Election Thread

[SwissMercenary]

I explained it to a friend recently thus; unemployed people without a bed need a place to sleep, but it should not be too comfortable. For the weary, a place to sit, but a wood stool, not a overstuffed leather recliner. We should never remove the motivation for them to go out and get a job to improve their lot.

And I'm in agreement with that. It should be tolerable, but a far cry from what people should be able to do from themselves.

Unfortunately, when it comes to Big Business, what you may end up with can be below 'tolerable'. Lead-based sweetener for candy in Mexico? Microsoft-ish 'captive' audiences? 19th century 70-hour work-week sweatshops? In any of the cases that fall under what we would consider to be harmful or intolerable, people do not act until it hits them where it hurts - close to home.

While I wouldn't want to go on another 'Lol business sucks' tangent here, indulge me in this point - do you think the average person understands exactly what they are signing away when they check off the mandatory 'Yes, I grant you permission to sell my person information to anyone and everyone' on their credit card application? While credit cards in themselves are not yet mandatory, they certainly seem to be heading that way?

Should an effort not be made to protect people from their own ignorance? I believe so, seeing as how to do otherwise would be fairly good grounds for justifying the legalisation of, well, any scam that you could think of.

You've simply got to have relevant regulation and taxation, because if you don't, to make an analogy, that bed for the unemployed would resemble a flea-infested rag under a highway overpass, then, well, a bed. That, and we would all be sleeping on it, with a few exceptions.

I can't say that applies to whatever instance of libertarianism you subscribe to, since for all I know, you may be supportive of laws prohibiting this or that in the 'free' market.

There's plenty of fat that can be trimmed from any government system, and plenty of ministries that could really use some help in various respects. For one thing, I'm pretty sure that my local high school doesn't need 90 Windows Vista licenses, when they are gutting the tech department to five classes, instead of seven.