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Frazzled wrote: Thats wehy we have 20MM illegal aliens here.

Last I heard they need to be 28mm heroic and at least 50% GW bits.

Red9 wrote:

Frazzled wrote: Thats wehy we have 20MM illegal aliens here.

Last I heard they need to be 28mm heroic and at least 50% GW bits.

Frazzled wrote:Conditions where thats at don't have minimum wage laws though, so again, its not relevant to the discussion.

Of the 197 countries and independent territories in the world, only 23 do not have minimum wage laws, and the majority of those set some form of regional/sectoral minimum wage through collective bargaining.

Frazzled wrote:

ShivanAngel wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Morality is irrelevant. Its life. You play the hand you're dealt.

Except unlike cards, you can do a lot to change the odds... Either for good or for bad... There are some things you have no control over, but many you do....

You cant say slacking off in school and then dropping out was a hand dealt to you, you looked through the deck and chose a gakky hand in that case.

Thats is true. As noted, you can only improve or fall from where you start, not where you wished you started or deserved to start. Is it fair (define fair)? yes, no, its still irrelevant.

You've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em Fraz. And in the end the gambler broke even, which is the best you can hope for apparently...( damnit Fraz, now I"m listening to Rhapsody, I have chores to do today!)

I'm not saying that everyone should have what they want and everyone should be equal, not at all. Some people are driven to get rich, and I think they should have the opportunity to do so. My opinion is that pursuit of wealth and goods can only lead to a feeling of emptiness and "running on a treadmill" just to keep up. However, I'm open minded enough to realize that some people actually aren't fooling themselves and honestly get great satisfaction from being successful in money.

I can't really argue this because its a matter of worldview. You're seeing that the world isn't fair and accepting that fact, while I see the same thing and expect to make rules to put things right. The way I explain it is that instead of free trade, I believe in fair trade. Capitalism works when trade is between those with equal knowledge of the trade. If you sell someone a pig in a poke, that isn't fair is it? People should play the game, but they should play fair. I know I use that "F" word a lot, as my father in law puts it. Thats something I've always been big on, is being fair.

I've always heard older people tell younger people with this viewpoint that they'll change when they have to work for a living. That wasn't the case with me. I find myself very fortunate to be in the position I am, even though it isn't always satisfying. I've see others who didn't get the same opportunities, and I worry that anything could happen at any time to my good fortune. I've seen that in the world the hardest workers and the brightest thinkers aren't necessarily who is getting rewarded.

As far as things like universal healthcare, food stamps, what have you, don't you think people would actually be more willing to take a risk and start a business if they knew they had a safety net?

Red9 wrote:It's repeatable, measureable and I'm not the first to do it. So I can expect that it will apply for everyone else provided they put in the same effort as I did or those who have done it before me.

Just as an aside, if you went door to door in the area that I grew up in, or the city I went to college in, you would have a fair chance at being arrested. In my experience there a lot of places in the US that require you to have a permit to solicit, if they haven't made it outright illegal.

Frazzled wrote:Morality is irrelevant. Its life. You play the hand you're dealt.

Take that religions of the world !

reds8n wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Morality is irrelevant. Its life. You play the hand you're dealt.

Take that religions of the world !

This is what boggles me about how people have managed to mesh this philosophy with Christian faith. I mean, I used to have those same political convictions, but I wasn't that religious. I've read the Bible, and from my experience the J.C. wasn't big on hoarding wealth.

Frazzled wrote:Morality is irrelevant. Its life. You play the hand you're dealt.

Wait, so if a certain person is dealt a gun, but not a lot of money, and morality is irrelevant, is it then acceptable for them to engage in armed robbery?

dogma wrote:

Red9 wrote:It's repeatable, measureable and I'm not the first to do it. So I can expect that it will apply for everyone else provided they put in the same effort as I did or those who have done it before me.

Just as an aside, if you went door to door in the area that I grew up in, or the city I went to college in, you would have a fair chance at being arrested. In my experience there a lot of places in the US that require you to have a permit to solicit, if they haven't made it outright illegal.

Yes, living next door to Beaver Cleaver would definitely make the whole door to door service selling more practical. Some people have more limited options. Entrepreneurs in these areas usually obtain a .40 smith and a dime bag as their initial investment.

Red9 wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:Wealth and job placement aren't inherently moral things. If they were (and people acted on it) parents giving their wealth to their children would be illegal and we would all go to equally capable schools. Conservatives hate communism though.

I fail to see the relevency of this.

The discussion was about about the inherent morality to capitalistic society, I stated my belief that it's inherently outside of morality and that moral social concepts have been thought up and are often times deemed immoral.

Grignard wrote:

dogma wrote:

Red9 wrote:It's repeatable, measureable and I'm not the first to do it. So I can expect that it will apply for everyone else provided they put in the same effort as I did or those who have done it before me.

Just as an aside, if you went door to door in the area that I grew up in, or the city I went to college in, you would have a fair chance at being arrested. In my experience there a lot of places in the US that require you to have a permit to solicit, if they haven't made it outright illegal.

Yes, living next door to Beaver Cleaver would definitely make the whole door to door service selling more practical. Some people have more limited options. Entrepreneurs in these areas usually obtain a .40 smith and a dime bag as their initial investment.

Never said it had to be a "legal" investment

ShumaGorath wrote:

Red9 wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:Wealth and job placement aren't inherently moral things. If they were (and people acted on it) parents giving their wealth to their children would be illegal and we would all go to equally capable schools. Conservatives hate communism though.

I fail to see the relevency of this.

The discussion was about about the inherent morality to capitalistic society, I stated my belief that it's inherently outside of morality and that moral social concepts have been thought up and are often times deemed immoral.

A free market is amoral, and you can engineer an economy on a moral basis,but is it not a case of 1 or 10? Isn't that the point of a mixed economy, where people are allowed to have ownership, but that they have to follow the rules. One of the things I was glad to hear about this financial reform is they're creating some sort of consumer protection agency. We've needed that ever since banks became fee oriented businesses and probably before that. I've been told that one of the things exacerbating this latest downturn was that people were sold financial products that they didn't understand, could not be expected to understand, and by people who did not make an effort or actively avoided enlightening them.


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dogma wrote:

Frazzled wrote:Morality is irrelevant. Its life. You play the hand you're dealt.

Wait, so if a certain person is dealt a gun, but not a lot of money, and morality is irrelevant, is it then acceptable for them to engage in armed robbery?

It could be argued that trade cannot be compared to behavior. They're apparently separated in laws.

Grignard wrote:

dogma wrote:

Red9 wrote:It's repeatable, measureable and I'm not the first to do it. So I can expect that it will apply for everyone else provided they put in the same effort as I did or those who have done it before me.

Just as an aside, if you went door to door in the area that I grew up in, or the city I went to college in, you would have a fair chance at being arrested. In my experience there a lot of places in the US that require you to have a permit to solicit, if they haven't made it outright illegal.

Yes, living next door to Beaver Cleaver would definitely make the whole door to door service selling more practical. Some people have more limited options. Entrepreneurs in these areas usually obtain a .40 smith and a dime bag as their initial investment.

Thats why they suck and will never amount ot anything. A 9mm is cheaper and just as efficacious. The money they saved could have been invested in a quarter bag. Its just thats kind of short term thinking and lack of good business analytics that hold the illicit narcotics industry back.

Grignard wrote:
It could be argued that trade cannot be compared to behavior. They're apparently separated in laws.

I agree that they're not comparable. The point I was trying to make is that the reason they aren't comparable is a moral one.

If morality is irrelevant, then Bernie Madoff was not a criminal, but a shrewd businessman with an entrepreneurial mind.

Red9 wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Last I heard, libraries allow free access to books for self improvement and learning. Also just because a desired job that allows a person the quality of life that they think they deserve or are conditioned to believe they are entitled to are unavailable, doesn't mean that one can't downgrade to lower wager jobs or multiple jobs.

Self training programs don't typically give degrees or marks of completion that are required for better paying jobs. They're great for self motivation or preparation for training, but they are a poor substitute for actual schooling.

True, and it leads to CLEPing a class towards a college degree, look it up. Now combine self taught knowledge with starting your own enterprise, where does it say, anywhere , that you have to have a degree to start your own business.

EDIT: grammar/spelling

You can't get a degree through CLEP, there are a lot of courses that universities and colleges won't let you CLEP out of. They require you to actually take some classes. So, this really isn't a good alternative.

dogma wrote:

Grignard wrote:
It could be argued that trade cannot be compared to behavior. They're apparently separated in laws.

I agree that they're not comparable. The point I was trying to make is that the reason they aren't comparable is a moral one.

If morality is irrelevant, then Bernie Madoff was not a criminal, but a shrewd businessman with an entrepreneurial mind.

Not all laws are moralistic in nature.

dogma wrote:

Grignard wrote:
It could be argued that trade cannot be compared to behavior. They're apparently separated in laws.

I agree that they're not comparable. The point I was trying to make is that the reason they aren't comparable is a moral one.

If morality is irrelevant, then Bernie Madoff was not a criminal, but a shrewd businessman with an entrepreneurial mind.

But there is some similarity then. Its sort of like Dante writing about those who squandered their money in hell, which he judged as a crime of violence. To the modern mind, I think it is puzzling why its a sin in the first place, and why it is violent. The reasoning is that wasting money is a violent act against the means of your own sustenance, you know, like shoeing a horse with silver f'ing horseshoes. Would that reasoning make collective ownership of property immoral, as taking someone's property is violence against the person, just like striking them?

ShumaGorath wrote:
Not all laws are moralistic in nature.

No, but they all need to have some foundation in morality, its just that said foundation might be relatively insignificant. After all, in order to make something illegal we must first understand it as something bad.

Vene wrote:

Red9 wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Last I heard, libraries allow free access to books for self improvement and learning. Also just because a desired job that allows a person the quality of life that they think they deserve or are conditioned to believe they are entitled to are unavailable, doesn't mean that one can't downgrade to lower wager jobs or multiple jobs.

Self training programs don't typically give degrees or marks of completion that are required for better paying jobs. They're great for self motivation or preparation for training, but they are a poor substitute for actual schooling.

True, and it leads to CLEPing a class towards a college degree, look it up. Now combine self taught knowledge with starting your own enterprise, where does it say, anywhere , that you have to have a degree to start your own business.

EDIT: grammar/spelling

You can't get a degree through CLEP, there are a lot of courses that universities and colleges won't let you CLEP out of. They require you to actually take some classes. So, this really isn't a good alternative.

I think its great how people say that you need to work harder or get more skills if you want to get ahead, and then call you a whiner if you mention that breaking your ass through 4 or more years of difficult material didn't pay off quite the way you had hoped.

Woah woah woah woah... lets all slow down.

20 bucks a lawn?!!

Im coming over in September, anyone want their lawn mowing?!

Ill do it for $19.50!

dogma wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:
Not all laws are moralistic in nature.

No, but they all need to have some foundation in morality, its just that said foundation might be relatively insignificant. After all, in order to make something illegal we must first understand it as something bad.

Not really, especially within financial law much of it is there to ensure smooth function in the financial sector. Many laws simply exist because they are required for others to function properly, not because something like overdraft interest correlation on online draft fees is a moral stand against the tyranny of greed. Many laws are clerical in nature.

mattyrm wrote:Woah woah woah woah... lets all slow down.

20 bucks a lawn?!!

Im coming over in September, anyone want their lawn mowing?!

Ill do it for $19.50!

Hell, i've heard of people getting a lot more than that, and not for lawns that are huge. Its sad when you've seriously considered a career change as an adult to get into that.

Grignard wrote:
But there is some similarity then. Its sort of like Dante writing about those who squandered their money in hell, which he judged as a crime of violence. To the modern mind, I think it is puzzling why its a sin in the first place, and why it is violent. The reasoning is that wasting money is a violent act against the means of your own sustenance, you know, like shoeing a horse with silver f'ing horseshoes. Would that reasoning make collective ownership of property immoral, as taking someone's property is violence against the person, just like striking them?

Potentially, though it could be argued that the use of collective property, with the ultimate interests of the collective in mind, does not constitute a violent act against the sustenance of any member of that collective. However, the misuse of collective property certainly would entail a violent act, per that reasoning.

My dad pays the same guy that does my lawn 40 bucks each time, takes the kid about 75 minutes.

What movies are showing u.s. troops as evil?

There are countless films where military officials are participating in conspiracies (Green Zone), or where they're the misguided idiots making everything worse (The Day the Earth Stood Still). Whether or not the movies are actually anti-military never really filters in. They see the military portrayed doing something wrong, and they assume it to be an attack.

I've never really understood the mindset of people that believe American values are under assault. A fairly casual historical look will show that we're doing better than we were during many of the darker times of the last 100 years.

Those folks who failed English? They failed history too

There are differing opinions on what exactly the American values are. The conflict arises from what conservatives deem there values to be, and that in pop culture, the government, and the media, they find situations where these values are dismissed as not important (The concept of the Nuclear family for example) or belittled (A lot of conservatives are also Christians. Christianity takes a lot of flak these days). Whether or not there is an assault doesn't factor in. There is one that has been perceived. I could give twenty paragraphs running through my explanation of this but I don't really think it would be beneficial XD. People don't usually react logically to problems, and sometimes they see problems where none exist. It doesn't make sense but there are a lot of events that just work out that way. It's sort of like a much tamer version of the Red Scare.

America always needs some great enemy to rally against, and when we have no great enemy we become it ourselves.

It's true of any nation. Nations stand strong when threatened by outside forces but quickly turn on themselves when things seem okay. Ironically though there is an outside threat to the US now in the form of Islamic Terrorism, yet, we don't seem as united against it as we did against the Japanese in WWII, or even the Spanish in the Spanish-American War, even though the tragedy that caused the current conflict had a much higher death toll than the previous combined.

My dad pays the same guy that does my lawn 40 bucks each time, takes the kid about 75 minutes.

Dang. I mowed the lawn for my neighbor and I got a quarter

mattyrm wrote:Woah woah woah woah... lets all slow down.

20 bucks a lawn?!!

Im coming over in September, anyone want their lawn mowing?!

Ill do it for $19.50!

I can give you a jelly jar full of white lightning, but thats about it.

Grignard wrote:

mattyrm wrote:Woah woah woah woah... lets all slow down.

20 bucks a lawn?!!

Im coming over in September, anyone want their lawn mowing?!

Ill do it for $19.50!

Hell, i've heard of people getting a lot more than that, and not for lawns that are huge. Its sad when you've seriously considered a career change as an adult to get into that.

What does that last bit mean?

Oh, and 20 bucks a lawn is great when you are the local broke teenager, but it really stops being enough when you do upwards of 8 lawns per day. I have known some maintenance crews/individuals that have found neighborhoods full of people that need basic maintenance, but the ones that are successful as businesses usually install the lawns and service the irrigation. There are just too many people with trucks and lawnmowers to make a decent living, even ignoring the cost of tool maintenance and gas.

You need a wider net to make a good living doing maintenance. I have met several people that do high-end maintenance and make 50 bucks an hour easily. That isn't common mind you, and their skills are generally so much more diverse than a simple cut-n'-trim service, it seems a bit odd to compare them. My tangent though, whatever.

I have done both high-end, and low-end maintenance, varying from mowing an acre of 2-3ft. tall grass with a dinky lawnmower and a weedtrimmer, to aesthetic pruning and planting. Guess what pays better? You can start off as a grunt, get training and certification, then move onto more advanced well paying labor. When there is no work, there is no work, it is really as simple as that.

Diving headfirst into labor in general is a pretty bad plan right now, considering how hard it is to find work in any type of construction, and the fact that serious money is in construction/installation and not maintenance. Having solid connections matters more than how hard you can work, there will always be someone willing to work harder than you, not to say having a good work ethic is a bad thing; you can easily overwork yourself though. Starting a cut-n'-trim service seems like a terrible idea to me, unless you live in or near an area which actually has demand for it. People save money by mowing their own lawns, your balls are on the chopping block with a company such as that.

ShivanAngel wrote:My dad pays the same guy that does my lawn 40 bucks each time, takes the kid about 75 minutes.

That's a big lawn!

When I was in high school I would work at an auto shop for a couple months every summer, the owner was one of my dad's parishioners so he was even willing to pay me under the table. There are plenty of ways to make money provided you have the right connections.

Having those connections makes all the difference in the world. People need a familiar face in order to feel secure.

ShumaGorath wrote:
Not really, especially within financial law much of it is there to ensure smooth function in the financial sector.

First you have to establish that a financial sector that runs smoothly is a good thing, and that is a moral judgment.

ShumaGorath wrote:
Many laws simply exist because they are required for others to function properly, not because something like overdraft interest correlation on online draft fees is a moral stand against the tyranny of greed. Many laws are clerical in nature.

Sure, but the end goal, and point of departure are grounded in moral judgment. There's a reason jurisprudence if often thought of as the formal extension of ethics.


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Wrexasaur wrote:Having those connections makes all the difference in the world. People need a familiar face in order to feel secure.

You have no idea how easy it is to profit from being a PK. People will place all sorts unjustified trust into you.

Little did the parishioners know that, at that time in my life, I was a dirty atheist.