rkbabang

Americans... ::) :o Supersize me baby. Do Canadians not have large families? I have 36 1st cousins, almost all of them older than me so they all had spouses and some of them teenage kids by the time I got married. My wife has a large family as well. Out of the 250 we invited it was over 200 family members alone. And there were some hard feelings over it from people we cut from the list.

You can also do a large wedding on the cheap. My wife and I did back in '96. We invited 250 people (we invited only good friends, limited family to 1st cousins, and asked everyone not to bring their young children, otherwise we could have invited 600+ people). We had about 240 show up and we did it for under $8K total (wedding, reception, dress, & rings). Her parents were not in a position to help us at all and my parents paid for our honeymoon as our wedding present and paid the band as well, but we had to pay for everything else. We rented an Elks hall for $150 for the night, the agreement was that they would provide all the drinks from the bar, so that is where they made their money. My wife got a discontinued dress right off the mannequin at the bridal shop and it fit her so there were no alterations, it was a $4000 dress for $1400. We found a caterer to do a chicken dinner for $8/plate (I'm not sure if you could find something so cheap today though). My wife did all the flowers for the church, reception, table arrangements, her bouquet, herself (she studied floriculture and floral design in school) we drove up to the wholesale flower place in boston and got the raw materials at wholesale costs. We had the wedding party all meet at a discount photo studio to take some pictures before the wedding and we just had family members photograph the wedding itself. We left disposable film cameras (1996 remember) on each table and encouraged everyone to take lots of pictures at the reception and leave the cameras on the tables when they leave (we ended up with tons of pictures of the reception). There are a ton of ways to cut costs for even a large wedding. And of course you don't need a 2 ct ring or whatever people are buying these days. If she needs that you probably don't need her.

Don't do that...you'll make yourself miserable. +1 How long until you're living in a cardboard box, eating nothing but ramen noodles, and going into the library to log on and check your portfolio every day?

I would assume that when most cars have this feature, that'll be more or less a thing of the past. Much reduced, yes, but only a thing of the past after there are no longer any human controlled vehicles on the road and no way for a human to take control of any vehicle. Otherwise there will always be the occasional human causing carnage on the roadways. This nutcase turned my 20min commute to over 2 hours on Friday: Good Samaritan stabbed and her car stolen Carjacking leads to multiple-vehicle accident and highway shutdown in Nashua

Another impressive article here. I didn't realize it would take over from you to save you from crashing. Tesla Model S autopilot takes over and saves driver from collision — watch it here

Oh god no, I hope Space X continues to focus on getting to Mars and doesn't decide to become a military contractor focusing on helping the megalomaniac ruling class destroy the Earth. Then again this is unlikely anyway. The only thing reusable rocket delivered bombs does is cut the costs of war. Since when does the government care about how much it spends on war? This isn't even a concern.

I've never owned a German vehicle, so I have no personal experience. But of course I have an opinion :), it is that they market their vehicles in the US as luxury vehicles, so they can get away with having poorer dependability. A high net worth individual will buy/lease a Mercedes or BMW new, then trade it in for another one after 3 years. So the people who buy them used are the ones getting screwed and the people who buy them new never really notice that they don't last very long. I have no problem with any company as long as they survive in the market without subsidies and bailouts, something which the american companies haven't been able to do.

The same way they survived when Asian companies produced higher quality vehicles at lower prices ... government bailouts. They won't. They don't have to.

+ 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.