Florida College Girls in their Undies!

hahaha....I love you Kory...thanks for the fun post! You do put up good points too......man, I miss this sort of debate in class!

 

OOOoooooooooooo this is just like the Center for Humane Studies all over again from a couple of years ago. Man that was fun. Alright, now that I'm warmed up I'm going to try and be on game. I'll be direct crossing this.

Where did it come from I wonder? Did Uncle Sam go around tossing money in the streets? Did the war fairy pass out checks?

Okay, I'm sorry, that was a little inappropriate, but I'm trying to make a point in a visual manner. The reason the poor had money again was because they got back to working. Wages during WWII did not meaningfully increase from pre war levels, nor was there any wage explosion in the post war economy. The reason they were poor before was because they couldn't find jobs, because there was no consumer confidence, and total manufacturing output dropped precipitously because consumers stopped buying goods. This was the result of the fall out of the middle class in America thanks to the sudden stock market crash. More specifically--the stock market crash destroyed the economy because ethical and safe buying practices weren't being used prior to the crash. Massive high end speculation (especially in real estate) left a market flush with cash resting on no foundation. The crash and subsequent economical impact were inevitable at that point. Incredibly enough, as my family knows first hand... neither the depression nor the war did much at all for the poor. They didn't lose any money in the depression, nor get rich from anything from the New Deal or the War. The overall economic disaster was the sole fault of too many people playing "get rich quick" all at once without any thought to the long term consequences.

Were they supposed to? Many "rich" Americans did in fact lose vast sums of money during the depression, including almost all of the "stock rich." The stories about people throwing themselves out of pent house apartments in new york are not fiction.

Um, the movie was about a horse. And i don't believe in the myth of the liberal media. The facts are-- better than 85% of base level media workers, especially anchors at all levels, are self-classified as liberals. However, media executives at the highest levels are overwhelmingly Republican. So whatever you think about bias in the media, the subject is nowhere near as simply as it always appears.

Aside from that, however, am i supposed to take the narration in a feature film loosely based on a historical story (built around horse racing) as definitive evidence for a complicated economic question? I hope not, or my economy seminars were wasted.

I'm disappointed Kory, citing Seabiscuit is an awfully weak rejoinder. Hit me with books!

Again, I'm going to argue that this is just plain wrong. Number one-- the United States was enjoying an incredibly prosperous time of economic growth and positive hopefulness immediately prior to the great depression. The middle class grew at an incredible rate, they had more money than ever before, massive amounts of venture capital was spent, and a great deal of fiscally irresponsible tactics were employed not by the rich, but by the middle class. If the rich had been doing it, they would have been ruined too.

As for during the great depression... once the economic bottom fell out of the middle class and consumer spending dropped precipitously, manufacturing owners and upper level people and yes even the rich in their corporations has no CHOICE but to cut production and cut costs by reducing labor. If you're not selling shoes... you can't just go hire more shoe makers. With massive amounts of venture capital gone form the economy, the buying power of the united states disappeared.

And don't ignore the massive impact of the dust bowl. That all these forces collided at the same incredible time is what caused the Depression. With the American farmer put out of business by his inability to compete with larger corporate farms due to the drought conditions, a massive unemployed sector was created which further drained the economy.

And if you want to know why that was so bad.... blame FDR. The farm based subsidies he created to try to stop this are universally considered by economists to have been nothing more than a stop gap which eventually made the problem it was designed to fix ten times worse. Those subsidies eventually drove UP the cost of the goods at the consumer level, continuing the cycle of lessened buying power, causing further drops in profit from production, causing even more farms to go under. This is the reason why basic food stuffs cost so much still in the united states by comparison to in other countries considering the higher efficiency of American farming.

I'll tackle the last part of this first. During the time of the pharoahs the lowest regions of society had no wealth, lived in communal housing, were SLAVES, could be regularly beaten, whipped, or sacrificed at the pleasure of those above them. They were not allowed to leave their homeland in search of better opportunity, and the pharoah enjoyed literal god power.

Please tell me now that we have it worse than them economically.

This "fact" gets touted more contextually inaccurately than anything else I ever hear. It's actually got a specific name as a "fallacy" in both economics and philosophy, but I can't quite recall the name. Either way, I'll explain why.

Yes, today the poorest people on earth theoretically have "zero dollars." although this is itself a highly unrepresentative idea. The richest has something in the realm of a few hundred billions dollars. Thus the total difference in wealth from top to bottom is several hundred billion.

Go watch austin powers.... remember how Dr. Evil initially asks for a million dollars in ransom at first because he thinks it's a lot of money, and then gets told that today VirtueCon makes billions?

Why?

Because there's more money TOTAL in the world now than ever before!! More wealth over all!

If I start with 40 dollars, and my buddy starts with 100, then at stage A I am -60 to him. Fast forward ten years. I now have 100 dollars, and my buddy has 500.

Guess what... i'm now down -400.

But... does that mean shit? I've gone up 60 dollars. This is the exact same thing (on a much grander scale) that is being ignored by the "disparity of wealth" argument you're giving.

Not to mention... nobody bothers to affect real inflation adjustment and goods worth analysis on the pharoah. They built massive pyramids at whim. They employed millions (or at least hundreds of thousands) of slaves perpetually. Translated into current goods value... the pharoahs controlled about 600 trillion dollars or so at the height of their powers. Bill gates ain't got shit on that.

 

I'll take this at length. Thus far, I've pretty well handled the claim that either WWII or FDR's legislation meaningfully righted the economy via any miraculous forces. So what about this natural ebb and flow of the dog stuff?

Kory, you would love reading Alexis de Toqueville's "The Wealth of Nations." It's still the definitive book on the free market. If you don't go for stuff that old, I can suggest a few handfuls of great modern economists for you instead.

The simple truth is this--you will almost never find a trained economist who is an outright left wing democrat. Don't exist, not gonna find em. If you do find one.... you'll find out it's because of some hatred of the GOP for non economic reasons.

You're dealing with the fundamental philosophical problem of "scarcity." There is a limited amount of total resources in the world such that unchecked consumption will result in the total annihilation of those resources and end in global disaster.

This is about the second most written about thing in philosophy. Reference Leviathan by Thomas Hobbs for the best example.

Unfortunately, you're leading down a dead end path. Problem--you don't want us to leave the food out for the dog, right? Cause he'll eat it all. Two things you missed--there are a whole lot of dogs... and who the hell is the person (who is apparently not a dog?) who gets to decide how to leave the food out in the first place?

The furthest termination of your line of reasoning is always a social/communist ideal which we know from history itself never works. You worry that if we leave the food out for the dogs, they'll all go crazy and eat it all and all starve. or at least some will starve. The big dogs will keep the food away from the little dogs. Then just they will starve. Right?

Okay... so instead we parcel the food out according to... well... good question. How do we parcel it out? Do some dogs get more than others, or do all dogs get equal parts food? And what's to stop some dogs from deciding after the distribution to take from the small dogs anyway? What's to stop gangs of dogs from joining together to fight other dogs for their food? is it the good benevolent nature of the dogs? But wait... if the dogs were good and benevolent and informed to start with... why would they eat all the food if we left it out?

Oh and there's another problem. Where the hell did the food come from? Heaven? Or did the dogs have to go out and find it, work for it, cultivate it? Okay, so now all the dogs go out and work all day, and when they come home they put the food together, and somebody (still haven't decided who that benevolent good trustworthy person is yet?) splits it all up for them.

But if all the dogs are going to get equal parts anyway... why work as hard as the dog next to you? Heck, if you work harder than he does... you're dumb cause you're just working for somebody else to have more to eat. Cause you're not getting any more to eat, that's "unfair."

So really, all the dogs's have in their best interests to do as little as they can. But of course if they do that... there's less overall, so now all the dogs go to bed hungry. Probably except the ones passing out the food of course.

So now if you're a smart dog, you're either taking from somebody after the food is passed out, or you're hiding the food you worked for and sneaking it when you can, or you're just trying to become a special dog that gets to pass out the food. What you are not doing is working on better ways to get the food in the first place, or anything else to improve the lives of your fellow dogs.

I wonder how Russia liked being those dogs? I wonder why the only time Russia got better was by stop the redistributive communism.

And i didn't even touch the most massive question of... if some dogs are out working for more than other dogs, where the hell does somebody get the right to take that dog's food and give it to another dog? Without an explanation of how you're ignoring the concept of "dessert" I can't even begin to guess how you're justifying redistribution.

Just because some dogs get less than others does not mean there is something morally wrong with the world or with the system. I'm not saying there is nothing wrong with the system we have now... there is much I would change. There is real unfairness and discrimination. There is systematic marginalization of a massive kind that nobody talks about.

But it's not because the poor have less than the rich. The poor have always had less than the rich, and will always have less than the rich. Some will be poor, and some will be rich. It's the nature of scarcity. of the world. There is no massive all powerful redistributors sitting around making everything equal, and there never can be. And if you tried, you'd starve all the dogs even faster, not to mention you'd be making them virtually slaves in the meantime.

The answer is not as simple as "take from john and pay peter." If only it were... but it's not. The fundamental idea of old school liberal economics is, to paraphrase comically, "tax and spend! tax and spend!"

Except of course that governments naturally waste a much higher amount of money in overhead and red tape than any corporation could afford to, and thus are less efficient at distributing wealth than any other entity in the world. Meaning you give back less than you take... and so on and so on until, yes, all the dogs are starving again.

The only hope for prosperity, as economists since Alexis de Toqueville have pointed out, is the free market. In the free market (and the freer the better) the only motivational factor is "do as well for myself as I can." Guess what... if you are lazy, or less skilled, or less motivated, etc etc... you may very well not do very well for yourself.

It is not social Darwinism to accept this as okay. Trying to be blind and think there is any other way to do it that is not a disaster is what is both unfounded, undefended, irrational, and often crazy.

Only in the free market can you have the human quality of charity--as a person can only give to others from their own excess (rationally speaking). Not all may do so... but then if it's not truly free and voluntary it's not charity anymore, and you're back to redistributive starving dogs.

We can no more make everyone rich than we can make everyone taller, or smarter, or faster. And even if we did make everyone smarter, or taller, or faster... some would still manage to succeed higher than the others. Even if we made everyone rich... took all the money and gave it back out equally... within five years some would be poor and some would be rich.

And in the process we'd have had to throw worldwide french style revolutions and induce terror and violence on everyone in the world.

If he's got a house, and a TV, and a Grand Theft Auto IV playing on Playstation III... how the hell is he poor? In the 3rd world there is REAL poor, poor that I've seen with my own eyes. In the US the average family under the "poverty line" has a home, a TV, a phone, a car.... and basically more than my great grandparents had when they came to this country and more than half of the middle class in India can hope to have.

I was a "poor college student." I was broke most of the time. I worked $6 dollar an hour jobs burning and scalding my hands since I was 14. I never had extra. i always felt bad, miserable even for being poor.

I had a crappy old car, clothes from sears (not abercrombie, I'm poor remember), and was in COLLEGE. That's not poor... that's not disadvantaged... it's a phase in my life getting started out. I worked my ass off, succeeded, have ambition, and soon will be making SICK money. Dirty Evil money. Tobacco company lawyer money. Sports Agent money.

Because the system works. Because you can't go from the bottom to the top unless you've got the freedom in the market to do so. Because once you get fed up with the market... you can't go up or down anymore... you can only go down.


(portions of this post were paraphrased directly from sections of my junior thesis "Free Market Economies and Fairness--Why Distribution is the worst enemy of the poor" published in limited run at West Virginia University in 2003.---how cool is that... I have to site myself)

 

For fuck's sake...

I get off the train, and not only are there new pics and the usual insane ramblings early on in the thread, but it's turned into an American History / Politics debate!

Great pics, PKK. You've got yourself some hot ones there, dontcha?

And I'm purposely keeping my nose out of this one. I'm a man of science. Or art. Or whatever the fuck medicine is (educated guesses, most of the time )

 

So Can we have this in the general forum and get back to how hot brooke and Kory are?

 

^^DITTO

 

OMG, you wrote so much bullshit in there, I don't even know where to start.

As far your analysis of FDR and WWII: "Historians and economists widely believe"... that's not "hitting me with books," either.

All that says to me is something I already know. That you learned U.S. history and the economy in West Virginia. And they had some books.

I'm not a finance major, or an ecomomist, but I know Democrats and Republicans who are. Both have "text books" and "expert studies" that mirror their beliefs, and they are happy to whip them out. I don't know complex economic theory, (which neither of us, I might add, has actually delved into) but I do know something about people, and why they do things. The Republican "experts" I know get a sick little twinkle in their eye when they're arguing with their "facts." The look of a smug, stubborn, evil person.

Classics like "Wealth of Nations" and "Leviathan" contradict each other. You can cite them to make a case on either side of so MANY issues. You, as a philosophy major, should know that. There is a text-book, or trade journal resouce to justify ANY argument.

I mean, there are oil company-funded scientific studies that say global warming is a falacy, and it doesn't exist. That it's all part of a big heating cycle that the planet goes through. Sounds suspiciously also like the economic theories about "cycles" I was hearing from you.

The rest of the world is pretty much looking at us now like, "Hello..." when it comes to global warming.

I don't believe that everybody who doesn't ask Jesus into their hearts is going to hell, and I don't believe that every country but the U.S of A. is communist, stupid, and jealous. Much like your closed-minded fear of foreign journalism. Nearly the entire world hates America right now and there are some pretty damn good reasons why. It's not because they are communists, idiots, or jealous.

Here's my angry joke. I think we may just may keep on stubbornly insisting there is no global warming until it becomes pandemic, and the U.S. corporations who can profit by countering the disaster will lobby Washington for contracts. Maybe Haliburton will be paid a no-bid contract for - what... air-conditioned stadium communities, or something. Little joke.

Like Seabiscuit. Mentioning "Seabiscuit" was not a "rejoiner"... it had a smiley face next to it. And that story was only "about a horse" on the surface level.

Every analogy and similie has a breaking point. The fact that my analogy about the dog that can't control himself was stretched by you until it broke is not impressive. I could say, "Tye runs like a deer." And then you could say, "Well so she runs on all fours? So she has hooves? If so, how come I haven't seen them on the website?" You would be missing the thrust of the comparison. I am saying Tye is fast, like deer are fast. Just like I compared big business and corporations to a dog, who doesn't know how to keep from devouring everything to the point that it's own body can't be sustained anymore.

The dog was my symbol for the American economy. There are no other dogs in this symbolic scene... that's a totally different analogy, when you start talking about corporations competing with eachother. The fact that corporations are competing with each other so viciously, and with tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of employees that are each responsible for maximizing the profits of their employer at any costs is WHY I would compare the sum total of U.S. corporations to a dog that can't control itself. It's wired to take what it can, right now, and to hell with "tomorrow."

Like Sprint. My cellphone is with them. I hooked it up to automatically charge my balance to my credit card. Three months go by, and I decide to check my statement. There was a $275 charge from Sprint! Since I had opted to recieve a $5 per month bonus NOT to recieve paper statements in the mail anymore, and since the online statements don't itemize the bills, but only give me general balances, I had to call an OPERATOR at the company to figure out why I was whacked with such a huge bill all of a sudden. She said, "Oh, it looks like we accidently forgot what calling plan you were on. Everything will be returned back to normal Your PCS to PCS is back on the plan. Sorry! Goodbye..."

YEAH RIGHT. Corporations these days pay their people to think of things like that... to calculate how many customers in every hundred who have arranged automatic payments would dispute the amount. And whether the cost of the additional customer service would outweigh the additional profits of a triple dip on a credit card.

It was the reason I was hesitant to stop the monthly paper statements and recieve their "bonus." I thought - these guys are too smart to just give out $5 a month for free... and there is NO WAY that it costs them $5 to print these statements out and mail these to me. I figured they must have done an in-house study that determined there are less customer disputes from the people without statements.

Combine the two things: automatic credit card billing and no paper trail, and I was probably statistically UNLIKELY to get my money refunded as I did.

Look at what AOL got caught doing: billing the extra month of service to everyone. That was in the news a couple years back, because a judge found them guilty and whacked a mult-million dollar award out of their pockets. (The kind of judge that the GOP want out of the courts, IMA, and replaced by corporate yes-men and women like Priscilla Owens)

When there is no check on the big dog, he takes whatever he wants, and too fast. $70 a month wasn't good enough for Sprint. They wanted $300 and all right now. Would that hurt my ability to pay my other bills that month? Maybe. Maybe not. Doesn't hurt them. So what the fuck do they care.

Just like the factory owners pre-depression, who figured they could pay 15 cents an hour to men, work them 18 hours a day, and that that would never bite them in the ass in the long run. It did, when suddenly no one in the country could BUY anything.

The stock market collapse was one problem. The speculating on over-valued stocks that couldn't be sustained wouldn't have created The Great Depression on it's own, and you know it.

 

Your right we do feel misunderstood but luckily I am a Narcisist so I just think it is because they are less intelligent than me I think there are probably quite a few of us roaming around but we just don't talk about those things because we don't think anyone would understand or care about of Philosophical Ramblings. Philosophy and Law? No wonder you like to talk so much.

I agree Linus. Too many words and not enough of them about hot girls. So in that spirit here is a little Riley.



Enjoy and HEY KORY! did you see the last pic I posted on the threadof Brooke? What da ya think? (It is the bottom of page 5)

 

wow, that's NEAT!

Good job, NyteWolfe. I'd have to say she looks completely different with the blue eyes.

Yeah, I agree about not writing essays in here. I'll stop.

It started to remind of the bar scene in Good Will Hunting, a little bit. "Vicus says..."

 

Everything is awesome about that picture. I love what you did with shading on her body.

What if her eyes were jet black, though? Since it's not truly an overall "scary" pic, like Tye's, do you think less blue on the eyes might work for the better? I want to try, but I don't want to manhandle your baby.

I did see the Brooke one... very neat idea with the map tattoo on her skin. Honestly, I was afraid at first she had lepresy on her arms when I looked at it though! But it looked great on her legs. It was clearer what it actually was over the lower part of her body.

Thanks for making those! I really appreciate it. We'll use em.

 

I could do black. Or I could do like white glowy insane eyes I'll see what I can do. Riley was so cute I was having a hard time making her scarry.

Oh that overlay on Brooke is actually a imprint of some coin that rusted into a piece of metal. I used it because of the discussion going on. Not that anyone could tell that but that was just my own little inspiration there.

Good Will Hunting. LOL yeah I was thinking the same thing. Anybody got some caramels?

"See you Monday. We'll be talking about Freud and why he did enough cocaine to kill a small horse.""

 

You guys are awesome. I must admit I had to stop somewhere to get back to ogling hot chicks, but this is quite a smart champagne room! Hello everybody!

 

Hey guys, I thought I would pass this along for a laugh... when I posted these pics on another board in a duplicate dummy-post to this one, some guys just said, "Brooke's cute but I bet she doesn't know shit about FDR." I gave him a little recap of this discussion, just for kicks.

 

those are great!!!

 

That is too funny. See why do guys assume hot chicks are dumb? Nothing sexier than an intelligent beautiful woman IMHO.

 

You are correct...Kory...thanks for the novel and just so you all know....

I WAS OFFERED THE HIGH SCHOOL POSITION! Go me...gonna drink by my favorite fake pool in CO....haha

 

Awesome Shoob! Congratulations. Good to know the youth is in good hands ;-)

 

Wow. She is hott. Nice pics.

 

call me when they are naked

 

^^^is this going to be your respone to every NN model out there?