I can't help myself, arguing with retards is the only thing that keeps me living.  I'd go emo and slash my wrists without such entertainment!

As an aside, based on the posts I keep seeing, I feel compelled to clarify that the above statement is not serious.  If you all stop posting this idiocy, I wont actually kill myself.  However, my I.Q. probably is dropping from this so perhaps that might change eventually.

On to the paradox of an utter moron that can somehow argue copyright law logically.

It's a mystery to me.  If your USPS snafu had been your first post here on these forums, I'd have decided you had the I.Q. of a retarded gnat, severe reading comprehension flaws, no arithmatic skills at all, and years of brainwashing by equally stupid people.  Without your political posts, just going by your copyright law arguments, I'd have assumed you were relatively intelligent.  It's a simplistic issue and doesn't require a genius to understand of course, but the ability to read, and grasp what you're reading at least says something.

My current hypothesis is that you're just severely brainwashed, unable to see beyond the cages of your royally fucked up mind, and can only logically argue that which you haven't already been fed illogical conclusions in advance.

Ok, second try.  IT'S ILLEGAL YOU FUCKTARD.

Take what you've done with copyright law, study the fucking subject.  Your argument is fucking worthless because one fifty pound box costs as much to ship as thousands of leaflets, and is a single item to those thousands.  The USPS is the only cheap letter carrier because it's ILLEGAL for anyone else to do so.

I will now accomplish a great feat.  I will make this simple enough that a two year old can figure it out.  How many grains of sand can you carry in a quart jar?  How many quart jars can you fit in a quart jar?  Do you think that maybe if they used actual volume, instead of the number of items, there might be a drastic difference in the amount shipped when comparing sheets of paper to a fucking box?

You're shitting me right?  You don't actually believe this and you're bored out of your fucking skull, right?  Please say yes, because I'm pretty sure I've never met anyone this stupid, and it's a scary thought that you can type and study law with such a handicap.  Hell, it's a scary thought that you can survive eating.  OH SHIT, I ACCIDENTALLY ATE MY FORK AGAIN!

Well, that answers that question, you didn't read it.  Could you at least go to their websites and calculate package shipping costs and compare equal services?  You'll find that for a two day delivery on that letter, UPS is cheaper.

First, laziness in not looking it up yourself aside, how does this not work out in my favor?  UPS and FedEx are prohibited by law from shipping half pound letters in most cases.  You know what they're allowed to do?  Second day air and faster.  You know what USPS does?  Express mail and slower, at equivalent prices to second day air, with a guaranteed arrival date one day later.  Wow, they don't have comparable prices because they aren't allowed to compete with USPS for the snailmail letter carrier badge!  Maybe if USPS offered same day delivery, they'd have $70 shipping plans too!  Maybe if UPS was allowed to take two weeks to deliver a letter, they'd send it for fifty cents?

Second, the almighty mailbox, sanctuary of USPS delivered mail.  Who buys your mailbox?  Who puts it up?  Who replaces it when some shittard runs it over or throws a brick at it?

Now, do you really want to be a fucking dumbass and compare your mailbox, that you purchase and maintain yourself, but can't recieve mail from other carriers in, to a store location owned by a private company?  It's either hypocracy or stupidity to the extreme, and I can't figure out which.  My fucking mailbox should be my own goddamned property and I should be able to give access to whoever the fuck I want to.  Instead, it's a fucking felony if UPS opens it and puts a package inside.  This should answer your claims that I'm socialist and want to give USPS resources to UPS and FedEx, but if it doesn't let me know and I'll cuss you out again.

Would it help if I begged?  Please tell me you're not this dumb.  It's going to give me nightmares.  Next I'll be debating primordial goo like they did in ST:TNG!

Um... if I disappear, I was banned, for cause, lots of cause...  So many rules to disregard, so little time...

Psychoak, the only difference between me on copyright and me on the U.S. Postal Service is that you happen to diasagree with me this time, and so assume that somehow, when I disagree with you, that I must have abandoned actually looking stuff up. Because there is of course no chance you are wrong.

That said - You don't actually look anything up before you type it do you?

UPS Rates 12^3 in, 5 lb package, Indianapolis (46205) to LA (90096)

Critical (Same Day) From $317 to over $5,500, depending on routing

next day $64.20 - $107.63 (Depending on delivery time)
2nd day $36.20 - $54.61
3rd day $25.97
ground $10.66

USPS Parcel Post, same trip (Zone 8, highest for non-international)

Express Mail $36.60 (1 day)
Priority Mail $14.75 (2-3)
Parcel $9.67 (7 days)

Although, sadly, no 'critical' option is avail

There are a couple of cheaper ways to do it USPS, but this establishes a baseline. But - lets try 50 lbs!

First of all - the good news. If you're going to pay for critical, they don't appear to care a whole lot about whether it's five pounds or fifty - so you can get the same bargain price of $317-$5,500!

That said -

next day 243.14 - 292.86
2nd day 206.18 - 224.60
3rd day 130.11
ground 50.22

Express Mail 172.30
Priority Mail 61.50
Parcel 39.23

Now - first of all, That's not the whole story - go over a certain size (24x24x16 <= x? <= 24x24x24) and the USPS charges go up dramatically - important information thank you Egon, don't cross the streams - but UPS doesn't ask and until that size is reached USPS doesn't care.

But a basic comparison  - that you could have done - doesn't support your premise.

That isn't to say that UPS isn't essential to business - the Government is good for large, generic services that will be of equal value to me or Warren Buffet. But is you need that 'critical' service, you need a specific time frame as to when it's delivered, even if you are okay with 4 days but not 7 days, the more specialized private sector is going to be better - and for commercail purposes even worth the extra money.

But the assumption that UPS is better on any basis for comparison, which was your original premise, is quite verifiably and objectively not true.

Scream and throw feces all you want Psychoak - you typed that out without verifying a basic assumption, and the fact is you would have been better served by verifying it before you posted.

Jonnan

You suck at debating a losing argument, when cherry picking aspects to make yourself look good, they can't show the opposite.

You mistake optimal delivery for guaranteed delivery.  UPS next day air is guaranteed by the end of the next business day.  USPS Express mail is "guaranteed" inside three.  Comparing Express to Second day air seems fair, maybe it arrives a day earlier, maybe a day later.  Unless they lose it and ship it to you a week later.  A show of hands for those with personal experience on that one?

Also, 5 pound packages and .5 pound letters are a long way off from each other.  But then I've apparently stated that UPS is more effective in every minute aspect of their business in an alternate reality and have to prove that they outdo the USPS at every weight, dimension and shipping speed before your colossal fuckup of an argument becomes invalid and you don't look like a complete asshat.

I really shouldn't complain though, much less brain atrophy caused by reading this one.  Also, chimpanzees seem to be smarter than you going by these last few posts, so I'll take the poo flinging as a badge of honor.

For your next argument, try damage.  USPS has the best record for packages arriving safely between the big three.

In this reality, October 7th, at 23:49, Pschoak posted - -

Sorry Psychoak, in this reality, approximately 50 hours before you posted this, you stated that "a for profit industry, without fail, does a better job". I posted a counter example with objective, verifiable facts.

You then proceeded to move the goalposts and say that UPS, specifically, would be cheaper on a package - and, looking up prices specific for packages on five and fifty pounds packages between identical routes and locations, I refuted that.

Now you want a different set of criteria, rates of damage.

First it's "Private Industry will always win", then it's best two out of three, and now you want to compare damaged package rates for best three out of five? If I win that one, what's your next set of criteria - fashion sense?

You've done a great job at trying to insult me and claim victory - backing up your blanket assertion with any objectively verifiable facts, ehhhhh - not so much.

How many times do you think you get to move the goalposts on this Psychoak?

Jonnan

psychoak, you seem to read a lot, so I wonder what you think of the economists' term "public good." If you find the category reasonable, can you tell us some things you'd put there? If you reject the concept, can you say a little about why?

double post...

Okay, do you want to know what the problem is?

So we have shares. Stock exchange is the governing econimic factor. Hehe. Yeah, kinda very unexpected, wasn't it?

So people buy shares wich are showing good value increasing probabilities because they aim at making profit. Buy low sell high. Kinda self explanining.

So what makes "good value increasing probabilities"?

There are market analysts making predictions. Good predictions are a factor, as well as meeting predictions or surpassing them.

Because every stockholder is interested in this it is the ultimate goal. Not making actually profit. Raising the stock exchange value. Because the intend is to sell the stock for a high value. Actual profit is neglectable.

I read about "virtual money" thats a good descriptiojn actually.

So what they do is devoting the entire efford on stock exchange value doping. Even if it means burning HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS $.

It kinda depends on the analysis method what is done. Usually its about signing contracts. You know, insurances, ISP contracts, estate sales, health care, selling debts, etc.

They will attempt to do it as much as possible even if it actually ruins actual values. Because actual holdings are not the important factor, the important factor is getting those stock values up, the "virtual" (estimated, not real) value.

And of course the real cash is used to superfuel the "virtual values". So the real value decreases whilst the "virtual" one is bloated.

At one point - as you might already have guessed - the "virtual" bubble bursts and you have to accept you face indeed a crisis in REALITY.

Thats what costs you 700000000$. And it was done fully aware that this will happen.

And then people get told by the government representatives (wich are on the payroll of the stock moguls, or in most cases ARE the moguls) what a big surprise this was and the nation has to act quickly by filling the hole with national reserves. Because - oh big surprise - employment is in danger.

If they would care about your employment they would not have acted like that at all.

Sad fact is they don't.

They also do not care about causing national economy desasters because they are on the winning side.

They kinda take the money from national reserves and pocket it.

So i ask you: Do you really want to support a economy mechanic wich constantly destroys REAL value in favour of "virtual" value, endangering currency stability and socialy stability on a constant basis?

Besides it is the main cause in the first place for unemployment because so much companies die from it.

Because thats whats happening right now.

Look very closely who is supporting this... yeah... assault on your national treasury, your future and your employment.

Remember them. Avoid them.

double post... triple actually ^^

I'd like a culture that was a tad more "conservative" about neologisms. It might be a good start twoards discussing use value vs. exchange value in a pragmatic context. That real-vs-virtual stuff is just so much smoke & mirrors to me because I've lived most of my life in an economy where no leading world currency is based on anything material.

MRDred, selling short.  Which, by the way, the commies want to make illegal...  While there is motivation to balloon stock values, there is equal motivation to deflate them among the investors.  It is lopsided only within the company, where people get paid for making the stock go up, and generally get paid in stock as well.  Blaming investors for the woes of the economy is unfair regardless.

The stock market could drop to zero and it would be irrelevant for purposes of employment if people weren't running businesses off credit.  If you want to pick on something for causing unemployment, it's commonly referred to as plastic and resides in your wallet.  The liberals really like pushing it because people without can live beyond their means, the rest of the morons go along with it because it makes them look good to all their fellow morons that can't tell the booming economy is a bubble.  When people and businesses stop running off credit, major bubbles wont exist to start with.  Getting a loan is intelligent for expansion, not operation, and it always catches up.  The reason it hits when the stockmarket drops, is that capital is used for collateral in lending.  When the price of GM stock halves, GM takes a massive hit to their paper assets, a thousand shares at a thousand dollars can be collateral for a million dollars, a thousand shares at ten dollars only for ten thousand.  The banks also use their own stock as collateral for making loans, they have to actually have ten percent of what they've lent out, if their stock is half their capital, small drops make for really big losses, big drops make for insolvency.

GW, public good is a severely abused term.  Your mail service, since we're on the topic, is in the public good list, but isn't one.  Individuals pay for their own transmissions.  Even if it were complete public funding, the use of it would still detract from others.  It may not register for most people due to insiginficant quantities, but if one were to mail several billion pounds of something all at once, the system would collapse and a backlog would be formed to accomodate the traffic jam.  That is true even with the pay per use system we have, Bill Gates could shut down the mail service for months all by himself if they accepted the orders.  People using it more than normal around Christmas are what accounted for the massive delays before UPS and FedEx started seriously competing for consumer service.  Once they had to actually try for your business it got better, but they still deliver residential orders late frequently.

It really doesn't exist in a perfectly representative state.  All public goods created by industry require significant investment to create, and all public goods created by industry do have a maximum capacity for use that when approached create degraded service.  Traffic jams, busy phones, power outages from load spikes.  You could call air a public good, but only because it's plentiful worldwide, and asthmatics in large cities would disagree with the premise that other peoples use of it doesn't detract from theirs.  The next closest is probably national defense, which holds true until territory is surrendered in favor of holding others.  Whenever capacity is exceeded, a service fails to meet the definitions of a public good.  There is also the matter of unfair tax allocation, creating roadways that exhibit the status of a public good at the expense of people using them is entirely logical, taxing the rich and giving rebates to the poor that don't pay taxes to create so called public goods, is just theft.

Jonnan, context much?

"Well, that answers that question, you didn't read it.  Could you at least go to their websites and calculate package shipping costs and compare equal services?  You'll find that for a two day delivery on that letter, UPS is cheaper."

This was in response to your not bothering to verify that it was indeed illegal for UPS and USPS to compete with USPS as letter carriers.  You then looked up 5 pound packages in response, and ignored the minor issues of delivery times on UPS shipping methods being guaranteed, and USPS shipping methods being optimal.

So, mind looking up two day delivery on a half pound letter?  The object of comparison used by that wonderfully pointless chart you linked?  You know, the only evidence favoring your premise?

"This falls into the magical fairy land category.

First point, and this is categorically true and irrefutable without outright lying, private, for profit industry, without fail, does a better job in the long run at any and all tasks."

Your link falls under outright lying. and mine falls under the categorically true and irrefutable bit.  Does that cover it?

Instead of listening to talking heads from idiot magazines, look at the books, USPS has open books.  Yes, I called Forbes magazine an idiot magazine, the only things of worth in them are the financial reports.  You'd be better off getting a spider than reading financial advice from the guru's, Vegas has better odds for gambling.

For those of you too lazy to read, that link says Jonnan loses.  Their package shipping wouldn't even cover indoor plumbing at the post office.  Do something for your progeny, educate yourselves on the wonders of government monopolies.  Hail the 300% profit margins on first class presorted mail that cover their overhead costs while violating your postal cavity!  Without them, your cavity would bleed from overuse!

Or be sheeple, whichever works.

Oh yeah? Is it unfair after results like this? It seems not so equal at all. Blaming the poor constantly worsening the situation and then fill their pockets after destroying BILLIONS with money earned through hard work. All on the backs of honest people pushing more ond more into poverty. And i am unfair? That is the reason why a hightech nation like the US is constantly struggeling with social issues. Not because they lackt the capability to deal with it - because somebody pockets the resources to do so and keeps it for personal entertainment whilst other people have to work at two jobs to make a living. Disgusting leeches the lot of them.

I'm probably a "commie" in psychoak's book, but, like Marx and Engels, I make no pretense that capitalist systems (edit) don't (end edit) have their efficiency mechanisms. Short-selling can seem wrong or weird when you first read about it, but in our current systems it provides a valuable service by identifying troubled companies.

Re public goods, I'm very interested in having the idea debunked for me, but most of what psychoak offers seems to be passionate rhetoric, not methodical refutation. (On a detail point, I'd exclude air until such time as we need production facilities to get it. So maybe Mexico City, Taipei, and those other places with oxygen vending on the streets are there, but thankfully most of us can just breathe.)

I *knew* you were an idealist of some sort; can't get as ticked off as you seem to be without loving something, somewhere. And, again, you sound more like a lapsed anarchist than any sort of "conservative." Would you go for direct democracy if there were only a few hundred of us on the planet?

That wont solve our problem, only prolong the inevitable.  What you dont understand is that our fleet upkeep is so insanely expensive so we have to mine more crystal AND metal along with upgrading our civilian infrastucture. It is quite obviously a multidimensional problem that we currently face, seeing as we have in no doubt dropped from rank 1 in economy to rank 100.  Although military is # 1 overall! yes! success!

First of all Psychoak - so far as I've heard, no one, commie or otherwise, has any plan to render selling short illegal.

They are taking steps to tighten up the regulation of naked short selling (They already are mostly, but not entirely illegal, but they are tightening up loopholes).

For those unfamiliar with the terms, the difference is simple, and the reason they *should* be illegal seems to me to be fairly obvious.

A short sell is a system in the market for when someone thinks the price on a stock is too high and is going to fall. Basically, they borrow stock from a portfolio, and sell that stock at the current market price. If they're right, and the price falls, they then buy stock back at the new cheaper price, return the stock to the portfolio they borrowed it from with some interest, and pocket the difference between the two prices. It is a highly necessary mechanism for helping to prick 'bubbles' in markets, and if it were not there things would be worse than they are.

Now, most market transactions are promissary in nature - money changes hands instanltly, but you have three days to actually deliver the stocks, and five before you're reported for not doing so  - but the system runs on trust that the title will be delivered even though you don't actually have stock change hands as quickly as the money does.

So what you *could* do is sell stock you don't have or haven't arranged to borrow, turn around with that money and buy stock as it falls, and deliver that stock before the trade fails - a 'naked' short. Short selling is a case of arbitrage, because all the transactions you used were yours to use. - you're just pocketing the difference, minus fees.

Naked short selling is fraud, because the money you used to buy the new stock was given to you on the assumption that you had stock already there to sell - but in a liquid market, it's very hard to spot, and you still pocket the difference, just not minus the fees for borrowing the stock.

Now - what if the market is not liquid and you can't turn around and get the new stock  - Suddenly the fraud has gone from very hard to spot to very easy, because the guy you sold the stock to is out his money and out his stock. And he's going to go to the SEC and say this guy sold me stock but didn't deliver - you're about to get in a hell of a lot of trouble.

So you do what any burgler does when they get caught in a crime - you kill the victim, albeit metaphorically. Because if a *lot* of this fraud is done to a company in a short amount of time you can drive a mid-size firm into bankruptcy very quickly, because they're suddenly out of cash and out of stock at the same time. Even if you deliver the stock before the five days is up, you can kill them because they've lost liquidity very quickly, and can't do anything while they wait for stuff to catch up. So it's always been illegal to *deliberately* do a naked short - it's fraud, and in a fast moving market it can kill it's victims.

The SEC is just tightening up the loopholes on this.

Regarding:

You're going to have to actually make your point somehow  -whatever you're moving the goalposts to here is buried in a fiscal report, and given your knack for bringing in something vaguely relevant (i.e ACORN), having the obvious link debunked, and then claiming "Oh, that wasn't at all what I was talking about", you can carry your own damn goalposts when you move them.

Oh, btw, as near as I can tell, UPS and USPS have the same moneyback guarantee on 1 day delivery (Although I'm sure you'll come up with some BS excuse for not accepting that fact) . So we're to best 4 out of 7 now with whatever it it is in fy07cra1.pdf you have dreamed up - I don't suppose there's any chance you've actually looked at the UPS equivalent before you shot your mouth off this time?

Jonnan

P.S. - Oh, what the hell, since you thought it was going to be a major difference if we talked about 1/2 lb letters, I looked it up for you

UPS: Critical broke $6,000 this time! {G}

1 day: $27.88-$67.56

2 day: $19.75-$21.84

USPS:

Express: $16.50-$19.25

Priority: $4.80

1st Class: $2.02 (3 days)

Those Goalposts wearing you out yet, or you wanna go for five out of nine?

The herd mentality always wins.

Warren Buffet is sinking billions into the market to shore up weak points.  This isn't to say Warren Buffet is the Messiah, Warren Buffet is just marginally intelligent and has a firm grasp of reality.  When they tank, they go back up and people that buy after the tank make a whole bunch of money!  That's how people like Warren Buffet get filthy stinking rich, by understanding the basics.  Do you know what the poor working man losing all his hard earned money was doing last week?  Selling.  Mutual funds and 401k's have been bailing out of the market like there's no tomorrow.

This is what happens when you're a moron that doesn't spend a large amount of time learning the mechanics of a complex system before putting your life savings into it.  You lose.

Ok, so you ask, I give logical reasons why and where it's abused, and why the term is more a result of poor foresight than a mechanical aspect of life, and you call it rhetoric while ceding the point that public goods don't actually fit in their own definition.  Did I miss something?

Yes, you are a commie.  I don't make distinctions between people that actively seek a communist society and those that blindly vote for the ones that are, the democratic power base has been hardcore socialist since FDR with a breather for Kennedy that I thank his good looks for providing.

I'm generally called a pessimist, but if that were true I wouldn't be depressed by reality so often.  My guess is that I'm a realist.  I am however of the opinion that government is a threat to my existence, so in that matter I do share views with the anarchists.  The problem is anarchists are idealists, and I actually think.  That something utterly sucks despite being the best option does not negate either aspect.  Unless you're actually happy with the progress of government, I fail to see how my views on the matter can be taken as idealistic.

Yes, I would go for direct democracy with so few people.  Wouldn't you?  On meeting one of the other survivors, which could take years of searching assuming no one could get the communication grid up, what other method of decision making would there be aside from beating the crap out of each other and letting the winner choose?

Jonnan, you really are a fucktard.  Next time you're going to link something, actually look at what it says.

If I were to ship a package to my parents, tomorrow, these are my guarantees.

From UPS:

Money-Back Guarantee
For certain services and selected destinations UPS offers a free money-back guarantee. To find out if it applies to your shipment, go to 'Calculate Delivery Time' in either the Shipping or Resources section at www.ups.com and key in your shipping details.

On calculating, the guaranteed delivery time on next day air is... the next day?

From USPS:

No results could be found based on your search criteria.

Wow, USPS doesn't know when they'll actually get an Express mail package to Anchorage!  Not surprising, since their estimated delivery time is three fucking days.  Yeah, they don't think it will get there till thursday.

So, for the last time, be kind to the USPS and split the difference between their guestimated time and their perfect world time, and compare Express to Second day air like those of us not living in lala land do when trying to get something important delivered by a specific date.  Or restrict your argument to in state deliveries, one or the other.

Typical liberal, when faced with the truth, lie your way out of it to avoid admitting government doesn't, never has, and never will be the answer to all life's problems.  I'm through changing your diaper on this one.

As for ACORN, if you got news that wasn't biased against those evil evil republicans, you might know they do more than voter registration too. Not to mention voter fraud has dick to do with the discussion, was entirely out of context, and made no sense as a retort.

This isn't even new news, ACORN has been fucking around in the mortgage market for over a decade now.  Us right wing crazies have been bitching about the bad loans since Clinton hosed us with them in ever increasing numbers.  It's his monumental fuckup that makes him the worst president since Carter, although I think Bush is going to surpass him with the latest stunt.  Congress has never fixed a problem after the fact, they sure as hell wont start with one that puts their own ass on the chopping block for causing and propogating it directly.

Voter fraud is just the election year punchline.