Re: dbts: Privacy Fetishes, Perfect Competition, and the Foregone (fwd)

[Petro <petro@playboy.com>]

At 3:50 AM -0500 11/14/98, Bill Stewart wrote:
>At 12:18 PM 11/11/98 -0500, Petro or other people wrote:
>>	Sub-contracting can often lead to cost savings. For instance,
>>instead of each insurer having their own fire station network, they could
>>all share one, and only pay a certain cost-per-subscriber.
>
>Government subcontracting can be yet another excuse for graft and kickbacks
>or it can be an opportunity for the private sector to seriously compete
>for government business, or at least an opportunity to compete for graft :-)
>Sometimes this can save money for the public, though seldom as much
>as letting services be provided by the private sector.

	We weren't talking about Government Contracting (which I'll agree
with you would be politely called a scam), but rather in a crypto-anarchic
enviroment whereby an insurer or several insurers would pay a subcontractor
(the local fire prevention/suppression company).

>>>> 	Looking different is not illegal.
>What's that, white boy?

	It's not illegal for me to die my hair Green and Pick, and wear a
Tutu and black patent leather pumps. In this case, it probably should be,
but isn't.

>>>> 	Thinking different is not illegal.
>Always has been, anywhere, any time....

	Not in any legal book in this country.

>>	Listen Fuckwad:
>>	(1) there are paved roads from one coast to the other, as well as
>>railways.
>>	(3) Most of the roads being built with federal funds are for
>>"congestion  relief", not roads to new places so troops can move.
>
>Of course they are, and everybody's pretty much known it all along,
>but "defense" was the excuse used for having the Feds get into the
>road-building business on a much more massive scale than ever before.
>Much of it corresponded nicely with "urban renewal", the 60s policy
>of making cities more beautiful by replacing black peoples' houses with
>freeways.  Once (white) people got used to freeways, they mostly
>stopped complaining about expenditures, and started complaining that
>they didn't have _their_ freeway yet.

	So it's time for the feds to get out. We can't afford more roads,
and they aren't needed.

>>	The Army. Marines, and National Guard are fully capable of getting
>>whereever they need to go with our without the current highway system, if
>>they weren't they'd be worthless.
>No, but the industrial base that keeps the military functioning
>does benefit from the highway system.

	It benefits far more from the rapidly deteriorating rail system,
and besides, we have enough roads.

>>	(2) There hasn't been a war fought on CONUS since we attacked Mexico.
>Excuse me?  Are you talking about some recent attack on Mexico,
>or are you referring to the Mexican War of 1846?

	Actually, I was thinking of the one that Teddy Rossevelt was in,
unless I have my history confused.

>Or are you contending that the Confederate States weren't part of the
>Contiguous United States, and therefore the Union's ReConquest
>of the South wasn't in CONUS?  Or that the Indian wars in the west
>weren't wars, just Police Actions, or that the various ex-Mexican
>territories weren't States yet, and thus not CONUS?

	If IRC, Roosevelt Attacked (or counterattacked) Mexico in the late
1800's or early 1900's.

	That would have been after the Indian Wars, After the UnCivil War.
Anyway, there hasn't been a war fought on the Main Land USA in a LONG
fucking time, and the next one's going to be another UnCivil war where the
roads will help both sides.

	It's a crap excuse.
--
"To sum up: The entire structure of antitrust statutes in this country is a
jumble of economic irrationality and ignorance. It is a product: (a) of a
gross misinterpretation of history, and (b) of rather na�ve, and certainly
unrealistic, economic theories." Alan Greenspan, "Anti-trust"
http://www.ecosystems.net/mgering/antitrust.html

Petro::E-Commerce Adminstrator::Playboy Ent. Inc.::petro@playboy.com