Politics

Tanks said:

He is actually pretty likable. I have played Diablo IV in a group with him a while back. Yes, I am a gamer as well. When a new season starts I veg out for about 2-3 days playing 20+ hours per day with some guys then good until the next season.

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I’m still waiting for you to add author to your resume

Tubby’s Canteen said:

I’m still waiting for you to add author to your resume

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When one is almost 70 you do get a lot of experiences. The only things I have authored are technical manuals which do not count.

I put Big Easy on Ignore quite a while ago. Suggest he go read Johnson & Johnson's Credo, it's studied in most B-schools. I worked for a major oil company for most of my adult life. We constantly preached to all our employees and partners how it was critical to achieve the right results in the right way.

Johnson & Johnson

Our Credo

The values that guide our decision-making are spelled out in Our Credo. Put simply, Our Credo challenges us to put the needs and well-being of the people we serve first.​

Robert Wood Johnson, former chairman from 1932 to 1963 and a member of the Company’s founding family, crafted Our Credo himself in 1943, just before Johnson & Johnson became a publicly traded company. This was long before anyone ever heard the term “corporate social responsibility.” Our Credo is more than just a moral compass. We believe it’s a recipe for business success. The fact that Johnson & Johnson is one of only a handful of companies that have flourished through more than a century of change is proof of that.​

We believe our first responsibility is to the patients, doctors and nurses, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services. In meeting their needs everything we do must be of high quality. We must constantly strive to provide value, reduce our costs and maintain reasonable prices. Customers’ orders must be serviced promptly and accurately. Our business partners must have an opportunity to make a fair profit.

We are responsible to our employees who work with us throughout the world. We must provide an inclusive work environment where each person must be considered as an individual. We must respect their diversity and dignity and recognize their merit. They must have a sense of security, fulfillment and purpose in their jobs. Compensation must be fair and adequate and working conditions clean, orderly and safe. We must support the health and well-being of our employees and help them fulfill their family and other personal responsibilities. Employees must feel free to make suggestions and complaints. There must be equal opportunity for employment, development and advancement for those qualified. We must provide highly capable leaders and their actions must be just and ethical.

We are responsible to the communities in which we live and work and to the world community as well. We must help people be healthier by supporting better access and care in more places around the world. We must be good citizens — support good works and charities, better health and education, and bear our fair share of taxes. We must maintain in good order the property we are privileged to use, protecting the environment and natural resources.

Our final responsibility is to our stockholders. Business must make a sound profit. We must experiment with new ideas. Research must be carried on, innovative programs developed, investments made for the future and mistakes paid for. New equipment must be purchased, new facilities provided and new products launched. Reserves must be created to provide for adverse times. When we operate according to these principles, the stockholders should realize a fair return.

Big_Easy said:

think a mob and a large bureaucracy are different. One is actively violent, while the other is just apathetic at times. As a current bureaucrat myself, I can tell you that no one I work with wakes up everyday thinking about how they can screw over people. We mostly gather data and write reports that are used to inform the executives.

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Big_Easy said:

Go look up HSBC drug scandal Mexico. My local credit union doesn't need regulations to control it in the same way HSBC does. Or like when the ACA forced health insurers to cover people with pre-existing conditions and not discriminate against them anymore.

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I believe these two quotes contradict each other. Bureaucracies have caused enormous pain and suffering, all of it lacking malicious intent. It’s well meaning people like you and me, working to a common laudable purpose that run over entire groups of individuals. See my notes about First Nations and Inuit.

The list of reasons for your success is exactly the point your colleagues on this forum are trying to make. The shoulders you stood on were the supporting, loving people in your life, not government.

As for the first point in your reason for success, being a striaght white male probably helps but certainly doesn’t dictate the outcome, just ask Obama , Harris, or Bessent, none of whom fit your first reason for success.

In the 80s families fled Vietnam in boats. My parents supported a couple of families in my grandparents home. The father, an engineer by training, could not work here. He drove taxis in Canada to push his daughter through medical school. I have a hard time envisioning a family that was persecuted more or had a harder start. But success did not elude them because of the reason you found helpful.

Thought of @Big_Easy when I saw this meme.

Tanks said:

Thought of @Big_Easy when I saw this meme.

View attachment 788216

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To be fair, historically in most communist societies a lot of workers left the workforce for good...

The "cart analogy" often attributed or linked to Mike Rowe in discussions on socialism describes a society as a group of people pulling a heavy cart, where a growing number of people eventually decide to stop pulling and climb inside to ride. [1]

• The Setup: Imagine a society of 100 people with a giant cart meant to be pulled forward. Ten people physically cannot pull it due to age, sickness, or injury, so they ride in the cart—which a healthy, functioning free-market society easily accommodates. [1]
• 
  
• 
  
• • The Shift: Over time, some people pulling the cart get tired or winded and decide to climb inside and ride instead. [1]
  • The Politician's Pitch: The true tipping point arrives when a political figure walks down the line promising voters that, if elected, they can get into the cart and stop pulling entirely. [1]
  • The Result: As more people choose to climb in rather than pull, a tiny fraction of workers is left doing all the heavy lifting until they eventually give up and walk away, causing the entire system to stall. [1
  
  In some states, the cart is almost full and more and more politicians are using the "Pitch".

RLD said:

Plus people dump on Elon because he is an asshole. It's not entirely anti-capitalist he is just remarkably unlikeable.

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Yeah, but the truth doesn't fit their narrative. The one that the Fox entertainment channel has been feeding them for the past 25 years. It can't possibly be that Elon is a drug addled a$$hole. It can't be that he's a liar, it can't be his failed DOGE effort, or the fact thats he's a Trump fanboy, or that he's an Oligarch inserting himself into politics; It MUST be that we're all anti-capitalist and hate him for his success. Notice how the same people aren't out there shit-talking Warren Buffet? Or Bill Gates? or Mark Cuban? Their entire argument falls apart in mere moments.

375 Ruger Fan said:

I put Big Easy on Ignore quite a while ago. Suggest he go read Johnson & Johnson's Credo, it's studied in most B-schools. I worked for a major oil company for most of my adult life. We constantly preached to all our employees and partners how it was critical to achieve the right results in the right way.

Johnson & Johnson

Our Credo

The values that guide our decision-making are spelled out in Our Credo. Put simply, Our Credo challenges us to put the needs and well-being of the people we serve first.​

Robert Wood Johnson, former chairman from 1932 to 1963 and a member of the Company’s founding family, crafted Our Credo himself in 1943, just before Johnson & Johnson became a publicly traded company. This was long before anyone ever heard the term “corporate social responsibility.” Our Credo is more than just a moral compass. We believe it’s a recipe for business success. The fact that Johnson & Johnson is one of only a handful of companies that have flourished through more than a century of change is proof of that.​

We believe our first responsibility is to the patients, doctors and nurses, to mothers and fathers and all others who use our products and services. In meeting their needs everything we do must be of high quality. We must constantly strive to provide value, reduce our costs and maintain reasonable prices. Customers’ orders must be serviced promptly and accurately. Our business partners must have an opportunity to make a fair profit.

We are responsible to our employees who work with us throughout the world. We must provide an inclusive work environment where each person must be considered as an individual. We must respect their diversity and dignity and recognize their merit. They must have a sense of security, fulfillment and purpose in their jobs. Compensation must be fair and adequate and working conditions clean, orderly and safe. We must support the health and well-being of our employees and help them fulfill their family and other personal responsibilities. Employees must feel free to make suggestions and complaints. There must be equal opportunity for employment, development and advancement for those qualified. We must provide highly capable leaders and their actions must be just and ethical.

We are responsible to the communities in which we live and work and to the world community as well. We must help people be healthier by supporting better access and care in more places around the world. We must be good citizens — support good works and charities, better health and education, and bear our fair share of taxes. We must maintain in good order the property we are privileged to use, protecting the environment and natural resources.

Our final responsibility is to our stockholders. Business must make a sound profit. We must experiment with new ideas. Research must be carried on, innovative programs developed, investments made for the future and mistakes paid for. New equipment must be purchased, new facilities provided and new products launched. Reserves must be created to provide for adverse times. When we operate according to these principles, the stockholders should realize a fair return.

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If only J&J lived by that credo.

Irrespective of how you feel about Trump, the renaming stuff is awfully stupid.

Tundra Tiger said:

Irrespective of how you feel about Trump, the renaming stuff is awfully stupid.

View attachment 788246

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Who ever made that meme missed a golden opportunity , should read “to rename Melania to Stormy”

If your going to take a jab at him mights well tie several of his misdeeds together.

Pheroze said:

I believe these two quotes contradict each other. Bureaucracies have caused enormous pain and suffering, all of it lacking malicious intent. It’s well meaning people like you and me, working to a common laudable purpose that run over entire groups of individuals. See my notes about First Nations and Inuit.

The list of reasons for your success is exactly the point your colleagues on this forum are trying to make. The shoulders you stood on were the supporting, loving people in your life, not government.

As for the first point in your reason for success, being a striaght white male probably helps but certainly doesn’t dictate the outcome, just ask Obama , Harris, or Bessent, none of whom fit your first reason for success.

In the 80s families fled Vietnam in boats. My parents supported a couple of families in my grandparents home. The father, an engineer by training, could not work here. He drove taxis in Canada to push his daughter through medical school. I have a hard time envisioning a family that was persecuted more or had a harder start. But success did not elude them because of the reason you found helpful.

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Wonderful reply....but I have a feeling you will find your lost pearls in his pigpen.

Politicians cause the issue. Then campaign to fix it. Currently it’s the Democrats and DSA bemoaning the “affordability crisis”.

And how they are going to fix it by taking more of our money through taxation. The common complaints.

“1. Higher Education Tuition

• • The Democrat Complaint: Progressive politicians frequently criticize university price-gouging and predatory lending practices, calling for massive student loan forgiveness and government-funded free college.
  • The Government Cause: According to the Bennet Hypothesis , federal policies that aggressively subsidize student loans and expand borrowing limits (such as Grad PLUS loans) give colleges a blank check to relentlessly raise tuition. Because the federal government guarantees payment regardless of the cost, universities have little incentive to compete on price, leading to massive administrative bloat and campus luxury spending.

2. Healthcare and Health Insurance

• • The Democrat Complaint: Democrats often blame the high cost of medical care and premiums on insurance company profits, private equity involvement, and "greedy" pharmaceutical companies.
  • The Government Cause: The U.S. healthcare sector is one of the most heavily regulated, anti-competitive environments in the economy.
    • The Medical Loss Ratio (MLR): Imposed by the Affordable Care Act (ACA), this rule mandates that insurers spend 80-85% of premium revenue directly on healthcare costs. Because their profit is legally capped as a fixed percentage of total healthcare costs, insurance companies actually have a perverse incentive to let healthcare prices riseso their absolute dollar profits can grow.
    • Certificate of Need (CON) Laws: State-level mandates require healthcare providers to seek government permission before expanding facilities or buying new medical technology. This deliberately restricts supply and kills market competition.

3. Housing and Rent

• • The Democrat Complaint: Rent increases and high home prices are routinely blamed on "corporate landlords," institutional investors buying up single-family homes, and developer greed.
  • The Government Cause: Economists widely agree that the housing affordability crisis is fundamentally a supply problem manufactured by local zoning ordinances and land-use regulations. Stringent zoning laws, building codes, environmental review mandates, and historical preservation rules make it legally impossible or prohibitively expensive to build high-density multi-family housing. In addition, federal monetary policies, such as keeping interest rates artificially low for over a decade, flooded the market with cheap credit, causing home prices to skyrocket.
  • In four years allowing 11 million non citizens to take open affordable housing.

4. Childcare Costs

• • The Democrat Complaint: Corporate daycare monopolies and underpaid staff are cited as the reasons working families are priced out of early childhood education.
  • The Government Cause: Strict local and state regulations tightly govern things like staff-to-child ratios, square footage requirements, and strict credentialing mandates for employees (such as requiring college degrees for entry-level daycare workers). While well-intentioned for safety, these rules severely limit the supply of available childcare slots and artificially push up labor costs, forcing providers to pass those expenses directly onto parents.

5. Fast Food and Consumer Goods

• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• 
  
• • The Democrat Complaint: "Greedflation" or corporate price-gouging is blamed for the skyrocketing cost of everyday consumer goods, groceries, and fast-casual dining.
  • The Government Cause: Massive federal pandemic stimulus programs and historic deficit spending under consecutive administrations flooded the economy with money while supply chains were broken. Furthermore, aggressive hikes in local and state minimum wage mandates (such as California’s $20 minimum wage for fast-food workers) directly forced businesses with razor-thin margins to sharply raise prices to cover their exploding labor costs. “
  
  
• Education. We spend more per student and get worse results every year. What is Randal Weingarten’s answer. More “investment”

It goes on and on. They cause it. Then the answer is always more spending.

Warp 3 ....Mr. Sulu

Source: X
https://share.google/ZMdVcX9Wi5n2GJu6P

Pheroze said:

The list of reasons for your success is exactly the point your colleagues on this forum are trying to make. The shoulders you stood on were the supporting, loving people in your life, not government.

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Well I did list several successes that the government helped to create. They benefit some more than others. But the greater point is such that, ones success is not entirely their own, sometimes not even the majority. Many of these guys have consumed so much propaganda, some of it their own, that they actually believe it now in lieu of actual data. How successful would @Red Leg be if the federal government wasn't spending almost $2 Trillion a year on the military? Everyone has their own sacred cows I suppose. "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon him not understanding it."

Pheroze said:

As for the first point in your reason for success, being a striaght white male probably helps but certainly doesn’t dictate the outcome, just ask Obama , Harris, or Bessent, none of whom fit your first reason for success.

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Now think of your response as if it were 2008. Your comment here is only minimally true for the past 18 years of American history, not the last 250. One half-white president gets elected and suddenly the country is different? Especially not after the magnitude of hate we saw in the wake of his election.

Red Leg said:

I find this millennial anti-capitalist nonsense

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@Red Leg ...Are the anti-capitalists in the room with you right now? How about the Socialists? Are they there too? What do they look like, describe them to me. What are they saying to you? How long have you been hearing these voices?...Fear not because there is a cure...Push the power button on the TV remote. Are they gone? Good. The far-right main stream cable news media can make one delirious if not careful.

Red Leg said:

In my experience, large corporations are meritocracies in much the same way as the military.

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Your experience was vastly different than mine then. But I can accept that no two experiences will be the same.

Red Leg said:

At the end of that of that year and a half, I was promoted to Vice President and given a Business Unit to run.

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I'm not even going to take the bait on this one.

Red Leg said:

All of our employees were generously compensated

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Considering how many trillions of our tax dollars were spent during your tenure there, I should hope so.

Ontario Hunter said:

i.e. another "big brother is spying on me" conspiracy theory. Sorry if the comparisons were too complicated for you to grasp. Let me be clearer: Frankly, I could give a shit if anyone watches me have sex in a car (boy, those were the days ... sigh!). I guess my privacy might be more important to me if I was dealing meth or trafficking children for sex but I'm not. Someone gets his jollies watching me on a computer screen as I pick up dinner at McDonalds, I'm happy to make him happy.

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How is it a conspiracy theory ?.....it's fact ...or is that too complicated for you to grasp.....just thought i would return your insult...I haven't commented on your posts....but I will say that as time has gone on your posts have gone steadily downhill into the shit pit.....

Big_Easy said:

Now think of your response as if it were 2008.

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Condoleeza Rice and Colin Powell leap to mind easily. That wasn’t even difficult (except for recalling how to spell Ms. Rice’s name. I apologize)

Big_Easy said:

@Red Leg ...Are the anti-capitalists in the room with you right now? How about the Socialists? Are they there too? What do they look like, describe them to me. What are they saying to you? How long have you been hearing these voices?...Fear not because there is a cure...Push the power button on the TV remote. Are they gone? Good. The far-right main stream cable news media can make one delirious if not careful.

Your experience was vastly different than mine then. But I can accept that no two experiences will be the same.

I'm not even going to take the bait on this one.

Considering how many trillions of our tax dollars were spent during your tenure there, I should hope so.

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Are you trying to make a point or an excuse?

I am going to tell you my honest belief - I grew up in the 70s and 80s. Was there, and is there now, racist, sexist and elitist people? Absolutely. It got rather stuffy in the 80s with the previous generation (joke! Sort of). We were crude about it, had stupid jokes, watched Mel Brooks movies and all sorts of subversive stuff. But, the vast majority of people did not care. Ska music flourished. In fact, at one point it was practically trendy to be gay! It got weird. Harvey Milk left an impression I suppose. I kid you not. The difference is that some bright strategist figured out how to create a wedge issue. Since a lot of white people have been telling me how oppressed we are, things have gotten a lot more polarizing. But, division makes you take a side, anger motivates and injustice sells cases.

Could it get better? Yes, women and minorities today are living the freedom that previous generations (I specifically note the plural. A church in my town was a part of the Underground Railroad. Certain British colonialist fought for the end of slavery in 1863.) wanting a better world did not start in 1990. Making it better did not start recently, and people have always known it can be better.

Another big difference between those who endorse state regulations and those who oppose it, is the fundamental belief in the goodness in people. Those who want more rules, more controls, who are focused on the extreme wealth of a few people, tend to believe the worst in people in my experience. That’s why the controls are necessary.

If you believe most people are good, and I certainly do, then society will evolve one generation at a time. You won’t live to see the conclusion, but it will progress if people are left to live free of unnecessary societal imposed norms. Let people be good, bad and ugly. One generation trying to plan a utopia for all others is hubris is the extreme.

Watch a jury if you don’t believe me. A group of people, plucked out of their lives and forced together, struggling to do the right thing for someone they never met, with zero reward for the effort. I love a jury for a lot of reasons, but watching the honest effort in a stressful environment is encouraging. The sooner we stop making a wedge issue out of the worst in humanity the better we will get along. I think so anyways.

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