gdp's Comments

Don't Get Any Ideas : 15: Alone at Night - Don\'t Get Any Ideas

Sat, 9 Nov 2019 13:23:56 +0000

Society seems to have fallen back into the same bad habits as back in the 1960s and earlier. Grouping people into categories based on nothing but accidents of birth, cherry-picking a few bad apples out of that arbitrary group then painting the entire group as bad is exactly what American society did during the majority of the 20th and all of the 19th centuries. Attempting to justify it as moral or positive as it is done these days doesn't make it any better. People aren't members of ethnicities or genders. People are people. Just because one person did wrong doesn't mean everyone who bears nothing more than a passing resemblance to that person are also bad.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : Elizabeth Warren\'s Blank Check - Robert P. Murphy - Mises Daily

Mon, 3 Oct 2011 16:13:03 +0000

I'm, what you'd call, employed. Even if I lost this job, I wouldn't spend it sitting in a park like some homeless man waiting for "Wall Street" to give me "my dues". If your humanities degree isn't getting you anywhere, that's not the fault of traders, that's yours for having an inflated expectation of what it would get. I would go get a job, anything, while looking for something else becuase nothing looks worse for your future employment prospects than a big, blank space on your resume. "Protesting Wall Street September 2011 - Present" isn't going to be an impressive feature.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : Elizabeth Warren\'s Blank Check - Robert P. Murphy - Mises Daily

Mon, 3 Oct 2011 11:27:32 +0000

The roads comment is kinda funny considering that, parallel, we have the President complaining about all those "corporate jets". Doesn't this mean that the wealthy might actually use the roads less than the rest of us because they prefer to fly?

Ludwig von Mises Institute : Elizabeth Warren\'s Blank Check - Robert P. Murphy - Mises Daily

Mon, 3 Oct 2011 11:26:35 +0000

Probably because the Turnpike doesn't jam up like I-295 does and has onramps and offramps positioned around where people want to go. Just speculating, I've never been in New Jersey.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : The Police State Abolishes the Trial - Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. - Mises Daily

Sat, 1 Oct 2011 21:14:09 +0000

We ask our neighbors if they can pick up our mail or check in on the cat, we don't demand that they do and throw them in prison when they refuse. There's a huge difference between a social contract and forced servitude. We enter into no social contracts we don't agree to, which means that, yes, I can tell my neighbor I'm not in a position to look in on his cat this time.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : The Police State Abolishes the Trial - Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. - Mises Daily

Sat, 1 Oct 2011 17:16:39 +0000

At the end of the day, even if he can't pay it all back, I'd rather he live in poverty with a destroyed name than getting three squares and a bed at my expense.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : The Police State Abolishes the Trial - Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. - Mises Daily

Sat, 1 Oct 2011 10:16:41 +0000

Speaking as a victim of the WorldCom scandal, no, Bernie Madoff has no business being in prison. His imprisonment is not an appropriate punishment for his behaviors, he is not a danger to society and does not need to be isolated from the general population, nor does his imprisonment provide any justice toward those he defrauded. Like Bernard Ebbers and Scott Sullivan, I would prefer Madoff to remain in society as a productive member so he can continually reimburse those he defrauded. As it stands, Ebbers' 25 year prison sentence does no good to me, he isn't working to reimburse my lost investment. As for Sullivan, he is out of prison and I am seeing no checks coming in the mail from him to recompense as the Government overrode my interests for its own and decided that the people who were defrauded meant nothing and decided a few years confinement in one of its facilities was appropriate. No, these people do not belong in a prison. They physically harmed no one and should be out there working to pay us back for what they stole, not costing us even more money to pay for their food, shelter, entertainment, and prison watch.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : The Police State Abolishes the Trial - Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr. - Mises Daily

Fri, 30 Sep 2011 13:55:40 +0000

This is a purely bar room napkin calculation here (meaning based on only cursory examination of annual violent crime and murder rates combined with life expectancy), but based on violent crime rates, and that prisons should, at the most outset, be used to house only those we literally cannot trust in civil society (the life without parole or nothing at all philosophy), the prison population should be around 67,000. This is the population of rapists, thugs, and murderers in our society. Everyone else didn't produce physical harm to another nor is their crime serving the victim any justice; such as the white collar variety - a perpetrator of a Ponzi scheme has no business being in prison - his ruined reputation and asset siezure to repay those he defrauded is punishment enough. I would wager a guess that there have yet to be 2.3 million instances of violent crime in America's history, let alone on such a scale to put that many into a prison. If there were that many violent people in our country, which is almost exactly 1% of our entire adult population, our society would be what you see in those Mad Max movies.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : Problems with "Made in Missouri" - Devin Leary-Hanebrink - Mises Daily

Tue, 27 Sep 2011 13:44:49 +0000

Anti-trade is primarily a government thing. Trade means activity and production that happens outside the zone of that government's control, meaning fewer opportunities to tax and regulate that activity. The public is played to other motives to drive away external influences.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : Freedom & Growth - Ken Zahringer - Mises Daily

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 14:35:24 +0000

The "more free" category hobbled along with the rest of the bottom dwellers until 1995. Does this mean that these nations moved toward the higher freedom category at that point or were they caught up in the Western market bubble? It would be interesting to determine if there's a freedom "breaking point" that needs to be hit to enjoy the benefits; or if this is a proof positive that movements toward a freer society generates the growth by giving a before-and-after snapshot.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : To Serve and Protect — the State - Wendy McElroy - Mises Daily

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:43:06 +0000

I picked that example because, a) it's a hilarious town name, and b) it's a small town yet it's police force is so heavily weighted toward revenue generation instead of protective services. The illustration only gets more absurd for larger municipalities.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : To Serve and Protect — the State - Wendy McElroy - Mises Daily

Fri, 23 Sep 2011 12:39:35 +0000

If we look at the employment makeup of your typical police department, it becomes apparent that's the case. http://www.npd.org/orgchart.asp That's your typical org chart. Entire supervisory functions can be eliminated without touching the claimed goal of "protecting" the population. The whole of the Support Services chain can be eliminated save Investigative Services, but won't because Vice is a huge revenue generator from auctions of confiscated property. Under the Operations line, Traffic and Parking Enforcement, which make up a huge volume of police employees, can also be let go. A police force that was organized around legitimate protection services would be significantly leaner than they are today.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : The Accidental Americans - Wendy McElroy - Mises Daily

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 12:59:44 +0000

Thanks for the information. I've had my eye on New Zealand for a while, I admired what they did back in the 1980s with their regulatory structure and see a small ray of hope that they'll be willing to take it further down the line. I think the best first choice is to take a week to visit a potential nation to see how it feels. As for "foreignness", I'm from a Navy family and have been dragged all over the place, including the Philippines (I apparently picked up some bad habits from there, like public urination, that had to be molded out of me when I was 6). If push comes to shove, I'll learn a new language, I seem to have a knack for it, but never ran into a situation where I've been immersed enough to really learn one. The only real thing I'd have to give up is recreational shooting. There really isn't anywhere in the world that is this free about owning firearms.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : The Accidental Americans - Wendy McElroy - Mises Daily

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:44:19 +0000

It's going to be worse. Starting 2015, if you don't have an ID that complies with the Real ID Act (such as a foreign ID), they won't even let you on a plane. My own drivers license, which usually is enough, won't be enough and I'm a citizen living here.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : The Accidental Americans - Wendy McElroy - Mises Daily

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 15:42:48 +0000

The Earth is flat and stars are just holes poked into the giant blanket wrapped around the planet.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : The Accidental Americans - Wendy McElroy - Mises Daily

Wed, 21 Sep 2011 14:45:55 +0000

You know what? This is the last straw. Anyone have suggestions on where to relocate before this tax rate gets lowered to smaller and smaller salaries?

Ludwig von Mises Institute : Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme? - Robert P. Murphy - Mises Daily

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 18:24:48 +0000

It's not that much of a brilliant point since that was the original excuse as to why it would be solvent forever. So long as we "invest" via reproduction indefinitely, the whole system will somehow work out in the end. On top of being a mathematical nightmare (we'd end up having 50 billion people on Earth in 100 years), it creates a moral quandry - I brought you into this world, therefore you must take care of me? A person isn't a machine or a thing that "belongs" to anyone else. You created the child and are obligated to care for him/her until that child is capable of self-sufficiency. However, that does not create an in-kind return obligation. Being the older party, that individual had some 30 or so years of labor and experience above and beyond that of the child and should have used much of that time for savings. Should that parent make the choice to continue expending resources on a child that should be self-sufficient (buying a car or paying for college for instance) does not generate a liability for repayment.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : Is Social Security a Ponzi Scheme? - Robert P. Murphy - Mises Daily

Mon, 19 Sep 2011 10:50:18 +0000

What the whole counter-argument to this claim boils down to is, "Social Security is not a Ponzi scheme because the Social Security Administration says it isn't." However, if you call it a pyramid scheme, the SSA can't rebut because it pulls away Charles Ponzi's motives out of the mix and merely describes the act of one person being paid with the contributions of two or more.

Ludwig von Mises Institute : One More Time: Consumption Spending Has Already Recovered - Robert Higgs - Mises Daily

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 18:37:25 +0000

Regime uncertainty plays Hell with future business projections. In a stable environment, we tend to know how much it costs to hire an individual, finance a project, or otherwise do business. Where regime uncertainty comes in is that when government has some kind of wild hair it needs to pluck, all the number people like myself research and create to make investment decisions become invalid and need to be researched again. Since we're living in an environment where we literally wake up one morning with a brand new regulatory requirement that no one knew about staring us in the face, we basically say, "OK, since I cannot project the whims of some bureaucrat being a petty tyrant over his meaningless fief, I just won't do anything. It's safer to not do anything than be blindsided by yet another OSHA or EPA regulation we had no way to project."

Ludwig von Mises Institute : TSA and Unproductive Labor - James E. Miller - Mises Daily

Fri, 16 Sep 2011 14:12:58 +0000

The TSA saved the airline from me bringing on a tube of toothpaste over 2.3 ounces in size, which then "stimulated" the economy because I had to buy an overpriced low volume tube (they don't come cheap anywhere in the universe) to avoid having to throw another tube away on the return trip. I recall a study done a number of years ago on the number of "lives" destroyed by the TSA when counting up all the hours wasted standing in lines. The number was staggering and more people are "killed" annually by the TSA than were killed in 9/11.