rkbabang

+ 1. I have a technical job that I very much enjoy (think a combination of food safety, epidemiology, and toxicology). In high school and college, I had some opportunities to work white collar intern jobs, like many of my friends. However, I chose to spend my summers in high school and in college doing plumbing work, electrical work, masonry, and finished carpentry. (In hindsight, it is clear that these white collar intern jobs were of no use to my friends when looking for real jobs...they were basically a coffee/xerox queen.) I view these trades as essential life skills, and think that every man (and women) should be able to do basic plumbing, electrical, masonry, and finished carpentry. These skills will save you a bunch of money over your lifetime. And as Oddball noted above, I met some folks during this work that I would never have met otherwise. To this day, they remind me of the impact that a poor decision can have on your life. They also remind me how lucky I was to be born in the United States... I'd give the same advice. I sit at a desk all day now, but as a teenager in highschool and for my first few years of college I worked for a carpenter (framed houses), as a construction worker (paving roads, setting curbing), as a landscaper (building brick patios, stone walls, fishponds, etc), and I spent one summer as a splice technician climbing telephone poles for NYNEX (Verizon now) back when everyone still had land lines. I wouldn't trade that experience for anything. A desk job is better than flipping burgers, but if he can find a job where he can learn valuable skills that he won't learn later in life that would be the best IMHO. He'll likely be able to get internships in his field his junior and senior years so this year and maybe next are really the only opportunities he will have to do these other things.

Interesting report claiming that technology will make extracting shale oil even cheaper and more productive. SHALE 2.0, Technology and the Coming Big-Data Revolution in America’s Shale Oil Fields "Shale 2.0 promises to ultimately yield break-even costs of $5–$20 per barrel—in the same range as Saudi Arabia’s vaunted low-cost fields."

Thanks for posting the article. I hadn't seen the article before now, but I did listen to him talk about Trump on the Tim Ferriss podcast a while back. Yes, he understands Trump and his popularity better than most. It's an excellent interview for this and a number of other reasons, Scott Adams is an interesting guy. Here's the episode: Scott Adams: The Man Behind Dilbert

What real effects does a president's ability, or lack thereof, to "impress the business community" have on the economy or the stock market? I don't really understand how one president can have a worse effect than another, based on who they are, or what successes/failures they have had in the past in business (which is completely unrelated to politics). It would depend more on what bills he signs into law effecting the business environment through regulations or taxes. Which bills are you afraid he will sign to have the negative effects you are expecting?

Exactly. How can you not understand, LC? It's very simple. In rkbabang's Libertarian nirvana, might makes right. Really, it's not much different than college students who believe that Marxism is the solution to everything. The thing that amuses me about these discussions is that the people espousing these ideas don't recognize that they'd likely be among the first victims of such a system. It reminds me of this guy, who says that rape should be legal on private property. Does he think that if that happened, he wouldn't be one of the first ones targeted? In your government nirvana might makes right. Do what we say or we will send armed men to kidnap you and throw you in a cage. If you resist we will kill you. What is democracy if not "There is more of us than there are of you, so do what we say or else". It is the process of counting fists. There are only two ways individually human beings can deal with one another. Through voluntary cooperation or through violence. Coercive government is the attempt to legitimize violence. I'm not saying you can ever get rid of violence completely, but you can have a society where the vast majority holds the opinion that initiating violence against someone who has not done likewise is always wrong regardless of who does it. Marx is the extreme case of what you want not me. And some nut who wants to rape would never be very popular in any civilized society that I'd like to live in. If your precious all knowing government passed a law which said that rape was legal in one's own property, would you rape? I wouldn't. I already rape and kill all of the people I wish to, which is none. I wouldn't consider that law to be any more valid than the law which tells me which plants I can grow, or weapons I can own, or type of milk I can sell.

It's just tribalism. Go Team!!!

When you have a situation where almost everyone has a demand for a product, I don't think there should be any trouble finding the funding for that product. Whether it is safety, fire protection, insurance protection, education for oneself and children. Maybe insurance companies would require fire protection contracts to insure against fire and police protection contracts to insure against theft. Once people no longer believe that they have a right to forcibly extract resources from their neighbors, force a one size fits all product or service on them, and prohibit all competition then entrepreneurs will try to meet those needs which will still be there as much as they ever have. I'd love for everyone to have good healthcare (if they want it, I disagree with mandating someone buy something), I just disagree with funding it by force.

Beautifully stated. I "vote" everyday in a thousands ways in almost everything I do.

I never said useless. People create organizations, concepts, and sytems in an attempt to best meet their needs. Governments and religions are created in an attempt to meet the need of not being afraid. Religions are a response to the fear of death and the unknown, it gives people comfort to "know" that there is something after this life and to "know" why we are here and where we came from, who created us, etc. Governments are a response mostly to the fear of the other. Historically outside tribes of funny looking people who speak in strange tongues who want to raid and kill us. Many of these fears are justifiable. Death is scary, the unknown/unknowable is troubling, the history of humanity is full of instances where outsiders did raid, rape, pillage, and murder otherwise peaceful peoples. I am not saying these concepts come from no where and are foolish. I am saying that there are other ways of accomplishing the same goals, especially in an ever shrinking world where travel, communication, trade, and an increasingly lower language barriers. Knowledge, communication, familiarity, and trade kill fear and fear fuels religion and statism. You are hung up on the words "government" and "anarchy", I don't care if the systems people create in the future to fulfill their needs for safety and justice are still called governments, just like no one cares if the cotton plantations are still called cotton plantations as long as they no longer utilize slave labor. There will always be systems of justice and protection in a civilized society, whether you want to call those "government" or not is just semantics and besides the point. As long as they don't operate utilizing theft for funding or by initiating violence against otherwise peaceful individuals, I don't really care what you call it.

That's like saying if you don't like how slaves are treated buy some and treat them well. I don't want to contribute in any way to a system of violence, theft, domination, and destruction. I do just want to get people to see it for what it is. I don't want to try to be your master just because I don't want her or Trump to be mine.

OK let's talk about her then.

Perhaps in a truly anarchist society like the one you propose, slavery would arise as the naturally strong prey on the weak. Perhaps only through the collective agreement of humans (aka politics) would the unsavory aspects of human nature be limited. And the removal of a state is going to solve this? It won't necessarily solve it, removal of the state isn't sufficient to solve it, but it is required as a first step to solve it. You can't even begin to solve a problem if it is widely viewed as not a problem. "rights" don't exist in an anarchistic state. it only takes 1 person to think it's OK for them to do it. Rights are a human invention. You can't look under a microscope and say "there is a right". It is the same with morality. These things are what the vast majority think they are, nothing more. There will always be criminals that need to be dealt with somehow. The only question is do you legitimize these actions and call these criminals "government"? My question was relatively loaded because before "states" and "governments" existed, a "stateless" society existed. We lived in caves and hunted and gathered. But even in those days social structure existed. Maybe it wasn't an "official state" but there was a political process and agreed upon rules. And forms of "taxation". No, the IRS didn't come after you but you sure as hell better save some of your seeds with the village otherwise you will be ostracized. Before we had states humans were pretty primitive, we've evolved socially quite a bit since then. Another way to look at it is that we have always lived in a state of anarchy and always will. Just as there really is no such thing as morality, there is really no such thing as government. There are only human concepts of such things, which change over time. If you look at the whole of recorded history the concepts have trended over the long term towards greater inclusion (of races, sexes, lifestyles, classes, etc), greater individualism, more peaceful moral codes, etc. Once some form of violence is considered immoral, or some people are included in those who should have rights, society as a whole rarely goes backwards. People aren't likely to say, "you know we should bring back slavery and consider women to be the property of their husbands again. And we really need to do something about the dirty jews". It just doesn't happen. Human progress is slow, but steady. The average person of even 75 years ago, would be considered a bigot by today's standard. And the rate of change is increasing. It used to take a millennium to change the dominate moral codes now, people change how they think on many issues within their own lifetimes. This governmental system, the whole concept of the nation state, only survives because the vast majority of the people want it to. The moment a sizable number see it as either evil or unnecessary something else will take its place. I am not worried that slavery will come back in a society where the dominate zeitgeist is that even taxation is immoral and where voluntary solutions are always looked for over violent ones. Anarchy doesn't mean tolerating criminals to commit violence it means not tolerating gangs of people calling themselves government committing violence and claiming that it is somehow legitimate as we have now.

If only the Democrats would nominate Biglari to run against him. That would be perfect. USA by Biglari.

What's great about this election wherever I see it discussed, and this thread is no exception, is that unlike past elections where everyone was really excited about one candidate or the other and thought they were voting for hope and change, everyone now is like "They all suck, but X is a little better than Y".

Move to Canada. If Trump gets elected Canada will have to build a wall to keep all the fleeing Americans out. Maybe they can even get America to pay for it. :)

Not sure if you're serious...but if so, that is such an illogical argument. Illogical if you want the system "to work" whatever that means to you, but not illogical at all if you're goal is the crumbling of the system. The more hatred and disgust politics engenders the less people will look to it to solve problems. The best outcome possible is for people to think of politics as a nasty process that is irrelevant to their lives and to dismiss it completely. Just curious if you can point to any human society that functioned well with this type of structure. I don't think I mentioned any type of "structure". If you mean with very little to nothing being forcibly controlled and regulated by government, then probably no, not yet. Human society is always evolving and is still evolving. You do realize that you just gave the pro-slavery argument from the 17th century right? A prosperous society and/or empire has never existed without slavery. Maybe it was the industrial revolution that allowed a non-slavery society to be wealthy, or maybe a free market without slavery could have produced a wealthy society even before the mechanization of the industrial revolution. I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that slavery was immoral regardless of the answer to that question. Maybe a stateless society could have been possible before the information age, or maybe it takes the information age to make it possible, or some future technological progress that we don't yet have. I don't know the answer to that either, but I do know that using violence to control people and taxation to rob people is immoral. And just like slavery when the public at large recognizes that it is possible to do without it, it will suddenly become common sense that of course no one has the right to use violence against their neighbor "for the common good" or because 50% of the population think it's OK. We are still at the very dawn of the information age and already the world is becoming smaller, and once the oldest few generations die out we will have a world populated by people who have never been afraid of foreigners and who never thought of them as non-humans. Nationalism will lose its power to control, sort of how science took away religion's power to control after many generations. Almost everything that the government does has a historic example of a society that functioned reasonably well (for its historical time) without the government performing that function. The early united states is a good example for a lot of government functions as the government didn't do a lot back then, yet the society not only functioned but prospered. Medieval Iceland is an example of private law, for example, not perfect, I think it could be done better, but functional, maybe more so than today's united states. No, there has never yet been a full functioning stateless society, but I think we will eventually get there.

Not sure if you're serious...but if so, that is such an illogical argument. Illogical if you want the system "to work" whatever that means to you, but not illogical at all if you're goal is the crumbling of the system. The more hatred and disgust politics engenders the less people will look to it to solve problems. The best outcome possible is for people to think of politics as a nasty process that is irrelevant to their lives and to dismiss it completely.

I agree with you. The hatred for Trump is palpable, which is what makes me want him to win. All the love Obama gets makes me want to puke and I certainly don't want to spend 4-8 years watching as everyone falls all over themselves to worship at Hillary's feet. I loved it when Bush was president, everyone hated him almost as much as I did and Trump will be even better.

+1 to writser. I also worry about rising nationalism. However, about Trump - I don't support him, but I think I prefer him to the Christian right ideologues of Republican party. Trump is a clown and a55hole, but he's somewhat "our" a55hole. Just look at his past opinions about hot topics: he opined with Democrats more than with Christian right. Of course, it's impossible to rely on his past opinions, since he's a loose canon and he can change his opinion tomorrow. But I'd rather have that than someone who has these opinions set in stone and will never change them. I think that people comparing Trump to Hitler are taking an easy and false strawman shortcut. This is not something to be proud of. finally I agree with Jurgis on a political post. The growing nationalism and xenophobia scares the hell out of me, but all and all Trump isn't any worse than the other candidates on many issues and a hell of a lot better on others. He's bombastic and I think this started as a publicity stunt that turned serious when he started leading in the polls. I'm sure it surprised him as much as it did everyone else. Hillary probably scares me the most out of all of them, because I fear that she is solidly in the pocket of the military industrial complex, where I've heard Trump say things like the world would be better off if the US never invaded Iraq, which is a more sane thing then anything I've heard from any of the other candidates. And I also am glad that he isn't a loony religious nut that thinks god tells him what to do. The other reason I almost hope Trump wins (I won't be voting though) is that people actually see his insanity, where they ignore it in the others almost like its invisible. Take his insane statements about bombing the Terrorists AND their families. People get outraged when he says it, but ignore the fact that Obama quietly does it (link). Since they are all about the same, I'd rather have a president that people get angry at. I don't think any of the candidates will be worse or better for the stock market, unless of course Hillary gets in and starts WWIII to satisfy her buddies in the defense industry, that couldn't be good for stocks.

It is up to them, they will replace it with a "similar model". So if you had a Sub Zero you would get a new Sub Zero, if you had the cheapest fridge money can buy, that is what you will get. There are options though, the service tech we used had a bit of experience dealing with them, he said that he's seen customers want a top of the line super efficient heating unit and American Home Shield wanted to replace what was there with a similar builders grade unit, the customers were able to get the upgraded unit by paying the difference in cost between the two. If you had a cheap refrigerator (say a replacement with a similar model would be $1100) and you wanted a $9000 Sub Zero you could tell them to send you the $1100 and you could buy whatever you wanted. EDIT: But remember if the fridge is at all fixable that is what they will want to do. They would rather spend $600 to repair an old ugly dented rusty fridge than pay $1100 to buy a new one. As long as it will last a year they win, they know you won't likely have the warranty forever. It really has to be unfixable, really close to the price of a new one to fix, or some kind of a safety hazard for them to agree to a new unit.

More trouble than I would have liked, but the service technician was adamant that it was dangerous to fix it and it needed to be replaced. They initially wanted to spend about $2000 fixing it rather than $4000 replacing it. It was over 25 years old, in very poor condition, and the previous homeowner hadn't used it in five years (he heated entirely with wood pellets), which is the reason we purchased the home warranty to begin with. They will always want to fix something that can be fixed rather than replace it, but even fixing it would have been a lot more than we paid for the warranty. We went with American Home Shield.

I'd lean against getting the warranty. You are paying 10% of the cost of the vehicle for something you will most likely not use. 10% of the item's worth is a lot to pay for warranty insurance IMHO. I bought a new home last september and bought a home owners warranty (which already paid for itself as my furnace went and was replaced), but I certainly wouldn't pay 10% of my house's cost for a home owners warranty for 10 years, it was much much less costly than that. And as I said already, on a late model Hyundai you are unlikely to use it at all. Of course if you end up needing it, you will be glad that you bought it or upset that you didn't.

You know they say memory is the first thing to go.... Just kidding, it was 7 years ago. I've since moved all of my accounts over to Fidelity and use their reporting and performance reports. Once a month I can see my performance for a number of time periods all the way back to the start of my accounts with Fidelity. I've never found cheap, easy to use software to do this myself. And at this point I'm not going to be spending time putting 20 years of transactions with splits, symbol changes, dividends (some reinvested some not), etc, into excel. Too much work and I only need it for my own curiosity as I don't handle other people's money.

All rallies are real. The market goes up. Then at some point the market goes down and that is also real. Then at some point the market goes back up and it is real again. There are sometimes minutes, hours, days, weeks, or years in between these real events.

There is a lot of talk here of supply being reduced and oil rebounding, but wouldn't that just bring a bunch of supply back on line? Just because it is currently off the market doesn't mean that the excess supply doesn't exist. Wouldn't demand have to pick up drastically to raise the prices significantly for more than a short amount of time? Or is this a simplistic view? I'm not sure I understand the oil market all that well.