benjamin, thanks for your thoughtful post. i like a guy who likes to keep things lively!

but hmm ... personal attacks. i'll admit i've been fervent, but attacks? i haven't once called amber a stupid, elitist asshole. i've been strident, opinionated, foreful on tribe, but those things do not constitute flaming. the only epithet i came up with in this instance was republican, which given how deregulation (and thus corporporate) friendly libertarians (sic) are, that seems a very uncontroversial statement.

in my opinion, if someone is going to say fatuous things like "i'm a libertarian" and "i love my (sic) country" then those things have to be challenged, just as fervently as i have done.

without ever once saying something like, say, hey amber, get your head out of your ass.
www.nea.org/vouchers/
members.tripod.com/~candst/...chidx.htm

these "natural law" and/or "liberatarian" types like to think that competition is the natural state of things, and that it benefits everything. bullshit. money makes the world go round -- and drives it right into the ground. it's a pie in the sky fantasy to say "well if people don't like something, they won't buy it." but in a libertarian's world of unresticted competition, the big guys are free to gobble up the little guys and then we have little or no choices left.

and one thing we are left with is a populace too ill informed to be able to make such choices. thanks to bill c and congress, we have the telecommunications act of 1996, and the legacy today is that in the bay area alone, conservative clear channel owns half the billboards and most of the radio stations. alternative or dissenting voices cannot be heard, and most people are uninformed.

look at what happened here in sf during the dot com boom -- wille brown's planning commission rubber stamped every development that came in front of it, and we got a decimated city, a white-washed yuppie city with much less diversity. 2000 musicians/500 bands kicked out of a rehearsal space is not a good thing. go to portland or seattle or austin and you will see a real thriving music scene. sf doesn't have dick compared to what it used to have. and on a lot of fronts, not just music.

all of which is bad for a city's economy.
www.washingtonmonthly.com/featu...a.html

on a desert island with 20 people, the natural state of things might start with every man for herself, but it will quickly end up with poople banding together and majority, well, ruling. **that is government**

government is always with us. there is never not a government. a government dergulating industry and services is one that regulates the rich running rouighshod over the rest of us. the dot com boom saw the usual tiny minority get rich, or richer, and the rest get screwed. that is not the natural law of things, like anything we have talked about -- that is what government tacitly legislated.


i am going to let amber and whoever else desires to have the last word on this topic. it's all about petty ego now. amber will have to stick to her guns -- although it would not surprise me if she gave a little on some of these points just to prove me wrong (however much she will deny that is the reason).

she might also put forward some arguments in refutation, and perhaps even offer links as counter evidence. i won't even bother to read them. i've already considered these issues and made up my mind. conservative stooges still try to say that global warming is a myth, or exagerated. there's always an argument on the other side. statistics can always be twisted.

i'll stand by what i've said.