Well your a classy bloke arent you...... The last person who went on like that on the SPCR forums got banned for over the top profanity without justification, cause or even having a sensible point. I hope for your sake you sort yourself out or you might not be here for much longer giving people verbal (who are largely ignoring your stupidity, and not dropping down to your pathetic level).


Andy

Quit yer goddamn whining AndyB or he's gonna git yer!

yes, but he should have been stopped way before he came into power, without a war.

i live in san diego, CA.

that's hardly redneck country.

or should i make the assumption that all english are chavs?

concerning my country? nope, none.

anyways, my point is that non-americans being unaffected by american domestic policy, and lacking a vote in american politics, cannot have a relevant point of view or input to offer.

btw: our country gets a bad reputation among the rest of the world because of the things it does. case in point (what i studied in poly sci) operation condor.

do i care what other countries think of the US? not at all. "opinion" of other countries doesnt matter in world politics.

We may not be able to affect policy, but to say that we cannot have a relevant point of view is pushing it a little bit too far imho. Not being able to affect policy is not limited to non-americans btw. With that crazy system of yours most americans are without power as well.

It's also questionable if it exists a person on this planet that is utterly unaffected by american domestic policy, USA being the only superpower and all.


Oh but it does. To think otherwise is a bit naive, or is it the megalomania talking?

Yay! Rednecks with lots of cash, and the political clout that comes with it. its the most conservative part of California. -one of the only counties to fight medical cannabis tooth and nail...even tho its a "states rights" issue that was decided over 10 years ago by the voters.
Shit, if the surfers, skaters and Mexicans moved out it might quickly become the most conservative place in the US.

someone from mendocino talking about others with "lots of cash".

ridiculous.

no, it's the realism talking.

Now all we need is a few decades of the majority political power to go with it. Unfortunately, cash doesn't mean anything politically unless it gets taxed( and then exempted by buying a loophole bill of course).

as though norcal doesnt have the "major political power"..

are you really that dumb?

sonoma county doesnt have a huge political power because it doesnt have a huge population. but SF/Fresno do, and your views match theirs. so why whine?

and especially why whine about "rich hillbillies in san diego", when your own county has a much higher per capita income.

the scales are tipping the other way finally, after 3o years of getting robbed blind by GreedOverPeople party its about fricking time we started to gain some voice. If you dont like it, you can always do what right wing crazies have told hippies to do for years, and move out with rush!

Wavey Gravy/ Tom Ammiano in 2014!

republicans have been in power in california for 30 years?

any more rewriting history for you today? or are you all done for now?

Seems like your bubble might be simultaneously trapped under a rock.
It was the greedy SOBs (led and enabled by republicans, starting with governor and ultimately prez ronnie rayguns) that used to pride it self in controlling most of the 'favored' world, and raping the 'non-favored' for decades... True that a few years were peppered with some sanity toward the last decade of the 20th century, but that was quickly rendered useless, and then some, starting with the coup d'état of 2k.

realism defining US foreign policy started with ronald reagan?

i suppose people like teddy roosevelt, nixon was just a footnote in history?

i lol'd at "raping the non-favored world". care to give examples? if the best you can do is the one i already described (operation condor) then you fail.

america declared its sphere of influence with the monroe doctrine. james monroe. we've declared all of the americas as our bitches since 1823.

And the following quote is from the above linked page:



I would not dispute the above statement one bit - it sums up exactly what I believe. Call it Darwinism, evolutionary psychology or whatever; it is undoubtedly true. Put simply, humans have not yet evolved from the hunter-gatherer state.
But it is not how the world should ideally be, just how it is and how it has been for several thousand years. We should be striving to make the world a better place, not sitting complacently on our arses and accepting things as they are. A few thousand years ago a bunch of wise old men invented the concept of religion to do just that, and as we all know, that just led to even more quarreling between people.
Perhaps now that mankind has developed some semblance of intelligence and humanity it's time to attempt to change the natural order of things?
Surely absolute gains for all is preferable to relative gains for some?
The amount of wealth that is wasted on the arms race is shocking.

Have a look at pragmatic realism: here and here

BTW, apologies for posting the Redneck picture; it was a cheap shot.

Ronnie was just the greed idol for the last 30 years. he learned the darkside from our greediest fore fathers.

How can anything ever be explained to you when you ignore the crimes we commit across the world in the name of nationalistic greed.

IMO the state can't pass laws establishing monotheism. Atheism ("secular humanism" at least) and polytheism should also be considered as religious in nature and given freedom of religion people should be free to take up these religions.

However the main problem in schools is what is the state doing there anyway? It should just hand out vouchers, and let schools do what they want, subject to educational quality standards being met.

yes, absolute gains for all is preferable to relative gains for some.

however, the existence of those relative gains makes those the only logical choice.

google "Prisoner's Dilemna", practical examples.

refer back to posted realism.

nations act in their own best interests. that's ALL they do. there is no morality in international relations.

referring to "corporate greed", i'll bet you're one of those people that think royal carribean is doing haiti a disservice by renting of labadee. (google it if you dont know what i'm talking about.)

oh noes, corporations are raping the world by giving them jobs and injecting money into their economies!

I'm familiar with that; however doesn't it rely on the fact that the two prisoners have no contact with each other? If they were allowed to communicate and they agreed to co-operate, they would both get the lightest sentence, which would maximise the net gain.

In real world politics this would translate to "co-operation between countries results in greatest net gain." This can easily be seen in the enhanced ability of a coalition of allies to fight a war or "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts". Obviously 'trust' is an essential element of this coperative behaviour.

Maybe I'm wrong, I've never formally studied political science or game theory; I'm an engineer by training and am just going by my own intuitive feelings, logic and common sense.

even if they were allowed to communicate and cooperate, they would still attempt to stab eachother in the back in order to reduce their sentence to nothing, rather than the 1 year (or whatever) they'd get if they didnt sell eachother out.

HOWEVER: their preferred strategy is always selling the other out, because regardless of what the other does, the outcome is always better for them.

as i said, there is no "trust" in IR. there's no morality. there's only your payoffs vs your actions.

sorry i'm getting into this. game theory was my specific area of study in college.

Yeah, those corporations are really doing their best looking out for us all! They'll do almost anything to be nice... What did we do before there were large corporations?

...

think for a minute.

they're offering jobs to people who otherwise wont have them or will have to take jobs that pay less.

by offering jobs, they're increasing the quantity of jobs available there. by definition that increases the demand for workers there. if demand for workers increases while supply remains fixed, then the price of workers increases.

i dont understand why there's a negative stigma assosciated with companies doing business in foreign markets. if you want to help a country, then the best possible thing for them is to invite private companies to do business. whether that be manufacturing or tourism. they'll build necessary infrastructure, training, all things that have carry-over effects into other potential industries.

Why is private better than public in that case?

This whole discussion is meaningless. You think that mankind is greedy by nature and that we need a system that reflects that. Others disagree with that basic assessment and it seems to me that we can do little but agree to disagree.

Philosophy beats game theory any day btw, as a field of study.

because private sector will only invest where there's potential profit, whereas public spends towards a dead end. it's almost always a more efficient allocation of resources.

greedy = self interested. what's wrong with that? people pursue what's best for them. not taking into account the fact that people respond to incentives is the primary reason why communism fails.

philosophy was interesting too. i doubt it comes as any great surprise that my favorite philosopher was machiavelli...

but game theory is way better. philosophers just bullshit. i have numbers to back up bullshit.

"The problem that the libertarians miss is that the interests of the corporation align with those of the population very rarely. Somehow, it's not particularly reassuring when you are being exploited to know that the exploitation is happening very efficiently. Someone working inefficiently on your behalf is usually better than someone working efficiently against you."
^ Nice quote from a Slashdot discussion I read the other day that touches on this.


It's a game for those who already are rich and powerful. The ones in power gets to decide what everything is worth. Take labor for example. I say it should be worth a lot. But I have no power and those with it says that labor is worth very little.

Labor follows the laws of supply and demand you say? Sure. But those in power controls those laws so they are hardly natural. Look what NAFTA does to many mexican people for example.

Most people shrugs and say "well, that's the way it is" but it doesn't have to be. We have a system that assumes that everyone acts on the principle of greed, but not everyone does. In fact most people don't but the kind of people you will find at the top positions of this system most likely do. And so the system remains in place, until we change it from below, which happens little by little all the time in a constant struggle.

My favorites are Jesus Christ and Noam Chomsky.

Your numbers are in direct violation of my view of basic human rights. So I have to discard those numbers.

Are you full yet btw? I'm running out of troll feed.

I too, am wondering how it is that IF the market is perfect, how do we have market crashes?

How is it that corporations pollute? They externalize costs, for greater profit. Who cares if they use slave labor; as long as their profits are higher? Why should they pay a fair price for the resources they use?

You're in a dream world, Fayd. And the results are a nightmare for all the rest of us. Please wake up to reality.

you keep using that word. i dont think it means what you think it means.

stop being an idiot. it's not slave labor if you can decide NOT to work for them. the very fact that people have to decide to work for them means they have to bid for labor just like everyone else.

the more companies do this in any one country, the more that country's labor market gets bid up. companies DO pay fair price for the resources OF THAT COUNTRY. because it wouldnt be a livable wage here, it's somehow wrong to pay it to them there? where they're MORE than happy to work for it?

the interest of a corporation is to make money. the interest of a country is to make money, (taxes on commerce) the interest of people is to make money.

the essence of capitalism says that these goals are NOT mutually exclusive.