pastProlog

14 ms·

61.
by pastProlog 10y ago
This is just false. All business in the USSR was not tightly state owned. Yes, the "commanding heights" of the economy were. You're claiming Kiev had no privately owned stores? Like many people here you're talking ab
62.
by pastProlog 10y ago
Government backed monopolies like Bell created the transistor, and government purchases from Fairchild kickstarted transistors. Also you attribute statements to me that I did not make, then say these statements you made up and attribute to
63.
by pastProlog 10y ago
I know people who have opened stores in the US, and all of them have needed permits and various bits of government approval, sometimes zoning board hearings and whatnot. The larger the enterprise, the more approval needed, just like the US
64.
by pastProlog 10y ago
Alternate definition? A market is a place where you exchange currency for commodities. That is a definition of what a market is, not an "alternative definition". There is no being coy at all, I can't even twist my head arou
65.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> You can't even compare the situation to what's happening in Venezuela. Well having the US send $1 billion a year, year after year to prop your country up ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_Colombia ) h
66.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> I mean that the government regulates the economy or large pieces of it The Federal Reserve, bank bailouts, the government spending and government-backed monopolies that created the Internet we're typing on etc. The US "gove
67.
by pastProlog 10y ago
Yes, Honduras is in a far worse state right now than Venezuela after Obama and Hillary supported the military coup against the majority indigenous/mestizo backed president, and the handful of white landowners of 90% of the land had the
68.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> The socialist downfall of countries are all unique, but follow similar paths The PRC just surpassed US GDP on some measures, whereas in the 1940s it was a western and Japanese occupied backwards basket case. Is that the downfall you m
69.
by pastProlog 10y ago
You can read Marshall Sahlins, Lewis H. Morgan, Eleanor Leacock or others. One thing they say is the hunter-gatherer bands of 10,000 years ago (or the small handful which remain in the world's remaining wilderness today) are not as bad
70.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> because it supports the prevailing view and you disagree with "The Better Angels..." because it doesn't. No, I said the Language Instinct talked about science and the brain, and Better Angels talked about political ques
71.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> classified documents and gave them to foreign journalists What the "classified documents" said were that the government is secretly violating the constitutional "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses,
72.
by pastProlog 10y ago
Pinker is not a great example as a popularizer of science. He writes scientific books in layman's terms like The Language Instinct (which itself sometimes drifts off scientific canon into one explanation he favors over another in disp
73.
by pastProlog 10y ago
There has been much talk of a big cut in that assistance - it is being seriously discussed now. Plus the setback in UI and cross-border job opportunities by a hard border. Combined, this will flame hardline republican sentiment (left of S
74.
by pastProlog 10y ago
Also, Adam Smith's example of the invisible hand was as a mechanism to prevent so-called free trade, and raise protectionist tariffs. The people you mentioned have twisted Smith's words into the exact opposite meaning - they say
75.
by pastProlog 10y ago
At the end of the day, the EU as it is is something that was shoved onto the people of Europe by big business, bureaucrats, Eurocrats etc. Working people feel all the negative impact of open borders and so-called "free trade",
76.
by pastProlog 10y ago
According to that chart's definitions, a San Francisco household where there is one child and in which the husband makes $65k, and the wife makes $35k, is upper middle class. This is not upper middle class as traditionally defined.
77.
by pastProlog 10y ago
The US did shut down its WWI-era spying in 1929. The (Republican!) Secretary State did so with the simple comment "Gentlemen do not read each other's mail". > Enemy nations can then go rampant The main enemy of the FVEY a
78.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> attitude of hatred towards success, which was a large part of the propaganda If success is defined as not working, but parasitically living off the labor time of those of us who do work, as heirs and VCs and their LPs do, then yes, the
79.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> Marx didn’t say much useful about how to fix the problem Nor did he intend to say much. He famously said "I don't write recipes for the kitchens of the future". He gave advice to organizers in his day, and left the fu
80.
by pastProlog 10y ago
I don't find it hard to believe. In most of the cases where someone said something inappropriate, it was at a mostly young startup that had some success and then hired some older, white, male executives. At one company, a married blac
81.
by pastProlog 10y ago
> It is far more likely that he raised suspicion by wearing a keffiyeh > a picture of Guido Menzio wearing a scraggly beard and keffiyeh combo. He is not wearing a keffiyeh in that picture. A keffiyeh is a square scarf that is worn o
82.
by pastProlog 11y ago
I've seen this as well. We interviewed a guy, for a crummy position in our division of a Fortune 1000 company. This guy was friendly, personable, had worked at Bell Labs and elsewhere, and knew the technical details back and forth.
83.
by pastProlog 11y ago
It is a strange thing to use cars as an example of a free market. The government just bailed out the auto industry. The government bailed out Chrysler with loans and government contracts in the 1970s as well. The auto industry lobbied fo
84.
by pastProlog 11y ago
No. Classical libertarianism would be of a "left wing" type, as libertarian was a word used on the left since the 19th century. Only in the post-WWII US did some on the right begin using the term.
85.
by pastProlog 11y ago
Who is misrepresenting? In 1962, the USSR had markets where people exchanged rubles for potatos, just as in the 1962 USA, there were markets where people exchanged dollars for currency. Not much difference marketwise, other than the curre
86.
by pastProlog 11y ago
> People don't go about saying "I'm a fascist, let's give it another go, maybe it will work this time, sorry about the millions of dead children". I guess you are unaware of the activities of Golden Dawn in Greec
87.
by pastProlog 11y ago
> read Das Kapital...sounds very good in theory, but always seems to fail during implementation What fails during implementation? When leftists of his time demanded plans from Marx, he scoffed and said he was not August Comte, and refus
88.
by pastProlog 11y ago
How is anarchism a "totalitarian" ideology? I have been reading in the press about how the NSA, the CIA, the FBI etc. want an encryption backdoor in everything Americans use, so we can be spied on at will. I don't see why th
89.
by pastProlog 12y ago
> asian students that come from poverty In Fanshen, its is noted in pre-PRC China, poor peasants in the countryside could not afford livestock, so peasants used their own shit as fertilizer. Sometimes peasants would even steal one anoth
90.
by pastProlog 12y ago
> in a global economy, don't we also believe in a global workforce So open the borders and let anyone who wants to come in come in and work any job they want - let them vote as well. Until that happens, I have a problem with this.

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