Ladies! Better move fast if you want to sink your talons into some hard-working, high-earning beta man-wallet! Men’s Rights Redditor ShinShinGogetsuko is on to you ladies and your devious ways, and he’s taking his video games and going home. By which I mean: he’s GOING GALT!
Men are choosing to reject the culture that is being forced upon them which tells them to be anything but MEN. What they want us to be is slaves, to throw away our souls and toil away while women get to do whatever they want in the name of “female empowerment” and with a court system that will side with them. Equality is the ideal, but it’s not about equality–it’s about control. Men are going Galt.
When society takes a stand against the destruction of men’s character, then men will return to being men. Until then, Xbox 720.
See, I wasn’t kidding about the video games bit.
LINK and SCREENSHOT.
Thanks to tim-buckles on ShitRedditSays for the link (and the screenshot).
@Pecunium: I am not denying that credit card companies aren’t responsible for bad business practices (e.g the entire debt collection process). However you have made some errors:
1) If you don’t like the contract, you don’t have to sign up for the card.
2) Terms can be negotiated. I recently did this with a few of my cards and had my interest rate drop. One of my cards went from 15% to 11%…all with a phone call.
3) Just as they can change their policies, you can change being their customer. Yes, they create contracts to serve their best interests, but not all credit cards are treated equal.
4) You don’t have to have a bank account. In fact, I went without one for a few years with no serious issues. Instead of paying $5-10 bucks a month for my checking account, I cashed my checks at Walmart for something like $2-3 bucks a whack.
5) I have never had a credit card cancel my cards because of non-usage. Although, I specifically look for that in any credit card contract I review.
If you don’t like BoA, then you did the correct thing my moving your money elsewhere.
Most regulation is actually in favor of big business and not small business. Large corporations have the resources to comply with those regulations where smaller businesses don’t have the capital to comply. Hence more regulations actually snuffs out smaller business which further allows big business to become monopolies.
Most regulation doesn’t even give the corresponding agencies foresight into current industry trends.
Did the SEC, the Fed and other congress subcommittees have the foresight into the current recession? Nope…they got up and said “Everything is A OK” right before the crash.
Did the MMS have the foresight into the BP oil disaster? Nope.
Does the FDA keep medication in limbo for years which could save thousands of people even though other first world countries are supplying them? Yup.
Small businesses are needed to help keep bigger businesses in check. Small businesses help force bigger businesses to not exploit customers because smaller businesses can offer better service, prices and other variables to siphon customers away from exploitative businesses. Small businesses basically act as a system of checks and balances to larger businesses. They also provide customers with more choices which is a good thing.
I propose creating a larger barrier between businesses and government like no corporate funds for political campaigns and other like-minded initiatives. The larger the rift between the two, the safer and better off people will be.
Ah yes Medicare. It is easy to be number one in customer support when they have the power of the government to undercut prices. Of course you are going to like the cheaper service better. Government agencies have the benefit of using taxpayer money to lower their prices while other private insurers don’t have that luxury.
Businesses that use offshore accounts and corporations is just a form of tax competition. Sometimes it’s easier to comply with Isle of Man’s tax regime as opposed to the US tax regime (which is a mess).
Floppies and CD’s? What is this the 90’s? Data can be stored on RAID hard drive servers that create redundancy. And cost per GB is extremely cheap. Also data on the web is far easier to convert into newer formats. Once data is made into plain text, it is easily converted to HTML, TeX and tons of other formats. Also it is a relatively simple process to convert old formats to newer formats. Gone are the days of tedious and time intensive file conversions.
Lastly, file formats are far easier to convert (.doc to .html to .pdf) than medium conversions (floppies to magnetic tape to CD’s). But even still…if the files are saved in non-proprietary file formats, the conversion is easy.
Degradation? Unlikely with RAID servers. Failed hard drives can be easily swapped and the other drives have enough data parity to re-populate the new hard drive.
Also, database corruption is solved by database replication. The government just has to do what large corporations do already: Replicate data to another location.
Practically all software is free of charge by using a simple LAMP setup: Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. So they wouldn’t even have to pay for software.
@Cynikal: The USPS also gets government money and they are still running in the red:
http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/annual-reports/fy2010.pdf
Look under “The Past Year In Review” Their operating losses are growing even while “Capital Contributions of U.S Government” are growing.
So even with more money from the government…they can’t even break even. Nevermind turn a profit. I can live without quasi-govt/private companies not making a profit (since they are funded by taxpayers). But they should at least break even.
The USPS also has exclusive rights to certain deliverables, mainly standard US Letters. This is why you don’t see UPS, FedEx or DHL accepting standard letters.
@Rutee: Do you also know that even with the increase of money per pupil, test scores aren’t increasing. As the old saying goes, “If money was the solution, the problem would already be solved”
You do know that UPS, FedEX and DHL ship globally? When I was younger, I worked for a Mailboxes Etc… I never once had a problem helping people ship packages to countries like Haiti using UPS or FedEx.
@Elizabeth: Yes magic elves run everything and it somehow gets done…Amazing huh?
Sarcasm aside:
1) There are automated book scanners that can pretty much automate much of the process. This is what large companies like Amazon and Google use to scan books into their libraries.
2) Nothing has to be destroyed. However the physical archives could be stored more compactly which means they would require less space to house them.
3) If the government can do one thing…it has the resources to undertake massive projects. See: moon landing, highway creation in the 50’s, the census, etc… They could hire a bunch of people temporarily to handle the backlog until it is finished. Just like all the temporary workers for the Census.
Several points, the Feds are already having the assistance of dozens of companies (including Google) and agencies to help scan their materials. And they still cannot manage to put into storage all the papers that the Feds have created in the 235 years of our existence. Plenty of those documents are not easily scanned like books are as well. Nor are they easy to read in the way they are scanned now so having an opportunity to look at the originals is pretty important.
To quote from the National Archives:
“The volume grows at about 1.4 billion pages per year. Creating copies for our web site, and preserving those copies, simply exceeds our resources at this time.”
So yeah, surprisingly it is not as simple as you assume it is. And even with all the help Google is getting in their book project (which is only books so is limited to the 130 million known), they still are going to to take ten years.
Probably not going to be able to do much more then what we have now-the various libraries and repositories have been doing this for a long time, they know how to pack it in pretty tightly. And again, some of this stuff has to be looked at in the original because of the poor quality of the scanning, documents themselves and other reasons.
I worked on the census in 2000, the difference between that operation and scanning something from 1813 is pretty stark. 100% of the census documents were designed specifically to be scanned so you could stack ’em mile high (even managed to have most of them returned in scannable condition.) However no one knew in 1813 that in 2011 someone was going to want to scan permissions to sail from 1812-1815 so they made no effort to make them easy to scan. Which is why when you look at that you squint and go “I cannot read that.” *proceed to pick up the phone to make an appointment to see if you can get a copy of the original or to go look at it.*
So again, there is simply no way of having only a few people sitting in DC keeping an eye on the massive databanks that will one day have most of these documents. Even with all the resources that keep being
diverted away from the projectspent on it.Or as 13 just pointed out to me: scan everything, create a massive AI system that can sort everything instantly, fire everyone, wait for apocalypse when the AI figures you gave it a crummy job and starts killing people.
@Elizabeth: I am not saying that it wouldn’t be a huge undertaking. However, it would vastly modernize and preserve those documents. Also, it would make those documents more easily accessible, thus making government more transparent and open.
The issue isn’t the difference between census paperwork (which is modernized) vs old documents. It is about the governments ability to fund massive projects. I am not talking about a few clerks scanning documents. I am talking about temporarily hiring thousands of people to do it. They would do the backlog, while any new documents would be digitized/scanned right from the start so that we wouldn’t end up with another massive warehouse of paper later on.
Brandon: Ah yes Medicare. It is easy to be number one in customer support when they have the power of the government to undercut prices. Of course you are going to like the cheaper service better.
No. One likes the service that provides the better service. Penny wise, and pound foolish, and all that.
And scale is one of those, “negotiating tools” you were just talking about in other contexts.
Most regulation doesn’t even give the corresponding agencies foresight into current industry trends.
Have you heard of regulatory capture? Are the SEC able to enforce laws congress repeals? Explain to me why there were no major financial crises from the time of Glass-Steagall until its repeal, but a real doozy in the two industries that had it repealed (the Savings and Loan Crisis, and the present banking mess)?
@Elizabeth: I am not saying that it wouldn’t be a huge undertaking.
Yes, you are.
1) There are automated book scanners that can pretty much automate much of the process. This is what large companies like Amazon and Google use to scan books into their libraries.
2) Nothing has to be destroyed. However the physical archives could be stored more compactly which means they would require less space to house them.
3) If the government can do one thing…it has the resources to undertake massive projects. See: moon landing, highway creation in the 50′s, the census, etc… They could hire a bunch of people temporarily to handle the backlog until it is finished. Just like all the temporary workers for the Census.
Dismissive in tone, and failing to take the scale into account, some automated scanners and some temporary labor and it’s all done. Which is wrong, on so many levels.
Scanning documents isn’t all that trivial an undertaking. It requires some skills which take some time to learn. Archivists aren’t hired in off the street, it’s a specialty for a reason. Those, “automated scanners” are narrow in their function. They aren’t built for things published in folio, or elephant; and they aren’t able to do things published in doudecimo, much less the smaller sizes very well.
But as with so many things, certainty trumps facts, and actual expertise is dismissed as irrelevant.
We’re sending the money to schools that are already doing fine. You do know how NCLB works, right?
So does USPS, and I never had a problem shipping globally with them. I’m willing to bet they all do it the same way; Fob final delivery off on public mail service in that country.
Shit, son, you already had it shown to you that they do this in Merika. Why do you think it’s suddenly different when they ship to, let’s say, Britain?
I said a lot more to you that detailed your stupidity, you should actually respond to it. Again: WHAT KIND OF MORON GIVES A FLYING FUCK ABOUT THE USPS’ PROFITABILITY AS PROOF OF ITS DOING WELL OR NOT. It’s not a company out to make a profit. Blackhawk out-earns the USAF, but it’s still a horrific thing. You didn’t even fucking respond to my point that part of that profitability is DIRECTLY AT WORKERS’ EXPENSE.
Oh right, you’re not a UPS worker, you’re a Brandon, and Brandon only cares about Brandon.
Oh please, you won’t even support highways and the USPS, why should we believe you actually support the spending increase in the short term, especially given that it doesn’t actually save much money in the long?
Ye gods.
1. And just…not buy things? This is the 21st century, dude. Not everything can be bought with cash. Or are you imagining that there’s a magical perfect credit card out there somewhere else?
2. Good for you?
3. Contracts. They mean you can’t change being their customer. If there’s money on your card, you’re stuck until you pay it off. Also, see #1.
4. Check cashing: Paying money to get the money you already earned. Also, you now no longer have a debit card, and, as per point #1, you don’t have a credit card either. Also, you do realize that there are services that require you to have a bank account, right?
5. This point is true.
Way to miss the point completely. I gave you the reason WHY the USPS is losing money and all you do is repeat your talking point.
If you were any dumber you’d lose arguments to Mac & Cheese.
@Pencunim:
Medicare: Better service? I read that and see “Pays for everything with ridiculously low co-pays, pays for services that aren’t needed, doctors love it cause they can overcharge medicare but not the patient, etc…
Archiving: No…I am saying it would be a massive undertaking, yet a lot of the process can be automated. You would need a large temporary work force to do all the backlog.
@Rutee: You made the claim that the USPS accepts all mail as if UPS and FedEx don’t. I have never been denied shipping something from any major mail carrier.
I am not really worried about the USPS being profitable. However, I do expect them to break even (since they are actually charging money for their services). Breaking even allows the USPS to continue operations without having to constantly go back to the tax payer and asking for more money. Hence raising the tax burden on citizens when they don’t have to. It also allows the USPS some protection when services are getting cut. What politician would cut the USPS when they aren’t losing money? Not many.
ummm…I support highways. I have no problems with the government owning the roadways. I am also not opposed to privately managed roads. Both are fine.
If the USPS broke even, I wouldn’t care if they exist. But in the grander scheme of things, the more important money issues regarding the government is making major programs solvent (Social security).
@Katz:
1) Cash does not equal credit. Everything in this country can be bought with cash, hence the whole “This is legal tender” on all the bills. Businesses have to accept it. Debit cards aren’t credit and can be used for purchases where cash can’t be transferred (e.g the Internet).
2) The point was that Pencunim made the claim that terms can’t be negotiated. This is flat out untrue and many people have done it, including myself.
3) You only have to remain their customer if you owe them money. If you don’t like the new terms, go find a 0% Balance Transfer card and transfer the money from the card you don’t like to the one you do. You get the benefit of getting rid of a card you don’t want and not having to pay interest for a set amount of time.
While you can’t get rid of the actual debt, you can shuffle it around to places where you get the best terms.
4) You can live just fine without a bank account. Plus you avoid all those stupid fees they charge. So unless you plan on buying a house, renting a car or borrowing money anytime soon, you can live and work just fine. There are alternative like money orders and check cashing places. And since most banks are getting rid of “free checking” you might actually save money by using check cashing places over depositing it into a bank.
O RLY? Ever bought something on the Internet? I’m sure Amazon will let you mail them an envelope of bills.
Dude, you’re proving my point.
@Katz:
1) There are Internet merchants that accept checks and money orders. Amazon also allows you to link checking accounts to your Amazon account. So you don’t need credit to buy things on their site. A bank account, yes. Credit, no.
2) Not really. Besides a few things that require a bank account/credit (e.g renting a car) or payment where physical cash is needed, you can live without a bank account.
The point being was that you don’t need to apply for a credit card, accumulate debt, then pay interest on it for the majority of things in life. Even still a debit card will solve the majority of those problems. And if you don’t really buy things online…you can even live without one of those.
“You can live just fine without a bank account. Plus you avoid all those stupid fees they charge. So unless you plan on buying a house, renting a car or borrowing money anytime soon, you can live and work just fine.”
So anyone that has to work in a town with poor public transportation, or has a job that requires a car is just dumb? Cars are still pretty vital to a lot of people, especially if you don’t live in a large city.
Brandon, I may be remembering this wrong, but I thought you owned your own business. You’re never going to need a loan?
Lets see. No bank account = always carrying cash. It also means going to places which will cash the check for you. If you want to buy something which is a large value item you need to save, and save, and save, to have all the cash on hand.
Nope, that’s not got any detrimental effect on someone’s quality of life.
Debit Card = fees/money tied up in minimum balance. Also, if your bank isn’t one of the big ones, you have to pay fees to use an ATM, or go places which will give you cash back. (and BofA, among others just changed the terms of the contract, debit cards now cost $5 a month). Hit another bank’s ATM and pay them a fee (call it 2.50) and your bank (call it 2.50), suddenly you are paying a 5 percent rate to get at $100 of your money. If you don’t think about it, you might be paying 20 percent to get 20 bucks. That’s your idea of “providing a service”?
No, of course not. You will say it’s the consumer’s fault; it’s not that the companies are “taking” money and giving nothing in return, it’s people being stupid.
Good luck getting a loan for something like a car, at any sort of reasonable rate, if you don’t have a credit card (see above about the problems which come of paying cash).
So you say that businesses can’t just, “take money” while not really providing a service, and yet the system is stacked so that not taking part in the, “service” they provide is only possible if you are willing to live your life in a drastically more inconvenient way.
No matter what you do you will pay more for everything. Those debit cards have a significant amount in the way of fees. In 2010 the hidden tax from using debit cars (interchange fees) was 18.8 billion dollars. That’s money that came from your pocket, in the form of merchants charging higher prices because banks don’t charge a flat rate on debit purchases, but on a sliding scale.
It’s why some places won’t let you use the debit feature on your card; because they lose money when you make larger purchases. Everyplace else the cost of the fee is hidden in the price of things, and the shopkeeper has to guess what the margins are, so she can make a living.
The cost to the bank of each transaction is the same, but the charge isn’t.
That’s taking money for doing nothing.
“The point being was that you don’t need to apply for a credit card, accumulate debt, then pay interest on it for the majority of things in life.”
Ah, there’s the point. Personally I have a credit and a debit card. I use the debit for the majority of my purchases, and the credit card for emergencies (which so far has been maybe once or twice a year, so I don’t have debt on it).
But still… no bank account? I know the banks apparently fucked up the economy, but I’m still not comfortable keeping my money in my mattress or buried in the back yard.
I’d like to note really quickly that none of this shit happens to me because I use a credit union. I highly recommend them for peons.
None of it forgives the banks or makes Brandon’s point tenable, but there are non-screwing options.
Are you blind or stupid? Cynickal already posted the blazonly advertised policy of using the USPS for expensive delivery.
You pretended that the government having a ‘monopoly’ on roads wasn’t a ‘fair comparison’, as if they don’t create important value. FYI, I’ve seen toll roads; I avoid them entirely. The ‘value’ is nil.
Eat the rich. They’re trying to do it to you. You’re stupid, aren’t you?
Rutee: Credit unions are a lot easier now, then they were. I’m suffering (a little) because I’ve moved, so I have only one place in a hundred miles I can make a deposit. Credit unions are also (so it seems) much less common around here (for branches/types) than I’ve seen them in the West. Tennessee is a vast wasteland (I had some checks, I had to sign them to my father and have him wire me the money, it was unbelievable).
But yes, credit unions are much better than banks, all around.
Oh my fucking god. He can’t write two paragraphs without contradicting himself.
@Molly: People that need cars aren’t dumb and I have lived in urban and rural areas so I know that having a car is more important in “random farm town” compared to NYC.
You can avoid paying for a car with credit by paying in cash. My first car was a $2000 clunker, so while you might not be able to save $50,000 to buy a BMW, you can easily buy a cheap used car.
If you want a bank account, then go for it. No one is saying that bank accounts aren’t useful. I am just making the point that one can live without credit or a bank account depending on the lifestyle they live.
@Rutee: Yes and the USPS hands off global mail to local mail carriers…what is your point? If the USPS isn’t charging UPS/FedEx for handling their mail, then the USPS is fucking stupid and it is their own fault.
Even most toll roads in the US are still managed by some federal/state transportation agency.
Comparing mail and roads is like comparing apples and oranges.
If you want to compare apples to apples, then you need to compare a government service to a private service that does roughly the same thing. USPS = UPS, public schools = charter schools = private schools, public roads = private/toll roads.
Saying that it isn’t a “fair comparison” doesn’t mean they don’t provide value. It just means they aren’t closely enough related to actually compare. It’s like saying apples and airplanes can be compared.
If you don’t like toll roads, then do what you are doing and don’t use them. Pretty simple.
Did you actually have a point to make about making government services like SSI solvent or do you think that hurling insults is a valid retort?
@Katz: We are really talking about two different things. The need for credit and the need for a bank account.
Credit needed: Bank loans, renting a car, mortgage.
Bank account needed: Not carrying all your money on you, making internet purchases easier.
So if you don’t plan on borrowing money, renting a car from Hertz or buying a house…you can live fine with just a debit card and a bank account.
If you don’t plan on doing the above as well as not having a problem with carrying/storing your money outside of a bank or buying products online….you can live without both credit and a bank account.
It really all depends on how one structures their lives and their goals. I have lived with both credit/debit cards and without them. I had a few minor inconveniences, but nothing major since I wasn’t buying a house or renting a car.
No we’re not. You’ve said that it’s possible to live without either, so we’re talking about both things. Saying “You don’t need a bank account for that, you can use a credit card” is disingenuous since you’re saying that you don’t need either one.
Aaaand now we’re back in “things that Brandon doesn’t want aren’t necessary for anyone” land. How nostalgic. :p
Brandon: The USPS is not taxpayer supported. That’s one of the biggest myths about the USPS, and the most annoying to employees, who get to hear entitled douchnozzles whinge about how ‘their’ money is being wasted. believe me, It gets really fucking aggravating, especially when such complaints are interspersed with threats to blow up post offices or hunt you down and rape you (yes, I got both when I did telephone CS for USPS).
Source: http://bit.ly/nzMSyK
@Katz: And you can live without either. But it depends on how you live your life.
Also it is the other way around, it’s not: “You don’t need a bank account for that, you can use a credit card”
it’s: “You don’t need credit for that, you can use a debit card/bank account”
Both bank accounts and credit serves a purpose. However, if their purpose doesn’t mean much to you, then you can go without.
@Bagelsan: What is so hard to understand? People structure their lives in different ways. Some people can’t live without credit cards or a debit card while others move through life with neither. It all depends on what you want to do and what your priorities are. I am not the only one that has lived without either…many have and many do live without credit or debit by their own decisions.
If you work a simple paycheck to paycheck job and earning a weekly paycheck, you don’t really need either. However if you are in the real estate business, it seems highly unlikely you can do anything without credit (unless you have a serious bankroll).
So one can not make a blanket statement saying credit/bank accounts are useless. It really depends on your lifestyle and your life circumstances.
Brandon: I know that saying what you mean doesn’t come naturally to you, but can you please just answer:
Do you or do you not think that people can reasonably live without both? That is, they have neither a credit card nor a bank account?
@KathleenB: If you look at the USPS 2010 annual report, you will see under “this past year in review”. It has a line item that reads “capital contributions of US government”.
Now they may be using different definitions of “capital” and “contributions”. But I read that as “Money given to USPS by the US federal government”
It’s not like I got this data from some random blog…I got it from the USPS website:
http://about.usps.com/who-we-are/financials/annual-reports/fy2010.pdf
Also, the link that you provided also doesn’t prove your point since the first line on the second to last paragraph reads:
“The USPS does get some taxpayer support.”
Brandon: The impression that most have is that USPS is fully taxpayer-funded. That, in fact, was your implication above.
@Katz: I think for certain people no. They need credit and a bank account. I found that I could reasonably live without either. A few of my friends don’t have either and they live just fine as well.
It isn’t until you need to do what I listed above does credit come into play. If anything bank accounts are a convenience (debit cards, online bill pay, etc…).
So if you work, don’t have a lot of bills and rent a small apartment, you can work, cash checks at places like Walmart, pay bills with money orders. And if your needs are pretty small, the fees to do all that can be less than the monthly fees banks charge. (since free checking is dying).