me and you got alot in common on many in subjects. and i can tell that you really spend some time on this. and i think its real kewl that u were totally honest with ur views and i really like the idea that in the future that the government will run out off services for us.

very kewl bro. you have my kudos

 

 

I don't give two kudos very often. Well said.

I'll say a few things that come to mind. Do you know how Saddam came into power? By providing universal health care and other socialistic programs. People then become more reliant on the government so they rely on them even more. Iraq is a hell of a place to control. I think Saddam used brutal tactics because of difficulty of controlling that region. He favored Sunnis because he didn't want to end up like his Shitte neighbor Iran (which put itself in the stone age with it's fundies). He even got annoyed with the threat of Iran enough that he went to war with them. After losing that war, he needed a means to recover from the economic losses so he was going to invade Kuwait and get it's oil. By doing so, he aliened the western nations from him. Being one of the richest oil nations, having sanctions againsts him was too much. So we invaded Iraq in hopes to restore free trade with Iraq with less restrictions.

Chavez in Venuzuela is going to be the next Saddam and Chavez has oil too. Bush went to South America in hopes of starting a trade for ethonal with places like Brazil. It sounded promising and South American can produce ethonal better than we can. We need a new energy source. Though the ethonal trade will increase damage to the rainforest.

I also keep hearing about how talks between Iran, Iraq, Syria, and the US are going good.

It's also good to hear that Gulliani has a good chance to get elected. He is a moderate libertarian. I don't see him losing to Obama or H. Clinton.

The US has been able to do things efficiently by highjacking religion (having people vote on stupid shit like pro-life allows the politicians to do what needs to be done). It's not like the government ever follows up on those religious things anyhow. Pro-life politicians never do anything about abortion anyhow except veto the occasional stem cell research bill. Europe has less religion and more socialism as a result. Economic mobility is tough in Europe. This could be proof that having diversity in social class produces better results. Them fundies have a purpose!

Anyhow, this isn't quite a direct response, more of me adding my thoughts.

 

"That is, democracy is socialism applied to governing businesses. Socialists assert that businesses should be run democratically, and this is in large part how our government is run."

No it isn't.

If you want to know what we (socialists) really think, there is a difference between bourgeois (or capitalist) democracy and socialist democracy. Democracy is merely a form; the content is determined by the ruling class, i.e. the class that owns the means of production and most of the wealth of society. If you want to go back and read the Federalist papers, especially no. 10, you will see that Madison envisioned, and got, a government that protected the interests of the wealthy while fragmenting the working class into a million separate and often conflicting interests.

That is why Aristotle and anyone else who follows him is wrong to simply declare that democracy is the rule of the poor. With a system such as the electoral college, the "will of the poor" is ever so convienently channeled into the agendas of two corporate parties. If the Democrats were even 1/10th as "socialistic" as the typical right-wing libertarian crank believed them to be, I wouldn't be a socialist myself, I'd simply be a Democrat. As it stands, the Democrats stand as firmly in defense of the priviliges of the top 1% as the Republicans, only differing over the best tactics.

A person truly interested in the defense of capitalism would be a welfare-statist, old school Democrat. They are the only ones who understood that some of the "purity" of the free market had to be sacrificed so that the working masses don't overthrow the entire system. The problem is that libertarians can never step out of the vacuum and recognize that there is a limit to how much poverty and economic injustice people are willing to endure, and that no amount of preaching the gospel of self-reliance and personal responsibility is going to mitigate severe economic crises brought on by the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny sliver of the population.

"Capitalist libertarians, to be internally consistent, should be opposed to democracy, and instead advocate letting market forces mold governments. In fact, this is very possibly the most sensible stance."

They should, to be consistent. That would only make me their more consistent enemy :)

"No major, successful businesses work on the socialist model (where the workers democratically control the "means of production"),"

Means of production in quotes - as if they don't exist?

What businesses following that model have you ever investigated? They are few and far between, and they fail because they can't compete. They generally can't compete because if workers are in charge, they aren't going to take measures against their own self-interests; for example, they aren't going to outsource themselves to a third world country. Cheaper labor will always mean higher profits, all other things being equal. This allows major corporations to undersell cooperatives, to drive them out of the marketplace. But there is nothing wrong, internally, with the cooperative model. Its benefits are undeniable to all but the most ideologically hardened partisans. What possible objection, other than an utter contempt for people in general, could one have to workers owning and democratically controlling their firms? You do realize that these firms could and would compete with one another, so none of the social benefits of competition would be lost.

"so it only makes sense to get rid of the socialism in our government, right?"

Yeah... whatever floats your boat. I'm not on board with the 18th century notion of natural rights, but if we put the root philosophical positions aside, the idea of a set of rights that are beyond the scope of market forces is an absolute essential to any society that hopes to retain a shred of justice and dignity. Toasters should be mass produced and marketed; our civil liberties should be valued a bit more highly, don't you think? I don't want focus groups and test panels deciding what our basic rights as citizens should be (that is how the big companies decide what to make, and how to sell it... if government is going to be run like a business, it is going to be run like a big business, a corporate bureaucracy, and certainly not your idealized mom and pop store).

 

"No it isn't."

Look.

Socialists want businesses to be run democratically.
Our government is largely run democratically (in theory, if not in practice).
Therefore, since I've taken the government to be a business, it's a socialist-style business.

"A person truly interested in the defense of capitalism would be a welfare-statist, old school Democrat. They are the only ones who understood that some of the "purity" of the free market had to be sacrificed so that the working masses don't overthrow the entire system. The problem is that libertarians can never step out of the vacuum and recognize that there is a limit to how much poverty and economic injustice people are willing to endure, and that no amount of preaching the gospel of self-reliance and personal responsibility is going to mitigate severe economic crises brought on by the concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny sliver of the population."

That's not real capitalism. I think you mean "corporatism".

"Means of production in quotes - as if they don't exist?"

No, just because I was using the cliche socialist term.

"They are few and far between, and they fail because they can't compete. They generally can't compete because if workers are in charge, they aren't going to take measures against their own self-interests; for example, they aren't going to outsource themselves to a third world country. Cheaper labor will always mean higher profits, all other things being equal. This allows major corporations to undersell cooperatives, to drive them out of the marketplace."

Exactly, exactly. You and I have never agreed more.

"But there is nothing wrong, internally, with the cooperative model. Its benefits are undeniable to all but the most ideologically hardened partisans. What possible objection, other than an utter contempt for people in general, could one have to workers owning and democratically controlling their firms? You do realize that these firms could and would compete with one another, so none of the social benefits of competition would be lost."

And now you completely contradict yourself.
If none of the social benefits would be lost, why can't socialist companies compete with normal capitalist companies?
The workers may be better off, but only at the expense of the consumer.

"the idea of a set of rights that are beyond the scope of market forces is an absolute essential to any society that hopes to retain a shred of justice and dignity"

Ah, that. I decided elsewhere that the social contract (and all of the personal rights and such) worked outside of governments.

Anyway, that ... eh ... I don't see why that would cause any problems.

"if government is going to be run like a business, it is going to be run like a big business, a corporate bureaucracy, and certainly not your idealized mom and pop store"

In that case, you should probably secede, and create your own "mom and pop store" government. Like Morocco.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

 

I meant Monaco, not Morocco. Just any tiny, one-city country would be fine for the example.
Hope that didn't confuse anyone...

 

"Socialists want businesses to be run democratically.
Our government is largely run democratically (in theory, if not in practice).
Therefore, since I've taken the government to be a business, it's a socialist-style business."

This is quite the syllogism you've laid out, but it is flawed. Socialists do want businesses to be run democratically. But our government is not run democratically. In the first place, it wouldn't matter if it was correct "in theory"; if it isn't true in practice, it isn't true at all. To say it is "theoretically true" is only to say that it is possible, not that it is reality. Secondly, it isn't even true in theory, but rather in mythology. The founding fathers, at least those who were on the winning side of the constitutional debate in the 1780s, were explictly opposed to democracy, which they identified with mob rule.  Again, I implore you to read the relevant Federalist papers, particularly no.10, also 52 for good measure. One might argue that the removal of property requirements for suffrage created something closer to a "true democracy" than was ever envisioned by the authors of the US constitution or the various state constitutions. But I will remind you once again that socialists would define any society where the only possible ruling parties are clearly reperesentative of the interests of the bourgeoisie or middle class as an oligarchy, not a democracy.

Of course the founding fathers used the term "republic" to describe the state they were creating, which was to mix the best elements of democracy, aristocracy and monarchy while eliminating the worse. And we would argue that "in practice", and in the sub-text of the Federalist papers, an oligarchy was clearly envisioned, and the anti-federalists such as Brutus recognized this.

Therefore, the argument that the US government is "run democratically" is a false claim as far as socialists are concerned, both in theory and in practice. It's a misuse of the word socialism. Surely you understand, since in your eyes we are always conflating capitalism with "corporatism". If the government were to pass the "socialist" (or "democratic") test for actual socialists, it would have to, at the very least, operate on the principle of proportional representation, preferably according to trade or in this modern era, socio-economic class (another anti-federalist proposal that was shot down).

"That's not real capitalism. I think you mean "corporatism".

Which we (socialists) see as the natural and inevitable result of "real capitalism". Why any actual capitalist would not want to eventually become a corporatist is simply beyond my powers as a realistic thinker to comprehend.

"And now you completely contradict yourself.
If none of the social benefits would be lost, why can't socialist companies compete with normal capitalist companies?"

Because "normal capitalist companies" are willing and able to take certain measures to reduce costs that no cooperative firm could undertake, such as slashing benefits, mass firings, outsourcing, etc. It costs more to operate a cooperative than it does a normal capitalist firm, just as it costs more to operate a normal capitalist firm than it does a plantation full of slaves. This is only a problem if your highest human values are efficency and profit maximization. If they are, then fight for them. If not, and somewhere along the line the health and happiness of human beings are considered, then cooperatives are obviously the better choice.

"The workers may be better off, but only at the expense of the consumer."

If the vast majority of workers are organized into cooperatives, then so are the vast majority of consumers. If the vast majority of workers are better off, then so are the vast majority of consumers. The consumers would benefit just as much from the elimination of all top executive perks, benefits, expense accounts and other frills as they would from the firing of 10,000 workers. The real concern isn't the consumers, but the majority stockholders. They would be the ones to lose everything, and rightfully so.

"Ah, that. I decided elsewhere that the social contract (and all of the personal rights and such) worked outside of governments.

Anyway, that ... eh ... I don't see why that would cause any problems."

Well what happens when some latter-day Milton Friedman decides that the right to counsel isn't cost effective? How many amendments will we have to toss aside in the interests of efficency (i.e. the profits of the few)? This leads to a whole discussion about the citizen vs. the consumer, entitlements vs. privilge, etc. I think the problems, for now, should be obvious enough. As soon as you subject something to market forces, you ensure that the extremely poor will not have it, that the working poor will only have it with great struggle, and that the middle and upper sections of the working class will have to go into considerable debt to get it.

If you want a Social Darwininan/Hobbseian struggle of each against all in the concrete jungle, a survival of the fittest contest, then just say so.
 

Alright, Joe, I meant "largely" in my original argument to reflect that we live in a constitutional republic (constricted, indirect democracy).
I probably should have written "partially" instead. (I might alter that in the blog for you.)
Also, I addressed your oligarchy comments in the blog (that first link sums it up pretty well). While a small group may be in control, technically, we still have partial democracy, as people's votes affect our government, whether they're pre-decided by someone else or not. This is something I used to support my views.

On corporatism: Let's think about this from a theoretical perspective.
If a governing business, competing with others, enters into self-serving partnerships with large corporations, it's going to give other governing businesses a wide open chance to lure away its customers. So corporatism inside governments will be largely wiped out.

How could governing businesses monopolize the market? If they do, competition disappears, and the business atrophies, leaving the field wide open for small start-ups to lure away their customers. Without a government regulating the competition, large businesses/governments have nowhere to turn for protection from ambitious entreprenuers.

Better governments will solve most exploitation problems. Like I wrote in the socialist group, look up Hernando de Soto.

If the vast majority of workers are organized into cooperatives, then so are the vast majority of consumers. If the vast majority of workers are better off, then so are the vast majority of consumers. The consumers would benefit just as much from the elimination of all top executive perks, benefits, expense accounts and other frills as they would from the firing of 10,000 workers. The real concern isn't the consumers, but the majority stockholders. They would be the ones to lose everything, and rightfully so.

Again, if that were true, then workers could form their own businesses, pay themselves more than the average wage for their profession, and still beat the socks off of companies with highly paid executives. Why aren't there any major companies profiting like this?

Well what happens when some latter-day Milton Friedman decides that the right to counsel isn't cost effective? How many amendments will we have to toss aside in the interests of efficency (i.e. the profits of the few)?

I imagine quite a few people will move away, and the few profiteers will go broke.

As soon as you subject something to market forces, you ensure that the extremely poor will not have it, that the working poor will only have it with great struggle, and that the middle and upper sections of the working class will have to go into considerable debt to get it.

No, no, that's not how it'll work at all. A government can't make money off of poor people if they can't afford the taxes. Thus, it is in the government's self-interest to make the taxes affordable. It's also in the government's self-interest to invest in people so that they can make more money, allowing the government to collect more taxes.

If you want a Social Darwininan/Hobbseian struggle of each against all in the concrete jungle, a survival of the fittest contest, then just say so.

I want a Darwinian struggle between governments. I don't like the sluggish rate of improvement at the moment.

Scott wrote:
I myself support survival of the fittest among humans. Why should we be held back by those that cannot adapt?

I once held that view, and then I realized that poorer people tend to have more children.

Joe wrote:
So keeping everyone ignorant while ripping them off - this is the system you defend? At least you're honest. Meanwhile I will fight for a society where individuals have rights, a garuantee of justice, and basic human dignity.

I, too, am fighting for that, in my own way.

 

Well crap, I typed up a reply to this and it didn't post and all the text was gone. Something wrong with your blog my friend?

 

I myself support survival of the fittest among humans. Why should we be held back by those that cannot adapt? Billions of years of evolution based on survival of the fittest should stop with humans? What evolutionary bottleneck do we need to eliminate the socialist genes from our species? Perhaps the few thousand humans that survive the dark times following a meteor crash will be the ones that strive to succeed and live for their own genetic line benefit rather than leeching off of others.

There is an old saying "Give a man a fish, it will feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and it will feed him for a lifetime." That is true to this day. We need to teach our people how to survive in this world. The only type of socialism that I have any real support for is the stuff that would "teach a man to fish".

But I think the way we have things now is the most efficient way. In Rome, the citizens were entitled to bread and the gladitorial games. This kept the masses in check. Same situation today. Politicians try their best to be most economically efficient while pleasing the ignorant public at the same time. The real skill in being a leader is presenting a face. They can have advisors do the thinking for them.

 

And here we have a really enlightened human being.

"I myself support survival of the fittest among humans. Why should we be held back by those that cannot adapt?"

Well then, let's forget thousands of years of social progress and start building death camps. It's nice to see how you folks come full circle. One day evil "corporatists" are the enemy holding back "true capitalism". The next day you preach survival of the fittest, failing completely to realize that this rule is what destroyed free competition to begin with. How you can constantly box yourself into this corner and fail to see it is simply amazing. This is fascist ideology. This is what was behind the death camps. The first victims of the Nazis were not Jews, but the mentally handicapped. The ancient Greeks started at birth and tossed their deformed or even physically weak infants off of cliffs.

Why deride the state then, why not praise it as the fufillment of these principles? The state and the corporations are the fittest - you are the weak. Accept your fate or embrace a new ideology.

"Billions of years of evolution based on survival of the fittest should stop with humans? What evolutionary bottleneck do we need to eliminate the socialist genes from our species?"

You would love to eliminate that which makes us human too. One step below a fascist, a complete barbarian. In case you haven't noticed, thousands of years of human civilization based on the development of the arts and sciences have clearly imparted new values to the vast majority of the human race. They have allowed our compassion, our pity, our capacity to love, to flower when otherwise they would have remained at the most primitive level. It's not socialism you despise, it's the idea that a human life has intrinsic value.

"Perhaps the few thousand humans that survive the dark times following a meteor crash will be the ones that strive to succeed and live for their own genetic line benefit rather than leeching off of others."

No socialist advocates leeching, and I'm sure you know that. There is nothing lecherous about collective ownership, where each individual owns and profits from his own share in an economic enterprise. Nor is there anything lecherous about granting entitlements to citizens who contribute to the functioning of society with their time and effort, or in providing for those too young, old, or sick to work. If you want to stop lechery, how about fighting the old money families that did nothing to earn their wealth and survive because an arbitrary law says they have the right to everything their fathers and grandfathers accomplished? They didn't "survive" - they're the largest leechs of them all. Yet you probably save most of your hatred for poor immigrant families. Should that be the case, you aren't interested in stoping the leechers, but rather in easy prey, like any sociopath.

"There is an old saying "Give a man a fish, it will feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and it will feed him for a lifetime."

Yes, and play by the rules of "survival of the fittest" and I'll simply kill you and take your fish, and when I need another one, go kill someone else.

"That is true to this day. We need to teach our people how to survive in this world. The only type of socialism that I have any real support for is the stuff that would "teach a man to fish".

Survival in a modern industrial society cannot be compared to fishing by some pristine shore. When a tiny portion of the population controls the means of survival, everyone else is at their mercy. If self-reliance is truly your goal, then in a modern industral age that means everyone must have a direct economic stake in the productive forces of society, ideally in proportion to how hard and/or skillfully they work. This isn't the frontier, this isn't the 19th century. Cheap land was the great social saftey valve of that century. The land is all bought up. Now there are only jobs. It isn't enough to teach a man to fish, because some corporation or the government owns the pond and 9/10ths of every fish. Every man must have a section of the pond he can call his own, and a certain number of fish that are his for the taking.

"But I think the way we have things now is the most efficient way. In Rome, the citizens were entitled to bread and the gladitorial games. This kept the masses in check. Same situation today. Politicians try their best to be most economically efficient while pleasing the ignorant public at the same time. The real skill in being a leader is presenting a face. They can have advisors do the thinking for them."

So keeping everyone ignorant while ripping them off - this is the system you defend? At least you're honest. Meanwhile I will fight for a society where individuals have rights, a garuantee of justice, and basic human dignity.






 

We can try to enlighten the public but it is hard to do. We already have a society where social mobility is possible. But some groups of people are want to the government to get them things for free while not earning it which of course, screws the people at the top of society that are making all the progress.

What I mean by survival of the fittest is by people that are best adapted to handling society and are able to move up the social ladder. In all honesty, I could really give a shit about the poor people. Currently, I live alone with a ton of bills from college loans and such and have a hard time affording things like food. But do I condemn the system? No, I do not. I instead, go online and continue to find ways to put that college degree in business to use. Michigan is a rough state economically but I now have more experience at this point.

The state and the corporations you say are the fittest. Well you have to remember that the state and corporations need people to exist. They do require tax payers and consumers. And they are big enough to provide services that we cannot. Who's to say I won't become a CEO or run for office? If I even own stock, then it means that I am part of a corporation.

As for the leeching off others, I am not refering to families helping their own genetics. I am refering to those idiot voters that condemn the successful people and want more economic equality and support things that break the basic principles of the free market. As I said, we have economic equality because we each have the opportunity to move up in our system.

What I was refering to with "teach a man to fish" is to teach people that they need to be seeking higher education and to teach people to be competetive on the job market. Is it better to have people that want free stuff from the government or better to have people that are able to produce for society and give to it rather than take from it. We do have a shortage of higher educated people in this nation and that is why they are entitled to so much money. Anybody can stock the selves in a retail store but not everyone is able to manage the store and make it profitable. Thus the person with the management abilities is far more valuable. If you cannot survive college then I have little respect for you. We all have the ability to get college loans that you do not have to pay back until after you graduate. If you chose to live in a rural area when our society is moving toward a services economy then it is your loss.

I don't hate immigration families because they are the ones seeking to better their lives and willing to work the jobs most Americans won't. I only hate them if they come here to just benefit from our socialism programs like welfare. If we didn't have a minimum wage and all these programs, they wouldn't be coming here.

Anyhow, you can try to demonize me all you want, but the system we have now is closest to ideal. Big business that outsources labor to China and India has helped in the fight against poverty in those nations tremendously. While the people that lost their jobs in the US are probably still making more than the people that got their jobs. We have more equality there, don't we? We take from a group of leechers that got $50 an hour from their union bargaining and give it to people that will work for what they are worth and actually make them richer while bring prices lower to everyone all around.

Why should someone in the US get paid more than someone in China and India for the same type of labor? US arrogance?

Where did my ideas come from? Alot of it I learned from my professor in college that got a law degree in India and moved to the states and has taught business law and such for 37 years. Both of his kids graduated on the top of his class and are going to Harvard, I think in the medical field. He always said that people in the US expect to get paid $30,000 a year just because they live here. You get paid based on education and experience, not based on where you live. Even people from rich families have to get education and experience (though they are able to get it easier).

Anyhow, your arguments are ignorant of how economics work as well as dominated by the carebear emotion that is working to destroy our society.

 

Right, my arguments are ignorant. You didn't address a single one, you just gave us your life story and then threw in some half-assed responses at the end. If you don't want to really discuss these things, thats fine, but why waste your time like this?

You really buy into this delusion that "people at the top of society" make all of the progress. Progress is a collective effort. Have you ever heard of a research and development department? The myth of the rugged individual moving society forward is just that, a myth. Secondly, causing technological progress, while highly valued, doesn't give a person the right to be fabulously wealthy at the expense of the basic necessities of another. How did basic human compassion and decency become a "carebare" mentality? Your way of thinking isn't normal, its a mental disease brought on by a decaying society. It's reactionary and post-modern. Seig Heil.

"Currently, I live alone with a ton of bills from college loans and such and have a hard time affording things like food. But do I condemn the system? No, I do not. I instead, go online and continue to find ways to put that college degree in business to use."

Oh yes, poor you, with your college degree. I'm actually in the same boat. Wait until someone you love is denied health insurance because of a previous medical condition. Will you be preaching survival of the fittest then? Fuck'em let'em die? My "condemnation of the system" was always more abstract then real until that moment. Now I wouldn't mind seeing the whole thing burned to ashes. Oh, but that's "carebear" mentality, I suppose I should "toughen up" - forget about concepts for the weak such as justice and dignity.

"The state and the corporations you say are the fittest. Well you have to remember that the state and corporations need people to exist. They do require tax payers and consumers. And they are big enough to provide services that we cannot."

And we, as a people, are big enough to either buy them out, or throw them out, and produce for ourselves.

"I am refering to those idiot voters that condemn the successful people and want more economic equality and support things that break the basic principles of the free market."

When "success" is based on exploitation, or even worse, inheritance, then it should be broken.

"As I said, we have economic equality because we each have the opportunity to move up in our system."

It isn't an equal opportunity or anything remotely close. We all have a starting point in life based upon the social position of the family we are born into. And the current structure of the American economy is such that 80% will be wage-earners and the rest will be something more (or less). We'll have economic equality when everyone is actually allowed to have a meaningful share of a productive enterprise, that is, when their own work actually benefits them, without the majority of it going to profits for someone else.

"Anyhow, you can try to demonize me all you want, but the system we have now is closest to ideal."

You've done a fine job demonizing yourself.

"Big business that outsources labor to China and India has helped in the fight against poverty in those nations tremendously."

Is that why social unrest in China is higher than it has ever been?

"We take from a group of leechers that got $50 an hour from their union bargaining and give it to people that will work for what they are worth and actually make them richer while bring prices lower to everyone all around."

Oh yes, the union workers are leechers, certainly not the CEOs who make 530 times the average worker. No, lavish expense accounts and bounses aren't "leeching", they're just rewards! What is this slave mentality you have that justifies everything the corporate executive gets through swindling and "bargaining" and arbitrary power, and wants to deny to a working person whatever extra they can get from their employer?

And you say I know nothing of economics - obviously someone in the US should get paid more because it costs more to live here. If you put all other things aside and boiled it down to bare essentials needed to get up and come to work every morning, there would still be considerable cost of living differences. Workers have no control over that. But executives have full control over where they ship their jobs, and they don't do it out of benevolence, nor are third world workers accepting the jobs out of some selfless ideal. What the capitalists want is for conditions in America to be as impoverished as they are in India or China before they will consider using American labor; what true socialists want is for conditions and especially labor rights in China and India to reach parity with those in America.

" He always said that people in the US expect to get paid $30,000 a year just because they live here."

Was he some sort of moron who didn't have the slightest comprehension of how much it costs to live in America?

"You get paid based on education and experience, not based on where you live."

Wrong. If you can't afford the basics you can't come into work. Local and national living standards play a huge role in determining wages and salary, and if you haven't caught on to that you have no grounds to criticize anyone else's understanding of economics.





 

Damn, I posted a reply that took 2 hours to type. Too bad the internet failed and I lost it.
 

Yeah, that's a real shame.