The Militarization of American Law Enforcement

[Wraith]

--" you can't just single out the government as the one and only factor."

As I said the first time, it was the government that turned a mild-to-moderate recession into the Great Depression.

--"Could it be that having a diversified economy had helped out?"

It probably does, but I fail to see how this can be credited to the government.

--"Government services that have buffered displaced workers?"

Government services that have created a class of people dependant on government support.

--"A strong middle and questionably a lower class, with a nice distribution of wealth that doesn't leave all the power in rich investors hands?"

A large portion of the middle class are investors...
And, again, something that his little to do with government.

--"YET THERE IS NO DEPRESSION RIGHT NOW."

Monetary policy has been pretty much the same (ie. incredibly dumb) for the past eighty years. Back then it was still a shock, going from something actually close to a free market into this mess. We've largely adjusted to it, and would actually be operating fairly well if the government didn't constantly change the details of the rules. Compliance with all the minor changes is a big drain.

--"To sum up, you're a laisse faire wannabe economist, and that's a theory that never has nor never will work."

As far as it has been implemented, it has worked. The periods of the greatest overall economic growth have pretty much coincided with the periods of greatest economic freedom.

--" the people of this nation and its leaders have had to the wisdom to not only create programs, but leave them intact."

Social Security was, by FDR, meant as a temporary program, to be ended as soon as possible. How is it wise to extend the life of such a Ponzi scheme?

--"In all these programs, there are several billion dollars worth of programs that people are dependent upon."

And I really wish you would think about the consequences of statements like this. Yes, you are perfectly correct, and this is exactly the thing I'm afraid of. You seem to think this is, if not a good thing, then perfectly acceptable. I find it something to be very worried about.

--"It's called pooling resources for the greater good, (not STEALING, sensationalist)"

Taking money from people by force is stealing, whoever is doing it.

Wraith
"Anarchism is founded on the observation that since few men are wise enough to rule themselves, even fewer are wise enough to rule others."
-- Edward Abbey

[Joe R. Golowka]

Originally posted by Ted Striker
As for you berzeker, you are living in a fantasy world outside of the lines, one based on your own idealized delusion.

You advocate eliminating the minimum wage.

You advocate eliminating unemployment, welfare, social security and medicare.

To sum up, you're a laisse faire wannabe economist, and that's a theory that never has nor never will work.

It would work fine if we also abolished class society.

There are things like anti-trust acts which were implemented BY THE GOVERNMENT for a reason, yes to prevent railroad meltdowns like the one Roland mentioned. To distribute power and diversify the ecnomomy, TO PREVENT THINGS LIKE PRICE FIXING/GAUGING and ****TY LOW WAGES.

Their origonal implementation was actually used to attack unions.

It's called pooling resources for the greater good, (not STEALING, sensationalist) because NOBODY can exist in a void on their own.

One can pool rescources voluntarily, it need not require force.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Joe R. Golowka
It would work fine if we also abolished class society.

It is the necessity in each society -if it is to be a society, not a rabble- to order the relations of men and thier institutional ways of achieving needed ends ... Organized power exists -always and everywhere, in societies large and small, primitive or modern- because it performs the necessary function of establishing and maintaining the version of order by which a given society in a given time and place lives.

Elitism is not a result of inadequate education of the masses, or of poverty, or of capitalism, or of any special problem in society. The necessity for leadership in society applies universally. This basically sums up my objections to anarchism.

[Joe R. Golowka]

Originally posted by DinoDoc

Elitism is not a result of inadequate education of the masses, or of poverty, or of capitalism, or of any special problem in society. The necessity for leadership in society applies universally. This basically sums up my objections to anarchism.

Did you know that over 90% of human history has been lived in Anarchy, without states or classes? There are numerous examples of working anarchist societies. The !kung come to mind. One can organize without hierarchy. You claim hierarchy is necessary but you present no proof nor even a plausable arguement to show your claim is true.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Joe R. Golowka
Did you know that over 90% of human history has been lived in Anarchy, without states or classes?

Did you know that we've progressed, not regressed, into a civilized society since then and that you still haven't disproved the assertions made in my previous post?

But if you really want facts to back up my assertion wrt the inevitability of elites, I could 7 sources off the top of my head if you wish.

Further point of discussion, how is elitism the result of any special problem in society?

[Berzerker]

chegitz -

There is another alternative, which those opposed to minimum wage consistently fail to recognize, and which businesses almost always choose; take a short term profit hit instead of laying people off or raising prices. Eventually they get that profit back as more money in people's hand's means that more of their products are getting purchased.

And this profit hit means fewer jobs because profit is one way businesses re-invest thereby creating jobs.

Every increase in the minimum wage has resulted in a corresponding increase in jobs.

The fact jobs might increase can be attributed to other factors without pointing to a forced wage increase. If this logic was valid, wouldn't increasing the minimum wage to $10 + an hour create an economic boom? I know someone who lost their job because of a minimum wage increase, they aren't unique. The fact is jobs have increased quite a bit since the 1980's with only 2 or 3 small increases in the min. wage. Claiming these increases created more jobs ignores the job creation rate due to an expanding economy. The relevant question becomes: did the min. wage increase create more jobs than the economy was creating already? If jobs were being created at 1 million a year and following a min. wage increase, at 1/2 million, claiming the min. wage increase created jobs is false.

My father constantly complains everytime there's an increase in minimum wage and says he'll just have to lay some people off. The fact is, he can't get people to work for him at minimum wage as it is, and generally has to pay higher than min wage to get something close to full staffing. Most min wage jobs are sh*tty service sector jobs that no one wants to work anyways (cuz they're only min wage).

Listen to your father If minimum wage increases effect only minimum wage workers, why do unions constantly push them? Because they have the effect of pushing up other wages, including union wages.

Wraith -

Taking money from people by force is stealing, whoever is doing it

Ted has bought into the lie that "government" doesn't steal when it does the same thing thieves do. Of course, being a liberal requires both acceptance of this lie and the never ending attempts to rationalize away the fact they are no better than the people they call the cops on for stealing their money without "government" help. Ouch!

Ted -

As for you berzeker, you are living in a fantasy world outside of the lines, one based on your own idealized delusion.

Umm...which "delusion" would this be? That stealing is wrong and freedom is moral?

You advocate eliminating the minimum wage.

Yes, I don't have the moral authority to put a gun to your head to force you to exchange your time and labor at rates I like.

You advocate eliminating unemployment, welfare, social security and medicare.

Yup, neither do I have the moral authority to steal money from others to pay for what I want.

To sum up, you're a laisse faire wannabe economist, and that's a theory that never has nor never will work.

I just believe in freedom and morality. I could care less if your "system" works better or not at achieving your goals. And what kind of "wanna-be economist" are you? Hypocrite! As for your claim that laisse faire has never worked, do you deny that the western world took off economically over the last few centuries as economic freedom increased? Your claim lacks proof, in other words, just another unsupported statement you would have us accept as the gospel truth.

When left as a free running system, things go haywire, and vulnerabilities to extremes is left exposed.

And economies involving billions of interactions are far too complex for a handful of people elected by people like you to run even assuming you were put here to run our lives.

When misapplied, yes they can do more harm than good, but when conservatively applied, they can and HAVE worked well.

Is this an admission that a mis-application occured before the Depression? If so, what's so wonderful about your ideology when it caused so much tragedy? Your argument here applies to most "systems" including Nazism. They all work rather nicely when not abused.

There are things like anti-trust acts which were implemented BY THE GOVERNMENT for a reason, yes to prevent railroad meltdowns like the one Roland mentioned.

By putting those word in bold, you're assuming I care. I don't! If the RR's "meltdown", then they meltdown (assuming you even know what you're talking about, an assumption I won't accept after all your BS!).

To distribute power and diversify the ecnomomy, TO PREVENT THINGS LIKE PRICE FIXING/GAUGING and ****TY LOW WAGES.

Well now, if these laws were enacted following the 1870's because of the RR "meltdown", why didn't they diversify the economy 40 or 50 years later before the Depression? If you don't like the wage someone is offering, WALK AWAY! How liberals can keep a straight face when telling others they believe in freedom is amazing, talk about a fantasy world!

These are all programs that have been created over the last 100 years, the people of this nation and its leaders have had to the wisdom to not only create programs, but leave them intact.

All meaningless rationalizations and generalizations. The "people" did not make these laws, some people did and some opposed them. And the fact some people steal from others does not prove it wise, moral or anything else other than that some people steal from others, and that many more will steal if the risk is removed.

As for your claim of welfare creating more out of wedlock births, that's BS, because what you have FAILED TO RECOGNIZE is that out of wedlock births HAVE INCREASED FOR EVERY SINGLE RACE, INCOME LEVEL AND MARITAL STATUS.

About time! Now, JUST HOW DO OUT OF WEDLOCK BIRTHS INCREASE AMONG MARRIED PEOPLE? Think a bit more before typing! Welfare programs are not designed for just some races and not others (except for some Indian programs), so claiming they have increased for all races doesn't prove anything other than a possible link between welfare and an increase in out of wedlock births, doh. That leaves only income, and don't even try to claim out of wedlock birthrates have increased among the wealthy as much as among the poor. TRY AGAIN!

In all these programs, there are several billion dollars worth of programs that people are dependent upon.

MANY people! And many of these people have more children out of wedlock introducing them into poverty (oh yeah, you really care). at a much higher rate than people not on welfare. And it isn't "several billion", it's several hundred billion! Roughly half the federal budget - if not more - is devoted to "entitlement" and welfare programs, and that doesn't even include the state programs.

And so your solution is to eliminate them and everything will be fine.

Never said everything would be "fine" as you define the term. Making people dependent on government promotes dependency, not self-sufficiency. Oh yeah, those long dead white guys did after all produce a document called "The Declaration of Dependence".

Your reasoning, "the government is stealing our money and people are too lazy."

I never said people were lazy and I asked you to stop putting words in my mouth. I agreed with Richard that most people won't take care of themselves - in that they are quite willing to vote themselves other people's money. Thieves are not necessarily lazy, just thieves.

I'm glad you have this well thought out. I'll appoint you as the Transitional Director for our new economic model. Gimme a break!!!

No thanks, I won't work for an a$$hole.

it's called pooling resources for the greater good, (not STEALING, sensationalist)

Translation: give us your money or die.

NOBODY can exist in a void on their own.

Translation: we exist to pay for what you want.

[Ted Striker]

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[Ted Striker]

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[Roland]

Ted:

"The point here is that there are ALOT of factors contributing to the Depression, you can't just single out the government as the one and only factor."

Separate them. Economic factors and/or government mismanagement lead to a recession. Government ineptitude caused the great depression.

"the recent bubble was one of the biggest in history"

Yup.

"yet I see no Depression and even further still, we are already climbing out of our light recession (though I know you will probably dispute that)."

The US will look like Japan until around 2005, but then it should be back to normal (and I'm still sceptical trend growth is much above 2.5 %).
Not every bubble ends in a great depression. It has some nasty hangover (UK Lawson boom, german reunification boom, Japan inc boom....). Now, if we had not only an artificial government fested boom going bust, but also budget cuts, a crumbling credit system (that is still to come in the current bust, btw) where the Fed shuts out banks, nutty tariffs and a total collapse of the international economic system, we could have great depression all over again. As an econ terrorist, Greenspan is much more effective than Bin Laden.

"Could it be that having a diversified economy had helped out?"

Diversified ? How much more diversified than 1929 ? On what aggregates ?

"Government services that have buffered displaced workers?"

See above.

"A strong middle and questionably a lower class, with a nice distribution of wealth that doesn't leave all the power in rich investors hands?"

The 1920s were a great time for the middle class. Just too much debt. Just like today.

"Stricter banking and credit regulations that have kept the bottom from falling out?"

LOL!
Reckless reliquification at any cost by the Fed, rather than regulation. Also easier with pure fiat money than a semi-gold standard. The regulatory side has pretty much collapsed. And the worst excesses are outside the banking system this time.

"As YOU have pointed out in the past, monetary policy now is nearly the same as it was back then, YET THERE IS NO DEPRESSION RIGHT NOW."

Not quite. In creating a bubble and cutting rates in the downturn, it is parallel. On the pumping side (or aggressiveness, if you want), there is a huge difference. Besides, the other factors (fiscal etc) are not destructive.

[Wraith]

--" That's why the anti-trust legislation was passed, because mostly railroads were in charge of everything, not just the railroads themselves"

Interesting that you should bring up the railroads. They have quite the history, one that illustrates the problems of government control very well.

Did you know that in the 1890s there were already more than 1,000 different railroads in the country? There were more miles of track in the US than the rest of the world combined. Competetion was fierce, rates (passenger and freight) were low.
Now, granted, they did try to form groups to fix rates and so forth, but for some reason those groups were always falling apart.

Now, competition was greatest on the long-haul routes. Prices for those were very low, and in many cases the price for the long-haul shipping was actually less than the short distance shipping that covered the last bit of the journey (sometimes because only one railroad served a particular town). This is where people started complaining about monopolistic railroads.

As the complaints mounted, the railroad owners realized something. This could help them. So they started joining in the people calling for reform (including, I should mention, the Populist party, which called for government ownership of the railroads). This lead to the establishment of the Interstate Commerce Commission in 1887.
A decade later the commission was in full swing. It managed to solve the long-haul/short-haul problem. By raising long-haul rates, which made the railroads quite happy.
As time passed, the commission's power increased. Then, in the 1920s, something appeared that finally threatened the railroads power. Trucks. The artificially high long-haul rates allowed the trucking industry to grow quickly.
The railroads, of course, didn't take this lying down, and lobbied to have trucks placed under similar constraints as they operated under (despite the fact that the old monopoly arguments had no validity in this case). In 1935 the Motor Carrier Act gave the ICC jurisdiction over trucking, and it was pretty much a repeat. Rates were fixed, routes were assigned, and the industry was basically cartellized by the government.
When the ICC started its regulations, they required motor carriers to get a license from them. There were over 89,000 applicants. Only around 27,000 were approved. After that, the number of carriers dropped steadily (less than 15,000 in 1974, not sure about now). At the same time the amount of shipping increased greatly.
Then aircraft came along. The railroads, burdened by ICC rules, were already having trouble adjusting to passenger service in a world of busses and cars. The story repeated itself yet again, with the government setting minimum rates the airlines could charge (although in this case it was a reversal of the original long-haul/short-haul situation).

So, oddly enough, it was government that caused the railroad cartels, and it was government that eventually destroyed the rail industry.

--"BOB HERBERT"

Is a liberal, isn't he?

BTW, you might want to examine the government definition of poverty some time. Interesting stuff in there. Even before Bill Clinton tried to get designer sneakers included.

Wraith
"Ministers say that they teach charity. That is natural. They live on hand-outs. All beggars teach that others should give."
-- Robert G. Ingersoll

[Ted Striker]

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[Ted Striker]

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[Joe R. Golowka]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Did you know that we've progressed, not regressed, into a civilized society since then

Civilization is highly over-rated.

and that you still haven't disproved the assertions made in my previous post?

Your assertion is a non-sequitor and a bare assertion. Just because you claim something is true doesn't mean it is true.

Regardless, you claimed that the rule of elites, a state/ruling class of somesort, is inevitable. If it's inevitable then any society which has been around a signifigant amount of time should have developed these ruling elites. If any society has existed for a long period of time without developing these elites then we can conclude that such development is not inevitable. The !kung are a society who have not developed a ruling elite and have been around for thousands of years. Therefore, the development of ruling elites is not inevitable.

But if you really want facts to back up my assertion wrt the inevitability of elites, I could 7 sources off the top of my head if you wish.

And a hundred years ago you could have cited many sources to "prove" that white people are inherently superior to everyone else. That many scholars defend the status quo is nothing new.

Further point of discussion, how is elitism the result of any special problem in society?

I'm not sure what your'e asking in this question. If you mean why did some societies develop elites and others not, I'm not 100% sure why. I believe it happened in different ways for different reasons in different reasons. A full elaboration on all the various historical reasons for this would take a large book. The reason why hierarchical societies dominate the world today is because hierarchical nations from Europe conquered the world and imposed similar social systems on them. A few centuries ago there were many anarchist societies around the world. An anarchist revolution could reverse the current domination of statist societies.

[Sirotnikov]

Originally posted by Joe R. Golowka
Civilization is highly over-rated.

Indeed it is. It has developed into a society not-critical enough which allows for people with idiotic self-destructive ideas such as yours to spring free and criticizing you would be considered "not correct".

Your assertion is a non-sequitor and a bare assertion. Just because you claim something is true doesn't mean it is true.

Yet your claims are great since they support themselves so nicely in a circle

Regardless, you claimed that the rule of elites, a state/ruling class of somesort, is inevitable. If it's inevitable then any society which has been around a signifigant amount of time should have developed these ruling elites. If any society has existed for a long period of time without developing these elites then we can conclude that such development is not inevitable.

We can't conclude that since to conclude that we need to show that those societies that haven't developed elites have evolved. If a society isn't evolving it's very reasonable it won't develop anything new, including elites.

The !kung are a society who have not developed a ruling elite and have been around for thousands of years. Therefore, the development of ruling elites is not inevitable.

Developement goes hand in hand with evolevement.

Show me in which ways have the !kung evolved in any aspect. Have they raised standards of living? Have they ended many plagues? Have they contributed to creating easier longer and healthier life?

Since I never heard of the !kung contributing to it, I'll assume that they haven't, unless you can prove otherwise.

Therefore they haven't evolved and therefore they can't be counterproof to the natural evolvement of elites.

And a hundred years ago you could have cited many sources to "prove" that white people are inherently superior to everyone else. That many scholars defend the status quo is nothing new.

And now we can quote many idiots publishing books to prove living in the stone age is so much more advanced, since today it's not politically correct to criticize idiotism.

I'm not sure what your'e asking in this question. If you mean why did some societies develop elites and others not, I'm not 100% sure why. I believe it happened in different ways for different reasons in different reasons. A full elaboration on all the various historical reasons for this would take a large book. The reason why hierarchical societies dominate the world today is because hierarchical nations from Europe conquered the world and imposed similar social systems on them.

Therefore proving hierarchical societies are better equipped to expand and flourish, while non-hierarchical societies can't evolve meaningfully and can't defend themselves, making them objectively worse.

A few centuries ago there were many anarchist societies around the world. An anarchist revolution could reverse the current domination of statist societies.

I'm willing to bet that most anarchist societies haven't developed these ideas but rather lived that way for lack of knowing any other way to live by.

[Sirotnikov]

It's also a bit pretentious to critize preserving a status-quo on the one hand, and then preaching against developement of different forms of societies on the other.