The Dangerous Case Of Donald Trump

[Jaguar]

Kevin O'Leary's success story starts where most entrepreneurs begin: with a big idea and zero cash. From his basement, he launched SoftKey Software Products.

Barbara Corcoran: This big bucks self-starter's credentials include straight D's in high school and college and 20 jobs by the time she'd turned 23. Don't believe us?
Now what would you say if we told you it was Barbara Corcoran's next job that would make her one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country, when she borrowed $1,000 from her boyfriend and quit her job as a waitress to start a tiny real estate company in New York City?


A couple of losers, no doubt.

 

[anticlimatic]

You're right to some extent, but I can't help feeling like you're oversimplifying this. Libertarianism's flaw is that its proponents assume the best of intentions and pure ethics will always be at play in their desired system, whilst only seeming to notice the worst elements of corruption and tomfoolery occurring in the system they oppose. They disregard or fail to consider how corruption and selfishness tends to creep into any type of organized endeavor when they insist that free market enterprises would run things more ethically and efficiently than the government. Of course the same is true about socialism and its proponents ("bUt ThE sOvIeT uNiOn WaS nOt a TrUe ExPeRiMeNt In SoCiAlIsM cUz iT gOt tAkEn oVeR bY cOrRuPt iNdIvIdUaLs wHo aBuSeD tHeIr pOwEr!!!"), or any other system, for that matter. We all tend to rank our own preferred ideologies and systems through beer goggles whilst judging those with which we disagree through a stricter, more sober lens. We don't even notice the glaring inconsistencies in logic of the systems and ideas we prefer. We assume the best about our own ideas whilst assuming the worst about those we dislike. I think this is why the alt right racial realists overlook so many points when they try to bring up IQ and race. Or why lefties just conveniently ignore any data on biological sex differences when the data doesn't support their worldviews. We see this reflected in any ideologue when they speak of their own tribe or party being more indebted to facts and logic whilst referring to their ideological opponents as overly emotional and uncaring of facts and logic. Prime example, watch Shapiro's interview on Joe Rogan when he tries to debate Rogan on religious grounds. He stammers and struggles and you can see him realizing his own arguments are seeming increasingly thin despite his constant mantras about only caring about facts. The sense of panic exudes from his pores.

Ha. You can always tell when Shapiro is in the weeds based on how autistically indignant he gets.

Im not sure how complicated morality has to be. I wouldn't say I have a particular ideology that I think would work for everyone, but I have one for myself that I feel can fit it almost everywhere- so long as it's a fair and impartial system. I only ask two things of my community and society:

1) Leave me alone and get out of my way so I can work.
and
2) Let me keep what I earn, and don't try to steal it.

I don't think that's too much to ask. I'm happy to pay taxes for public services- so long as they're services I have a stake or interest in using someday.

 

[The Cat]

 

[anticlimatic]

Aren't you afraid that in a world without sheeple, it might be you living at the bottom of the barrel, and there'd some douche hoping you'd die in a hole he's dug for you for 160 dollars an hour? It's called 'A Warning', not 'A Surprise'.

Oh man....I beat off to fantasies of a world without sheeple- a world ripe with game and fertile soil. No more derelicts, no more 'takers,' no more administrators and regulators trying to use police and politics to tell me what to do or how to do it all of the sake of the safety of the dumbest sheep there could possibly be- no more worthless drains on natural resources- no more worry of climate change with shuttered factories peddling Chinese Walmart crap and a billion cars burning gallons upon gallons of fuel just to get them from barn to trough and back again.

Ahhh, sweet utopia- the good place; the place that cannot be. You can put me at the bottom of a barrel in such a world- see how long I stay there.

 

[Jaguar]

Well, this thread sure got strange. lol.

 

[anticlimatic]

Did you really just essentially look Stigmata in the eye and tell him to crawl in the hole you dug and die? We're all super impressed with you. Yay. Well done. You're #1.

I don't know stigmata so I don't have any judgments regarding his worth.
[MENTION=13112]STIGMATA[/MENTION]- homie that wasn't directed at you, no offense.

 

[Peter Deadpan]

Oh man....I beat off to fantasies of a world without sheeple- a world ripe with game and fertile soil. No more derelicts, no more 'takers,' no more administrators and regulators trying to use police and politics to tell me what to do or how to do it all of the sake of the safety of the dumbest sheep there could possibly be- no more worthless drains on natural resources- no more worry of climate change with shuttered factories peddling Chinese Walmart crap and a billion cars burning gallons upon gallons of fuel just to get them from barn to trough and back again.

Ahhh, sweet utopia- the good place; the place that cannot be. You can put me at the bottom of a barrel in such a world- see how long I stay there.

You must be a social 5. How cute.

 

[anticlimatic]

Well, this thread sure got strange. lol.

You're welcome for the interlude.

Now back to your scheduled Trump hating circlejerk...

 

[Jaguar]

You're welcome for the interlude.

Now back to your scheduled Trump hating circlejerk...

Did someone shit in your Cheerios this morning or what?

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

Aren't you afraid that in a world without sheeple, it might be you living at the bottom of the barrel, and there'd some douche hoping you'd die in a hole he's dug for you for 160 dollars an hour?


It's called 'A Warning', not 'A Surprise'.

Why would someone pay double anticlimatic’s rate? I’d be more worried someone came along offering to do the digging for 40

 

[Z Buck McFate]

Why would someone pay double anticlimatic’s rate? I’d be more worried someone came along offering to do the digging for 40

I'm going to guess his point is that there's always a bigger fish (and one that would charge twice as much would probably qualify as bigger fish) around, and since conservative Social Darwinism dictates that the smaller fish should crawl in a hole and die: shouldn't he be glad/relieved there are "sheeple"? (Since otherwise, he'd be the smaller fish and he'd get snuffed out).

/Probably shouldn't answer for Nico, but did anyway.

 

[Kingu Kurimuzon]

I'm going to guess his point is that there's always a bigger fish (and one that would charge twice as much would probably qualify as bigger fish) around, and since conservative Social Darwinism dictates that the smaller fish should crawl in a hole and die: shouldn't he be glad/relieved there are "sheeple"? (Since otherwise, he'd be the smaller fish and he'd get snuffed out).

/Probably shouldn't answer for Nico, but did anyway.

Typically bigger fish can afford to charge less and price out their competitors.

I didn’t really take Nico literally, I just wanted to tease him about his economic analogies

 

[Z Buck McFate]

Libertarianism's flaw is that its proponents assume the best of intentions and pure ethics will always be at play in their desired system, whilst only seeming to notice the worst elements of corruption and tomfoolery occurring in the system they oppose. They disregard or fail to consider how corruption and selfishness tends to creep into any type of organized endeavor when they insist that free market enterprises would run things more ethically and efficiently than the government. Of course the same is true about socialism and its proponents ("bUt ThE sOvIeT uNiOn WaS nOt a TrUe ExPeRiMeNt In SoCiAlIsM cUz iT gOt tAkEn oVeR bY cOrRuPt iNdIvIdUaLs wHo aBuSeD tHeIr pOwEr!!!"), or any other system, for that matter.

Well said. The thing that frustrates me - to the extent that it feels utterly pointless to even attempt dialogue with people who identify as libertarian anymore - is that there's an aggressive blindness to facts about how reality actually plays out. I think there's definitely valid criticism about government regulation, and I doubt we'll ever get to the STNG-like point where things run so smoothly that it can be taken for granted because all the kinks have been discovered and it's mostly been ironed out. But with libertarians, it's like there's such an abject fear and amplification of how government regulation can go wrong - without realizing they are blinded by this fear, seeing their own viewpoint as 'rational evaluation' - that they can't even 'go there' in dialogue. It's like talking to a flat-Earther.

*insert picture of Janet Leigh screaming in Psycho poster, but it says "Socialism" instead of "Psycho"*

I mean, I don't know how else to make sense of how they turn to this argument about how an absolutely free market will work itself out in the end, without being able to hear absolutely any argument about how that hasn't been how it's played out in reality. eta: Without regulation, wealth 'trickles' upwards and creates more income inequality. This has been proven practically as thoroughly as it's been proven that the Earth isn't flat. And yet...

 

[Z Buck McFate]

Typically bigger fish can afford to charge less and price out their competitors.

I think there's point in here about seeing the same amount of work ("digging a hole") done by oneself as being worth twice as much when you're a bigger fish. Though yeah, because the "bigger fish" will have figured out how to make the money off of others' labor rather than their own, they will have found a way to charge less.

 

[anticlimatic]

Did someone shit in your Cheerios this morning or what?

Is it that hard to tell when I'm having a good time?

 

[Stigmata]

I don't know stigmata so I don't have any judgments regarding his worth.
[MENTION=13112]STIGMATA[/MENTION]- homie that wasn't directed at you, no offense.

No offense taken.

 

[anticlimatic]

Well said. The thing that frustrates me - to the extent that it feels utterly pointless to even attempt dialogue with people who identify as libertarian anymore - is that there's an aggressive blindness to facts about how reality actually plays out. I think there's definitely valid criticism about government regulation, and I doubt we'll ever get to the STNG-like point where things run so smoothly that it can be taken for granted because all the kinks have been discovered and it's mostly been ironed out. But with libertarians, it's like there's such an abject fear and amplification of how government regulation can go wrong - without realizing they are blinded by this fear, seeing their own viewpoint as 'rational evaluation' - that they can't even 'go there' in dialogue. It's like talking to a flat-Earther.

*insert picture of Janet Leigh screaming in Psycho poster, but it says "Socialism" instead of "Psycho"*

I mean, I don't know how else to make sense of how they turn to this argument about how an absolutely free market will work itself out in the end, without being able to hear absolutely any argument about how that hasn't been how it's played out in reality. eta: Without regulation, wealth 'trickles' upwards and creates more income inequality. This has been proven practically as thoroughly as it's been proven that the Earth isn't flat. And yet...

If I may...

There are many many different kinds of regulators. Most of the people I work around in the building trades are libertarians- like 99 percent of them- the people that construct and maintain all of the infrastructure that everyone depends on and takes for granted- running water, electricity, roads, heat, air conditioning, etc. All that shit is constantly breaking down all the time due to the entropic nature of the universe, and keeping it running is a full-time war against the elements. This war is hard enough as it is, but every individual building trade is also beholden to a legally enforced branch of regulators and administrators- and although a certain degree of that kind of thing is important in keeping things safe- by and large they are just corrupt bureaucrats who only make money by screwing people over, and charge exorbitant fees and fines simply to justify their own existence. They are almost universally despised by the people that do the actual work, and serve as a kind of microcosm for how they feel overall about 'regulations' in larger systems beyond their understanding. That's how you get the libertarians you know.

 

[Tellenbach]

How can you suggest wages have increased when we have the greatest income disparity since the depression? Unemployment may be trending downward but people are having to work longer hours for less and less spending power -- you have an increasing amount of households which are working poor.

Wages have increased; this is empirical evidence gathered by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. You call up a couple hundred thousand people monthly, ask them what they make, and put it in an excel file and chart it. The trendline slopes upward.

Income disparity is a good thing because it means there is abundant opportunity; when there is more opportunity, you'll see greater income disparity. Cavemen had no income disparity. Is that a good thing? Of course not. It means that cavemen had no opportunity to move ahead. The one stat that's truly important is the median household income; that's gone up by over $2000/year.

Unemployment may be trending downward but people are having to work longer hours for less and less spending power -- you have an increasing amount of households which are working poor.

It's not true that people are working longer hours for less; they're working longer hours because they were jobless before and now they aren't. The greatest economic stimulus package is a job. Under Obama, we saw the number of people on food stamps double; under Trump, we've seen 4 million fewer people on food stamps. The economy is sizzling right now.

 

[Z Buck McFate]

If I may...

There are many many different kinds of regulators. Most of the people I work around in the building trades are libertarians- like 99 percent of them- the people that construct and maintain all of the infrastructure that everyone depends on and takes for granted- running water, electricity, roads, heat, air conditioning, etc. All that shit is constantly breaking down all the time due to the entropic nature of the universe, and keeping it running is a full-time war against the elements. This war is hard enough as it is, but every individual building trade is also beholden to a legally enforced branch of regulators and administrators- and although a certain degree of that kind of thing is important in keeping things safe- by and large they are just corrupt bureaucrats who only make money by screwing people over, and charge exorbitant fees and fines simply to justify their own existence. They are almost universally despised by the people that do the actual work, and serve as a kind of microcosm for how they feel overall about 'regulations' in larger systems beyond their understanding. That's how you get the libertarians you know.

This is actually helpful. Thank you.

 

[Virtual ghost]

🤷 If you cant hack it in this world, you can't hack it. Personally I prefer a society that rewards people with integrity ambition and intelligence. The great mass of useless sheeple that don't measure up can crawl in a hole and die for all I care- in fact I'll even dig it for them (80 dollars an hour, one hour minimum).

Yes, but all these sheeple are direct consequence of the market and someones business.


Who destroyed public education to the point that it is useless ? Market loving people.
Who is doing 24/7 reality TV ? Market.
Who completely filled the environment and culture with Ads ? Market.
Who made laws that everything should result with financial profit of private consultants, even if it is just based on useless regulation. Market people.
Who introduced social networks and all other ADHD/Narcissism "standards". Market.



You may not recognize it but you are living in your own phantasy, since this is where it leads to.
The 1% are fundamentally nothing more than people who were rewarded for their ambition and intelligence.