"You specifically named mobility as a factor of opportunity!

You keep mentioning company stores. What about company stores? Are you arguing that there are no consumer goods alternatives within any reasonable walking distance of a factory? What happened to free-market principles of supply and demand? If a demand for consumer goods arises around a factory, surely some individuals with entrepreneurial spirit would have set up shop around those factories?"

Do you know nothing of the history of worker exploitation? Do you know nothing of the conditions which you argue unions are so responsible for ending? How can you hold such a strong position without this knowledge?

Company stores are the classic example of worker exploitation used in teaching the history of unions and espousing the positive change they caused.

Decades and centuries ago when populations were much more rural, when consumers didn't consume SO MUCH as to make economical the retail store ratio we know today, and transportation (of both goods and people) was a tiny fraction of what it is today, exploitation of people with few or no options was possible in ways it isn't today virtually anywhere.

I'm a bit confused by having to explain this. Are you unaware of the history of worker exploitation? Are you arguing that it's unions preventing it from happening today? Please be more clear, because that's a hilarious notion.

"Well, conditions for the working (wo)man in late 19th century New York still sucked. So what happened?"

Do you really want to get into all of the layers of the political/socioeconomic history of centuries past? Are you going to offer commentary, responses, and make arguments if we do? Or are your questions intended solely to suggest that it's unions preventing such conditions today? Again, please be more clear. Because you'll have to explain how you perceive this to be the case. It'll be a difficult argument to make, given the small minority percentage of the population which unions represent and vastly improved standards of living today. Hell, work hours are considerably less too, and that includes those w/o unions. But if that's the argument you're going for, please do make it. Discussion of the socioeconomic development of NYC more than a hundred years ago, I suspect, would be fruitless.

"No, I am not ignoring what you said. You are attacking regulatory laws through an argument of barrier of entry, are you not? Remember, we are talking about unskilled labor here. What could education provide unskilled laborers that they couldn't otherwise gain through training at the job?"

A lot. Have you ever employed anyone? While schools certainly vary and many fail today (thanks, in no small part, to unions!), one can safely have much higher expectations for a high school graduate than someone who can't read. Even for unskilled labor, the basic socialization and reasoning skills inherent in education hold much value.

Again I beg you to be more clear. It sounds like you're playing the devil's advocate, but to what end? You're suggesting that an unskilled laborer could benefit economically by seeking work as a janitor without first learning to read or getting a basic (high school) education? That's just silly. Such education is accomplished before adulthood anyway. Unless you're advocating child labor and parents abandoning their children, you're not even making any argument that it would benefit people economically to forgo basic education. Also, presumably, there are other accepted purposes to education, such as the development of responsible citizens (don't want cave men voting down civilization) and some nonsense about human potential and happiness.

"Are you disagreeing with those capitalists who hired children as young as 4?"

I've clearly stated that nobody disagrees with all labor laws. You're completely ignoring what I've posted, again. What do these commonly accepted and supported labor laws have to do with unions? Or are you arguing my side now?

I'm all for labor laws preventing child labor. Yet I've stated that unions largely exist today to extort society, protect laziness and unproductivity, and cost society as a whole greatly--the poor most of all.

I've explained the mechanics by which I contend this happens. Do you disagree with anything I actually said? Care to state what and discuss it? Because I certainly didn't argue that laws against child laborers are a problem, and that's the sort of thing you've repeatedly talked about.

"I can only assume you realize that both consumer protection laws and regulatory laws did not exist at one point. If the ideal case you presented worked, consumer protection laws would have never been needed in the first place. "

You're arguing from an all-or-nothing standpoint. I'm not. Of course, many consumer-protection laws are common sense and I have no problem with them. I have never, at any point, in this thread or elsewhere, argued the extreme "ideal case" you're alleging here. Your straw man is for your convenience--I've never advocated anything that could be misinterpreted as some sort of "purist," "ideal" academic nonsense. Of course some laws are pragmatic, common-sense, and there's nothing wrong with them. There's nothing wrong with saying hey, no lead in children's toys. Or no furniture which will catch fire if someone lights a pipe a meter away. So please stop pretending I've advocated some insane position and responding to that. Those are not my positions, and refuting them means nothing to discourse here.

I merely said that many consumer-protection agencies act more often in the interests of big businesses in their respective fields, not in the interests of consumers. I challenge you to find a single regulatory board whose members are not predominantly industry heads. The fact that common-sense laws are desirable does not negate the fact that these corrupt regulatory agencies harm the entirety of society.

"I stress caution against the blind belief that free market is a panacea that will automagically solve all our problems."

I've explained the mechanics by which what I allege occurs occurs. How is my belief blind when I've explained it and you've disagreed with not a word of it? I stress caution against blind belief too. And I've explained myself at length.

"History does not support it, experience does not support it, and last but least, human nature does not support it."

False, false, and false. Educated in Amerika I presume? Indoctrination has been getting worse for decades. The reasons free markets work are precisely because of human nature.

Here's why freedom (aka capitalism) is so awesome for everybody:
With his freedom in tact, man benefits (is rewarded) the most from being productive. Man likes benefiting, so he's more productive! The more productive most men are, the more things are produced, and the cheaper things become! Yay! Freedom, aka capitalism, is not complicated. And you certainly haven't provided any explanation of your vaguely alleged shortcomings here. You just vaguely allege that capitalism, without significant government involvement at every level, is terrible and fails, without explanation or examples (at least, not any I remotely accept as being the fault of freedom ).

And that's just economically! I happen to think freedom is very metal for moral reasons. But that's just me. I'll stick to the math here.

Great depression? Recent recessions? Dangerous (extreme) market fluctuations? All caused (and prolonged) by government, not freedom. Only indoctrinated overlords and sheep with no interest in learning the ugly truth about tyranny and the intellectual laziness of the masses buy into propaganda alleging otherwise.

I have no problem with government protecting people. But the notion that government has to take away significant economic (and other) freedom to protect people is the biggest lie tyrants have ever told mankind. They don't know you. They don't care about you. They can't make better decisions than you. They just want your money. They want more of your money. They'll never get enough; they will ALWAYS argue why it's best for you and everyone if they can just take a few pennies more.

"You do not seem to be against the idea of unionization of productive workers. So tell me, what is your opinion that we as a society, should do to people who fail to achieve the simplest of functions?"

I have no problem with government support being the last refuge of invalids. I don't want them to starve or be homeless or some such horrible fate. My arguments here are focused on the fact that waste--such as that of high taxes and government spending, such as that of unions making whole sectors of the economy less productive and taxing all of society because of this--makes doing this less possible, and makes any such care we provide significantly less.

We're broke. We're waaaay into debt. We're not paying off our debt. We're EXPLODING it. Interest costs are going up every single day. At some point, it will be acknowledged that we're never going to be ABLE (let alone choose to) to pay it down/off. Then we literally will not be able to care for those who cannot care for themselves.

This isn't theoretical, this is inevitable. And it's the least-skilled, who fail to achieve the simplest of functions, who will be hurt the most. It's them I'm arguing we ought to protect by avoiding insolvency. It's them I'm arguing we can provide better lives for by removing the waste that makes our costs of living SO high in the USA. Our poor have larger incomes than 90%+ of the rest of the world, but it's costs like those imposed by government/labor/regulatory board taxes/waste/corruption that make our cost of living SO astronomically high compared to most of the rest of the world. Our poor are harmed most by the cost of living in our nation, not the amount of aid provided to them.

"By that logic, even if we were to completely get rid of regulation, it still wouldn't be a free market. Why? Because 100, heck, 1000 years later, who knows what additional mobility, population density, and opportunities people will have? You're essentially saying we will never have true free market today because I can't get from Earth to Mars to work."

I said nothing remotely like that. I said that the expansion of opportunity has made exploitation of circumstances and monopolistic situations (such as company stores with no other sources of consumer goods) rather extinct.

"We should just get rid of mandatory schooling, since that's obviously a barrier of entry to the workforce."

Now you're obviously completely ignoring what I said, for the second time responding to nothing I actually posted. Schooling and requirements are common-sense best-interest policies with absolutely no connection to "consumer-protection" regulations.

Genesis,

You and You_Fool just posted harassing posts void of any content. If this is over your head, ban me. Because you're not following your own rules, yet you're threatening me because I respond lightly to those very infracting posts of yours.

Your judgement of the constructiveness of my posts implies a judgement of my intellect and capacity to communicate, nothing else. It is an insult to my intelligence and therefore inflammatory. It has no relevance to the topic and is therefore spam. Your reference to insult-free posts is a violation of the rule regarding accusations of rule-breaking on the forums. You both violated at least 3 rules in what you posted, yet here you are crying about me jokingly responding that I won't mock you back if you start enforcing the very rules which you are breaking.

Thanks. I appreciate the mockery of hypocritical trolls who aren't aware of the irony in their statements.

You've literally never posted anything of substance, yet the disrespect of this is lost on you. Bravo.

How would that help a lot? We'd still have annual deficits exceeding a trillion dollars. And growing. Defense is hardly our biggest expenditure, and it's pensions/healthcare/welfare which are exploding as our population ages and more people accept living on welfare for generations as a lifestyle choice. They're pandered to, they vote, and they get taken care of.

There's no work-around. Our government spends too much. Our government wastes too much. Far too much. At some point not in the distant future we're going to max out our line of credit.

Be careful, logic like that will apparently convince Einstein to adopt such a position.

Does it matter?

Nobody would consult me any more than they did to print trillions to cover their bailouts this decade. It would be printed and we would all pay the costs in inflation, just as we're doing now.

The difference is that what they did short-circuits the free market and inept banking failures continue to do business in the industry. What I would have preferred would have rewarded successful, competent bankers with more business and forced the losers to find other work which they could actually perform.

Undeath,

The USA has a spending problem, not a revenue problem. We're already taxed ridiculously. We just spend even more ridiculously than that.

Cutting spending is easily sufficient. MOST of what our federal government does is entirely a waste, from bombing foreigners to operating 20-50 agencies domestically with overlapping functions (on top of managing them horribly).

"Haven't the past few years established that in this climate tax cuts aren't creating an increase in spending great enough to create the revenue needed?"

Nope. People don't spend so much based on temporary tax cuts; they know they have to prepare for the coming hikes, and keeping extra capital on hand is a buffer against insolvency.

This is basic economics. Taxes harm the entire economy. Business people aren't idiots: Given a one-time tax-cut in hard times with leaders pushing to make them harder times [via higher taxes], they understand the security in saving and how foolish it would be to spend that money immediately. They're not blind or dumb. That tax cut isn't not taken from them in a vacuum. They know they might need to keep it on hand. It's just being responsible. It could save their businesses and millions of jobs across the nation.

Genesis,

"So what you're suggesting is back in 2008 the federal government should have just let all those insolvent banks go bankrupt right?"

If only.

Undeath,

"In 2004 the federal government should have stepped in, slapped the bankers who were handing out loans like candy, and then put them in timeout until they learned how to do their job "

The federal government is why they handed out loans like candy. They mandated certain lending practices and, more importantly, the Federal Reserve made money (lending) ridiculously cheap. The federal government (via the Federal Reserve) created the bubble, not banks.

I Like Trains kid,

"If 4,750,000 people had bank accounts of $100,000 or more that would have been lost, the FDIC would have had to spend the same amount of money as TARP did."

Yet it wouldn't have exerted a crony force into the market, rewarding inept bankers with free cash and depriving competent, intelligent, responsible bankers of the business that the inept bankers would have lost in a free market. There's more than just costs of insurance to consider; there's costs to the breaking the free enterprise system and the wealth it creates/protects.

"But... you're just playing with fire here, to suggest that the entire banking system should have systematically collapsed just as a way to say screw you to people who mismanage their funds."

There's no malice in wanting to protect the free market which enriches us all. There's no malice in wanting to protect our children from continued massive inflation which continually robs us all of what we work for.

I literally don't know anyone with more than $100,000 in a bank account. That'd be a waste of money. How many people really had that much money just sitting idle in banks? I have no way to guess, because that would be foolish and I know literally no one who leaves that much money idle for more than a small minority of the time.

The FDIC already has the full backing of the federal government. Everyone knows there'd be no hesitation to print all of the funds necessary to carry out its functions. We print trillions just to give it away to bankers. Printing to cover FDIC insurance would hardly be contentious.

Not all banks failed. There were plenty of banks run by competent people who would have loved the new business of people escaping failed banks. Failing banks is a necessary part of free markets which benefit everyone. They're part of a process which improves all banks, because the inept, wasteful, and failing were removed from the herd. The FDIC exists to protect people from unmitigated harm in this process.

I won't mock you similarly if you manage to delete any spam or trolling from the forum and stop embarrassing yourself. Just FYI, in case you ever give it a try.

Why would I care?

If they break laws, prosecute them. If they smoke a joint on their porch with a few beers before making love to their beautiful women, why the hell would I care? I certainly don't want to pay taxes to prosecute people for smoking marijuana any more than I want to pay for the prosecution of people for drinking alcohol or smoking tobacco.

Einstein's cited a study that shows that some people aren't real bright, some people are unstable, some people are very anxious, and these people won't enjoy smoking pot. So what? Who cares? Solution: Don't smoke pot. Imaginary problem solved.

The vast majority of people who smoke have absolutely no problem with it, and these people who supposedly lose their heads all calm down within hours. Nobody forces anyone to smoke. What, exactly, is the problem here justifying wasting billions of tax dollars and locking people up for smoking a plant that grows all over the world and people have smoked for thousands of years?

The Hebrews burned marijuana as incense. Jesus was a Hebrew. And no, none of them were dumb enough not to notice a relaxing and euphoric quality to the smoke.

OHNOES RELAXATION AND EUPHORIA! Sounds evil. Must outlaw. And spend billions combating it to no effect. And enrich drug cartels. And get law enforcement and by-standers killed. ...All because some people who should know better than to drink alcohol or use any psychoactive drug might feel uncomfortable for a few hours if they smoke it? Really? That's all you got?

Sounds sketchy. I'll bet if I researched it, I'd find out that marijuana was outlawed in the USA because it was the preferred substance of Mexican and black people. Oh, wait, I have. Oh, wait, that's why it was outlawed.

You're crazy sober. Stop blaming the pot.

While you're correct to point out that some modern marijuana is crazy powerful, it's still mechanically very different from "hard" drugs. It doesn't do the damage to your body that any "hard" drugs do.

As a psychoactive substance (nobody denies that it is), one should certainly take one's own psychology into account. It can have varying effects depending on the person, their state of mind, and their will at the time. It can be very distracting or help one focus. It can be calming or nerve-racking. The point I make here is that nobody is advocating forcing anyone to take it; that it bothers some people is no cause to ban it.

The significant point to Einstein's crusade against it is that the unusual effects discussed in this thread are very rare and the result of preexisting psychological conditions. They're not horrible ailments inflicted by marijuana; they're interactions of the psychoactive substance with the psychology/dysfunction of an individual. And they're quite temporary.

"psychosis" is an oft broadly used term. Obviously psychoactive substances have the potential to bring it on in some individuals. Hell, I'll wager some people enjoy those times best.

Seeing as all anyone needs to do to avoid this reaction to pot is not smoke it, I think that about wraps up this topic.

This study shows that crazy people shouldn't use any narcotics, not that pot specifically causes anything. And nobody contests this.

Unless similar studies tested other psychoactive substances and found no connection, this study is not evidence of any direct link.