GM kills Saturn after Penske ends deal. Obama Motors announces"Yugo" rebirth.

Brent wrote:
> On 2009-10-03, Bill Putney > wrote:
>> Brent wrote:
>>> On 2009-10-02, Dori A Schmetterling > wrote:
>>>> That's a rather curious desire.
>>>>
>>>> Looks like you want to live in anarchy.
>>> Free societies are often "anarchy" to control freaks. I wonder, if it
>>> weren't for the heavy hand of the state, would you kill your neighbor to
>>> have his stuff? I wonder about people who are so affraid of freedom that
>>> they think all sorts of horrors would occur if some day the government
>>> just wasn't there. Do they harbor a desire to kill their neighbors? To
>>> steal? To run amuck?
>> So you pretend not to recognize the other side of that coin? What
>> planet have you been living on? You can't be serious.
>
> Other side? Yes, I do. Those people are often attracted to the power
> that police and government offer. But the idea that government some how
> keeps us from killing our neighbors is assinine. The criminal element is
> here regardless of government and often IS government.
>
>>> I think not. If the government were to vanish I
>>> don't think much at all would change.
>
>> Care to give some examples of where that has been tried and worked for
>> any meaningful length of time?
>
> Good people who band together can keep the criminal element in check
> just as well if not better than a government that rules over all with
> the use of violence. And the example would be the way the USA used to
> be in much of the country.

Would that have been while slavery was going on? I suspect there would
be plenty going on at that time that a reasonable moral person would
have a problem with.

Anyway - I believe that that is by definition a government - maybe
local, but nonetheless a government. If it doesn't start out being one,
it evolves into one.

>>> Perhaps a different strong arm
>>> force would act to move in to try have power over people under the guise
>>> of 'protecting' them, but that's just another government.
>
>> There's no perhaps about it. A vacuum will be filled. The job of the
>> people is to ensure that there's a benign presence in place to prevent
>> that void and to protect against those who would steal from, harm, and
>> kill you. Take that away and it gets pretty nasty (lots of examples in
>> the present world and throughout history).
>
> And who is keeping the government from doing that these days?

The people, and doing a poor job of it for many years - but they are
waking up again.

There's a saying (I forget who said it - don't have time to Google it
right now) - something to the effect that our system of government is
the worst one - except for all the others.

Good luck finding your utopian society. Or have you found it, and if
so, where is it?

>>> No, the only thing to fear is control freaks fighting each other for
>>> control, that is to be the government. Society doesn't need
>>> an entity ruling over by force, that is a government. It could use a lot
>>> fewer people trying to control it though.
>
>>>> In general governments have an influence on our lives and make sure
>>>> precisely that not all "do with their lives as they pleased".
>
>>> I don't need a 'masters' telling me how to run my life. Why do you? Why
>>> do you need it to keep you from infringing upon your neighbors?
>
>> Umm - how about to protect from those who would kill, steal, and destroy
>> if there were no man-made law or authority to tell them they can't (the
>> other side of the coin that you are pretending doesn't exist).
>
> The government's police don't protect. They write reports after the
> fact. The courts have ruled as such.

I agree that we have gotten away from some of the better way of the
past. But of course they were subject to abuse too. So what are you
going to do? Where else are you going to go that's better, and why
aren't you there already?

>>>> Parliaments spend their days passing laws that affect some or all of us.
>>>> One can argue that too many laws are passed, but the even if they pass less,
>>>> they still pass laws.
>
>>> Some people like being slaves. They like trading their freedom for being
>>> cared for like a pet or livestock. Other people like being slave
>>> masters and using force to make people do what they say. There are also
>>> people who wish to manipulate others for their own profit and take
>>> advantage of the system set up by the prior two. Then there are some
>>> people who want nothing of that whole system and prefer to be left
>>> alone. Most people just don't know any better and go through their
>>> lives accepting things the way they are told they are by the first
>>> two. The first three find those who want to be left alone to be a
>>> threat to them. Afterall, such thinking might someday have an effect on
>>> the masses that they need to feed off of. If much of the masses
>>> withdraw their consent, what ever would they do?
>
>> Isolationism doesn't work.
>
> That's not isolationism. That's not interventionism. And that does work.
> Works for everyone but control freaks and do gooders who want to tell
> other people how to live.
>
>> There are those in the world who will invade
>> the "live and let live" isolationists. Look up "sharia law" and
>> "caliphate".
>
> You want to know something, most of those people wouldn't care about the
> USA if the USA wasn't messing around in their business all the time. Put
> down the fox news, islamofascism coming to take over america is BS.

Fox News - you mean the ones that were helping to expose ACORN for what
everyone already knew it was but the that the mainstream outlets were
wearing blinders about until they couldn't ignore the outrage anymore -
that Fox News?

You are quite ignorant, and apparently willingly so.

>> You live in Britain and don't know about this stuff?
>
> I don't live in Britain. Never been to that apparently orwellian state.

Yep - I realized that after I hit send.

--
Bill Putney
(To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my
address with the letter 'x')

On 2009-10-05, Bill Putney > wrote:
> Brent wrote:

>> Good people who band together can keep the criminal element in check
>> just as well if not better than a government that rules over all with
>> the use of violence. And the example would be the way the USA used to
>> be in much of the country.

> Would that have been while slavery was going on? I suspect there would
> be plenty going on at that time that a reasonable moral person would
> have a problem with.

Government school teaches the civil war was fought to end slavery. It
was the excuse the US federal government used to get people to back the
war, so indeed it did work as a powerful motivation to get people to
end the practice in the US.

> Anyway - I believe that that is by definition a government - maybe
> local, but nonetheless a government. If it doesn't start out being one,
> it evolves into one.

A very minimum government if that, not a set of rulers managing our
lives.

>>>> Perhaps a different strong arm
>>>> force would act to move in to try have power over people under the guise
>>>> of 'protecting' them, but that's just another government.

>>> There's no perhaps about it. A vacuum will be filled. The job of the
>>> people is to ensure that there's a benign presence in place to prevent
>>> that void and to protect against those who would steal from, harm, and
>>> kill you. Take that away and it gets pretty nasty (lots of examples in
>>> the present world and throughout history).

>> And who is keeping the government from doing that these days?
>
> The people, and doing a poor job of it for many years - but they are
> waking up again.

Yeah, the management team that is out of power always tries to appeal to
the freedom loving, then when it gets in power it's more control
freakism government.

> There's a saying (I forget who said it - don't have time to Google it
> right now) - something to the effect that our system of government is
> the worst one - except for all the others.

The US system of government presently is quite poor and much better ones
have existed. At least many nations manage not to bankrupt
themselves by having a world-wide empire. Such 'better' nations include
the USA when the constitution was still followed for the most part
instead of mostly ignored as it is today.

> Good luck finding your utopian society. Or have you found it, and if
> so, where is it?

Ahh.. you're just falling back on 'love it or leave it'. This tells
me to stop bothering right here. Anyway, been through this before... for
some damn reason if I don't accept the changes that take away what made
the USA better that I should leave it. Well, keep making those changes
and maybe one day you'll notice you're in a boiling pot wondering how
the water got so hot.

<snip, unread>