Free Subscription! 
iTunes 
Our podcast will keep you up to date...
I know I shouldn't even be talking to these people...
So I'm having a discussion on some leftist forum and the guy I'm talking with has hit upon a very interesting tactic. He has begun simply pasting this same quote in every one of his responses:
"I do not like anyone stopping me from indulging my unchecked greed and malicious expoitative impulses..if I wanna use my natural advantages and position to exploit, hose, and use desperate workers, that's my business. Let me be a wolf, let me be myself...free, I was born free, and you gotta break a few eggs to make a freedom omelet" ...that's the argument you are making."
It's ridiculous. Initially we were discussing his desire to cap CEO pay, we eventually got to minimum wage laws, and he eventually just decided to start calling me a malicious wolf.
Here's his last outburst:
"I do not like anyone stopping me from indulging my unchecked greed and malicious expoitative impulses..if I wanna use my natural advantages an position to exploit, hose, and use desperate workers, that's my business. Let me be a wolf, let me be myself...free, I was born free, and you gotta break a few eggs to make a freedom omelet" ...that's the argument you are making."
This is what you are saying. Now, maybe you're from another country originally and your idioms are different, making your meaning hard to pin down, but taken at your writ word, you're saying businesses should be allowed to do whatever they please and workers should hve no rights at all and be vulnerable to exploitation.
If we negotiate, and you have a gun to my head, it's not an "agreement".
Seems pretty simple to me. I guess it's not to you.
You are supporting a land where the bulk of the workforce lives in abject poverty and occupies company barracks, and must buy food bars sold in the company store. Then they must work in whatever conditions the employers desire.
You support a vendor being able to sell chainsaws for $500 after a hurricane in the disaster zone.
You support a gas station owner being able to hike the price of his gas 100% after a hurricane.
Most Americans find that deplorable and anti-American.
But you're free to believe whatever you want, it's a free country.
Sometimes I just don't even know what to say to stuff like this. This is the same guy who in another thread is arguing with me that Ron Paul is a fascist. I'm generally very patient, but sometimes the ignorance is just too much to bear.
Okay, I'm better now. Just needed to blow off a little steam, but I guess it's also worthwhile to remember that there are folks like this out there. It's a scary thought.
Dude, while I read this whole post, all I could think about is the movie "The Deer Hunter" with Al Pacino and Christoperh Walken.
When Christopher Walken (Nick) and Robert DiNero's (Michael) characters are in the pow camp, and the camp director decides that they should play Russian Roulette, they are not in any way agreeing to play Russian Roulette. They are forced to. Later, Nick goes AWOL from the hospital and starts playing Russian Roulette of his own volition, and makes a tidy sum, which he then sends home. If you haven't seen this movie, it is well worth it.
I can't believe I haven't seen that movie! I should have, but somehow it just eluded me. Gotta put that on the list.
Sorry to be dense, but what made you think about the movie?
(PS - I enjoyed your recent podcast on the Mekong catfish)
Dude, while I read this whole post, all I could think about is the movie "The Deer Hunter" with Al Pacino and Christoperh Walken.
It was De Niro not Pacino & personally I always thought the Deer Hunter was overrated
http://twitter.com/sophiabotha
The Russian Roulette scene was intense and well-acted but I have to agree with you that the movie was overrated. I think there is a lot of peer pressure with movies like these. People like it because it's the "in thing". Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, also directed by Michael Cimino, was a great movie. I would highly recommend watching it. It stars Clint Eastwood and Jeff Bridges.
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it
Learned Hand
In the past men created witches: now they create mental patients.
Thomas Szasz
Relinquish liberty for the purposes of defense in an emergency?
Why? It would seem that in an emergency, of all times, one needs
his greatest strength. So if liberty is strength and slavery is weakness,
liberty is a necessity rather than a luxury, and we can ill afford
to be without it—least of all during an emergency.
F.A. Harper
I'd agree the Russian Roulette was brilliant but one brilliant scene does not make a movie
Personally I think Thunderbolt and Lightfoot is the better film, both Clint Eastwood 7 Jeff briges are on top form & I love George Kennedy'ss the bad guy.
I can't forgive Michael Cimino for Heaven's Gate, okay its not the worse film ever made, but because it was such a massive flop it brought an end to what been since the late 60s a golden age in Hollywood.
These fake progressives love using the Company town analogy. As though that were the norm. To the extent that these Company towns used force to stop people from leaving or organzing, libertarians would be opposed.
As to his lone wolf diatribe, I would respond this way. Any person with these inclinations will have them in any system. It is far more dangerous to have a highly centralized state that could fall into the hands of such as wolf than it is to have these wolves roaming in a decentralized system. The wolf can do far more damage in the former than the latter.
As for the price gouging, ask him if he would rather there be shortages at below market prices, or the chance of buying something at the market price. Also point out to him that a great many people help out there fellow man not only at no charge, but at cost to themselves. This was evidenced in the reason tornadoes and Mississippi floods.
And you're right. You shouldn't be talking to these people. It is a waste of time.
These fake progressives love using the Company town analogy. As though that were the norm. To the extent that these Company towns used force to stop people from leaving or organzing, libertarians would be opposed.
As to his lone wolf diatribe, I would respond this way. Any person with these inclinations will have them in any system. It is far more dangerous to have a highly centralized state that could fall into the hands of such as wolf than it is to have these wolves roaming in a decentralized system. The wolf can do far more damage in the former than the latter.
As for the price gouging, ask him if he would rather there be shortages at below market prices, or the chance of buying something at the market price. Also point out to him that a great many people help out there fellow man not only at no charge, but at cost to themselves. This was evidenced in the reason tornadoes and Mississippi floods.
And you're right. You shouldn't be talking to these people. It is a waste of time.
Good points Lysander. You always have a great way of turning the issue around and showing how ridiculous the statist position is.
And you're right about me wasting my time. Sometimes I just can't stop myself... :)