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I have been constantly criticized by many on this forum. I have been called fake, pseudo-intellectual and even closed-minded. I never bothered to address these claims because there was never anything to refute. They were simply untrue. Although I valued the opinions and tried to understand them to the extent that I believed the speaking individual was a rational human being. I believed all human beings looked for the truth as I do.

It seems I have again made the mistake of putting too much faith in my fellow man. It seems--as I am--that we are all fallible.

The other day I acted on impulse. I gambled all my money on Bitcoinduit because of a mere possibility; a mere possibly over certainty of money in my hand. I realized my mistake quite quickly and I accepted it as I've always done with my life over the past couple of months. I am nearly free of desire. When I am not, I accept it just the same. There is no room in a peaceful life for shame.

I have no shame in knowing and speaking with the goddamn idiots on SomethingAwful and on this forum. I have no shame in sharing the same digital space with people who think they know what's best for my life. I have no shame in sharing my life with people who deny truth over convenience every chance they get.

I accept all of you for who you are and thank you for what you have given me: The experiences and the knowledge I come to enjoy to this day.

Night.

acceptance of everything is the only way I've found permanent awsomeness out of life- any opinions are non-acceptance. Nice post :)

Then why'd you change your name for the fourth time and not admit it's you until every single person on this forum realized that "I. Goldstein" couldn't be anyone but you? Granted, most of us realized that from your first post, but there are a lot of libertarians on this forum, and they're kind of naive and maybe a little slow.


If you were actually looking for the truth, you'd read more things that challenged your beliefs instead of constantly trying to reinforce them.


Thank you for this stunning realization. Next thing, you'll figure out that people aren't the least bit rational, either. And maybe, if you try hard enough, your insights on human nature will make it to the level of an average high school freshman.

Hey Kettle. Read Wealth of Nations yet? Or maybe Atlas Shrugged or Fountainhead?

Read Atlas Shrugged as a teenager. But you know I kinda did grow up in the most capitalism-loving country on Earth that loves to censor and keep anything truly leftist from the people at all costs. I'm gonna go ahead and say I've been way more exposed to capitalist thought than Atlas has to leftist thought living in small-town Texas. Call it a hunch.

These are all basic-level Economic texts.

Would that be Hong Kong, Singapore, Monaco, Dubai, or someplace else?

Let's say I enjoy Karl Marx's writing style albeit translated. The Communist Manifesto is one of my favorite books.

One day you will wake up and realize that all this psychological hardship you put yourself through is simply of your own creation.  All your pet conspiracy theories which pit you as the underdog against The System will unravel.  You'll question why all the people you listen to on the radio who talk about the end of fiat dollars only accept fiat dollars in exchange for their goods.

I guess what I'm trying to say is...It Gets Better™.

Yes, I'll wake up to the truth that there is no such thing as "I". Compassion and rationality can only come from our great governors on the hill. Yes, man is an irrational animal doomed to die unless he is leashed by his superiors. I will realize the truth is only in mediocrity and that I should accept authority because I am not worthy enough to own myself.

I'll accept that as soon as the Second Coming of Christ. Heh.

If man was a rational animal, it stands to reason that we wouldn't have a system this fucked in the first place, doesn't it?

Actually it shows how man likes to act in his own self-interest. The power and control that has been successfully achieved is only a testament to man's individual rationality. Seeing the most determined men reach where they have only shows how capable we are. I am not proud of the corpses they have walked over along the way but they will eventually find they can't destroy man's happiness and maintain their wealth.

They are in for a struggle. Man is rational in the sense that they will always want to maintain their happiness. Inevitably so as their short-term blunders come to fail. Revolution occurs for a reason. I still have a lot of faith in man despite letting itself become enslaved so many times.

Revolution and evolution is key.

I sure do hope you were being sarcastic :)

Will you accept it sooner if SomethingAwful allows you to join by paying in BTC?

What is your opinion on Marx's ideas of alienation and commodity fetishism?

His contentions regarding commodity fetishism are largely irrational. They are based on axioms of value that are mostly subjective; although he claims otherwise. He's nearly as bad as Rand when it comes to what he defines as rational.

As for alienation, you can't force people to take interest in their work. It should be up to the individual to decide whether he derives value from being a larger shareholder of the product at-large or if he just prefers to contract his work. When it comes to his contentions based on classes, I just can't relate to it. I don't see people in these artificial groups or classes. I see them as individuals with different priorities. It's a load of rubbish to me.

It is folly to interpret any Texan's dismissal of leftist views as a lack of understanding of them. We simply dismiss them because they are silly. Not silly in a good way like Jerry Seinfeld. But silly in the way an 8 year old rationalizes their father buying them a new skateboard.

Silly like this current events example:

http://www.cnn.com/2011/10/26/politics/obama-student-loans/

Way to support the president's argument CNN! But still, I'm hugely in favor of education.



OK, the main problem is the cost of education is rising. Granted.

Could it be a supply and demand imbalance? No, how could it be possible for college student to have too much money to waste on tuition that is needlessly high. That's Inconceivable!



Doh! The government is giving student money to pay needlessly high tuition rates. THEN, we are not even asking them to pay it back. Oh, that makes perfect sense now. Certainly, just like with free mortgage money, free education money will drive up prices.

So let's fix the problem!


WTF!  We are going to fix the problem of increasing education cost, by having students pay back less of their loans!!!

Why don't we just charge science and engineering majors more because they are going to be rich. But give discounts to english and history majors because they are going to be poor.

Wait! Universities are actually doing that! You've got to be fucking kidding me. Deliberately penalizing people from learning to be productive, while encouraging people to study what will keep them in poverty.

Well as long as there is a plan! Go left go!

College tuitions are overpriced due to federal subsidies. When colleges will get paid regardless if a student defaults or not, you will see inflated prices like this. You guys are only playing with symptoms at this point.

Also, want to know a secret?

I hate Atlas Shrugged. I couldn't get through half of that piece of shit.

Your main problem seems to stem from your inability to realize that you can't call someone an idiot while restating their premise.

And Atlas Shrugged is not that tough a read. Download the audio version if you are lazy.

Heh. I don't understand your point.

Oh but it is a tough read. It fails as a novel. It is terribly written.

Wait, do I agree with Atlas on something? Are you sure you're the real Atlas?

Really?



How can you not see this as a restatement of my point while calling me an idiot?

I don't recall calling you an idiot. I'm sorry if you felt that was directed towards you.

No worries!

Gambling addiction can be very dangerous, I hope you will not make this same mistake again.  You have worked very hard for your money, don't risk it, make every decision with a Clear Body and a Clear Mind.  

Personally I believe gambling should be illegal, especially online.  As much as some folks think personal responsibility is the only consideration there are often times when people are underage or don't understand the risks or are just plain addicted to the thrill.  

Pseudo-Buddhism. As in so many other things, he reads the words but he doesn't actually grasp the concept.

Alright, Lolie, show me the way. Show me how I am not grasping the fact that desire is pointless since all will be lost in the end. Haha. Feel free to continue viewing me through your rose-tinted glasses. When you're interested in actually getting to know me, hit me up some time.

Meh, I like losing things sometimes. Declines add nice contrast. Sometimes I dream of being thrown in the street with absolutely nothing but the clothes on my back. If life is a game, it might as well be played on its hardest setting. Combating a gambling addiction would be interesting. Well, any addiction really. I have never truly had one before.

...but yes a bird in hand is worth two in bush. I will always prefer certainty. Again, I regretted this gamble immediately but it's not over yet. I might win although I'll happily accept a loss.

I am not even going to address the inaccurate interpretation of Rand. I hold accomplishments of creation as one of life's pleasures but I do not cling to it. In the end, it's a matter of semantics and what defines desire in both contexts. Rand is neutral when it comes to desire consuming a person. She only addresses a man's long-term happiness as his prime motivator in life. I find clinging to desires as against this end.

Every good that is worth desiring is useful to the public. I find the idea of a "public good" silly. Everything benefits the public in some shape or form -- except looters and parasites.

Have you ever looked up the traditional economic definition of "public good"? It's a pretty useful classification of goods that withstand the difficulties of traditional free market pricing mechanisms.

This is an example where you would probably be surprised at your interest in reading up on actual terms.

I think the traditional term can go fuck itself.

Look, you guys are hopeless. The whole lot of you. You are literally pulling these assumptions out of Lolie's ass. You know very little about me.

Let me turn things around here: Consider the possibility that every axiom you have pushed upon me could be wrong.

Hahaha. Look, I don't know where you gentlemen heard that I follow both of these things unequivocally. I've only taken the parts I like. God forbid I ever follow Objectivism rigidly. Holy shit that would be a nightmare.

You know it, brother. I'll be here all week.

atlas you get those posters yet?

I did. My school certainly appreciated them. : ) Thanks, Deslok.

You should have taken some pictures to collect the few coins left in the promotion

Yeah I could of but I don't need to be paid to do this. It's valuable unto itself.

Actually, it's very open ended. Critical thinking and questioning of possible facts and ones teacher is revered. You are free to hold and deny truths according to your judgement. 

I don't understand, Atlas. Are you here to learn anything, or just fight everything? Obviously, you can't argue with me about public goods (or anything for that matter) if you don't even know what I'm talking about.

Also, no need to be so angry. I was just pointing you to an interesting topic.


You are not displaying "critical thinking" by saying a term can "go fuck itself" if you don't even know what it means...

Wait, your school? I thought you were homeschooled?
Also, just wondering, how can you, or any kid, really, grow up and live where you're at? I mean, your house is nice, but the area is so empty and desolate... I stand there, among the very sparsely set buildings, look out on the horizon, and there's nothing as far as I can see... Not even hills or forests, or even trees, except for a few here and there. Nearest cities are a bit of a drive away, too. So, what the heck do guys do for fun out there? Pray and shoot guns? I grew up in essentially a metropolis, so that area and life is somewhat of a culture shock for me.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I did not wish to live what was not life, living is so dear; nor did I wish to practise resignation, unless it was quite necessary. I wanted to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life, to live so sturdily and Spartan-like as to put to rout all that was not life, to cut a broad swath and shave close, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."
— Henry David Thoreau

It's like that. Without the woods. Or the pond. But with guns.

So it's like that, but without all of that, and barely any marrow to suck in the dry and desolate environment... but with guns? I lived in a deep European forest a few months for vacation, and I was definitely not bored. Atlas's development of houses is practically out in the desert. I would literally go mad if I lived there. Maybe that's why he is on here so much bringing up such varied and frequent topics, or why he's into Budhism, having nothing really physical around him to need/want?

I don't really know where he is from. But it sounds like the desert southwest. I know many people from out there. Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, California. All of those places are different, but they are basically filled with people living deliberately. With guns. Also, often with motorcycles and all terrain vehicles. Sometimes they make explosives just for the hell of it. Life is nice when you can make things go boom without attracting needless authorities. Lots have boats and go fishing in a places you'd swear could have no water. Sometimes people grow things where you'd swear nothing should grow. There are few signs to tell you what you can't do. So people come here to find out what they actually can do.

The desert southwest is baffling to East Coast city people. They are convinced nobody should live out there. However, they are also convinced that is the perfect place for people to build them the solar, wind, hydro, and thermal power plants they want. In California they call this the "not in my backyard" effect. But to the East and West coast folks, the southwest is really "nobody's backyard". Curiously though it is. And the people in that backyard think, Woot! More shit to build!

In Texas we find things especially ironic. After being resented as a bastion of the evil oil (energy) industry, now we lead the nation in wind power (energy). And you'd be horrified to know that the same rednecks that built the oil refineries are now building bio-fuel refineries, solar plants, and now it looks like they can keep drilling holes in the crust for geo-thermal plants as well.

In ten years, the East Coast will be pissing and moaning that evil Texas energy companies are manipulating their costs of clean energy. But every moment from now till then, the "intelligent", "educated", "civic minded" people in the "civilized" parts of the country will keep thinking, "What on earth could you redneck morons possibly find to do out there???"

I grew up in a desert region and it was awesome.  We had fuck all in the way of on-tap entertainment - the town didn't get a swimming pool until I was in high school, we had two TV stations and they didn't start broadcasting until 3pm, the local cinema only showed movies about once a month and closed down for a few years - so we had to find stuff to do. 

The only rule most of us had was "be home by dark" and we used to either ride or walk miles out of town to go swimming, go fishing or yabbying or have a picnic at the local waterholes.  Occasionally someone got injured, but that was regarded as a normal part of childhood back then (you hardly every seem to see kids with a broken limb these days).

Yep. He's near Serenada, TX. Looks like a few housing developments, and an airport, but I guess not too far from Austin (if you have a car)



Ah, awesome! So thanks to you guys, we have a place where our "intelligent," "educated," "Ivy League" created technologies can be built and tested on cheap land by cheap "redneck moron" labor. Thanks! ;)  (j/k of course. Austin makes some tech and science stuff to sometimes)

LMAO at the phrase, "If you have a car!"

Yes everyone has cars. Even teenagers! And that is really just a suburb outside of Austin. It only looks flat but it's on the edge of the hill country. There are lakes and rivers, trees, hills. He is a really easy drive to Austin, Dallas, San Antonio, and not to far to Houston.

Really, don't fret for him!



East Coaster's do have a hard on for Austin. Yes there is some tech there, but it's not like they put men on the moon or anything.

But really that was my point about technology. I doesn't matter how intelligent your engineers are, if they can't build anything. Last I heard the "Green" mountain paradise of Vermont had exactly one windmill. And they were complaining that it was too noisy! Massachusetts is busy litigating to see if they can build windmills off the coast.

Texas has an open invitation for anyone who wants to build offshore wind farms. It doesn't even require federal permits. This was a really good article on understanding Green Technology and Texas.

http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/energy/solar-wind/4338280

Heh, don't knock on smart people. We invent the tech that makes those windmills work, and our east coast financial power houses and west coast VC's provide the cash to have them built. MD and WV are deploying a whole slew of windmills up in our "mountains" (aka "hills" in west coast speak) too, you know  ;)

I never knock smart people. I tend to bash those who keep smart and motivated people from actually solving problems.

Just keep giving them grant money, and they'll keep at it  ;D

My initial point though was that if I, with my personality, intellect, curiocity, and wants was stuck where Atlas is now, I'd likely get all depressy and insane, and spend most of my time on the intenret trying to learn about as much about stuff outside of the place I'm stuck in. My social focus would get reoriented more towards internet stuff rather than the "boring people" around me, and I'd keep trying to figure out some ideas or ways to help get me the hell out of there, too. Wonder if that's Atlas's excuse, too?

Wow! Could you be more condescending? I don't actually know where you are so I can't make appropriate geo relative comments, but suppose you lived in Manhattan. What you are saying is, "Can you imagine how much it must suck to live in New Jersey? I bet all those people have to do all day is internet porn."

Really, if Atlas is the least bit clever he'll start a business and become one of the folks the Columbia students are protesting. I mean no matter what happens, somebody has to be in the top 1%. It is completely clear who has zero interest in being in that demographic.

Tell me when that happens and I'll make a public apology for saying this, but those rags-to-riches stories don't exist anymore. The only way they would be protesting Atlas right now would be if he just inherited his late father's investment firm and starting scheming up more ways to earn money off investors while lobbying for less taxes and regulation for himself and more taxes and another Patriot Act for those poorer than him.

I've lived in both the Northeast and the Deep South as an adult. The difference among attitudes, friendliness, intelligence and all of that in actual regular people (not raving ideologues, politicians, etc.) between the two regions is way fucking smaller than the media would like you to think. Some of our Pennsylvania rednecks can give just about anyone in the South a run for their money.

Really? Come on! Michael Dell dropped out of college not 30 miles from where Atlas is. But if he is not rags-to-riches enough, how about:

College Drop Outs

Steve Wozniak
Steve Jobs
Bill Gates
Mark Zuckerberg


College Graduates

Larry Ellison
Jeff Bezos
Larry Page
Sergey Brin
Warren Buffett
Herman Cain

Those are just the tech folks and others who immediately come to mind. You will find the Forbes 400 is filled with people who didn't inherit their money from daddy.

Then why do we have very nearly the lowest social mobility of any First World country? I think I've asked you that several times  that you ignored actually.

Look how easy it is to trick people like you. Someone holds up a few token examples of what you want to believe and you're satisfied. Facts, statistics, these things don't matter and never will, right?

Also, most of those people got their start decades ago when social mobility was much higher and many were never even close to poverty at any time in their lives. I mean, Bill Gates? Seriously? The real reason you can't understand the frustration groups like OWS have is that you're looking at America through 1970s-tinted glasses, and conservative media sources are only too happy to egg on that delusion.

Hey! Who is the lowest? I didn't know there was room for improvement.

Well it is clearly a conspiracy. Obviously, the folks at the top are not competing among themselves. They are all preoccupied with penalizing the folks who work at McDonald's. It is symptomatic of the rich's perceive that the poor spit in their food. Either that, or they are all trying to get back at them because they got picked on in high school.


People like me! You mean niggers! You racist bastard!

England, actually.

But you just avoided the question yet again, so great job with that.

Actually, I read a good article on that the other day. I was looking for the link. It was written by a European socialist ruminating on the same question. I can't seem to find the link. I'll summarize his view, then I'll give mine.

He pointed out that Europe has more "situational" equality, meaning people are more financially equal as you are suggesting. He attributed this to homogeneity. French people seem themselves a French people and they should be the equal. However, his view was that European countries have very little "opportunistic" equality. Meaning that if you are Muslim new-French you are expected to not try to fit in. You are people, but you're not "our people".

Conversely, he saw America as having much more "opportunistic" equality. His view was everyone, black, white, rich, poor, gay, straight, (and he had a growing list of groups we are tolerating, like it or not) is seen as having a chance to succeed. So if someone does succeed, we are more willing to tolerate the "situational" inequality.

---

Personally, I think Europe blew themselves the fuck up during World War II. The process of randomly destroying people's shit, removed any notion of a mapping between owning property and deserving to own property. Specifically, if a bomb fell on my house but did not fall on your house, that doesn't mean I deserved to have my stuff destroyed more than you.

In the end, everyone had to rebuild together out of what they all had left. Or they could stand on arbitrary principles and all die or kill each other. This process left a couple of generations forever changed.

However, they are quickly re-discovering that some people are more productive than others. Even Amsterdam tolerates its famous drug users because it is less bother to do so than otherwise. They don't consider drug addicts as living a socially equivalent lifestyle. European countries are also discovering that they enjoy their homogeneity. The French are not keen on giving the new-French Muslims the same social freedoms and benefits. Clearly, the Germans want equality for the Germans, but they are not really saying, "Oh those poor Greeks."

---

The US has a different philosophy from Europe. I partially agree with the guy above. If you are Herman Cain and come from poverty, you can make it. If you are an orphan like Steve Jobs you can make it. These folks deserve what they earned. They didn't steal anything. The created value.

And we Americans see ourselves in them. Sometimes there is envy in our eyes, but still we think, if I wasn't so damn lazy I could be like those guys. I could create awesome shit! I could bring people together to change the world! Now where is that last beer?

Speaking only for myself. I know this category of people fits me. Maybe I'm delusional and I'm not as smart or driven as Steve Jobs. But in no way is my personal failing Steve Jobs fault. Him being clever doesn't make him responsible for me being less so. This is not a zero sum game.

I worked my job so I could deserve the cool shit Steve Jobs willed to life. He didn't will it to life because I deserve it.

Well, thank you for at least addressing the question, but I really don't think this is the case. Wages, life expectancy, accumulated wealth, and every other metric put black people in America way below whites. Unless one thinks that black people are inherently inferior, we clearly still have a big problem with stuff like this, black president or not.

While Americans are more likely to want to start a business or dream of doing so, people in, for example, Norway, are far more likely to do so. See this article: http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-norway-start-ups-say-ja-to-socialism.html (http://www.inc.com/magazine/20110201/in-norway-start-ups-say-ja-to-socialism.html)  (but ignore the part where they constantly refer to Norway's social democracy as socialism - hey, it's Inc. Magazine, whaddya expect?).


There's a nice quote from Steinbeck about this attitude:

See just when you think you've said something well. Someone has already said it better. Nice quote. Thanks!



I certainly don't claim everyone is even. There are clearly differences but it is difficult identify the true causes and effects.

I taught my kids, everyone starts with all the doors open. Then each person shuts doors through personal actions. You break into a store, you shut the door to being a cop. Decide not to study science, you shut the door to med school. Clearly, parents and friends encourage you shut some of these doors as well. But that doesn't make anyone righteous. It also doesn't make the decisions reversible.

It is quite puzzling to wonder why some groups continue to fall behind while some do not. Asians became statistically indistinguishable from white people a while back. This is true even though most are relative new comers to this country. Hispanics often have differing success rates based upon their country of origin. This seems true even if we find them indistinguishable. When I was in high school my black friends from successful Jamaican families separated themselves from "American blacks". When I was in college my Nigerian black friends wouldn't even party with "American blacks".

It appears to me that the more successful groups tend to value shutting doors more slowly. I saw a Ted talk that claimed the future success of children was easily predictable based upon their ability to delay gratification. The guy had a brilliant video of children trying not to eat marshmallows. How is it that one child comes to have the ability to delay gratification and another doesn't?  I have no idea. I probably effected that in my children, however I don't take the blame for affecting others.

^ Maybe hundreds of years of institutional discrimination and racism are to blame for African American performance?

Here's the thing people don't seem to understand about rags to riches.  It is possible, but not for everyone.  People overestimate the value of hard work and intelligence and undervalue luck and making connections.

The world is full of intelligent, hard workers, and people with dreams and hopes.  Not all of them get to be Bill Gates.  There isn't room for that many Bill Gates.  So should the value of being the right intelligent hard worker at the right time mean you should have thousands of times the wealth of people who didn't quite strike gold?

I don't think so, personally.  That isn't to say these qualities should not be rewarded, they should be, but society receives no benefit from rewarding the lucky as much as we do instead of evening out the rewards to all the hard workers.  

A good standard of living is essential for most children to reach their full potential, so how can we judge if Bill Gates really deserves to be richest when so many of his potential competitors were handicapped by poverty?  Or by discrimination based on race or gender or orientation?

The bottom line is, people don't want to be parasites, they wan't to strive for achievement and we should give them the tools.

Sorry, didn't mean to be condescending. Was mainly saying that I personally would likely be very bored living there. If I was ribbing the south-westerners about being dumb rednecks, it was ONLY in jest in reply to Reds ribbing of us as being self centered "educated" elitists. Though if you came in mid conversation, you likely would've misunderstood. I AM very curious as to what Atlas does for fun to pass the time (besides post to this forum I mean).

I grew up spending a part of my childhood in Kiev, Ukraine (the "metropolis"), with a few Summers on a farm or in a vacation spot by a lake in the middle of a forest, then a part in Rome and Nettuno, Italy, living mostly in a beach town, then in a somewhat ghetto apartment complex north of DC, and finally in a more rich and ritzy suburb area of Potomac, MD.  In the mean time I also traveled with my family and spent some time in Canada, Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. So, yeah, perhaps my bar of what's interesting has been set a bit high.

Now that is the easy politically correct answer. That doesn't explain why my new to the country friends automatically inherited the same racism. Keep in mind these where the years where everyone was protesting aparteid in South Africa. Being an actual African was very popular among the locals. However, these Africans view being in the US to study as an amazing opportunity. They thought the other students were lazy and using any excuse not to study and succeed.



It's not that I want to attack this argument. But really I can't just let it stand without pointing out that it is a self attacking argument.

So personally I'm not a Bill Gates fan. But really? You expect me to belief that Bill Gates got ahead on luck and making connections? I'm sure his Harvard connections were awesome when he dropped out to go work with a nobody in New Mexico!

But since you brought up the analogy, say I set out across the country to dig for gold in California. You decided that I was a moron and wasting a lot of time. So you decided to forgo the trip and start digging for gold in New Jersey. After all, that meant you could get started six months sooner than me. And lets just say that you dug a whole three times as deep as the hole I dug. And it was through rock that was twice as hard is the rock I dug through.

Now say, I found an ounce of gold and you found none. How much of my ounce are you entitled to because through "luck" I struck gold? And through only "bad luck" you "didn't quite strike gold".

I say none. Not because you didn't work hard. But because you didn't do anything productive. Meaning you didn't "produce" anything. Just a whole. Maybe that is useful, so go find a market for your hole. Then send me some of the money you got for it because I wasn't lucky enough to sell my hole. Just my gold.

Suppose Zuckerberg sold FaceBook off at his first off then retired to a island to live off of his 10 million instead of going on to be worth more than a billion. Are you saying we would all be better off? Ask Rupert Murdock about MySpace then tell me again how everything is just luck.



Really, you are going to continue on with the Bill Gates was lucky argument. I suppose Steve Jobs, and Mark Zuckerberg were lucky too!

But life has already tested your hypothesis. When Steve Jobs was booted from Apple the whole company crashed. When he returned it went from near bankruptcy to the most valuable company on the planet.

Bill Gates left Microsoft to Steve Ballmer (Who really did get lucky meeting Bill Gates at Harvard). But you really want to tell me that Microsoft is the same post Gates? Bill Gates leaving Microsoft to give away his fortune has cost the world trillions of dollars of value that Gates could have created but Ballmer couldn't.



The point is we don't get to "judge if Bill Gates really deserves to be richest". Bill Gates created that wealth and value out of thin air. Prior to him you couldn't buy Microsoft Word (insert your favorite) even if you wanted to. We are all better because he helped us be more productive, or better entertained, or (insert your favorite). We gave him the money in exchange for value that we received. He didn't steal from us.

Now you want me to believe that we shouldn't have bought the products he created, because some nebulous competitor didn't get the opportunity to build products to compete with him?



I don't reward people for "striving for achievement". I pay people to share with me the value they created by actually achieving things. Things either I couldn't achieve, or didn't want to attempt, or chose not to bother to do.



Really!? Dianetics!?

Your impulse toward sanity, does not guarantee your actual sanity.

Red, similar story in my family. Back in '89, as soon as USSR opened it's borders a tiny bit, my parents just up and left with nothing buy a suitcase of clothing, $300, and two young kids. Even left the teacups on the table, with tea still in them. Our other family members and some of my parents' friends thought they were stupid and crazy for doing that, especially with two kids. When they first came here, they worked as janitors. Then they got jobs they had degrees in. Then when that didn't pay enough, they took evening classes, and now earn six figure incomes each. From $300 to start, and nothing else, while even supporting two kids. Some of the friendships back home eventually had to be broken off, though, because it went from "wow, I have rich American friends!" through "can you get me this and that? You make so much money, you are rich!" to eventual resentment because they are "rich only because they are lucky to be living in America, and aren't sharing their wealth with the less fortunate," as if their hard work had nothing to do with it, and even though those friends had the same opportunity to move here, and even moreso after USSR fell apart in '91. So, no sympathy for whiners from me.

Awesome story! I have friends from Romania that I helped to immigrate here. They have a very similar story. They came over only about 10 years ago. Now they make more money than me. I guarantee you it is all from their personal motivation and hard work.

You miss the point.  There are real metrics of performance upon which African Americans lag behind.  Anyone coming to the country can notice this.  Properly identifying the cause of this is the problem.  In short, your friends are not inheritors of a racism based on a history of slavery and segregation that continues today.  African Americans inherited that history.


I think there are millions of people who try and fail to develop a business despite having equal intelligence and drive.  I think those people obviously don't deserve to be rewarded as well as Bill Gates, but they do deserve a decent standard of living and things like healthcare which can be difficult when you have put so much of your personal wealth at risk.

Look at Harvard itself.  There are TONS of people qualified to attend, but they have to whittle it down.  Every High School has a valedictorian.


No, the analogy is closer to me being a mile away in a different spot in the same area.  Equal intelligence to find a likely location, equal drive to dig, random chance.  

http://americanhistory.about.com/library/weekly/aa090901a.htm

Let's start with, people who work are entitled to life.  


I think there are tens of millions of people as smart and capable of Zuckerberg and Murdoch.  You ask what if we lost Facebook?  We lose ideas just as good every day.  Some starving kid in Africa could probably grow up to find out a way to make money with social networking without invading people's privacy, I bet.  Ya know, if she lives.


Yes.  That doesn't mean they aren't accomplished, it just means that someone else in the same spot could achieve similar accomplishments.  Do you really think we wouldn't have the same sort of technology we have today without them?  They owe their success to legions of software developers and engineers.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6677971.stm



What a strange argument.  Football teams crash when they lose star quarterbacks, but sometimes Aaron Rodgers is right around the corner.  Nobody is that unique.  There were plenty of tech companies doing well in the absence of Apple as a leader.  The talent was elsewhere, not vanished out of existence.

But as for luck.  Put Steve Jobs in Somalia as a baby instead of America.  How does he do?


I think the general consensus is that Microsoft has been producing much better operating systems as the 2000's have rolled on.  The X-Box was also released when Ballmer was chief executive and it has done very well.  


Actually, the original products Microsoft developed were not out of thin air.  They developed products to work with computer systems other people made.  None of this is all that unique, there were and are word processors before and after Word that work just fine.

Let me bold this because it is key:  The more people making and developing new products, the more people who have an oppurtunity to build their success off of what other people have done.  When you let the kid in Africa starve without making his contribution, you have robbed yourself of a chance to build on what he made. When you don't reward people for striving for success in building their own business, they are less likely to try and you have robbed yourself of opportunities to work with them.

Anyway, it is a straw man to claim I am saying he stole anything.  I simply think it is unfair the other people who help produce the work of our society are disproportionately unrewarded for their efforts in comparison.


That you are responding to things I have not said is probably a sign that my argument is the stronger.


This is the exact center of your problem of understanding here.  There is no achievement without people who strive and fail.  There is no value without it.   It provides, at stone cold least, information on what products and services lack value when presented in such and such a manner.  

But the problem is more that people who do strive and succeed are disproportionately rewarded based on luck.


You are free to follow whatever philosophy you want, I wouldn't pressure anyone, but in my personal view there is a lot of universal wisdom there the same as there is in the Bible or Koran.

I won't respond to most of that because it is silly, circular and not worth my time. The whole argument is basically a poor copy of this. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ldAQ6Rh5ZI

However, if anyone else thinks I'm ducking out of anything other than futility please let me know.


I love this! Woot! Woot!

You are saying "at stone cold least" everyone should be rewarded for setting an example for others. Especially those who set a Bad Example! Obviously, it is from their self sacrifices that we all learn the most.



So the people who strive and succeed are rewarded based on luck.
And the people who strive and fail should be rewarded despite bad luck.
And people who don't try at all and therefore don't succeed should be rewarded. Because had they bothered to try, they would have deserved an equal a shot at luck as those who strived and succeeded.

Nice job Stuart!

It's more like: Everyone should have their basic needs met.  A rich society doesn't leave people to die.

Everyone who works should be well paid for it in accordance with what they produce. (psst, this is why the rich are so much more rich than the poor than they used to be in the 20th century US. (http://thecurrentmoment.files.wordpress.com/2011/08/productivity-and-real-wages.jpg))

People should not be scared to try and build a business because the consequences of failure, which can just be bad luck, are too great.

In short, people should be given what they deserve.  What they deserve is often out of step with the wealth they have accumulated. 

Look, I speak from experience here.  I was born wealthy and have had many advantages.  I did well in school, I work hard.  I've had nothing but success, but this path was so much easier for me than for other people I have known and have worked with thanks to where I started and how I was raised.  Someone who has reached the same place as me but has had to work harder for it deserves for that to be recognized.  If that means I have to be taxed more to support their kids and other kids like them, fine.

This is a mantra not a supported argument. Who should meet these basic needs? Who deserves to have them met?

You certainly can't argue that everyone deserves to have their needs met, but nobody should be require to meet them.
But you can argue that everyone deserves to have their needs met, but everyone must be required to meet them.

That only leaves, some people must be required to meet the needs of others. Who are these blessed people and who are those burdened?


I did this in another thread already. I'm not going to do it again.
But basically those that succeed are indispensable, those that fail are trivially replaceable. There is an endless supply of people who fail. Effort expended is not a measure of value. Success is a measure of value.



People should be scared. The actual odds are horrible. That is why there are rewards for success. Not rewards for risk taking.
http://boss.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/15/failure-is-a-constant-in-entrepreneurship/



Nobody is given what they deserve ever. That is a silly concept. There is no tooth fairy either.



You don't have to be taxed! You just have to HELP! Are you telling me Bill Gates fortune would be better spent if he gave it to the government. Better than if he used it to directly help improve conditions among his fellow mankind? That bastard! Having the hubris to think he should be allowed to decide how best to help people! He is not even a liberal! He's a heartless business man. Who put him in charge?

If you wish to continue the debate please address my previous post instead of skipping ahead to the summary.  It just seems like you can't address the points and want to speak in generalities and strawmen.  If you are just here to troll I'm not really interested.

African Americans lag behind. Granted. I already addressed this.
Your conclusion is pure politically correct speculation. In 50 years, black children will still inherit that history. Must they still fall behind? Is it my fault? I will be dead long before they are even born.

The Chinese in the west share a similar history but it doesn't seem to be effecting them. I call your self-perpetuating politically correct postulation bunk.



No one anywhere is rewarded for starting a business! They are rewarded for succeeding at business.
No one gets a decent standard of living because they "deserve" it. They earn their decent standard of living by being successful.




Saying you are "qualified to attend" but you are not accepted, is a politically correct way of saying "We don't want you! We've found somebody WE WANT MORE than you."

No one is qualified to "be the best" because they jumped through hoops others told them to jump through. Unless you are competing at Olympic hoop jumping.





I'm clearly saying, if you dug a whole and didn't successfully pull gold out of the hole, it doesn't matter where the fuck you dug the needless hole. It doesn't matter how smart you were before you made your wrong decision. It doesn't matter how much you believed in yourself or how much self confidence you had. It doesn't even matter how prestigious your upbringing. You dug a needless hole! Tough shit! Exxon doesn't get paid for drilling dry holes either.



Obviously, the wilderness disagrees with you. But clearly you are saying, the government should have build a gold miner safety net before it allowed anyone into California to search for gold.

I can't say more strongly that, jumping off a cliff doesn't make you deserving of the ability to fly. You need to beg the tooth fairy for that honor.



Again, how smart and capable you are results in ZERO VALUE TO ANYONE if you don't succeed. Thinking you are awesome does not make you awesome Stuart.



Again, you are an idiot for not acknowledging that others have been or are in those positions and they suck by comparison. And if it turns out they don't suck, you blame them for their own success because they were obviously lucky.


What is the point of this? The bad luck of the guy who made glue that failed to stick and didn't know what to do with it?
Or the brilliant genius of the person who saw a market for glue that didn't stick very well? Neither seem "lucky" in any sense of the word.



This is so circular and stupid I can hardly respond. Steve Jobs leaves an the company fails. Thousands of competent workers jobs go at risk but none of them can stop the fall. Steve Jobs shows back up tells them to stop working on their crappy shit that was going to fail. Then he gives them a direction that will succeed.

You dismiss all of that as luck? BULLSHIT!



I have no fucking idea, but based on everything I've read about him over 30 odd years, I'd say he would probably have taken over Somalia fired the incompetents and made it profitable. Then he would have improved the lives of the Entrean's and be threatening to reform Egypt as well.



Good. Buy their stock.


Again circular non-sense Bill Gates wasn't rewarded because his stuff was better, we all just made him lucky. Even if he was never born we'd be perfectly happy with what we got. But you are telling me that everyone isn't happy with what they got. They deserve better.



We should give money to everyone indiscriminately because maybe they are "the one" who will change our world.

Again I say this is fantasy adolescent bullshit. It is circular and can be used to justify anything. The Unibomber might turn out to be "the one" too! More money for him! We owe it to ourselves to see what he accomplishes so we can all build on it.



I am saying clearly that I think people earn what they deserve based on their personal success. Steve Jobs fired smarter people for being unsuccessful, than most companies hire. That is what successful people do.

That is where "luck" comes from.

It depends, are we going to address the problems or continue to deny them?  Are we going to change the racist attitudes that perpetuate the situation?


You are incredibly wrong. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Transcontinental_Railroad#Laborers)  The Chinese workers were generally paid immigrants.  It wasn't great pay but it was employment.  Irish workers did a lot of railroad work too, but that doesn't remotely compare with a system of kidnapping and generational slavery and years of official apartheid polices..


You make such bizzare statements it's hard to even take you seriously.  Banks reward people with loans before they even start the business, they do this because there is a reasonable chance of success which generates income for multiple parties and benefits the economy as a whole.  Everything is connected.   The more investment we put into people, the better their chances of success.

The question isn't one Bill Gates or none, it's getting two instead of one.


No, there are hundreds of thousands of virtually identical applicants for the top schools.  It can come down to things like life experience and volunteer work.   You know who has an easier time padding the resume that way?  Kids like me who were rich enough not to have to work to help the family during high school.  It was a luxury to be able to do volunteer work.  



Because of luck.  It's called prospecting for a reason, nobody knows exactly what they are going to find.  You can do the exact same work as someone else with the same planning and still end up with nothing.  It'd not a bad decision, it's a bad roll of the dice. Of course, now the other guy knows not to dig where you did.  Benefit to the mining community as a whole.


Obviously, civilization with you.  It's all about supporting a population rather than individuals or small tribes.   What I am saying is what government has been saying for quite a while, we need enforcement of safety standards and we should use tax money to support it.   It's not really a controversial concept outside of libertarian leaning circles.


You do understand the concept of potential value right?  My example of starving children speaks to their potential value which you have squandered by letting them die just like deciding to not invest in a company with good potential.


If you are going to choose to not adress my arguments and set up strawmen instead I think you should stop replying and go start your own thread to address imaginary debate partners.  I don't blame anyone for success, they earned it.  I just think everyone else deserves to be paid for what they earn as well.


Precisely the point, the rewards do not go to the most deserving.  These are the men who should have reaped most of the rewards for the success of the product since they are most responsible for it.  It went disproportionately to others instead.  Our sense of who should be paid what is out of synch with the value they generate.


No.  Luck is that his cancer developed later.  Luck is that he was born in the US.  Luck was that he didn't die in a random car accident.  Luck was having people like Wozniak around to offer crucial contributions.

What I dismiss is that he was so responsible for the success as to be paid as highly as he did while the factory workers, people just as essential to every company, get worked so hard and paid so little the factory has to put up "suicide prevention nets". (http://www.wealthwire.com/news/global/778)  Surely he deserves reward, just not so outsized as he received because of the massive tangle of others who contributed to his success.


Computer geeks and warlords have different skillsets.  Regardless, does he get anywhere in life without an early leg up?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs

He was lucky, compared to what an orphan in Somalia would have faced.  Can't deny it.


Don't dodge.  Debate.  Sounds like you are dodging because it would be a bit damaging to your argument to admit there was another qualified CEO right there and Gates wasn't that special.


No, you have entirely dodged the point again.  Gates was able to make software because someone else built computers for him to make software for.  Every business is reliant on other businesses.  The more businesses available the more economic opportunities for everyone.  We all stand on each other's shoulders.

Seriously, you are not even attempting to adress what I said there.


No, we should be very focused on fulfilling basic needs that can be advantageous for our own economic growth.  Food, shelter, education, infrastructure, healthcare.  The next Gates needs the next IBM to give him something to work with.

If you would pay closer attention to my arguments and truly focus on them, you would see that I am not saying anyone is the one.  I am saying there are plenty of intelligent and capable people around the world and we should take advantage of everything all of them have to offer in their various fields of competence.


Aside from those post-it dudes!  They just get a yearly salary despite being the most responsible for the product.  And those factory workers in China?  They are paid less than equivalent workers in the US because of lack of personal success?  False, this isn't a debate, your assertion is simply provably false.

I understand it can sound wrong to say some should give up their wealth to benefit others, or that it should be taken against their will through taxes, but this is really about self-benefit for everyone.  Doing the right thing can be good for us as individuals: (http://www.scientologyethics.org/scientology-ethics.htm)

"Like ethics and justice, good and evil have long been subject to opinion, confusion and obfuscation...it must be understood that good can be considered to be a constructive survival action. It is something that, to put it simply, is more beneficial than destructive across the dynamics. True, nothing is completely good, and to build anew often requires a degree of destruction. But if the constructive outweighs the destructive, i.e., if a greater number of dynamics are helped than harmed, then an action can be considered good. Thus, for example, a new cure which saves a hundred lives but kills only one is an acceptable cure."

From a material standpoint when we allow the worldwide underclass to share in our privileged lifestyles that offers benefits for the whole world.  Even if we have to redistribute from the rich that one destructive action is balanced out by the benefits, which is that there will be more businesses for us to work with and invest in and more people to buy a higher standard of products.

There really zero benefit to continuing this discussion. Somethings are so stupid they should be left to die.

That's the engine of progress, my friend.

Your opinions aren't that bad, it's better to have them be brought into the open and discussed and corrected rather than hold them in. 

All men have inalienable rights to think freely, to talk freely, to write freely their own opinions and to counter or utter or write upon the opinions of others.

Yes it is!

But you are wrong about Atlas Shrugged, it was really interesting as a novel. You should pick up the audio version and play it at double speed. You'll be done with it in only 26 hours or so.

LMAO! I meant your opinions are so ill considered and childish as to not be worthy of rewarding with discussion.


But they are not all entitled to consideration.

That is most disappointing, I had hoped you had come to understand the topic under discussion and were not cutting and running from an argument you had lost by posting a snide insult.  I look for the best in people.  :)

You called a loan a "reward". I'm not even convinced we speak the same language.

But quite frankly you aren't saying anything even remotely interesting. It is like badly rephrased arguments from the standard liberal talking points. I've heard them all. They all fall flat. You just happen to make them even less compelling then reading legal boilerplate.

Your philosophy requires the "sanction of your victims" as Rand would put it. You seem incapable of compelling that from anyone. Quite frankly is was amusing to watch your early attempts, but now you just come off as precocious and more than a little tedious.

It rewards offering a sound business plan.  Do you think they just hand them out to anyone saying they want to restore a theatre?  Every step along the way is a milestone that took work to achieve and people who make that effort should be treasured by society instead of being at risk of ruin so great they can't pay for their own healthcare.

Your protestations that my arguments were weak would be more convincing had you actually addressed them instead of repeatedly refusing to address the substance and bowing out with insults.  Look, it's okay to examine the fact that you have come to entirely incorrect conclusions about the world, don't let your cognitive dissonance lead you to lash out with pointless insults instead of debate to discover the truth.

Do you think Bill Gates gave up in the face of his problems?  Or tried to smear his critics with insults?  No, you can fix your mistakes and move on.

Do you really believe that children starving to death is not a waste of economic potential that could have benefitted you, or is it just that the implications for your chosen economic ideology are too dire for you to consider? All I hope for is "a civilization without insanity, without criminals and without war, where the able can prosper and honest beings can have rights, and where man is free to rise to greater heights” and I think that is a goal worth fighting for, even if it means I have to pay higher taxes.

LOL! OK, OK, you got me! I've been trolled by the best. I totally thought you were serious until I read this line.


LMAO! You are the master!

http://wiki.urbandead.com/images/e/e4/XenuChurch2.jpg

Attacking my spiritual beliefs and insulting me doesn't make it any less clear you have lost this debate. ::)

I concede! I can't possibly compete with the superior intellect! Khan!!!!

But I have to ask, WTF does "Do you think they just hand them out to anyone saying they want to restore a theatre?" mean?

It means that loans are not awarded to amateurs who lack a sound business plan (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49734.0).  Developing a business concept that has reasonable chance of success is a difficult task and is something society should respect even when the endeavor ultimately fails.  If you are too harsh in your punishment for failure, for instance making healthcare or housing unaffordable, you risk losing people who have ideas that will work because they can't take the chance.  This is a loss for the economy as a whole.  There are also people who fail because of luck, just as some benefit by it.  They deserve not to be overly punished as well.

OK, that makes more sense. It was a kind of interesting thread too. Unrealistic, but unrealism permeates this site.


The reason I assumed you were trolling is because the terms you use are hopelessly naive. As I linked earlier, more than 50% of all startup ventures fail within 5 years. That puts a huge amount of money at risk. Mostly the money of those who started the venture. This is as it should be.

If you are loaning money, a "reasonable chance of success" is nowhere near good enough. Bankers are loaning someone else's money. Those people depend on the bankers not to lose their savings. If the bankers lost the loan money on 50% of the loans, it would be a catastrophe that makes the wall street guys look like rocket scientists.

Bankers require basically 100% assurance that the loan with be paid back with interest. They are not business partners sharing risk. They get this assurance by making sure borrowers have skin in the game, and requiring collateral that can be foreclosed on and sold if the borrowers fail to pay back the loan for any reason. If a startup found puts $100,000 worth of cash into his new business and borrows another $100,000 worth from the bank against his home, this is in no way a *reward* for writing a good business plan.


If the above startup fails, the owner loses his $100,000 investment. He must also pay back the loan, even if he has to sell his house to do so. I'm sorry if this sounds to you like "punishment" it isn't. It is what grownups call "consequences".

Venture capital works differently. These folks invest at risk, but they take the lion's share of the business (often ownership) to do so. This means they get the lion share of the reward even if they didn't have the idea and didn't do any work. Risk takes the reward.

If it seems like the above process is kills many ideas before they start, it does. Fortunately, most of those ideas would have failed anyway. Even if the idea was good. Most of those people would have failed anyway. There is a saying in business that goes to start a successful company you need three things: A good idea, balls & money. If you have balls and money you win. Because ideas are trivial to find.

The real world really isn't high school. There are no *awards* for turning in good papers. You actually have to take risk and produce salable things to succeed.



If you borrow money from people, to which you've promised to pay it back. They don't care why you are failing to pay them back. They just expect you to make good on your word. There is no punishment for "bad luck". It does, however, have consequences. Consequences are what keep smart people from doing stupid things.

There is only "punishment" for failing to meet your obligations. Punishment is used to dissuade dishonest people from doing bad things. Like taking other people's money and breaking your promise to pay it back.

Those who fail because of "bad luck" are welcome to bring those facts to their investors. They are also welcome to convince their investors they've learned from their mistakes and the "bad luck" is sure to stop. However, those are your investor's decisions to make because it is they that must live with the consequences of their risk.

I'm sorry the real world seems harsh. It is.

As luck would have it, the New York Times just published a really interesting article on luck.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/30/business/luck-is-just-the-spark-for-business-giants.html

Duh.  That is the entire reason I believe in a strong safety net for such people.  The economy requires many people to take this risk for it to function and the more the better for the economy as a whole.  Every failed business makes a contribution to other business revenue and to tax revenue during their time in business.



I don't know why you decided to think you are talking with someone without business experience, if you knew me personally you would find it kind of ridiculous.  Is your whole collapse of logic here because of a semantic choice of word?

Please familiarize yourself with a common English term:   to award a loan. (http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1AVSW_enUS377US378&gcx=w&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=%22award+a+loan%22)

There was no hidden political meaning in my choice of phrase.  You really never encountered this before or are you, as I have suspected all along, just trolling here?


Again, is semantics all you have?  Punishment or consequences the argument holds the same meaning, the results of the failure are too dire. 

I think our conversation has been entirely unproductive from your end so I can only conclude you are trolling.  You have bounced from strawmen, to dodging arguments entirely, to hooking on to random word choice to try and argue semantics instead of the issue at hand...It's fairly disappointing.

I'm sorry you choose to believe in something in the absence of all mathematical logic. Certainly you can't subsidize 50% unprofitable businesses based on the profits of the others. Not to mention that to try to do so is just stupid.



I have no idea why. It could be your complete detachment from business concepts and reality as a whole.



The word you used was "reward".



Curiously, I do speak the language, semantics and all. By the way, semantics means "meaning". If you are not capable of writing what you mean, why should I rewarding you with any attention at all?

But if you didn't grasp my meaning, I'm saying directly, the results are exactly what they should be. If you try and fail, I don't care. Don't expect me or anyone else to analyze your failure to try and decide how close you were to not failing. No one gets points for pretending.


I'm quite sure I understand your fantasy world.
I'm quite sure you understand my reality world.
I'm not at all sure you understand your world is a fantasy.

So to be completely clear, let me restate your thesis. You are saying:
    Because we should relieve the successful of credit for their success, (it was only luck)
    Then we should relieve the failures of responsibility for their failures. (it was only bad luck)

I am saying unconditionally, that this argument and the self-referential logic behind it, IS BUNK! Entirely content free. It isn't even sound as wishful thinking. It doesn't even provide an intriguing plot line for a fantasy.

You are free to live your life following those tenets. I'm quite certain you will find your life filled with unexplainable "bad luck".
I assure you, however, that bad luck will not be unexplainable to me or others.

[This is a metaphor]
If you jump of a cliff, you are much more "in need" of the ability of flight than I am. If as it turns out you don't receive the reward of flight, you are free to consider that as "bad luck". Fortunately, you will only have to ponder your bad luck for a very short while. The reason you jumped off the cliff has very little bearing on the situation. There is zero difference to gravity if you jumped because you were on crack, of if you jumped because you were testing your handcrafted flight suit. If you don't succeed in flying, it is not gravity's fault.

And it's not my fault either. Not even if I decide to handcraft a working flight suit.

Strawman, responding to argument that was not offered.


Pretending the word award was not just quoted, pretends not to know the words are synonyms.


Stawman, responding to made up argument.


Strawmanning, making up argument to respond to.  Please start your own thread if you want to talk to the imaginary voices in your head.


And when you land roughly you may be in need of someone to help you move.  That is why we save as many people as we can.   You have again wasted a post hoping that making up fantasy arguments constitutes actually entering into a debate.  It does not.  You need not restate my thesis, as it has already been stated and is still awaiting response on the actual points, anytime you actually wish to engage on the arguments, I will be here.

Nope. I reread everything you wrote. Pure fantasy nonsense. I stand by my comments.
If you can't understand my comments, I find that fact, well... unsurprising.

But do keep in mind, you are the one aiming to change the world. I maintain our status quo is better than any fantasy you might have in your head. It is your burden to convince the world. We don't have the burden of convincing you. All we have to do is ignore you to get our way.

So, bye bye!

You have been ignoring what I've actually been saying since you started talking to me, lol, it hasn't stopped anything yet.

Oh, I went back and reviewed some of your other posts. You are that crazy guy who wants the government to monitor every bitcoin account! I had you confused with someone coherent. My mistake. I never should have awarded any of my time to you.

You are a Scientologist that believes in centralized control of resources for the supposed good of everyone. Of course you do. You would have to now wouldn't you. Nothing more really needs to be said.