Dagerow said:
cornographic said:
Guy Chamberlin said:
Dagerow said:
Guy Chamberlin said:
Savage Husker said:
Guy Chamberlin said:
Savage Husker said:
He's a good businessman, but he's a shark.
Won't deny that.
Savage Husker said:
Funny how his train oil spills don't make splash headlines like other environmental spills do.
There have been plenty of train crashes and they do make headlines, especially when there's a big fireball like the one in Virginia. Mainstream media covers them, and NBC News reported that oil train dereailments hit record numbers in 2014. Even the Daily Show did a segment on how trains might be more dangerous than pipelines. If the implication is that Buffett can buy, or simply get sympathetic treatment from liberal media on railroad related stories, it's a dubious connection. Train spills are typically much smaller and more easily contained than pipeline bursts, especially where water is concerned, so they might affect fewer people. The Keystone Pipeline story is pretty interesting in that it's hardly unique as pipelines go, but environmental organizations decided to draw a line in the stand and make Keystone a litmus test. I also think they really, really hate the Koch Brothers.
It's not even just liberal media, that he also owns, it's politicians and a president that veto the bill. But even heavy liberal media in Seattle WA are finally coming around to questioning BNSF and their lack of reporting spills.
I can definitely buy your last sentence.
Agree. The Koch Brothers are just awful human beings.
Yes, demonize people who have different ideas on how to address problems. (For those who don't know, they are libertarians that have the audacity to support ideals that they believe in, many of which liberals now embrace (gay marriage, legalize pot, etc.) and claim moral superiority).
It was a wee joke, aimed at a poster who was slyly demonizing a man with different ideas on how to address problems.
In truth, I would support the candidacy of a genuine Libertarian. And since America has an established Libertarian Party, I can't wait to see the Libertarian candidates the Koch Brothers will be funding with the billion dollars they've promised in the coming election cycle.
I think they're awful but hey....prove me wrong Koch Brothers!
Current 'Murican style 'Libertarianism' is basically a call for full on, unregulated corporate authoritarian/facist rule(just ask Ayn Rand) and the Koch Bros apparently want to own the whole world, like most of their ilk. The Koch Bros are big time anti Labor, union busters as shown by their puppet boy Scott Walker, and if they continue getting their way in 'Murica you will see the country slide back to a raher 3rd world scenario(extreme rich and poor) reminiscent of the USA before FDR.
Libertarianism actually has it's roots in 'Libertarian' or 'Anarcho Socialism' of the Enlightenment period of France and England(
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarian_socialism#Political_roots ), but of course, everything in 'Murica gets translated into capitalism, even though 'Murica has practiced state sponsored(publically funded--->privately profitted) 'capitalism' for many decades now.
Capitalism and libertarianism have similar philosophical roots and are by no means are exclusive (as your post suggests). They are both based in the principal of freedom, which at its core involves an individual's property rights, and captilism has been the single greatest source of (all) rights and prosperity in the history of the world.
(People have distorted the terms repeatedly and such confusion makes any real debate problematic until such terms can be agreed upon. Incidentally, I have heard a number of presentations and quotes from Koch, and he supports the libertarian ideals set forth above (or something close to it). Very few people are true libertarians, but the same is usually true of any party)
I can see you can't be inconvenienced by small things, such as facts, but prefer , "necessary illusions". Re: capitalism:
most(all) of the world is capitalistic and
most people in the world are poor, often to a desperate degree:
Almost half the world over three billion people live on less than $2.50 a day. At least 80% of humanity lives on less than $10 a day. More than 80 percent of the world's population lives in countries where income differentials are widening...
http://www.globalissues.org/article/26/poverty-facts-and-stats
Just to clarify your remark re: 'prosperity', capitalism concentrates control of resources, wealth, and power in the hnads of the few and leaves the masses--working classes, in particular--on the edge of survival, and that's a fact. "Capitalism", in America, is heavily state subsidized, especially in the fields of technology, finance, and agriculture(ask any famer in NE, for e.g.), and monopolization, so the whole 'free market capitalism' claim is basically a lie in that regard. I defer to Chomsky's term, "
really existing capitalism":
First, let me say that what I have in mind by the term "really existing capitalism" is what really exists and what is called "capitalism." The United States is the most important case, for obvious reasons. The term "capitalism" is vague enough to cover many possibilities. It is commonly used to refer to the US economic system, which receives substantial state intervention, ranging from creative innovation to the "too-big-to-fail" government insurance policy for banks, and which is highly monopolized, further limiting market reliance. It's worth bearing in mind the scale of the departures of "really existing capitalism" from official "free-market capitalism." To mention only a few examples, in the past 20 years, the share of profits of the 200 largest enterprises has risen sharply, carrying forward the oligopolistic character of the US economy. This directly undermines markets...
"Really existing capitalism - RECD for short (pronounced 'wrecked') - is radically incompatible with democracy."
http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/26538-can-civilization-survive-really-existing-capitalism-an-interview-with-noam-chomsky
