"Paul.Bramscher@xxxxxxxxx" <Paul.Bramscher@xxxxxxxxx> writes:
> On Mar 16, 4:02 am, Mark Kent <mark.k...@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> > Mark Kent wrote:
>
>> Those nomadic peoples who've survived into the modern age have been
>> reasonably territorial, which does suggest that the pre-farming
>> communities would roam over loosely defined areas doing their
>> hunter/gatherer work in order to survive. The kind of government needed
>> for such a system is pretty rudimentary, so probably a senior council,
>> perhaps with a chairman (probably called a king!).
>
> At the pre-sedendary level we're not even talking kings yet, probably
> chieftains. The rise of warlords seems to coincide with the rise of
> agriculture. The warlords were basically early proto-capitalists
> (i.e. whose extistence is predicated on some monopoly/control of
> resources and an expectation that others must work for them). They
> morphed into the church, Caesar, kings, and then Fortune 500's. In
> every case, there's a monopoly of resources, backed up by threat of
> violence. In the case of the Fortune 500's, government/legal system
> is the ostensibly impartial/neutral legal system charged with
> enforcing the monopoly claims. Of course, it's obvious that laws are
> for those bound by laws, and access to justice is a function of the
> size of one's pocketbook.
>
>> So, to your question - why can you not live in Canada and work in the
>> US? You can, but you need to follow the rules, which are considerable
>> and complex. You can argue that it's easier for companies, but in a
>> way, it's also much harder - if they go out of business, it's their
>> problem, whereas if a migrant fails to economically contribute and needs
>> state support, then everyone has to pay a little more tax.
>
> Aside from the rules, which seem to be penalizing by their nature, I
> was referring to something different. A company, as an abstract/
> conglomerate, can outsource a function (for instance, a service call
> center) to another country to take advantage of cheaper labor, taxes,
> etc. I can't outsource my house & cost of real estate to another
> country. As a real human in the US, I'd have to live near the border
> and cross daily to work, or be on an airplane every day. In a
> nutshell, whereas a large traditionally American company like
> Minnesota Mining & Manufacturing (3M) is outsourcing to cheaper labor
> markets, while keeping its headquarters just a couple miles from the
> working-class neighborhood I grew up in (my father and several
> neighbors worked the factory), there is no way for me to outsource the
> cost of my real estate. That is, the single most expensive
> encumberance that most Americans take on: cost of housing. No way to
> outsource that, and the prices here have been inflated artificially by
> bank/lending/investment monopolies.
>
> Curiously, after 500 years of history, and massive legislation such as
> the Homestead Act of 1862, most Americans are still paying a
> mortgage. Clearly, the bank/government tag-team has been designed to
> permanently displace, economically, each generation anew. I discuss
> it a bit on my blog:
>
> http://paulbramscher.blogspot.com/2007/03/why-america-has-been-on-decline.html
>
> This all sounds extremely off-topic, but it does tie back with
> Microsoft. You see that their model is also predicated on people
> never really owning a stable stake/interest in the operating system.
> It's a constant cash-flow to M$, with forced depcrecation, a never-
> quite-there feeling about it because -- of course -- if Microsoft were
> ever to release the definitive/developed operating system, they'd put
> themselves out of business. So each of their OS's is another shopping
> mall with flaws, already to be torn down and deprecated with another.
> It's the same game that bricks & mortar developers are playing here in
> the US. They're leaving an environmental devastation in their wake,
> here in the American midwest, and wrecking an awful lot of highly
> productive farmland as well.
>
>> Where the whole system has fallen down, though, which I think is
>> what you're really driving at, is why is it possible for a company to
>> headquarter in a tax haven, but employ people in a tax-paying environment,
>> and/or why can you not do the same thing? Well, if you're rich enough,
>> you can, of course, but that doesn't address the issue with companies.
>
> That's part of it, the dodging of taxes. But even if my yearly
> household budget were tax-free, the vast majority of my annual income
> goes to the banking establishment to cover my home mortgage.
>
> The crux of the problem, numerically speaking, is that I can't
> outsource/off-shore the cost of my real estate. I'd like to "price
> out" my house according to the cost of a similar home in Mexico. i.e.
> instead of being assessed at $193,000, I'd like to be assessed at like
> $35,000, borrow for a mortgage, pay insurance and taxes on a value no
> more that that.
>
> The whole globalization game is predicated on captive populaces,
> divided-and-conquered, unable to offshore the cost of their housing in
> the way that corporations can offshore the cost of everything (taxes,
> labor, buildings/factories, etc.). It's literally a Western racket,
> and not new to globalization. This is the serf/manor, or miner/mining-
> town arrangement that describes America (and its predecessor economic
> system) as a whole.
>
> In Europe you've got ~10 times the population density we have here in
> North America. So the fact that the "middle-class dream" is slipping
> out of reach here is due to an extremely unbalanced/unsustainable
> system our elites have created for themselves, we cannot attribute
> this to sheer population pressure. There's an awful lot of empty
> space on this continent.
>
COLA loonies and google. A terrifyingly boring and self conceited
mixture. A gold star to anyone who can follow half of Roy's sock puppets
waffle above without thinking "what a bluffer".
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