Madison320
Member

It's irrelevant whether Trump got money from USAID. The important thing is that it ends. It's not hypocritical to simultaneously take government benefits while trying to end them. Did you cash your covid stimulus check? Did you think the policy was wrong?

I agree. The problem for me is it doesn't feel sustainable. I still think that the incentive structure is for government to grow because people tend to vote for free stuff and the federal reserve is able to print the money for that free stuff. Although the odds are improving my bet is still that Trump wipes out any doge savings with some of his pet projects like the Iron Dome. I don't think we'll really be able to cut government until we have our "argentina moment" which is hyperinflation.

I think you should have wealth first before you can think about investing it.

The problem I see is that Trump is very likely to wipe out any savings by undertaking any number of things he's talked about doing. The Iron Dome. The Gaza Strip. The Panama Canal. Greenland. At this point I'd say there's more than a 50-50 chance that we're going to have high to hyperinflation and a major economic collapse under Trump's watch, especially if he doesn't cut spending OVERALL. If that happens people that were celebrating will lose all credibility.

It's way too early for celebrating. The debt clock is at 36.2 trillion. Let's see where it is in a year.

Trump is doing some good things but my early impression is he's penny wise but pound foolish. For example the iron dome. Still early though, let's see how much the debt goes up in the first year.

I like the idea of ending birthright citizenship and only deporting someone if they've committed a crime here. Ending birth right citizenship: minimizes the burden of illegals and their children since they can't vote and they won't qualify for welfare as easily. Only deporting active criminals: prevents the "door to door show me your papers" problem

That's a stupid idea. It's opening the door for a dictatorship. Not for Trump, he's too old and there's a really good chance this gigantic debt bubble pops during his term and nobody will want him to run again anyway. Imagine President Gavin Newsome, for the next 30 years...

If we explicitly declared that all corporate decisions will be made by the US government, as you appear to be in favor of, no corporations would exist in the US. Then we absolutely would become venezuela.

I'm not following how any of what you said proves that you can deny the rights of (in this case censor) a corporation (group of owners) but not an individual. Suppose Bob decides to have a garage sale and he hires Fred to run the sale while Bob is out of town. In this scenario Bob is equivalent to the shareholders and Fred is the CEO. Fred would be the one who gets criminally charged if he injured a customer. Since Bob wouldn't be held responsible for the actions of Fred, would that mean Bob loses his rights? Would it be ok to ban Bob from advertising his garage sale for example? Also look at the practical side of it. Suppose Fred spills grease and a customer slips and is paralyzed and it's going to cost 10 million to treat him. Compare that to a customer who slips in a walmart. Who is more likely to get compensated? Obviously the customer at walmart is far more likely to get compensated.

I tend to focus on economic issues and property rights more than most people. I really think we're on the edge of a major economic collapse and adding more regulations to our businesses is going to make things much worse.

Yeah, well we're 36 trillion in debt, we've printed 7 trillion since 2008 and we're running trade deficits of a trillion a year. That says we're on the path to Venezuela. And a large part of the problem is businesses can't make a profit from all the taxes and regulations.

That was a quote from Ron Paul, which happens to be my position as well. Corporations get sued all the time and it drives down the stock price and the dividend shares of the shareholders.

I said that zuckerberg may have censored voluntarily and was not forced by government. I don't see the difference but I'll use your exact words. If there is a cooperative effort between the administration and the corporation in their efforts to censor or diminish opposing viewpoints, do you think that corporation should be nationalized?

It constantly annoys me that only maybe 2 or 3 people on this forum agree with us on this. It's not theoretical either. I can't think of a quicker way to wreck a country than to start nationalizing corporations. Look at Venezuela for example. At least Ron Paul agrees with us.

They don't. Where did I say that? That's your argument. The owners are responsible for the actions of a corporation.

It's very possible that zuckerberg censored stuff voluntarily, but I don't see the what difference it makes. Is your position that we should only nationalize corporations that voluntarily censor?

I'm not arguing that "corporations are people". I'm arguing that corporations are merely a group of individual owners and that individual owners should have the same rights as anyone else. Ron Paul agrees with me: "Paul rejects the notion that corporations are people, with collective rights. He says that only individuals have rights; people are individuals, not groups or companies. "Corporations don't have rights per se, but the individual who happens to own a corporation or belong to a union does have rights, and these rights are not lost by merely acting through another organization."

The individual shareholders ARE the owners. How am I the collectivist? You're the one arguing against individual rights. By the way Ron Paul agrees with me: "Paul rejects the notion that corporations are people, with collective rights. He says that only individuals have rights; people are individuals, not groups or companies. "Corporations don't have rights per se, but the individual who happens to own a corporation or belong to a union does have rights, and these rights are not lost by merely acting through another organization."

Do you think we should nationalize all corporations or the just the bad ones?

So you lose your rights if you're forced to do something by the government? Back then I was the only one besides occam arguing that the solution is not to nationalize facebook but to stop the government from forcing them to censor. Everyone else wanted to nationalize them or they thought that facebook was just censoring on their own.

I try to look at it from an individual rights perspective (as does Ron Paul by the way), not whether it's "for the greater good".

The owners are persons. If you feel that owners of businesses don't have the same rights you should nationalize the business.

You think the state should ban them?

So you think Big pharma TV ads should be banned by the state?

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/12/23/health/rfk-jr-tv-drug-ads-ban.html I think I read it on zerohedge a couple times also found it: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2025-01-19/report-rfk-pressures-trump-ban-direct-consumer-pharma-advertising

Yeah, most people here are against the tiktok ban. I'm curious to see how many are also against banning pharma ads given how much people hate big pharma. I agree that something is out of whack with all these ads. They're annoying as hell. Health care is probably tied with banking as the most regulate industry in the US. I'm sure there's some government interference that is causing things to get out of balance and that's why there's so many ads. The answer is to get the government out, not ban speech.

Do you think the US should be sending money to Israel? I'm agnostic on the question of "who's the bad guy between Israel and Palestine" but I'm 100% opposed to the US using taxpayer money to support Israel in any way.