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Hey, Answerman! - Predatory Lending

Back in your glorious Wild West, scam artists created fake medicine consisting mostly of booze and stole hordes of money from innocent people.

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Back in your glorious Wild West, scam artists created fake medicine consisting mostly of booze and stole hordes of money from innocent people.

Sources that aren't modern TV that show how "common" this was? It was not common. I'm not saying it didn't ever occur, but it wasn't common like you imagine. It's just more interesting for modern TV if things like this were the case.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snake_Oil
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quackery

Should you buy as much as you can to support the industry? Well, yeah, of course. The industry needs it. But if you're having trouble supporting yourself, the industry can wait. There's many, many ways to watch anime and read manga that are completely free and totally legal and everyone should be using them. Watch streaming video on Hulu or Crunchyroll or right here. Check out manga from the library. Rent stuff from Netflix. That's all well and good.

So many bases to cover.
Not unlike some people wearing shirts, getting tattoos, etc of Japanese or Chinese characters without actually knowing what they say because it seems cool, Japanese like English words in that same mode. There's also the alien aspect of it. Toriyama stated when he went to name Vegeta's attacks he reasoned Vegeta would name them in his own language so they should sound alien. To Toriyama, English sounded pretty alien.
So they might use English to seem cool, or they may also use it to denote strangeness-something not naturally Japanese.

There is nothing wrong with showing DB to 3 yr olds. Sorry.
Take an hour or 3 to watch some of the old Looney Tunes from the 30's & 40's. These cartoons were made like DB to appeal to the children, but also the adults who may also be in the audience. Problem is we're getting to be a paranoid lot. Even though we all grew up on Looney Tunes, they're too violent for our children!

Of course, brick-and-mortar stores themselves are starting to go obsolete in the face of Netflix and Redbox, and I know Netflix has a ton of anime.

There's many, many ways to watch anime and read manga that are completely free and totally legal and everyone should be using them. Watch streaming video on Hulu or Crunchyroll or right here. Check out manga from the library. Rent stuff from Netflix. That's all well and good.

It's a naive, absurd argument that would undo 90% of the social progress we've seen over the years.

I don't mean to divert the whole thing here (I do want to show there is a totally different point of view), so I intend this to be my only response, if you want to go further please PM me about it.

vashfanatic wrote:

Yes. Because when elected officials pass tax laws and democratic referendums pass, then this is "forced theft." /facepalm

Yes, because not everyone agrees with the laws. What makes your majority magic? Why is it not ok for me to personally steal but if I join the majority of some group in asking for some farm subsidy or what-not that it's now ok for me to steal?

vashfanatic wrote:

Welcome to democracy, kiddo. Sometimes we do things for the greater good of our communities, things that cannot be accomplished individually. Hence we have taxes. It's a pragmatic issue, and if you don't like it, then vote and advocate.

Were computers made by governments? Was medicine discovered by governments? In some cases perhaps but not in all cases. There is something called the division of labor that is possible through trade and the market. It works much better than the government will ever work towards achieving goals and it doesn't require a monopoly of coercive force and the theft of people's income. Nor does it require any redistributionary policies that favor consumption over production.

vashfanatic wrote:

But a taxless society wouldn't have roads, police, firefighters, schools, Social Security, Medicare, etc. etc. -- at least not for most people. The obscenely rich could of course provide for themselves, but that would only lead to an entrenchment of class barriers as only a limited number people would have a chance to advance themselves. You know, like back in pre-democratic times.

Please read about the "Wild West" (it wasn't that wild at all) of mid and late 19th century US. There absolutely have been private solutions to your police, firefighters, roads, etc. Generally they were not needed nearly so much as you would imagine. The reasons for many of the ills of society is in fact due to the perverse incentive structure created by governments.

On the matter of fire/police/etc. everyone pays for some kind of insurance in modern society. Insurance companies would probably either pay for those services in accordance with need for them or perhaps run their own internal outfit (for a lot of reasons that would probably be out-sourced).

vashfanatic wrote:

Any vision of a taxless society is dystopian. Period. Now, how much should taxes be and what should they cover? That's an issue that can be reasonably debated.

Well, first, as a voluntarist I don't think society without a monopoly on force is a utopia. There will still be problems because ultimately humans are the source of problems in governments. However, the structure and incentives created by monopoly-mafia-based society are corrupting influences from the outset. Even the best of people do terrible things with power they gain only by being able to threaten force against others.

Every time I read this nonense my mind is boggled
Xanas you don't actually believe that your right do you?
Especially when you stated that the Wild West was a better era than we currently have now
There were so many problems back then, it's impossible to list them all
I don't know if you came to this conclusion yourself, or if someones been indoctrinating you with it or whatever else it may be, but everything you have said is complete and utter nonsense I'm sorry to say

For simple words and phrases the requisite English part of Japanese education provides for some general knowledge?

vashfanatic wrote:

Of course, brick-and-mortar stores themselves are starting to go obsolete in the face of Netflix and Redbox, and I know Netflix has a ton of anime.

Unless you live in Canada, where Netflix offers only their "excellent" streaming service. See you in another decade, today technology.