Saffire

I was gonna say... I think it's legal in Canada as well, lol. Oh and speaking of tax revenue: Social Security is officially in the red now: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/5/social-security-red-first-time-ever/ And the US Postal Service is losing $3.5 billion dollars per year because nobody's sending letters anymore: http://money.cnn.com/2010/08/05/news/companies/US_postal_service_earnings/ And I think the military industrial complex posted an $840 billion dollar loss but I'm not sure... maybe they found gold in Afghanistan. :laugh3:

Also, the judge was himself gay. :laugh3: Fitting, considering in the past it was just a bunch of straight judges ruling on an issue that only affects gay people. It should be mentioned that for the government, this isn't a civil rights issue at all - it's about taxation. Currently the US government collects far more taxes from unmarried gay couples than wedded couples. So they'll lose a lot of tax revenue when gay marriage is legal. And when the SHTF they'll be looking for every way they can squeeze extra cash out of the people.

He's just pissed off that his pet war is going badly lately. The last two months have seen the highest numbers of troops deaths since the beginning of this 8 year long idiotic adventure, and it has nothing to do with Wikileaks. On the question of whether it's treasonous - I'd love to see an example of what Wikileaks published that fits the bill. There were no documents talking about recent troop movements or anything like that... if you're going to make such astounding allegations, you should back them up with specificity. Julian Assange is doing God's work - holding governments accountable.

Logan Lerman He's 18 now, so lay off! :P

The only reason it's worth so much is because it's illegal. Once it is legalized, that stash will probably only be worth 500 bucks :laugh3:

In other news, California is about to nullify the federal law! So Obama and pals can go suck it!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/7908742/Axe-falls-on-NHS-services.html

I'm Jay, and it's not really a soap opera so much as it is just an effort to poke at my politics. :P I'm not a fan of governments or patriotism.

Oh my God...

I'm 24. I'm a guy. Not a man yet... not sure when that will happen. Maybe when I make my first million? :P

Right, the EU is an intergovernmental organization that's designed to make Europe somehow more powerful (counterbalance the US and China economically). But the reality is that the EU makes Europe weaker. Eventually the Euro will collapse. The rules and regulations only serve to destroy jobs and inhibit competition. The EU was sold to Europeans as some unifying force, but it's like forcing people to live with their in-laws. You might love them as family, but eventually they drive you crazy and you put potassium in their coffee. Yes! He didn't kill anyone, but he committed the worst crime imaginable - making the government look bad. They spent over 2 years trying to catch him and he kept getting away. He has tens of thousands of fans on Facebook. So I'm sure he'll spend the majority of the rest of his life in jail because the government will want to "make an example" of him or whatever. I hope if/when he gets out, that he can make some serious cash off his story. But the government might try to take that away from him too.

This is like saying "No religion could never work. Religions WILL always be there, in one form or another." We're currently in a point in history where religions' control over peoples lives is waning, particularly in countries with low church attendance and high numbers of atheists - you don't see an inordinate amount of sinning occurring in those countries (in fact, quite the opposite!). The belief in the necessity of God is exactly the same as the belief in the necessity of government. Right now, there is an overwhelming sense that government is necessary for the smooth functioning of society (primarily due to the fact most children grow up in government-run schools). People know that theft and murder is wrong, regardless of what the Bible says - but they are still indoctrinated to believe the Government is the miraculous exception to the rule ("God Walking On Earth"). What will happen, eventually, is that people will become aware that governments aren't necessary, or are overrated. And when that happens, other people will see the success of non-government solutions and will withdraw their consent to be governed. It'll spread in the same way secularism is spreading. The fear of "gangs of thugs roaming" and preying on the weak is a common Hobbesian argument for the necessity of government. But what, praxeologically, is keeping the same thing from happening today? Nothing in particular. In theory, I could go get a group of friends together, buy some guns, and go hold up a bunch of elderly people at their homes. I could do this quickly, before the police can catch me. If I was smart about it, I could do it without being discovered, for a very long time. There is nothing magic, or special about a Government that makes it any better than other institutions or individuals in the effort against this sort of preying. The fact that police exist nearby shouldn't make you feel any safer than you are when you are in the wilderness, miles from any police station - after all, police don't have an obligation to help you. They collect a paycheck regardless of whether you are safe and sound, or just a stain on the wall.

Government consolidation doesn't last very long, usually only one or two lifetimes in a row. The closest the world has ever come to having a single government was during the USSR/USA Cold War. But the politicians in each country preferred to use fear of the other government as a method to extract more money from their tax bases. You'll never have a situation where politicians voluntarily give up power/money in order to create a combined government. Wars are fought over potential increases in tax revenue. The supposed social reasons are hooey. Anarchism, unlike socialism, is incredibly complex. Whatever you imagine anarchy to be like in your head is probably wrong, because of what Hayek refers to as the "discovery process" - people voluntarily working together to discover the best ways to manage societal problems typically don't use the same methods governments impose. Price signals determine what each individual values and in what ratios they value it - for instance, one family might rather take their chances with a less-safe car, while spending their money on superior structural quality of their home. Other families might choose the opposite, or might rather just save their money. You can't predict these things. Politics is about forcing everyone to make the same choices, which destroys the price-signal system that communicates scarcity. Socialism, on the other hand, is very simple. It is a denial of reality. Whatever scarcity/abundance that exists for any good/service is ignored by bureaucrats who wish to shape society in their "ideal" way. Don't have enough food for everyone? No problem, ignore the existence of scarcity and FORCE everyone to share their calories. It works in the short-term, but it doesn't address the underlying problem - scarcity of food. So now that food is socialized, there is no profit to be had in discovering new ways to expand the supply of food. That sector of the economy stagnates like swamp water, and progress is lost. The exact same thing happens in any area of the economy - whether it's education, healthcare, security, transportation... whatever. Government regulations destroy our ability to discover alternatives and make progress.

It's also insane to believe that any country would adopt democracy. No monarch would voluntarily give up his power to the masses! And even if a government collapses, the people are too dumb to accept all the minute rules that go along with democratic governments - what their rights are, where they vote, when to vote, WHO SETS ALL THIS STUFF UP? It's just totally pie-in-the-sky stupidity. We've always had kings. We will always have kings. To argue otherwise is to be blind to history. EDIT: And what happens when a democracy is invaded? Do you really expect the people (who are inherently greedy) to VOLUNTARILY vote for higher taxes to help the poor, send children to school, and pay for security and fire protection? That's insane! People wouldn't do that! Only politicians have such selfless souls! Look at ancient Greece. They tried democracy/republic before and the were eaten alive by the Spartans and Romans. Case closed.

Nobody WANTS to do their job. It's work. The fact that you prefer the idea of working at McDonalds to working as a prostitute doesn't mean everyone feels the same way. Same is true with child labor. Just because most children would prefer to remain idle doesn't mean they ALL prefer to remain idle. Some children MUST work in order to bring enough income for their families to survive. You cannot legislate away scarcity.

Prostitution, like child employment, should be legal. Sometimes people need money, because their government blew it all on meaningless wars 10,000 miles away.

Oh Chris, don't make me puke. This thread really is living up to its name! xD

Nadal.

Also here's one from the perspective of a little girl in the 1940's: She was very grateful for the services the government provided to her and her family.

I've seen this before several times, it assumes the services provided by government are as good and as cheap as the services would be if they hadn't been monopolized. It's the classic example of "opportunity cost" - you don't know what you're missing out on, because you've never seen the alternative. Just like the people in North Korea are very grateful for their clean cities and perfect roads. People can vaguely detect there's something wrong (for instance, public education is generally acknowledged to be pretty substandard, as well as the DMV and Post Office) but there's nothing to compare it to - every industrialized nation is essentially the same, with the same sorts of monopolies and superstitions. There are many examples of private electric companies, private roads, private schools, private courts, private security, etc throughout history (all were much more successful and efficient than their government counterparts, not to mention cheaper) but I'm too lazy to post them here now.

Well it's a good decision, but the reasoning behind it is superfluous and rather stereotypical. I believe people should be able to live wherever they want to live, walk wherever they want to walk (as long as it's not inside someones' home), work wherever they want to work. What annoys taxpayers is when people who are suffering in their native countries from poverty and persecution decide to move and take advantage of another government's welfare programs. That's a problem with the governments in question, not the individuals taking advantage of them. On a side note, I think Norway has a thing where they refuse to extradite people to any country that has the death penalty. It's just enlightened thinking, not an attempt to annoy straight people or use taxpayer-financed programs.

Oh no! Teenagers are having fun!? CALL IN THE DOGS! GET IN THE CHOPPA!

I saw the movie, and Ken was instantly attracted to Barbie when he first laid eyes on her. That's hardly how a gay man would react. :P My problem with the Toy Story movies is how they teach young kids to love inanimate objects, while portraying the parents/mother as just burdensome background noise to annoy the children. That's not healthy.

Doctors in the UK don't have to wear pants to work.

Josh is right. Instead of one super-rich family that is mostly content with life, democracies have millions of poor people who are never content with the free money raining down on them from the working class. Plus monarchs aren't fickle, unlike the constantly-changing laws here. I'll take monarchy over democracy any day.