Millions Dead And People Accept It As Perfectly Normal

reply to post by mnemeth1


just making the point that local solutions are much better than overarching, take-it-or-leave-it, one-size fits all solutions.

but if you are unable to see that,

then i guess i [and others for that matter] have overestimated you.

noted.

you definitely need to drop the anarchist.

have a nice day.

Originally posted by mnemeth1

Originally posted by Janky Red

Originally posted by mnemeth1
reply to post by Janky Red

 

Violence can not solve complex social problems.

Making people pay for every last experience in life will not make for richer people, better life or; fundamentally
change the nature of driving, giant hunks of metal, filled with explosive liquid.

People already pay for every last experience in their lives.

Nothing is free.

Nothing.

Currently people who don't use roads pay for roads - is that more fair or less fair than only making people who use roads pay for roads?

while there are people who do not drive a motor vehicle, they live their entire lives enjoying being surrounded by things they want and need and consume - and every one of those goods or services had to be transported to them. just as fresh fruit at the corner market may seem expensive, you can trace that ready for sale produce back multiple steps. each step involves people earning paychecks, machinery used to grow or transport, etcetera. the big picture is what dictates.

my own wife feels it is unfair that our taxes are so high. she points out that much of that money is for the local school system. she feels this is unfair, as we do not have children. meanwhile, she came from a family where the parents had 8 children who went through the public school system in their own time, with someone else footing the bill.

as you stated elsewhere in the thread, nothing is free.

as for the title of the OP, i'd like to see statistics on how many people have perished on public roadways from their own darn stupidity. drunken driving, speeding, too tired to drive, carelessness, distracted by doing things other than driving the car etcetera. it is not the fault of the road, nor of the public paying taxes for those roads. privatization is not going to suddenly make people behave like rational adults with common sense.

the link below is to wikipedia list of motor vehicle deaths per year, usa. please take a peek, and scroll down that page. we are doing better than you may think, if that info is accurate.

en.wikipedia.org...

The question must be asked, how many of those deaths are due to dui, or drunk driving?
How many of those deaths are due to the sheer stupidity of people travelly way to fast during incliment weather and losing control?

There are private roads out there, that are upkept and safe, but then again it costs money to travel down them, as they are toll roads.

reply to post by mnemeth1


Well part of the problem is we end up giving afghanistan 360 million bucks every couple of months and instead of using that money to help them stablize, they got crooks stealing american tax dollars. Maybe the U.S. government should give money to its states instead of letting those one or 2 corrupt politicians that run afghanistan take our tax dollars and put it in their swiss bank accounts.

Seriously, do we really need to give Iraq 96 billion dollars a year? All those mud huts that their insurgents blew up while attacking us couldnt have costed that much.

Why do we give Israel billions of dollars a year? They have the best airforce in the world, our pilots suck compared to theirs. They also got nukes, they can bomb any muslim country that throws a Stink Eye at them back into the stoneage.

Whyre we letting bankers ruin the world? One well placed rifle round could end their tyranny in a heartbeat. Hm, Caesars from Ancient Rome thought they owned the world too, it didnt take them too long to figure out they didn't even own the dirt they stood on.

Privatizing the roadways, bridges etc would only pave the way for foreign ownership and thus control. As soon as it happens these businesses will set up tolls and taxes for the right to roll down the road and to cross a bridge. It becomes another business that we are slaves to and have no control over.

You want to pay the Chinese for permission to pass down the road in order to get your milk and eggs?

My vote...a resounding NO!

525151

First off, Mnemeth, I don't think you understood my point in the post you replied to here. You can't compare Detroit to a Disney-run resort town. They are vastly different organisms, despite a superficially similar outward appearance. Drawing comparisons between them is like trying to compare horses and cows.

Originally posted by mnemeth1
Private corporations have filled your home with useful products and will fill the stores you shop at with all the products you will ever purchase in the future.

Government has brought you endless wars, millions needlessly dead, and roads that kill 40,000 people a year.

Even for a child, that would be a childish argument, Mnemeth. Really, the position you're going to take is "corporations are absolute good with nothing but ups and government is absolute evil with nothing but downs?" I'd like to think you're not a stupid person, Mnemeth, please stop trying to convince me otherwise.

If Wal-Mart owns all the roads in my area, there's not going to be any of Wal-Mart's competitors lining those streets, are there? If there were, is Wal-Mart going to let their shipments get through the gate without a profit-killing surcharge on the toll? Allowing competition in a market you can feasibly corner is bad business, as I'm sure you understand. Even if you don't, Wal-mart certainly does, given their well-documented methods of killing all competition in the areas they set up shop. Any other corporation, given the opportunity, would no doubt do the same.

Putting private companies in charge of areas vital to public interest is a ridiculous idea, Mnemeth, and is actually harmful to your free trade utopia ideal.

You want better roads? Vote for candidates who will pay for their upkeep instead of your apparent voting record of acting against your own self-interest.

reply to post by TheWalkingFox


I'm not comparing Detroit to Disney World, I'm comparing publicly owned roads to privately owned roads.

reply to post by mnemeth1


Sigh.
Page one. Post one:

Originally posted by mnemeth1
Let us move on to looking at an anecdotal example of private vs. publicly owned roads. Consider the case of Disney World vs. Detroit. The contrast is so stark that it leaves one almost speechless.

A Disney owned road:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/c4a6238c9228.jpg[/atsimg]

A Detroit publicly owned road:
[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/9ff032bd1c60.jpg[/atsimg]

Does anyone seriously think that Disney would ever allow such a disgusting dilapidated road to exist on its properties? Disney senior management would fire the grounds manager responsible for such a catastrophe faster than the blink of an eye

Yes, you in fact did directly compare Disney World with Detroit. You obviously completely and utterly fail to comprehend why the comparison is invalid.

Further, you pretend that either Detroit or Disney World is at all representative of the public or private sectors, respectively. Neither is true.

Further, you completely ignore the vital point that privatizing areas of public interest is a recipe for disaster.

Still waiting to hear about all these people who don't use roads at all, too.

Originally posted by ReluctantBlossom
I hear you!

If anyone thinks that plans for privatizing EVERYTHING aren't currently underway, you are blind. The systematic choking off and waste of funding for government needs is long term and deliberate. You think things will get better under corporate rule? Their only goal is profit and they will do ANYTHING to increase that...When you have no other choice, they will raise the tolls until they are unaffordable. They will end up giving you the lowest quality for the highest price...THAT'S WHAT THEY DO! Their only concern is the bottom line and just like with the phones and the cable, etc. The bill will always go up while improvements never happen. Corporations CANNOT be trusted with our necessary infrastructure. Not our schools...Not our roads and not our water.
.

I'd like to second this.
Could not have said it better myself!

Originally posted by ReluctantBlossom
I hear you!

If anyone thinks that plans for privatizing EVERYTHING aren't currently underway, you are blind. The systematic choking off and waste of funding for government needs is long term and deliberate. You think things will get better under corporate rule? Their only goal is profit and they will do ANYTHING to increase that...When you have no other choice, they will raise the tolls until they are unaffordable. They will end up giving you the lowest quality for the highest price...THAT'S WHAT THEY DO! Their only concern is the bottom line and just like with the phones and the cable, etc. The bill will always go up while improvements never happen. Corporations CANNOT be trusted with our necessary infrastructure. Not our schools...Not our roads and not our water.
.

I don't know how i missed this excellent and to-the-point post.

cut taxes -> cut funding -> poor performance -> use poor performance to argue more funding cuts -> use funding cuts to justify further tax cuts -> even less funding -> even worse performance -> sell public institution at a loss.

It's Bechtel in Bolivia, ITT in Chile, and United Fruit in Honduras.

reply to post by lonewolf19792000

Yeah...bet if we wanted to we could dig up some nice pics of nice new roads in Iraq and Afghanistan that would put our U.S. roads to shame. Roads no doubt built by Halliburton or others of its thieving ilk. Not to mention roads repeatedly blown up and rebuilt. What a racket.

reply to post by ~Lucidity


All roads look good when they are new.

The question is, who maintains and operates them better?

Clearly private road owners take far better care of their roads on the whole than government does.

reply to post by mnemeth1

Yeah. Sucker taxpayers paying for building and rebuilding of roads overseas. Keep our money here. We don't, and this is the issue and what is "broken."

privately owned roads would be a license to print money as just think if you have a driveway everytime you pull out you have to pay the road owner for the permission to use that road and you go down 12 streets to get to work all owned by different companies all charging $1 a pop so suddenly you are paying $24 just for the pleasure of driving to and from work every day then add in the tolls for stuff like going shopping/visiting friends and you could easy be spending $200 a week just on tolls

Originally posted by neo96
everything wrong with the universe as in this country is the fault of the state

dont like dont wanna beleive but

deal with it.

id rather have a libertarian than a big government pusher type who pushes all responsibilty onto the govenrment

where it does not and never has belonged.

I am sorry but have you been asleep for the past decade?

Did you completely miss the role that banks and corporations played in the financial collapse?

Or was that all the fault of the state as well? Did they not deregulate enough?

reply to post by mnemeth1

If courts were privatized, Shell would have been run out of business for the disaster they caused.

You really didn't think this comment through did you? If the courts were privatized and Shell were being sued they would just buy the courts and bye bye lawsuit. Who has the money to buy the roads? Major corporations. So letting the roads to be privatized would just make the American people even more the slaves of the elite. This idea is as stupid as moving private corporations into Iraq to do things for the military that the military is fully capable of doing themselves.

reply to post by mnemeth1


Privatize the courts? You can't be serious!

We saw recently how privatizing institutions that should be public can have disastrous effects.

The cash for kids judge loved his relationship with the private juvenile facility. The innocent kids who lost a large part of their childhood because of the greed of corporations suffered because of it. This type of greed is rampant throughout corporate America and you want to turn over institutions that are in the hands of the people to the corporations?

Put down the Ayn Rand books and step into reality.

The responses to this thread have really made me sad.

I know I'm putting forth some challenging material that really pushes people to think, but I'm still highly dismayed by the lack of critical thinking that has gone into the responses I have received.

It is very disheartening to know that there are a large number of people who simply don't care about this subject, while those who do care seem to be incapable of mustering even the most rudimentary of reasoning skills in their criticisms.

As America descends into socialist chaos, one of the first things to go will be the infrastructure. As all roads deteriorate into Detroit roads, people will scream for the government do something about it. Of course, government will be totally incapable of doing anything about it. But the screaming will continue until finally the entire system collapses into North Korea.

If people can't grasp that government is an evil violent institution that is incapable of managing an ant farm, there is no hope left. The lack of reasoning is appalling.

I've never seen so much blatant hostility toward private businesses in all my life.

It is as if everyone hates the very people who put bread on their table, cars in their garage, and TVs in their living rooms. While at the same time they laud the virtues of people who have killed millions in war, spent trillions in bailouts, invaded multiple countries that posed us no threat, and have locked up millions of Americans for the heinous crime of smoking a doobie.

Sad... I am truly sad and very afraid for our future.