Out of Pod Experience

Why shouldn't corporations do what they can to minimize what they pay in taxes? Do you pay as much or as little as you possibly can? Do you pay more if you don't have to pay more?

And of course the politicians are corrupted by the money. Power has value, so of course it is going to attract money. Why is any one surprised by these things? Do people suddenly become angels when they enter government? Quite the opposite is true.

Government is about power, corporations are about profit. I'd rather deal with starbucks, wherein my interactions with them are voluntary rather than government where they will stick a gun in my face if I do not comply with their involuntary demands.

If you want money and corruption out of government, then you have to remove power from government. If there is no power there, then there will be far less incentive for the money to influence that power.

Detroit is proof that Canada won the War of 1812. Detroit is north of Windsor yet still on the American side.

Just something to think about from somebody who has just retired as a charge nurse on a busy (UK)NHS ward.

For every tax pound spent on the NHS, only 13p gets through to front line clinical services. The rest is eaten up in administration and management!

Now, when I started out in nursing, many, many years ago, it was at a big old fashioned hospital, 500 beds. But with lots of clinical staff to work them. All of the admin was done by a retired doctor and six ancient dragon..........administrators. It was far from perfect, we had to use the ‘favours and old boys’ network if you wanted anything done fast.

Today, the old hospital has gone and been replaced with a 100 bed 'specialist' unit. A unit with not near enough clinical staff to look after patients needs. But it does have a nice shiny admin block with almost 200 administrators and managers in it!

Oh, and today, you cannot use 'favours and the old boys’ network'. It's "unprofessional"!
OK, enough if this rant from a very bitter veteran of the British NHS.

I think the poster is alluding to, is the fact that no matter what country you come from, or what politics a politition claims to follow, the sad fact is, not one of them give a flying f**k about the people who voted for them. And that they are all in it for whatever they can screw out of their respective systems.

Domocracy in action, if you are rich enough. If you ain't rich, STFU, vote for us like good little peons, and do as you are told while we tax you to crap to fund our big pay rise

I would have to agree with you that currently the pendulum has swung in favour of the wealth consumers as opposed to the wealth creators . it would be very interesting to see how Detroit pulls itself out of its current situation .
lol... beurocrats .... = fkn vampires

which is pretty rich coming from someone who`s currently unemployed

It's a curious thing isn't it? And I do want to note, I am not in favor of kings and dictators. That said, kings and dictators "own" their empire/state/whatever. To them it is personal property, so they have a vested interest in making sure that their subjects can be productive and are happy enough not to revolt and go around blowing things up.

Sometimes the dictators/kings do this through fear, intimidation and violence, but also just as likely to do it through programs that distribute goods and services. They do all of it of course for their own profit and power. A healthy slave is a productive slave. A healthy slave that does not produce gets the whip.

In systems that are not collectivist, such as feudal systems, the profit motive and ownerships are shared, in lessening degrees the further from power down the structure one examines. There is a personal profit motive and personal property expressed in the system. Except for the poor slaves and serfs of course. Though even in the dark ages, the serfs had opportunity to make personal profit despite their lowly status.

Collective structures, such as socialism, common property and communism, give no one a sense of personal ownership, of property or people, so there is little incentive to provide good services. There is no competition for that service any where else, so why improve and why worry about costs? The bureaucrat doesn't care if a 'slave' is productive or not, the bureaucrat only cares about his own little area of the process, making sure he keeps his job and gets a budget increase in the next cycle.

The collectivist serf, or even common man, the masses, own nothing, there is no personal profit motive at all. The only path to profit is corruption (not sharing production with the state) or entering the power structure of the state.

The mix of near dictatorial power, combined with collectivist structures, creates the most damage possible. No one cares about cost, no one owns anything except the very few at the top. Since there is no profit motive below the top tier, they (the non-ruling class) appear to be healthy but unproductive slaves, who are against the collective. Get the whip, since it can't be the fault of the collectivist system. Fault of the system would be an admission of the failure of the ruling class, The State, and The State can't admit it is at fault, or its imposed legitimacy fails.



Well that's enough rambling for a Saturday morning.

They do tend to implode at some point, don't they.

My own guess about that is, all governments tend to try and collect more power over time. This causes profit motive and decision making power to be taken from those who are ruled. Sooner or later this causes failures in the system, possibly revolt.

Critical errors are more easily made, since the choices of a very few become so much more significant. Good choices are amplified, as are bad ones. There is no Solomon like ruler out there that always makes the best choice.

When this happens in a modern dictatorship, and the ruler fails, the entire state fails. The structure of the state is imposed by an individual. So when that individual goes, so goes the system.

Feudal systems however are well established, and the king is not the sole owner of everything. There is tradition, religion and structure that will survive beyond the king.

In a feudal system, when the king went bonkers or made a lot of bad choices, the landed gentry would and could raise an army and remove them from power, or off them by some means from poison to diseased harlots posing as courtesans to a knife in the back, and the structure remained intact. In a modern dictatorship, no such structure exists beyond the will of one man and a handful of henchmen. When they go down, the whole system goes down.

The more power is distributed, the more stable a system seems to be over the long run.

"The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. It is a natural manure."

- Thomas Jefferson

those guys actually knew their stuff, didn't they?


doesn't matter, since everything will be made in china.

Oh the irony:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA_P8CaNwro
(Delta City aka Detroit, Robocop)

Doesn't sound like such a bad idea now eh