Jeremy "UncleHoot" Praay wrote:
> I supported Bush for at least 3 years.  By the second election, I had strong 
> doubts, but believing that Republicans were more in-touch with my beliefs, I 
> went and voted for him again.  Republicans later proved that no one in 
> government shares my beliefs, save a small few, like Ron Paul.  They seemed 
> to think that they could pass some worthless legislation to impress the 
> Religious Right, instead of passing legislation that really speaks to the 
> core values of those of us who are more Libertarian than Republican (limited 
> government/taxation, and basically a "just stay out of my way" attitude). 
> The Republicans, largely under Bush's guidance, completely lost touch with 
> that segment of the American Public, and it was largely those people that 
> voted them into office in 1994.  So, we made sure to vote them out in 2006. 
> At this point in my life, I no longer feel a strong party affiliation.  I 
> find myself agreeing with Barney Frank (a far left gay congressman from 
> Massachusettes), than I do with just about any of the Republicans currently 
> in office.
> 
> Poor John McCain got associated with Bush, and yet he was the one Republican 
> to actually stand up against the President and the rest of his party when he 
> felt it was necessary.  No, he wasn't 180 degrees different, but perhaps 30. 
> LOL. 
> 

What you failed to grasp is that the only "libertarian" values shared by 
the Republicans is to "keep hands off ***their*** industries." They have 
no problem screwing everyone else's. That said, I think the Libertarian 
position is naive, and fails to, often, even acknowledge, the prior time 
periods, "before" legislation of businesses, when the only thing not 
controlling them got was everything from arsenic in medications or 
making people work for less money than they could live off of, while at 
the same time, selling them everything from the houses they lived in, to 
the clothes on their backs. I think you miss a key point. Innovation 
must be unfettered, but "commerce" can't be. Innovation creates new 
things, commerce will quite happily ignore the new, if its more 
profitable, would cost them more money than they want to spend, or 
threatens something else they make. And, no, I am not talking about 
something like someone finding a cure for cancer. For one thing, the 
insurance companies wouldn't stand for it, if something denied such a 
medication, thus making the insurance companies pay thousands for years 
of treatment, if their was a $20 solution. You don't find a lot of 
"syphilis" specialist doctors around, for precisely that reason. It was 
cheaper to pay for $20 of penicillin than pay thousands to doctors that 
treated it with the older methods.

What I am talking about is the short sighted stuff you get every place. 
Light rail. If Obama's Change.gov site didn't have that on the "top" of 
a list of things people like the idea of, it might never happen. It 
would require technology from a numerous industries, but its "existence" 
would, at the same time, undermine car sales, undermine plane travel, 
undermine... nearly every industry that right now makes 100% of their 
money off of selling "bad" systems to people, while only giving them 
back about.. 40% of that, maybe? Companies do not do what is in the best 
interest of people, of nations, of other companies, or even, in some 
case, themselves. They would rather make $1M now, than spend $2M to make 
$5M later, even if in 20 years, it will cost them 50 times as much to 
finally convert to something else, when they have no damn choice but to 
do so. And that is without even considering what they will do to screw 
everyone they can on the way there.

Example, where I work, they renegotiate with what in Arizona is 
"laughably" called a union every 3 years. In the 15 one person has been 
working there, her salary has "dropped" every single year, while 
everything else has gone up, and we have less vacation, shorter breaks 
(two 10 minute breaks in 8 hours), and we get paid, over all, $2 less 
per hour than the same chain a few hundred miles away, despite the fact 
that, as a resort location, some months we have "more" business than the 
other place gets in the same time period. Every time they "negotiate" 
the company steals something else. This wouldn't happen in a state that 
wasn't "unregulated", and where the only thing the damn union does is 
make sure you get 20 hours a week, some, but less than before, vacation 
time, and insurance. Without them, they would make me work only one day 
a week, and, without "federal laws", probably give me no vacation at 
all, and deny me insurance too.

Companies don't think like individuals, they think like groups, and 
basic group psychology is that **groups** will do things that, if given 
bad direction, will be worse, more vile, less moral or ethical, and 
fundamentally less beneficial to anyone "but themselves", than they 
would as individuals.

So, stop all the BS preventing people using ideas to make new things, 
but nail the fracking "companies" feet to the floor, if you have to, to 
keep them from using that in a way that "impedes" rational progress, for 
idiotically short term goals. Because, most of them, once they start 
seeing "numbers" instead of people, communities, or even countries, 
won't be able to tell the difference, and "will" do things that hurt 
everyone, long before they hang themselves with the rope they wove.

-- 
void main () {

     if version = "Vista" {
       call slow_by_half();
       call DRM_everything();
     }
     call functional_code();
   }
   else
     call crash_windows();
}

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