healthcare, imho, should not be in the purvey of the government in anyway shape or form

7/31/2007 11:53:02 AM

arab13, imho, is correct.

7/31/2007 11:59:40 AM

But how could we do it? How do you design a Government that will resist the urge to grow? A lot of very smart men tried and failed miserably.

It seems to me, instead of a constitution we needed to found our own religion. Sure, law was its own religion at the time, but it was corrupted and contaminated at the start of the 20th century.

7/31/2007 2:28:45 PM

Quote :

"I suspect you failed to realize that most companies, GM included, are owned by individuals outside of Detroit. Presumably, either they or their security firms will be on hand to defend their property eventually. Not to mention, all the businesses you say GM merged with, how? Did GM really just buy out everyone? Does GM really have the $1.3 trillion to buy all those companies outright? Not to mention, if GM buys up all the other security companies, then the value of my company is astronomical as customers, affraid of GM, would pay anything for my protection. As such, we have a holdout problem, as security company owners are demanding GM pay all it can afford, praying we will be the last holdout and can extort GM, which we are not. As such, GM could at most buy out maybe 50% of the market before everyone got wind of its acquisitions, making further acquisition impossible. Similarly, if GM stopped making cars customers wanted and went to making tanks that only it wanted then pretty soon its outside debts would become prohibitive, as its stock and bond holders in New York call up an army to retake their company from an obviously deranged leadership. Presumably the investors would offer a reward for the return of their company, say 10% of its value, or $130 billion, so the attacking army has access to all outside resources and strong incentives, too. Which itself is silly, because even if GM manages to buy out all the security firms, they were not much better armed than the populous at large. If GM sends out its troops to attack others, it will find a very high casualty rate. After a short while, GM would run out of money and everything would go back to normal, and the GM leadership would end up being executed. "

GM doesn't buy out everyone. A combination of buyouts and mergers will achieve the goal, that is, domination of detroit. Mergers for larger firms assure them higher revenues and less competition. The same reason mergers happen today, pooled resources mean more profit.

Their shareholders would be OVERJOYED, because they will be making more money than ever. In a monopoly, the shareholders WIN.

Remember all those weapons I talked about? Well see those pesky last 1 or two holdouts get blown the fuck up. See in the real world, those last holdouts would end up sparking the industry for new competition and government would assist them with anti-trust legislation.

But in the all private world, they get fucking killed and the monopoly continues. This is the EXACT reason that socialism and communism fail so miserably too. The other extreme has the same faults. As soon as ONE person in power becomes corrupted, they can simply kill any opposition. With communism is deteriorates into totalitarianism and a dictatorship. With pure privatization it deteriorates into a capitalist oligarchy.

8/1/2007 12:51:48 AM

What an odd little world you inhabit. A few thousand men with guns, with no interest beyond a salary, are equally able to win against a million men with guns defending their homes, some of which saw this coming and own tanks and planes of their own.

Quote :

"Mergers for larger firms assure them higher revenues and less competition. The same reason mergers happen today, pooled resources mean more profit."

You have never heard of diseconomies of scale, have you? Larger firms are harder to manage and requires exponential expansion of middle management with linear expansion of size. So, as your company becomes larger and less efficient, small competitors are more able to enter the market and take your revenue, leaving you bloated with expenses and no revenue, wracking up huge losses.

Quote :

"Their shareholders would be OVERJOYED, because they will be making more money than ever. In a monopoly, the shareholders WIN. "

Again, you have yet to demonstrate how GM got a monopoly. It so far only controls Detroit, outside the city GM is no longer selling any cars, having abandoned production for war material. So, GM is no longer even a competitor, much less a monopoly. Even if it was producing, every car leaving detroit would be siezed by private agents to compensate victims. The same goes for all assets outside Detroit: bank accounts, dealerships, etc. It doesn't even have a monopoly in Detroit, since everyone living there not working for GM already fled the city.

So, to finish up the What If, GM would be able to sieze detroit for a few weeks until the money ran out. Pillaging Detroit would carry GM maybe a few months, but modern Americans tend to use moving vans, so nothing valuable should be left for GM. A military in the field is expensive, especially once you have no revenue. But you don't even need to wait for the money to be gone, since its military men are not idiots, they know ahead of time that GM is heading for failure, and they don't want to end up executed after it does. So this frakas would end before it even began, as GM would find it difficult to find enough men willing to kill for the purpose of taking over Detroit.

8/1/2007 8:44:47 AM