old salt wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2023 2:35 pm
If it was more efficient & cost effective than our interstates & air travel system, we'd look like Europe.
It's the essence of the free market at work.
Massive Government spending is your idea of the "free market"?
OS: the free market would be private roads, my man. Full stop.
You're a liberal, but want to pretend you're not because it makes you feel good.
BTW....lobbying is when kept us from having more rail service subsidized by the .gov. You, of course, want to ignore this, and pretend that millions of miles of asphalt roads fell from the sky.
Why are American Conservatives so freaking bad at understanding the basic principles of free markets?
old salt wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2023 2:35 pm
What's your preferred alternative ? ...rural bus service or trolleys ? ...methane emitting donkey carts ?
There it is: you understand that without Big Government, and rural Americans taking money from people in Big Cities to give them infrastructure that the can't afford on their own? Rural America is royally F'ed.
It only took you 7 years to admit this. Better late than never, my Big Government friend.
old salt wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2023 1:04 pm
Not if you make POV travel cost prohibitive or don't maintain the infrastructure for it. The system we have evolved because it's the most flexible & cost effective,
Buffalo bagels. Rail is by far more cost effective for shipping goods. You, like every other Republican I've ever met, ignore the cost of the roads, pretend it's free....and then claim trucks are cheaper. Nope.
And again, the comparison you're making for personal travel ASSUMES the asphalt and other infrastructure is free.
Please. Pretty please with sugar on top: get rid of the Farm Bill. Or price controls on farming. Let's see how you and your buds will do without Big Government.
old salt wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2023 2:35 pm
...yeah, shame on us for taking food stamps & enabling everyone to eat. They were a real high profit margin money maker. As I said, they were a loss leader. Ever heard of food deserts ?
Trying to twist your way out, as usual.
What I'm saying is: you are 100% Big Government. And are more than happy to take money from the .gov.
I've told you 1,000 times: the only difference between you and I is that you're in denial, and are hilariously claiming that Government services are "free market" solutions.
old salt wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2023 2:35 pm
Your're right. We should have shamed those riff raff for using food stamps & driven them out of our store.
Again, trying to deflect from the fact that you like Big Government just fine. It's not working.
old salt wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2023 2:35 pm
...then we could have prospered by selling high profit margin designer liqueurs rather than 6 packs of Falstaff, ...with all the smelly, empty returned 2 cent deposit brown bottles that I had to sort for my allowance of a shiny half dollar/wk (the going rate for a 12 yr @ 1960).
And now you're trying to make fun of my product, which is actually free market.
Nice try, comrade.
old salt wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2023 1:04 pm
Those wars for oil keep our price at the pump 1/2 of those in the EU.
That's right! At least you understand that.
So how the F do you think this is the free market in action? This is the Government stepping in and FORCING the price of oil with guns, OS.
Come the F on. Wake up.
old salt wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2023 1:04 pm
I repeatedly said -- the oil wars were to sustain our dispersed lifestyle that had evolved & to maintain our standard of living, which had also evolved as it did thanks to our previous abundance of cheap oil. How'd it go in the '70's when we tried to live without it ? We increased mpg's & reduced emissions. We added home insulation, double pane windows & installed heat pumps when our old oil furnaces wore out. We became amateur lumberjacks & chimney sweeps to feed our fireplace inserts (before carbon climate hysteria).
Right. Big Government intervention.
What you're doing is complaining about a "different kind" of Big Government intervention, while claiming your preferred solution is "free market".
You're either lying, or you're an idiot. Pick one. (you're lying)
old salt wrote: ↑Thu Dec 21, 2023 2:35 pm
Right Comrade. You are advocating for a Soviet style command economy. The antithesis of an incentivized free market economy.
Nope. All we're discussing is that the system that you grew up in, and enjoyed economic prosperity in.
Your head is so far up your *ss, you have it all backwards.
Old Salt: family kept doors open in their store with government food stamps. He then attended a Government University where he was trained by Government employees, and then served in the Federal Government. His job after Government service was 100% dependent on the training and experience he got from, you guessed is.... the freaking Federal Government. Wife? You guessed it: government job. Enjoying Government health care for life, as well as a Government pension.
A fan: started a business with his brother. Both of us educated at Private Universities. I went to vocational School overseas. Started a business where not only are their no helpers like Food Stamps, there are additional taxes because guys like you decided we should pay extra taxes in every State we operate in, PLUS a Federal excise tax. This is BEFORE we pay all the taxes everyone else gets to pay. Wife? Private Sector, although she did get her MS at a State U.
And yet you're so delusional, that you call ME 'comrade'.... there is no one on this board that owes more to Big Government than you.
And yet you slag off government every chance you get, and lecture me about a free market that you have never experienced.
This attitude of yours is why our government cannot function: you keep telling your R leaders that government is "bad"...and yet without it, and without a LOT of it? Your life would be in shambles.