scandal Vs. private scandal.

I have no desire to discuss scandal either. I'm just interested in
discovering a way to mitigate the negative effects of _unrestrained_
competition in the marketplace.

I would FAR rather deal with a private scandal than a government
scandal because it make me less cynical of why money is taken
from my paycheck every two weeks.


Ummm...


In your ideal world, how would the US government be funded?


If its functions were limited to those specified by the
Constitution it would be funded by various excises [sic] taxes
and that's it.


What amount of excise tax, expressed as a percentage of sale price,
would have to be charged to fund the military, NAS, maintain the
nation's infrastructure (roads, courts, national parks, ...)?

This has all been detailed by people far mor learned than I. Don't
be juvenile and make me research the information that will result
in a proper rersponse to that basic question.

Research is juvenile in your opinion? Interesting.


If producers were paying such an excise tax on the raw materials they
used in the production of their products, could they be competitive in
foreign markets?

BINGO you nailed it... except it is called income tax and other
types of taxes that are being paid now that cause companies to seek
foreigh shores to try and remain competative.


But it was you that proposed an excise tax, not me. Have you
forgotten that?

Let me see if I understand what you're implying. You think that
reducing US manufacturing workplace conditions to turn of the
(nineteenth) century sweatshop conditions by eliminating taxes, in
order to compete with the low cost of producing goods in third world
countries that lack social and environmental reforms, would be a step
forward? Are you advocating third world workplace conditions be
permitted in the US?


If such an excise tax as you advocate meant that there would be no
escaping the payment of taxes by any person or entity, I would
consider supporting it. But if you're going tell me you advocate
certain exclusions, it betray's your hidden agenda.


Well now you are beginning to see the light... the fact is that
despite your desires, corporations do net really pay taxes. They
pass it along to customers in higher prices... or they lay people off.

Or they escape taxation through loopholes in the laws that their
lobbyists have influenced, or they move to Dubai or ...

Pretty underhanded way for the government to increasae taxes on people
don't ya think?

The way I parse that "sentence" is, that you are saying that the
federal government passes the cost of income tax on to consumers by
taxing corporations who don't pay taxes. Absurd.

But it works if you can control the economic
education of society.


You seem to forget the fact the government functioned fine
without income tax for the first 150 years of its existance.


I'm not advocating any increases in any taxes. Where'd you get that
idea?


But how do you feel on increases in government spending? Because
like it or not they have been happening at an alarming rate.

Oh, you must be referring to Bush's $3-billion a day giveaway in Iraq.
Or are you referring to the Bush giveaway to parasitical companies
through the prohibition of competitive bidding for the drugs purchased
through Medicare, or ... ?


And let me stipulate that I am not partisam about this... BOTH
paries (all politicians) have been intoxicated by the drug of
being able to take money from people at the threat of prison
time in order to further their goals to remain in power.

Huh? "At the threat of prison time?" WTF?

It's beginning to sound like you're the one "intoxicated by the drug"
of your choice...

Larry Dighera wrote:


And let me stipulate that I am not partisam about this... BOTH
paries (all politicians) have been intoxicated by the drug of
being able to take money from people at the threat of prison
time in order to further their goals to remain in power.


Huh? "At the threat of prison time?" WTF?


Prove me wrong then... try refusing to pay taxes and see what
happens to you.