When the Senate Tried To Ban Dial Telephones 506
An anonymous reader writes "With the Senate now looking to have the government block access to websites it deems to be bad (which seems to be called 'censorship' in other countries), it's worth pointing out that the Senate doesn't exactly have a good track record when it comes to deciding what technologies to ban. Back in 1930, some Senators came close to banning the dial telephone, because they felt that it was wrong that they had to do the labor themselves, rather than an operator at the other end."
Forward thinkers (Score:5, Funny)
"For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press 3."
-- Alice Kahn
Maybe the Senate was far more forward thinking than any of us give them credit for.
Re:Forward thinkers (Score:5, Insightful)
That sounds awfully like the older people who complain about "self checkouts" at a supermarket. For one thing, they're not mandatory (at least not yet), and for another, I vastly prefer them as they tend to have much shorter waiting times, and I can scan and pay much faster when doing everything myself. It makes no sense that "other people should be doing this for me" when all it involves is pressing a couple of buttons, and in the end the result is far more convenient - and should result in savings for you when the store or whatever has to employ less staff.
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Of course if I have to put up with one more cashier that can't count and can't speak I may use self checkout more.
Or shop somewhere else.
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Same argument around the proliferation of ATM's at banks. It was originally a vehicle to reduce staff expenditure (salary, benefits etc.), and save money. The irony is that you are often charged more for using an ATM transaction than to walk into a live branch and talk to a teller for the same transaction.
Talk about messed up
Re:Forward thinkers (Score:5, Insightful)
Same argument around the proliferation of ATM's at banks. It was originally a vehicle to reduce staff expenditure (salary, benefits etc.), and save money. The irony is that you are often charged more for using an ATM transaction than to walk into a live branch and talk to a teller for the same transaction.
You only get charged an ATM fee at an ATM that isn't your bank's. You wouldn't be able to perform an ATM transaction at a bank that isn't your bank either. Complain about ATM fees if you want, but this is a dumb reason to complain.
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In the UK, ATMs in the walls of banks are generally free to all users, including customers of other banks. ATMs in other places - groceries, pubs, hotels etc - generally charge £1.50 or £1.75 - about $2.00.
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I like the self-checkouts and find them quicker, but there are a few rules
1) Nothing age limited or in a security case that requires staff interaction anyway, just queue for the human when buying booze.
2) Unpackaged fruit or anything you have to weigh is a bit hit and miss.
3) Please please please understand the simple concept of showing the scanner the barcode, reverently placing the item in the dead centre of the scanner/scales platform thing and saying a prayer will not make it scan. I have seen far too m
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I've never had any issues with the self checkout being buggy, and I use it almost exclusively at my local grocery store. You are correct however, that any savings are unlikely to be seen by the customer. It's the same issue I have with bringing my own bags... I'm saving the store money without seeing the benefit myself.
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Yeah, but if you don't use their plastic bags, you have to spend money to buy condoms.
Re:Forward thinkers (Score:5, Insightful)
What do I care if an executive makes more money? My ONLY concerns when grocery shopping is that I can find and afford what I want, and get out of there as quickly as possible. If I have 2 items and there's an open self-checkout station, why WOULDN'T I want to use that instead of waiting 5+ minutes in even the express line?
Of course, it only makes sense to do it if you have a small number of items. The checkers who don't have to wait for the voice prompt to scan the next item can blow through 100+ items a lot faster than I could. But I like having the choice.
-Restil
Re:Forward thinkers (Score:5, Informative)
For me self-checkouts are slower. Simply put: I don't move as fast as the full-time worker does. It takes me about 3 times longer. Also the "scale" often doesn't register when I move my item into the shopping bag.
"Please put your item in your bag."
"I did."
"Please put your item in your bag."
(removes item. Puts back into bag)
"Please put your item in your bag."
"Grrr." (pulls item out of shopping cart and dumps into bag)
"Thank you sir. Please scan next item or press done to continue." ----- Yes that's right. I stole an item. Not my fault the machine doesn't work right. It's the store's fault.
Re:Forward thinkers (Score:5, Funny)
"Thank you sir. Please scan next item or press done to continue." ----- Yes that's right. I stole an item. Not my fault the machine doesn't work right. It's the store's fault.
How does the machine know you're a man? That's scary.
Unless of course you're not - in which case, you're right, the damn machine doesn't work right.
Re:Forward thinkers (Score:4, Interesting)
Pretty much every item in the store is marked with the weight of its contents, and the packaging weights within classes of objects don't vary too much(ie pound of shitty store-brand coffee vs. pound of the good stuff). Even an amateur should be able to break the weight-based verification system without breaking a sweat; but it is inevitably either failing to register my small items or freaking out because I've accidentally left the corner of my bag of earlier purchases just slightly on the scale. I'd assume that, if you are one of the pros(stealing mass quantities of baby formula to cut your drugs with or whatever) it isn't rocket surgery to haul out a scale and work out precise weights for your UPC swap scheme. Never mind, of course, that the checkout system doesn't know that it exists if you don't scan it.
I have to imagine that it would be more efficient to have one loss prevention/old lady helper dude watching over 4 or 5 checkouts that focus on efficiency, rather than paranoia, instead of having zero humans watching a bank of paranoid but ineffectual self-checkout units...
Re:Forward thinkers (Score:5, Funny)
I was using a self-checkout at a grocery store and was somewhat bemused when I was asked to put a helium-filled mylar ballon in the bag. Thankfully there was an employee nearby to override the machine's demands. I wonder what weight was associated with that UPC? Was it negative? :)
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Please stay out of the self-check line.
Re:Forward thinkers (Score:4, Informative)
I don't deny there are some bugs but I think the majority of problems come from being an immature technology.
The following are my thoughts on the casual observations of the way my roommate and I check out.
The machine has a very limited margin of error for the timing between scanning and weighing and scanning the next item.
The scale for instance can lag because the initial force of dropping the item in the bag registers more than rest weight. If you scan the next item before the scale stabilizes it throws the thing out of whack and it won't recover until the cashier comes over. In the meantime the software starts to lag and the instructions don't keep up with the customer's actions. This spirals into a very unpleasant experience for the customer.
One solution could be to wait until the end when everything has stabilized to report an error. And then to have an idea of which item it could be that it doesn't understand. It would also help if the stores realized relying on such exacting weights problem cause more shrinkage than people who go in with the intention of shoplifting.
That's my 2 dollars worth anyway.
Re:Forward thinkers (Score:4, Insightful)
I'll only use a self checkout if I don't have to wait behind another customer. Most people are way too technologically incompetent to scan their own merchandise.
Watch the slow ones some time. They don't understand the scanner has to see those little stripes. They'll bounce the product up and down on the scanner as if that's the magic action required to get it to cooperate. Or they'll wave it back and forth and back and forth like it's a mystical ritual. They'll never try anything that might actually help, like locating the barcode, or changing the orientation, or smoothing the wrinkles from the wrapper.
A cashier is almost always faster than a random human.
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The ONLY way to avoid all the tricks a supermarket trows at you is very high tech. It is called a "shopping list".
I find will power works perfectly fine for me. Then again, I often forget to buy one item and have to go back the next day, so I probably should make lists more often..
Re:Forward thinkers (Score:5, Interesting)
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All of these things are true, but I still find them much more convenient and pleasant than traditional checkouts. Then again, some people enjoy social interaction with strangers, but I'm not one of them.
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I tend to think that I scan faster than the checker, but I don't know if that's because I'm actively doing the scanning instead of passively waiting for them to finish. I certainly feel like it takes forever waiting for the people in front of me to finish checking out.
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Yeah it's certainly a lot less boring than waiting around. I have the whole paying process down to a fine art these days though at ASDA, my brain pretty much knows the exact timings and onscreen positionings etc that the machine will ask me if I want cash-back, or the card reader will beep to say to remove my card, so I waste minimal time and don't have to wait for the thing to ask me to do something, nor have to speak back to it.. if I'm only buying a couple of items I can easily knock through it in less t
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If you have several dozen items a cashier will
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FEWER staff, not less.
Secondly, any "savings" for this method will NOT be passed on to you, they will go to slightly greater corporate profits. You honestly still believe in such fairy tales?
Thirdly if such savings, in a fantasy world, WERE passed on to you, then you would see fresh produce for $0.98 per pound instead of $0.99 per pound. Face it, the company has passed on the cost of labor onto you, the consumer. And you think self-checkout is an advance and it makes no sense to do it otherwise!
Re:Forward thinkers (Score:5, Insightful)
Secondly, any "savings" for this method will NOT be passed on to you, they will go to slightly greater corporate profits. You honestly still believe in such fairy tales?
Have you not noticed the insane price wars always going on between major supermarkets?
I don't really check the prices of stuff any more to be honest, but I assume the reduction in staff will indeed show up as savings, the same way that Amazon can afford to be so cheap.. razor thin margins to attract a large volume of customers.
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Thin margins and price competition (Score:3, Insightful)
Secondly, any "savings" for this method will NOT be passed on to you, they will go to slightly greater corporate profits.
You greatly overestimate the ability of food retailers to retain extra margin. This is an insanely competitive industry that competes heavily on price. You definitely see some of the savings because if the supermarket doesn't pass it on, the one down the street will. Walmart has built their whole business model on this premise. Only way they can retain the margin is if they have no local competition since groceries are mostly a local business.
Thirdly if such savings, in a fantasy world, WERE passed on to you, then you would see fresh produce for $0.98 per pound instead of $0.99 per pound. Face it, the company has passed on the cost of labor onto you, the consumer. And you think self-checkout is an advance and it makes no sense to do it otherwise!
Self checkout is simply automation. With enough volume (and
Re:Forward thinkers (Score:4, Informative)
FEWER staff, not less
Fewer staffers, less staff. (the former being countable)
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Both of those. Generally I don't buy much at a time, but also I can swipe things pretty fast by just guessing where the barcode will be and swirling it around in the general vicinity (helps that there are 2 scanners in the checkout as well and they can read codes from almost any angle).
Sometimes it's a pain getting a bag open, but other than that it's much easier to just drop stuff right into the bag than deal with it at a normal checkout. I only go to the normal checkout now when I buy age restricted stuff
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It has gotten a lot better, and I suspect that they'll start using an electronic system which prints out a barcode with weight and product type on it in the relative near future.
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What's worse is they made it mandatory basically the moment they rolled it out. It was a shock when I first saw it. Where normally there'd be 3 or 4 normal checkout aisles open, there were 8 "self checkout" machines in groups of 4 each. Each group was staffed by a single person. Sinc
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The reason why we have a balance of power between the Judaical, Executive and Legislative branch. Is that Judaical branch will stop laws which are unconstitutional. Even if the other 2 branches are politically motivated to do such. Also why the Judaical branch isn't elected so they are not pressured in a way that they will loose their job for insulting any other member in the government.
So we got a lot of senators saying a lot of things... Most of it doesn't even get to real bill or even if it is added to
Politicians and Competition (Score:2)
They wanted to ban it because the operators were pooling information and providing it to various companies and politicians.
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Really???
Remember when we had self-dial modems, rather than the auto dial? That was because the government-created monopoly ATT (aka Bell) would not allow devices to hook directly to the line. THEN the next thing they tried to do was impose a $10 modem fee on my line (because modems are on 10, 20, or even 24 hours a day - thereby overloading the line). I denied ever having a modem, which of course was a blatant lie, but I don't care.
Luddites (Score:5, Interesting)
"Gotta save those phone operators jobs!" This is really no different than those backwards member states (i.e. OR and NJ) that don't allow self-pumping of gasoline. They probably would outlaw self-dialing too if they had thought of it.
Every time I drive through NJ I pump my own gas, not because I'm anti-full service, but because they move so damn slow. I have better things to do than sit in my car for ten minutes waiting for an attendant to show up, especially if I still have a 2 hour drive ahead of me.
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It's the opposite here, since NJ gas taxes are very low. It can easily be 10% cheaper to buy gas in NJ than in NY, NJ, or MD. (NJ would rather fund the roads using tolls than gas taxes.)
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Every time I drive through NJ I pump my own gas...
I once removed a tag from a mattress. I guess you have me beat.
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Where in NJ are you that they let you get away with that? I've seen people shouted down for getting out of the car to buy a drink, just because the attendants *thought* the person was going to pump their own gas.
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I've been a New Jersey resident for ~10 years. You're definitely full of crap because you would told be to STFU and sit back in your vehicle if you actually tried to pump your own gas. If you did not comply you'd be refused service and told to leave.
Re:Luddites (Score:4, Insightful)
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You're right. I do sometimes get yelled at.
So I just say, "Fine. Whatever. Pump the gas."
Or, "Go ahead, call the cops and arrest me. I don't care. Do you treat all your tourists like shit?"
Or, "I'll be sure to tell everyone back home in Maryland how much Jersey sucks. 'Course they already know that."
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Michigan is the last "Pricing Law" state, meaning EVERYTHING on the shelf must be priced or face fines from the Department of Agriculture. They claim it helps to create jobs, when the reality of it is, the small to mid-size stores never get hit, and they go after the BIG guys whenever the budget is running short (i.e. constantly). More associates aren't hired as a result of this, rather, less freight gets moved out on a daily basis due to budgets and then customers complain whenever they can't find anything
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self-serve fueling (Score:3, Interesting)
When I rented a car in Oregon, learning that I wasn't allowed to fill it, was a totally weird experience. And when the guy told me "You can't, state law," seriously, I thought he was pulling this tourist's leg. It had to be a scam. It just had to.
It wasn't.
I wonder if Oregonians feel that same strangeness when they pull up at a non-OR gas station and nobody comes out to "help" them.
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In Germany the service of gasoline pumping is outlawed because of the health issue. If you pumping gas for 20 or more years 12 hours a day you will get very costly health issues. But if the customers pumping, they are pumping maybe once in a week, they will not notice anything.
Nice backwards thinking, USA. But on the other hand, most of you don't have health insurance anyway, so the service guy will die with 50 anyway.
Re:Luddites (Score:4, Insightful)
According to latest Census figures, there are only 17.5 million (5% of Americans) that are not insured either by a private company or the government (SCHIP, medicare, etc).
Also 2 states out of 50 is equivalent to if 1 out of 25 EU states chose to require full service stations. i.e. It's not a big deal.
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Then I thought to myself: isn't Slashdot the same crowd that was always harping on the iPhone for not having voice
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There are some interesting things to do that are easiest to get to by cutting through NJ.
news for nerds (Score:2, Insightful)
news for nerds, stuff that matters. from 1930.
Remember, we're talking about the U.S. Senate (Score:5, Insightful)
Just because they didn't want to lift a finger to do something as simple as dial a telephone, that doesn't mean they need to ban it for the rest of us. The Senate is FAMOUS for passing laws that affect them (or affect everyone except them - you know, we get Social Security, they get a really sweet pension).
If they deem a website to be "bad", I have no problem with them blocking it from their own servers, but leave me alone. I can block things at my router quite easily, thank you. Should I be afraid that the Senate will try to ban toilet paper, because they can't manage to wipe their own asses?
Re:Remember, we're talking about the U.S. Senate (Score:5, Informative)
This was a resolution. They were only banning their own dial telephones.
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Now, it's true that the resolution only impacted the Senate -- but when another Senator asked why they didn't ban dial phones from all of Washington DC, Senator Carter Glass from Virginia who sponsored the resolution apparently said that "he hoped the phone company would take the hint," and would remove all dial phones.
Do you want your local supermarket to "get the hint" and stop selling toilet paper?
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Congratulations! I went down 2/3rd's of the page, skipping past an argument about self-checkout lanes, some bashing on Grey Goose Vodka, and reiterating about how much New Jersey sucks, before finally finding you, a person who had actually read the article and realized that this was about banning dial phones for Senators only.
That said, Senator Clarence Dill made a good point:
In his experience, the dial phone "could not be more awkward than it is. One has to use both hands to dial; he must be in a position where there is good light, day or night, in order to see the number; and if he happens to turn the dial not quite far enough, then he gets a wrong connection."
Rotary phones were a terrible interface, indeed.
Re:Remember, we're talking about the U.S. Senate (Score:5, Insightful)
You have that backwards, lobbyists don't work for the senators, the senators work for the lobbyists.
I don't get it. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a massive difference between banning a technology and censoring websites. The reasoning behind each is different, the methodology, and the possible reactions and methods of circumvention. About the only parallel is "government doing thing that it really shouldn't be."
They're not even talking about banning a technology this time. It's not like they're saying "ban the Internet." This is a really weak excuse to bash the government and bring up something ridiculous and idiotic from the past. Do people really need an excuse to bash the government? Aren't there enough legitimate reasons to complain? Do we really need a story going "Look, you think censorship on the web is bad? 80 years ago, they were too lazy to dial their own damn phones! Isn't government so damn wacky?"
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The point was that government is not very good at understanding technology, the benefits that it provides, and the fallout of any action to suppress it. We already tried this 14 years ago, banning "indecent" material on the internet. The problem is, they get something that looks good on paper and think the majority of citizens will get on board with, and pass it without even realizing how it will apply, who will be enforcing it, and if it's even workable. It's ok if you're specific. Ban child pornograph
Just think... (Score:2)
Just think how much faster we might have gotten voice recognition if touchpads had been banned.
"Call my neighbor Jim Pine."
"Calling naughty neighbors sex line"
(Cue laugh track.)
False (Score:5, Informative)
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To the slight credit of the editor, you'd also have to hope the phone company would "take the hint and ban all call displays," for that metaphor to work...
Now, it's true that the resolution only impacted the Senate -- but when another Senator asked why they didn't ban dial phones from all of Washington DC, Senator Carter Glass from Virginia who sponsored the resolution apparently said that "he hoped the phone company would take the hint," and would remove all dial phones.
But yeah, this is a misleading headline.
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"They tried to make the telephone company put back the non-dial phones IN THE SENATE ITSELF."
You're living in the Brave New World after Nineteen Eighty-Four. Before then, Ma Bell owned all the telephones, period, from the curb, to the wiring in your home, to the receiver itself. If Ma Bell said you're getting a rotary phone, you're getting a rotary phone, and nothing short of an act of Congress is going to stop it.
If Ma Bell says that you now have to start learning seemingly random strings of numbers to c
Butlers at your gasstation? (Score:2)
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PS: I believe the word you were looking for was "personnel".
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Yeah, much better idea is to make sure you can get through Jersey to stop in Pennsylvania or New York for gas. That way, you can pay more per gallon for the privilege of pumping it yourself. That'll show'em.
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Canadian, but as I understand from some US friends, it's because gasoline is a hazardous substance, and so it's some attempt to minimize accidents, moreso than protecting jobs.
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Re:Butlers at your gasstation? (Score:4, Insightful)
It's actually not. It's a bullshit excuse to pass protectionist policies, of the same kind that New York used to pass a law saying every automobile needed to be preceded by someone carrying flags to warn people it was coming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_laws [wikipedia.org]
The proof is that there are not mass casualties across the world from gasoline pump accidents as compared to Oregon and New Jersey.
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it's only hazardous for retarded people. retarded people shouldn't drive, if we have DMV that's working.
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I recently moved to Oregon from another state. If you were here, and asked why someone has to pump your gas - you will be told immediately not that 'gasoline is dangerous', but that the legislation 'creates jobs'. I often pull into an empty gas station and need to wait up to 10 minutes just for someone to swipe my credit card in the machine for me, press the button that corresponds to the grade of fuel I prefer, lift the nozzle from the machine and place it in my tank hole. T
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Ostensibly, the reason is that you are handling dangerous chemicals that could explode. The real reason is to keep jobs. But yes, there are states where the law is that individuals may not pump their own gas from public gas stations (you could own your own gas pump, though.)
Successful ban... (Score:2)
some Senators came close to banning the dial telephone
Maybe they did ban them cuz there are no more dial telephones.
They still work better (Score:2)
Fun times... (Score:2)
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That's not why they tried to ban it in 1930 (Score:2, Interesting)
They tried to ban the dial telephone because the operator's union had a lot of clout in congress and was afraid of losing jobs.
Remember, every piece of legislation that goes through congress has a special interest group behind it.
Fix the Constitution (Score:3, Funny)
Given the fact that US economy is being destroyed because of the huge monthly trade deficit, caused by the US labor force being uncompetitive, which all came around due to government regulations, taxation, wage laws, subsidies, monopoly creation, setting interest rates, printing of money, waging wars, destruction of competition etc., the US Constitution needs to be fixed. Without a basic fix to it, the economy will continue plummet, until the hyper-inflationary depression hits and then a long restructuring process will start probably following a period of very bad civil unrest possibly with lots of intermediary bloodshed.
Here is the fix (and I am not a lawyer, so this needs to be solidified to fit both the letter and the spirit)
Congress shall pass no law, that changes the status of any entity in a way that allows that entity to get any preferential treatment in economy.
What I am trying to say is that government must not be able to affect economy through any law, this way no matter how much money is spent bribing the government, it's of no use and cannot result in a favorable economic outcome for those, who are doing the bribing.
This concerns anything at all that deals with economy, be it minimum wage, social security, income taxes, corporate welfare, bailouts, stimulus packages, setting interest rates, printing money (all this should be privatized), creating federal institutions that insure any type of lending or borrowing or depositing or any other moral hazard.
Gov't shouldn't be able to change the economic outcome by providing any monopolistic powers, providing exclusive trading rights, creating any discrimination in the market place, setting any laws that fix prices or contracts or whatever.
I hope my point is clear and obviously again, I am not a lawyer.
This is the only way to keep economy Free and going and not having it broken by various violent intervention by a government, which clearly ends up badly.
Re:Fix the Constitution (Score:4, Funny)
There shouldn't be any bills that 'create or destroy jobs'.
Gov't that makes sense is this:
1. Justice system to take care of contract conflicts as well as anything that deals with harming individuals, running Class Action Lawsuits etc.
2. Minimum Military to protect against invasion.
3. Cops/Prisons.
The taxes must be only on things like sales and people who can't afford taxes should be able to file their income statement and get their taxes back.
It's not anarchy, it's minarchy - libertarian system with minimum gov't.
Yes, children and other types of education, etc., are all subject to market forces and should be left out of gov't and done privately.
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All roads and all infrastructure can and should be built privately. I definitely am not interested in a gov't doing any of this.
Space travel, highways, schools, fire and emergency response, utilities and financial, wilderness, it is all best suited for private hands to handle.
For example, if the ocean was owned by a number of private entities, BP wouldn't behave the way they did because:
1. Nobody would set any liability caps for them.
2. They would have to buy adequate insurance to cover any event.
3. They w
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Show me a Scandinavian country that has the kind of spending US has on military, pork spending, education spending, medical spending. Whatever US gov't is doing, it always ends up spending more than anybody else.
US is not built as a monarchy, right? It was the first (the only) country to be built as an attempt to be different, democratic republic, not affected by monarchy and special interests, using free market, but it's failing.
It's failing because the Constitution is not strict enough to make the free m
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The only thing that is needed from gov't is Justice system that allows people to dispute contracts, the only important idea in business is contract law.
Whatever gov't does for business reasons shouldn't exist. Copyrights, patents, gov't created entities of any sort, etc.
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You are another misguided well intentioned person on the wrong track. Another victim of these think tanks from the 70s to sell any ideas that fuel corporate power which ultimately ends up undermining yours.
- you have already done the wrong thing and assumed you know me. In the 70s I was still living in the former USSR.
We have government involvement now but its as close to anarchy as we've had
- right, that's why you have gov't holding people in prisons indefinitely, torturing prisoners, forcing banks to take bailouts even those banks that didn't have any toxic mortgages on their books, buying out car companies, 'stimulating' economy by spending borrowed and printed money, telling you what you can and cannot buy as health insurance, having near 10% of your population work for the g
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the only reason that companies are able to force their monopolies and avoid any competition and set what the prices are is because they have the gov't in their back pocket.
So get the gov't out of their back pocket but to do this, you have to get the gov't out of EVERYBODY'S back pocket, you can't pick and choose which back pocket you like and which you do not.
Thus gov't must not be a force that decides what any economic outcomes are for any entity.
Thus my proposal is no more crazy than the already proposed
AT&T lobbying against Automatic Electric (Score:3, Informative)
ATT did not invent the dial phone. a Missouri undertaker did. this was good ol' fashioned corporate hardball at work.
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The unfortunate problem is that the Republicans are doing what they've been doing now for a few decades which is screwing over the other party so that they look somewhat less incompetent while railing on the federa
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Ping Bob.Jones.SanFransisco.USA
"Hello?"
"Sorry Bob, just seeing if this damned handset works."