Comments on: Comments on Comments #29

By: rhyddid

rhyddid — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:16:49 +0000

@Mike: LMFAO!! I just told my coworker what the translation actually is and she laughed — said that maybe her translation skills (or lack thereof) are the reason she did so badly with the locals when she was there ;)

By: RG

RG — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:57:07 +0000

One last comment: you appear to have a faith in free markets, which I share. However, why should this faith not exist to the marketplace of ideas? That is, if we assume that all human experience to date is encoded in the memories of the markets, shouldn’t the marketplace include the choice of systems of organization? Lots of stuff has been tried, many rejected. The marketplace of ideas has selected some form of taxation and some role for government in 100% of extant cases. If your idea is that much better, you have a very high burden of proof to surmount ~10 billion person-lives of experience that have chosen otherwise. Granted, those choices are not always right (ditto any market), but if you have faith in markets you do need to explain why this market is special in that its conclusions should be ignored.

By: RG

RG — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 22:32:46 +0000

RE: primary vs. secondary needs being provided by the free market. I don’t see the question as whether these things can be provided by the free market. For instance, fire departments use to be 100% private. They suffered from the free rider problem/Problem of the Commons, and we decided that making them public was a better way of doing things.

Most of this gets down to allocation of resources. Sure, it is possible that Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon could run cables into your house. You could then use the cable appropriate for whichever provider you want to use. Similarly, FedEx could buy up tons of land and build their own roads. This would be a great competitive advantage over UPS, which might not have as savvy a land-buying team and would only have 60% as many roads (which would of course run in parallel). We could then drive on Toyota or GM or Ford roads. All makes sense in the abstract, but none of these ideas address the finite nature of space or resources. Would be curious to hear what make you think such an aggravated competition for resources at every level would not result in commensurate violence. (Such as one sees in resource-rich countries around the world.)

Also — as much as you have studied economics, I find it hard to believe that you support the market-distorting mortgage tax deduction. Granted, you believe nobody should ever pay taxes and we should live in caves. But given current circumstances, surely you can see that the tax deduction is nothing more than a transfer of wealth from renters and homeowners (e.g. no mortgage) to people who are somewhere on the 30-year journey to homeownership.

By: Zach S

Zach S — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:35:55 +0000

“ABC Network “rents” the house for a period of time, and accordingly, the owners are not liable for improvements made during the rental period.”

As an accountant, I do find this a very creative loophole and more power to them. I did some more tax research, there is a tax “information letter” out about these makeovers in 2006. It basically says the IRS does not agree with the loophole.

According to http://www.roanoke.com/news/nrv/wb/64599 (sorry, I haven’t wrote HTML in forever), it doesn’t look like the IRS isgoing after these families, but if they get picked for an Audit, they might have to shell out some dough.

I wish them luck!

By: Mike Gogulski

Mike Gogulski — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 20:19:25 +0000

:) It’s Slovak, and means, “Well, that’s such a cute doggie!”

Poor thing, the cone treatment really sucks for them.

Slovak and Czech are quite similar, but have enough differences that they really are separate languages.

By: rhyddid

rhyddid — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:35:21 +0000

“No to je také zlaté psícko!!!!” As best I can tell (it’s Slovak or Czech, which are basically the same language), that says something like “No, that is to say Golden !!!”

I could be wrong, but it doesn’t seem to make much sense — almost like it’s someone who doesn’t speak Czech trying to translate something in English TO Czech.

Of course I don’t speak Czech either, this is from a coworker who spent some time in that region of the world, so take it with a grain of salt.