things you're secretly kinda libertariany about

http://www.heyuguys.co.uk/images/2011/09/Footloose-Kevin-Bacon-1984.jpg

I have studied fun for many years and believe it can be created using fun-science

places that are boring are not boring on accident they are boring on purpose, because the people there want it to be boring, they used fun-science but they used it for evil

dl it sounds like somebody needs to.... SHAKE UP your little town

― TracerHandVEVO (Tracer Hand), Tuesday, 14 February 2012 15:42 (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Good grief, I'm trying. We do a pretty good job with our shows, but gone are the days where audiences will go to a gig just for the sake of it (i.e. never having heard of the band).

Smaller towns that once used to have a bustling number of pubs are now awfully quiet, especially in the week - obv not helped by the recession, but mostly cos pubs just aren't much fun anymore cos everyone's standing shivering outside or guarding the table before their mates get back.

this is so weird. UK ppl: is this really true? US ppl: has anything similar happened here? cuz i've seen no change at all. people still go to bars, they just spend a bit more time outside them now, and everyone seems to have adjusted happily. plus smoking seems to have gone way, way down in general.

maybe americans use the bar less as a general social space that appeals to the entire community, and more as a den of iniquity with appeal only to a fallen few, so the fact that certain people are now staying home isn't a problem, cuz they were always staying home. it's only the dedicated that made it out in the first place.

Yeah, that's how it happened in Ireland, all the smokers just went "Oh well I was planning on giving up anyway"

irish people have studied fun science for centuries tho

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/8/88907/1339674-tremors1_super.jpg

j. I'm okay w/ semi-privitizing the postal service. probably. makes it more expensive to send shit far away isn't nec bad in itself and it'd be a catalyst for making more bills, etc. all go digital.

that LRB piece on the mess that is the privatized dutch postal service made me stop flirting with post office privatization

well ups and fedex are fine if you reallly need to send sometime

something

like they are more expensive and they prob should be cause 'sending shit far away' shouldn't be an activity we encourage when there are alternatives

I like the smoking ban.

Prostitution, drugs, sex. Let people do what they want.

human sacrifice

sorry, the sun god needs to be fed sometimes

i do like going outside you get conversations starting and it makes a pleasant break from being bombarded by loud shitty music

I've noticed for a while that more socializing goes on among smokers outside than among drinkers inside. Sidewalks are the new bars. This could lead to smokers reproducing more than the general population.

reproducing infants with low birth weight and cleft palates

http://www.zillow.com/blog/files/2011/12/Lagasse_Photo.jpg

This actually swayed me a little towards privatizing the Canadian postal service: http://www2.macleans.ca/2011/06/17/rain-or-shine-the-monopoly-must-end/

It's a pretty dumb article.

I think 'is mail service something that should be subsidized in 2012?' is an question worth asking tho.

http://www.lrb.co.uk/v33/n09/james-meek/in-the-sorting-office

privatizing the postal service doesnt seem to have worked out v well for the netherlands

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/04/sunday-review/the-junking-of-the-postal-service.html

The fact is that the primary beneficiary of the United States Postal Service today is arguably the advertisers whose leaflets and catalogs flood our mailboxes. First-class mail — items like bills and letters that require a 44-cent stamp — fell 6.6 percent in 2010 alone, continuing a five-year-long plunge. Last year was the first time that fewer than 50 percent of bills in the United States were paid by mail. There were 9.3 billion pounds of “standard mail” — the low-cost postage category available to mass advertisers — but only 3.7 billion of first-class mail.

it's less privitizing and more 'our system for sending packages already is privitized, our reasons for sending paper stopped existing'

I actively avoid UPS and FedEx tbh

so do I, because they're more expensive. but that's not necessarily a bad thing.

merits asking, definitely

UPS works awesomely in my area, the postal service does a reasonable job with the exception of their delivery of some other guy's mail to me, occasionally. I like postal mail for magazine delivery but I'm pretty sure iatee will tell me that magazines should be read at the library because the use of paper and transportation to get them to me is destroying the world.

well iatee's vision of the future is locking everyone into densely-packed urban gulag camps where only billionaires can afford to do anything more than 20 blocks away from their residence, including work, so I think we can pretty much ignore anything he says

I guess my main point is from an environmental pov if anything instead of subsidizing the transportation of 'unnecessary' parcels we should be taxing it. making the decision to go for the physical magazine should be more expensive. and ups/fedex have proven to be reliable. xp

ups/fedex have proven to be reliable in concert with an exising postal service.

yep, they use the USPS for the "final mile" delivery of packages where they don't maintain routes, because it isn't profitable for them to do so.

basically, without USPS I would never be able to send anything to my parents, ever

it isn't profitable for the usps to do it either, and that's why it's having a huge crisis. and the usps model isn't gonna 'get better' - people are only going to pay more bills online in the future etc.

But maybe we should consider dissolving this constitutionally mandadted service that is still used heavily and helps to guaruntee social and economic cohesion because computers and invisible hand?

you can't see it, but you can feel it

The question here is "Shouldn't public services have other metrics than profitability?"

I mean, how profitable are roads?

(not v libertariany, I'm aware)

xp AP has it!

roads shouldn't be subsidized either, duh

But maybe we should consider dissolving this constitutionally mandadted service that is still used heavily and helps to guaruntee social and economic cohesion because computers and invisible hand?

lol the invisible hand called global warming

iatee is like the unrestrained capitalist libertarian of doom

btw there are countries where all of these things are not subsidized and people pay for that shit, but I do not think any of us would like it there

haha I'm like the least libertarian person on ilx

you're kind of the least and the most

I think if we want to credibly incorporate long-term environmental costs into our policy making - which I think is more important than the short-term 'economic and social cohesion' you get from masking the costs of living in the middle of nowhere - you have to accept that certain things are going to be worse off for certain people.

well iatee's vision of the future is locking everyone into densely-packed urban gulag camps where only billionaires can afford to do anything more than 20 blocks away from their residence, including work, so I think we can pretty much ignore anything he says

― (thinks and smiles) (DJP), Tuesday, February 21, 2012 10:31 AM (44 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh come on this is silly - all billionaires will be executed in this fantasy world

'how do we stop global warming and ps also change literally nothing about the way we live'

iatee otm