The Gaming Den

FrankTrollman wrote: Actual areas of zero-regulation aren't considered the best places for business, they are considered the worst. Your libertardian whine cascade is noted and rejected. There are no "absolute terms" of regulation mildness. Regulations are only harsh or mild compared to other things. And the US has regulations that are mild and unobtrusive compared to anything that has ever existed and has one of the greatest business environments in human history. By any possible metric, the US has mild regulation.

-Username17

While I admit there are Libertarians that are more Anarchist than Libertarian....
Libertarian ideology doesn't typically fall in favor of ZERO government or ZERO regulation.

Most fiscal conservatives, conservatives, conservative libertarian, reagan democrats.... and on want less government. Not ZERO government.

On a scale of ||Tyranny||-----|-----||Anarchy|| our system was designed with the intent to remain as close to Anarchy (as far from Tyranny) as possible while still supporting civil society. Civil society actually REQUIRES laws and regulations to function.

Back on track, though; Federal simplification is one of the primary goals of a lot of "conservative" causes. Of course there are the crazy people, but what most logical, sane, people support is a reduction in overly burdensome bureaucracy and especially redundancy. The quagmire of laws, restrictions, regulations, fines, fees, outdated rules and rulings and the like really do take their toll on business (and society in general).

TL;DR Libertarians are not (generally) Anarchists.

Maj wrote:confuse having a reason with using it.

You do not have a reason separate from a reason to do X.

No one uses a reason.

Literally no part of that sentence makes sense.

Maj wrote:They really don't care what you post.

Maj, I know you are an idiot when it comes to religion because you believe that Jesus Christ is literally the son of god, and also he is not. But try to pay attention. Disagreeing with what someone says and arguing about it is not "not caring" what they post.

Anyone trying to act like the Catholic church's grossly immoral actions ended some nebulous time decades or centuries in the past, and therefore critics of religion should just shut up and accept modern churches, is pretty fuckheaded.

John Magnum wrote:Anyone trying to act like the Catholic church's grossly immoral actions ended some nebulous time decades or centuries in the past, and therefore critics of religion should just shut up and accept modern churches, is pretty fuckheaded.

There's a difference between being a critic and being a automatic hate machine.

There are some pretty amazing people who've decided to devote their lives to the Catholic faith. I've met plenty. There are plenty of douche-whistles, too. Something a lot of people tend to forget when going on their rants.

Maj wrote:Hi, newbs! It's totally awesome of you guys to still be posting here with a positive attitude. On the topic of religion, though, the Den's OGs will beat you down until you shut up because they hate it. You could go to pretty much any neo-atheist site that hates religion (mostly specifically Catholicism, but it bleeds into a broad generalism about how religion - not people - are evil and suck ass) and copy/paste all their arguments here. They bow to the feet of Dawkins and confuse having a reason with using it.

So save your breath, close your eyes, and call them fuckwits in your head. Then move along. They really don't care what you post.

That's fucking pathetic. No, we don't bow to Dawkins. He's just a dude. He makes some pretty cool arguments, but not all of us use or even read him. The reason religion keeps getting beaten into the ground is because religion doesn't have any good arguments. it doesn't even have any new arguments.

Consider: codeGlaze actually made the "simultaneous existence" argument. The idea that because it is possible for someone to have a religious viewpoint about one thing and a reality-based viewpoint about another thing that those two viewpoints are not "incompatible" and therefore cannot be opposed. It's a terrible argument. People are complicated and full of contradictions all the time, and having someone hold contradictory viewpoints does not in any way mean that the viewpoints aren't incompatible. Lots of people think "All Black people are stupid" but acknowledge that Obama (or one of their Black friends) is very intelligent, or in some other way display clearly logically incoherent world views. It's so common that it's not even interesting.

And you know what? That's one of the newest arguments for religion. It's older than I am, but unlike the Watchmaker argument (AKA "Then tell Zog who made sky!"), it isn't older than writing or anything. As religious arguments go, it's young and fresh and fairly strong. And it's still pretty stupid. The holes are so obvious that I feel bad for people making it. And it's literally the best they have. If people make god of the gaps arguments, it's even sillier. If people make fine tuning arguments, it's stupider yet.

But still, the "simultaneous existence" argument is atrociously bad. And if you make it and you get made fun of - it's not because the other people are meanies and poopy heads. It's because your argument is worn through and full of shit.

-Username17

codeGlaze wrote: There are some pretty amazing people who've decided to devote their lives to the Catholic faith. I've met plenty. There are plenty of douche-whistles, too. Something a lot of people tend to forget when going on their rants.

The problem here is that the decent, moral Christians can and must ignore most of their own religious teachings in order to be decent and moral. The demagogues and tyrants who follow Christianity, however, can find plenty of excuses for their own behavior right in their own holy scripture, such as the commandment to kill homosexuals.

FrankTrollman the hardcore socialist wrote:They are more communist in practice than the Soviet Union ever was.

You lost me. I understand that these two types of socialism are motivated by essentially the same anti-market, pro-egalitarian philosophy.

But Denmark is one kind of socialism, which does NOT outlaw private ownership of means of production, it just has a lot of income taxes, welfare, and "equalization of opportunity" and things like that. Communist Russia is another kind of socialism, where the resources used to produce consumption goods are actually socialized. In that sense, most people would say USSR would be more "communist" than Denmark, the decisive feature being socialized means of production rather than just aggressive interference with the market economy. Right? Unless by communist you mean "egalitarian" or something, then maybe I understand what you mean.

This is total History Fail. Every industry has barriers to entry, and in any technically advanced field, major players in any industry can and will do things that increase those barriers to entry. Without huge government anti-trust actions, the major players will make it essentially or even actually impossible for smaller firms to even enter the market. What pharmacy is going to carry your drugs if signing a delivery contract with Pfizer is mutually exclusive with doing so? What incentive does Pfizer have to not make such brutal, competition busting demands on pharmacies?

I am afraid the Fail is all yours. Interesting how you use PFIZER, which benefits from tremenedous monopolistic advantages that comes FROM THE STATE’s REGULATION (for example, drug patents). But putting that aside, what is a barrier to entry? I am saying it is a restriction on the legal right to compete in a given field. So a firm being “big” and negotiating exclusive deals with a distributor is not a barrier to entry, and is not an inherent problem. Being a big firm largely because of the ability to use the political system to create legal and regulatory advantages for your firm IS a problem, but it is not a problem created by MARKETS.

Here's the deal, chucklefuck: countries that have no or virtually no regulations aren't mild and unobtrusive! Somalia is not a business paradise. You don't have an explosion of economic growth in libertarian hellscapes - you get roving bands of cannibals and rapists.

Oh here we go. The classic dumb-fuck argument. “LOOK AT SOMALIA!”

You are being an intellectually dishonest bullshitter. Or you are totally just fucking stupid. Either one is equally plausible based on available evidence.

Raping people or killing people and eating them are not examples of “market relationships”. So I don’t see what that has to do with “unregulated markets” at all.

IF ANYTHING, raping is more similar to... ready for it? REGULATION.

Why is that? Well, markets are characterized by voluntary exchange – non-market activity is characterized by involuntariness. It is the difference between people trading and people stealing. Easy to understand.

Now, regulation deals with forcing someone to use or not use their property in some way inconsistent with their preference. So it is more accurate to say that rape and regulation are in the same category, albeit different in degree, than to say non-regulation and rape are in the same category.

So, rape and cannibal attacks are what one might call a “coercive relationship”, or a “hegemonic relationship”. People getting raped in Somalia has about as much to do with free markets as people getting raped in Denmark has to do with Socialist Workers Paradises. So you're going to have to come up with a much better argument if you thought that was going to be your FINISHING MOVE in the discussion.

So with that notion cleared up, it is safe to say that if YOU like regulation so much, you should love Somalia! They regulate your body to the extent that they will FUCK YOU AGAINST YOUR WILL. Whereas I do not like regulation therefore Somlia is not a favorite place of mine.

But for you, well. I understand how YOU personally don’t want those capitalist Somalia sluts attaining a monopoly price on their vaginas. So if the government/criminals (same thing) can force them to “give it up for free” to those who are “needy”, and what they need is a “fuck”, then I would think that is CONSISTENT WITH SOCIALIST PRINCIPLE. I.e. consistent with the FrankTrollman socialist philosophy of REGULATION IS GOOD. Rather than being consistent with my principle of “Regulation are bad”, as you claim.

Can't wait to see your reply, Comrade Trollman!

If you're going to just flat-out say that every problem that isn't directly caused by the state isn't a real problem, well, I don't know how people are going to find ways to take you less seriously. We'll give it our best.

Duke Flauros wrote: The problem here is that the decent, moral Christians can and must ignore most of their own religious teachings in order to be decent and moral. The demagogues and tyrants who follow Christianity, however, can find plenty of excuses for their own behavior right in their own holy scripture, such as the commandment to kill homosexuals.

Yeah, see, I went to a small Catholic school in a small town and just about everyone was pretty great, actually. But it was also kinda sad and poignantly humorous because there was well-intentioned hypocrisy everywhere and a lot of these people were doing really nice things but also blatantly flaunting official Catholic stances (for example, we were taught actual facts about birth control alongside the standard abstinence rah rah stuff; amazing, I know). My aunt taught there for a several years as a science teacher and she was a lesbian and the local priest had a "housekeeper" who lived with him and it was just an open secret that they were a couple. Both of them were eventually given the boot and that formative experience is a big part of why I'm quite happy to date religious people and be friends with them but my relationship with the Catholic Church itself is often punctuated by eye rolls.

ISP wrote:I am saying it is a restriction on the legal right to compete in a given field. So a firm being “big” and negotiating exclusive deals with a distributor is not a barrier to entry, and is not an inherent problem. Being a big firm largely because of the ability to use the political system to create legal and regulatory advantages for your firm IS a problem, but it is not a problem created by MARKETS.

Huh?

If Pfizer makes exclusive contracts with retailers, your company is incapable of getting retail space and cannot enter the market at all. How can you possibly consider that to be neither a barrier to entry nor a problem?

Barriers to entry aren't "government regulations", they are obstacles that make it difficult to enter a given market. In the absence of government regulations, private and corporate entities can and will create and enhance these barriers to entry. We know this because they do that anyway and smaller fish take the bigger fish to court over it, all the time. Without those regulations, anti-competitive practices would be larger and more flagrant.

In 1948, Paramount Pictures was making exclusive distribution deals with theaters that prevented films made by other studios from even being shown. The government put a stop to that. In the absence of government intervention, you wouldn't be able to make a movie and have it get screenings without being part of a major studio. The barriers to entry would be so high that you'd have to literally build movie theaters to show any movie you made, which in turn would put competition in the motion picture industry completely out of reach for anyone who wasn't also able to sink millions or billions of dollars into real estate ventures.

-Username17

codeGlaze wrote:

John Magnum wrote:Anyone trying to act like the Catholic church's grossly immoral actions ended some nebulous time decades or centuries in the past, and therefore critics of religion should just shut up and accept modern churches, is pretty fuckheaded.

There's a difference between being a critic and being a automatic hate machine.

There are some pretty amazing people who've decided to devote their lives to the Catholic faith. I've met plenty. There are plenty of douche-whistles, too. Something a lot of people tend to forget when going on their rants.

The part that you are missing, is that you are a douche-whistle.

No one who has ever gone on a rant since you've joined this forum, and probably ever, has ever forgotten that there are good and bad people who happen to profess to be Catholic.

We don't forget that.

You are just a douche-whistle who fucking lies to yourself and other people that we do.

You read what we say and then deliberately misread it exactly like Maj does so that you can justify being upset, even though you have to lie to yourself about what we say.

Find one fucking person who has ever said "all religious people are bad" or any version there of in this thread or hell, any other.

Maj wrote:Hi, newbs! It's totally awesome of you guys to still be posting here with a positive attitude. On the topic of religion, though, the Den's OGs will beat you down until you shut up because they hate it. You could go to pretty much any neo-atheist site that hates religion (mostly specifically Catholicism, but it bleeds into a broad generalism about how religion - not people - are evil and suck ass) and copy/paste all their arguments here. They bow to the feet of Dawkins and confuse having a reason with using it.

Organizations are not judged on the best of what they do, but on both the best and worst of what they do. They also are heavily judged on the words and actions of their leaders.

This is why the Catholic Church is despised. Their leaders say terrible and ignorant things and their leaders led a widespread conspiracy to protect child-fuckers, and that pretty much negates all the past good they did in the Civil Rights Movement and the daily good that they do with poverty.

I'd honestly have a much higher opinion of religion and Christians if there were Christian leaders who didn't say terrible and ignorant things. I'm sure that they probably exist somewhere, but they never rise to popularity and that's almost as damning of a criticism of religion.

On a personal note, you should know that the vast majority of atheists have no idea who Dawkins is, or Hitchens, or the other two Horsemen whose names I always forget. That you think this is both sad and amusing.

ISP:
You think that Somalia has regulations?
Somalia doesn't have a fucking government. There is no regulations. There are men with guns who do what ever the fuck they want based on whim and money.

And I know you're a right wing idiot. But can you actually learn the difference between Socialism and Communism? It would fucking help.
Socialism is when the state takes an effort to make sure that the basics are provided to everyone. It also attempts to put reasonable safety nets so people don't start to death in the streets.

the basics are usually listed as
Utilities, Health Care.
Additionally, Socialism will have certain industries that are important to the government either directly owned and controlled, or heavily regulated.

Communism (which we don't really have very many countries) try to actually negate class imbalance completely.
Socialist countries don't try to stop rich people from being Rich. They just try and make sure that the poor people don't get shit on too outrageoulsy.

your rant about Somalia being a left wing liberal utopia.. because men with guns can rape you.. is fucking retarded.

@K : To a degree you are exceptionally on point. The Catholic Church has many failings, and recent years have just made them more apparent. It's unfortunate, because there IS a lot of good done by the church. I presume it's just going to get a lot uglier before it gets any better, if it ever does.

@Kaelik: lol
When people launch into their tirades against the church, they tend to paint with a broad brush. A lot like painting all 'conservatives' as pejorative 'right wingers'. There are plenty of Catholics who are disenfranchised by the broader church, but remain faithful practitioners because of their local community.

@Frank: You're right, living by ancient decrees from a book bound together from several different ancient texts about a non-physical entity who not only created, but watches, us is not a purely rational line of thought. That being said, there is something... good that can be brought out of people through faith. The spiritual side of it, very difficult to put into words, but it... can help.

I also think the pseudo-history reflected in religious text happens to be interesting.

sabs wrote:ISP:
You think that Somalia has regulations?
Somalia doesn't have a fucking government. There is no regulations.

lol

codeGlaze wrote:@Kaelik: lol
When people launch into their tirades against the church, they tend to paint with a broad brush. A lot like painting all 'conservatives' as pejorative 'right wingers'. There are plenty of Catholics who are disenfranchised by the broader church, but remain faithful practitioners because of their local community.

No, you missed my point. They aren't painting with a broad brush. You are just willfully misinterpreting them so that you can feel justified being upset when people make fun of the things you like.

If they were doing that, you could point to an actual instance of that occurring, instead of just claiming that it totally does occur and you don't have to put up or shut up.

codeGlaze wrote: @Frank: You're right, living by ancient decrees from a book bound together from several different ancient texts about a non-physical entity who not only created, but watches, us is not a purely rational line of thought. That being said, there is something... good that can be brought out of people through faith. The spiritual side of it, very difficult to put into words, but it... can help.

But you can bring more good out of people by leading/teaching them to actually be _good people_ by reason and rationality than by scaring them with the idea that little horned guys will poke them with flaming sticks after they die. Especially if they also believe that 'fessing up right before they die will let them avoid that anyway. That sort of shit works on a bunch of primitive screwheads (and a church looking to accrue land and wealth); but intelligent and educated people should be able to see through it. And guess what? Since the Enlightenment, quality of life has largely gotten better since political and cultural figures started relying more on science and less on the crazy stories about why giant beetles are pushing the sun around.

...which is another reason why faith-oriented politicians love gutting education (beyond the basic fact that it tends to prove the wrong on absolutely everything), regardless of the tremendous damage it does to the fabric of society.

Look, I don't care if Random Bob or Sue believes in whatever random shit they believe in, it impacts me not at all unless they natter on about it. But organized religions, religious political groups and faith-based politicians do a shitload of terrible damage to society, whether it is to the rights of women, the rights of groups that are different than them, the environment, medicine, infrastructure and basically the health and security of human society as a whole. And that is completely unacceptable.

The other advantage of the reason and rationality approach is it is more difficult for a charismatic fuckwit to lead them into doing terrible things.

I also think the pseudo-history reflected in religious text happens to be interesting.

It is, from a trainwreck sort of perspective. The book of Kings is highly entertaining if you use actual Hebrew translations, which obscure a hell of a lot less than the King James version. It is far easier to see that the 'great prophets' are betraying their own people and helping a brutal Syrian invasion because the Jews aren't worshipping god correctly anymore, so it is 'better' that they die in droves.

Beyond that, lots of mythology from a lot of religions have a high amount of entertainment value. They are epics, about larger than life figures, just like modern comic books and fantasy novels. But you shouldn't start worshiping Zeus or Jehovah any more than you should worship the Dark One, Mishakal or Eberron's Sovereign Host.

theye1 wrote:

FrankTrollman wrote:Meanwhile, Faith is actually the opposite of Reason. Meaning that every culture that has benefited from the Enlightenment or the proceeds of the Scientific Revolution can tell that one to take a flying leap

Our entire society based on faith, not in God, but in our fellow man. Our society only functions because we have must believe that every other person in the society is playing his part. A soldier must have faith in his comrade and officers, a man must trust his banker or stockbroker not too fuck him over, we trust the police to enforce our law.

That isn't faith. That trust is based upon reason and evidence. There are rules and laws many of which have been in place longer than we have been alive and we have every reason to believe that they will remain in place and that they will continue to be enforced to the best of our ability.

Faith would be trusting without any rules or laws or any reason to issue that trust... because faith is trust without reason, by definition. If rules are worth nothing, then society breaks down into a hell-hole without law and trust.

And on top of that, your false assertion has no bearing on that faith is definitionally the opposite of reason.


[edit:] I meant to add, I think Frank was stretching a bit on the other 3 points which you called him on (Temperance, Prudence, Fortitude), but you should have left faith alone because that was just retarded.

And... wtf... did that post get deleted?

It might be some epistemological ultra-skepticism wankery. You can't REAAAAAAALLY know anything, so everything is really faith at one level or another!

erik wrote: That isn't faith. That trust is based upon reason and evidence. There are rules and laws many of which have been in place longer than we have been alive and we have every reason to believe that they will remain in place and that they will continue to be enforced to the best of our ability.

Faith would be trusting without any rules or laws or any reason to issue that trust... because faith is trust without reason, by definition. If rules are worth nothing, then society breaks down into a hell-hole without law and trust.

And on top of that, your false assertion has no bearing on that faith is definitionally the opposite of reason.

Brother Erik, I can't see how you don't believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Why, if you would just look, you would see the evidence for his existence everywhere.

I will pray for you. RAmen.

John Magnum wrote:It might be some epistemological ultra-skepticism wankery. You can't REAAAAAAALLY know anything, so everything is really faith at one level or another!

This is false. Faith is the acceptance of a proposition without evidence. That is distinct from having evidence that is 100% irrefutable. The radical skepticism proposition that you are referencing is that you don't know anything with complete certainty, not that you don't have any evidence for the things you think you know.

The Sun will rise tomorrow, and that is not a faith based statement. It's theoretically possible that the statement is wrong, but there really is rather overwhelming evidence that the Sun will continue to rise every morning for quite a long time. The Sun has risen every morning for billions of years and there is every indication that it will continue doing so until long after we are dead. Radical skeptics will happily (and in my opinion, quite uselessly) remind us that we don't know everything and it is possible that our confident prediction of the Sunrise will be wrong. But I am pretty sure it's a trillion to one (or even more) that the Sun will in fact rise, and the minuscule amount of uncertainty in that prediction does not bother me in the least.

Bottom line: 99.9999999999% certainty isn't the same as 100% certainty, but treating them as functionally identical isn't the same as believing things with no evidence at all.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:The Sun will rise tomorrow

As a Heliocentrist I have to point out the TRUTH is that the horizon will recede. All praise to the prophet Copernicus.

FrankTrollman wrote:

John Magnum wrote:It might be some epistemological ultra-skepticism wankery. You can't REAAAAAAALLY know anything, so everything is really faith at one level or another!

This is false. Faith is the acceptance of a proposition without evidence. That is distinct from having evidence that is 100% irrefutable. The radical skepticism proposition that you are referencing is that you don't know anything with complete certainty, not that you don't have any evidence for the things you think you know.

The Sun will rise tomorrow, and that is not a faith based statement. It's theoretically possible that the statement is wrong, but there really is rather overwhelming evidence that the Sun will continue to rise every morning for quite a long time. The Sun has risen every morning for billions of years and there is every indication that it will continue doing so until long after we are dead. Radical skeptics will happily (and in my opinion, quite uselessly) remind us that we don't know everything and it is possible that our confident prediction of the Sunrise will be wrong. But I am pretty sure it's a trillion to one (or even more) that the Sun will in fact rise, and the minuscule amount of uncertainty in that prediction does not bother me in the least.

Bottom line: 99.9999999999% certainty isn't the same as 100% certainty, but treating them as functionally identical isn't the same as believing things with no evidence at all.

-Username17

That's not what most radical skeptics actually think, though. The majority of arguments based on radical skepticism of which Descartes' demon hypothesis: the hypothesis that there is nothing about our conscious experience that contradicts a demon determining our every thought and perception, so therefore we have no way of actually knowing anything; is probably the most famous, aren't dependent on probability. Hume's critique of induction is partly dependent on exactly what you just described, but Hume's critique doesn't have a great deal in common with other radically skeptical hypothesis. Descartes' hypothesis is exactly what you claimed radical skepticism isn't: that it is impossible to have evidence for anything, since all our evidence is based on an unjustified assumption, namely that we know that there isn't a demon controlling our every thought and so on. That's not to say that most radical skepticism is anything other than unfalsifiable wankery, but if you accept some radically skeptical theories to be true then you do, in fact, have to take everything on faith.

Prak_Anima wrote:I would say that, if I had to apply such labels, then RPG players are probably getting more liberal (see good vampires, anti-paladins, etc

I remember anti-paladin's from magazine articles in the early 80s, late 70s. Dragon iirc. And good (or non-evil) vampires have been around a long time. For example, Saberhagen's "The Dracula Tape" is from 1975. So please try to find something that doesn't predate 2nd edition if you are trying to argue that "things are different this time".

This reply is to Frank:

Re: barriers to entry

If Pfizer makes exclusive contracts with retailers, your company is incapable of getting retail space and cannot enter the market at all. How can you possibly consider that to be neither a barrier to entry nor a problem?

There are hidden premises here. Is Pfizer’s allocation of capital the result of people trading, or the result of intervention? The reality is a lot of Pfizer’s influence and economic muscle derives from government intervention in the form of patents, consumer protection laws, subsidies, etc. You know Obama's Affordable Care Act, or Bush’s Prescription Drug Program? The industry LOVES those kinds of thing. Their lobbyists and lawyers help write the laws and go to parties with the politicians!

It’s crony capitalism that you are complaining about, but you want to empower the very institution (the state) which makes that power possible in the first place. That’s what I don’t get about you pussy-ass socialists. At least hardcore Marxists recognize the incestuous relationship between big business and big government and therefore are actually LESS retarded than you, I hate to say.

Look, you aren’t gonna be in control of the government. It's going to be the rich, powerful elite. So why do you want to give more power to an institution that will be controlled by the people you hate?

So there is that.

But most critically, I want to emphasize something I mentioned above and many people overlook. Most major regulations are lobbied for BY the big players in the industry. So many of the regulations that supposedly keep companies like Pfizer from controlling the market are actually very useful to Pfizer. Burdensome regulations hurt small competition more than they hurt a big behemoth firm like Pfizer, and they often help the big firms quite directly.

Or instead of Big Pharma, think of Too Big To Fail -- where small banks are allowed to fail, but giant banks get bailed out. Then they scoop up the assets of the small banks and lend money to the government that racked up its debt... to bail out banks!

You also have to remember how antitrust is also used by those with influence against their enemies -- consider the early days of antitrust law in the US, when the Rockefellers and the Morgans alternately used the laws against one another depending on who had the most political influence at the time. I assure you, those cases were not on behalf of anything fair and good like free competition. Lots of other examples. Whatever.

I believe I can show your fundamental error in your analysis as follows:

It is a “barrier” to my ability to compete in the fantasy RPG business because WotC has more money, more brand recognition, and famous designers like Mike Mearls. They can make deals with the gaming stores because they’ve got clout and old relationships. Would you say WotC is “monopolistic” for this reason? Honestly, I think you would.

But I would logically have to say this is wrong. There is there is no legal restriction that only WotC is allowed produce and sell fantasy RPGs. If there were, than they would be a monopoly. Otherwise, they are not. Saying this is monopolistic is frankly ridiculous.

You might raise the point that WotC has more capital than I do, and so they have an "unfair" advantage. But WotC’s current stock of capital is the result of prior market activity, i.e. RPG gamers buying WotC’s fantasy RPGs. (Unless they just stole the money -- in which case they'd be a criminal gang or a government.)

Now with the movie production companies and the theaters -- actually, I’m glad you brought that up, because it doesn’t support your case at all. This was clearly a case of “sore losers” using the government to do what they could not do through the market. Like if no one bought Pathfinder and Paizo sued WotC.

----------

EDIT: This reply is to Sabs re: all the dumb shit he said, and it is in a spoiler to keep the post from getting too huge.

Sabs, are you fucking stupid? Oh my god. Where do I begin with you.

Well first of all, I didn’t actually say anywhere that Somalia has regulations. I said getting raped is like someone “regulating” your body, rather than someone trading with you. So rape was more consistent with socialism than free markets.

Where the fuck did I call Somalia a left-wing utopia? I was obviously showing Frank that he was being absurd by saying “rape” and “free market” are connected.

But INTERESTINGLY, because you (and Frank) are obviously uninformed about Somalia, you might be surprised that it DOES have a government. The way Afghanistan has a government, anyway. Al-Shebaab controls big chunks of the country. They are pretty hardcore for Sharia law. SO! They have regulations!!! Hard to believe, but yeah, they regulate like governments tend to do. For instance, they shut down some radio stations in Mogadishu that were broadcasting things Al-Shebaab did not like. They have taxes too, although it’s like medieval style – they just come to your house and take your stuff. When the US backs Ethiopian invasions of Somalia it’s to bust some “regime change” on Al-Shebaab. But oh my, don’t let these FACTS get in the way of you making an ass of yourself.

Moving on to your totally asinine lesson on socialism vs communism, I will first point out I clearly recognized the possibility that by communism Frank meant “egalitarianism”. Which … is what you are saying I did not recognize. And your definition of socialism is … pretty similar to what I described as Denmark style socialism. So what the fuck are you talking about? Go back and read my post.

And I am amused by you calling me retarded and cute names of that sort, but don’t fucking slander me with that “right-wing” shit. I don’t know what right-wing means in YOUR country, but I am not fucking right wing or left wing by American standards. So don’t use those terms because they are not helpful except to idiots who think Obama and Bush and Clinton and Reagan are totally different.

And this is a reply to John Magnum: .

If you're going to just flat-out say that every problem that isn't directly caused by the state isn't a real problem, well, I don't know how people are going to find ways to take you less seriously. We'll give it our best.

You are misrepresenting my position. I believe the market is the result of peaceful relationships. People trading goods and ideas.

Criminal behavior, like taking people's stuff or killing them, is by nature not the kind of things that happens in markets. Trading: nice, coercion/violence, bad. Criminal behavior is an interference with the market. That's just reality. If you can't understand the difference between trading with people and robbing them, I don't know how you function in society. (Although if you like TTRPGs, maybe you don't function in society.)

FrankTrollman wrote:Mild regulations are in fact quite lengthy. Harsh regulation can be short. You can blanket prohibit economic activities in a single sentence. Putting mild restrictions on fraud requires lengthy definitions of every single aspect of the transaction. The fact that the regulations of the United States are necessarily large is because they are incredibly mild. From a common sense perspective, you can pretty much do whatever you want. And it takes a lot of physical text to guaranty that.

Sure, as long as you don't mind going to jail for 5 years because you received shipments of lobster tails in clear plastic bags vs cardboard, which an obscure and illegally adopted regulation in Honduras required. Three felonies a day.