depends what you mean by 'original'

I work for a 300 year old insurance company that began life as a fire insurance provider - the chap who started the company was inspired to start the venture by living through the great fire of London in which thousands of people lost everything they owned.

The theory was this: for the very wealthy it was possible to rebuild and recover (partly because much of their wealth was held in banks) while the artisan and newly emerging middle classes could be completely wiped out by a single unforeseen event.

And this basic principle is still true - if you are wealthy and your house burns down you have options to rebuild. If you are not wealthy (and most of us are not) then insurance stands in the place of wealth when disaster strikes.

Sharing the risk is not a byproduct of the means to profit - it goes hand in hand. It is the means of making profit - and the means of making profit allows for the sharing of risk. It is (when not entirely corrupt - see health insurance where no single payer scheme exists) a social good. It allows people to take risks they might not otherwise take (spending on goods rather than saving every spare penny to set against the possibility of disaster) - it allows banks to take risks on people (mortgages) and people to take risks on business ventures (liability insurance) it allows smaller landlords to offer homes (rent cover schemes) and a host of other stuff.

The notion that companies exist for one sole purpose is as untenable as the notion that people generally act on single motives.

GM wanted profits. So their products suck. They even kept making V-8 engines. As a result, only top management was reaping massive profits. Since those were the only profits that mattered.

GE did everything to maximize profits. Therefore GE product continue to lose markets. Siemens literaly gorges on GE's diminishing markets. No problem. A Central Committee (top management) is still reaping big bonuses.

Companies that worry about their products are this nation's benchmark industries. Intel ignores profits. Intel's success is based in their product - Moore's law. Intel literally risked the entire company many years ago because their next generation processors would not meet Moore's law. Their risky commitment worked. So Intel processors were cooler. AMD (that wanted to make profits) was losing money and market.

When a company wants profits, then short term profits are followed by massive losses. And the central committee of the communist party (top management) pads their bonuses. This nation's lesser productive companies are also noteworthy for highest paid corporate executives. Meanwhile, companies that innovate - make better products - then have massive profits.

Reality requires many paragraphs. And does not include any "Donald Trump" style insults. So an extremists (ie henry quirk) cannot grasp it.

Only an extremists would insist what was first told by the 'central committee of the communist party' must be the truth. A soundbyte describes this: brainwashing.

The purpose of every company - even non-profit ones - is always about its product.

That's certainly true of firearms manufacturers. Their purpose has always been to make a good product.

And product numbers prove it:

It's great that the government supports companies that make good product.

The government should have more control over parents and what they produce.

"(The purpose of) firearms manufacturers...has always been to make a good product."

And why did E.R. Amantino strive to make a good coach gun?

Cuz, wisely, they understood: a consistently good product encourages repeat and new customers (more money [profit]).

Some gunmakers (there were, and are, are a few) make crappy products and literally pay the price (eventually) for being cavalier or cynical with the customers.

Simply: excellent products or services maintain and increase profit; a degraded quality in products or services threatens profit.

Anyone who tells you otherwise is...

...lyin' through his teeth...

...or...

...is terminally ignorant.

#

"The notion that companies exist for one sole purpose is as untenable as the notion that people generally act on single motives."

People are hellishly complex thngs...the instrument that is free enterprise is not.

Say it with me: profit...profit...profit...profit...

"Simply: excellent products or services maintain and increase profit; a degraded quality in products or services threatens profit."

Companies that have had their production costs go up have been faced with passing those costs on to customers and pricing themselves out of business; or, downgrading quality to remain competitive in price and continue making a profit. Quite likely the competition is in a similar situation and the net effect is that it doesn't change anyone's bottom line.

Manufacturers also increase profits by downgrading product quality for promotional events like Black Friday with negligible effect on their bottom line. Those consumers are just looking for the cheapest thing available and don't subscribe to brands.

"(The purpose of) firearms manufacturers...has always been to make a good product."

Anyone who didn't realize that I was being facetious either isn't here in the Cellar often enough to know better; or, they have the IQ of a chipmunk.

"Anyone who didn't realize that I was being facetious either isn't here in the Cellar often enough to know better; or, they have the IQ of a chipmunk."

Or mebbe such a person was just using a (rearranged) post by another as a means to make, reiterate, or further a point.

That is: I was talkin' at tw, not takin' a swipe at you.

*shrug*

Thank you for your kind reply. When people are quoted and a narrative follows, it's easy to think the narrative is responding to the person quoted. I try to avoid giving that perception by using ^this^, ^whs^, "and furthermore" ... etc. Sorry I didn't realize who it was directed at.

I wasn't clear, my error, apologies... :thumbsup:

I'm guessing Mexico blows up the graph.

Mexico 6.34

via

I wonder how that would compare to murder rates by any means?

We are a murderous bunch.

My stepson was involuntarily admitted to a psychiatric hospital last night after revealing to ER staff his detailed plan to shoot up his high school. So, you know. Fun times.

(I'm sure y'all know who this is, but medical confidentiality and all that.)

I'm fucking tired.

ouch. I won't be sending Thoughts and Prayers your way, but I will be thinking about you. Is it any coincidence that Thoughts and Prayers abbreviates to TP?

I've just figured out Trump must be into homeopathy, so that's why he thinks the solution to dozens of deaths by assault rifle is to give a teacher in each school a handgun.

Nah- if he was into homeopathy he'd let the teachers hold the guns for five minutes, then take them away and let the memory of the gun protect them.

Ha!

He said he would run into that school building even without a gun. He said. But he didn't. And he won't. He just will not solve our problems.

Bring tissues.

I am gobsmacked.

Perhaps that accounts for my inability to place you. Or, more likely, you overestimated my capacity. You do seem to give me credit for knowing you, so I'll rest on that.

W.T.F.F.

I hope everything turns out ok. jfc.

Thanks. If you could make a few paeans to the sleep fairy, that would help.

Perhaps you're unable to place me because you can't possibly imagine that this sort of thing happens to people you know very well and consider to be good, even excellent parents? It's a straight-up mental health case, of course. He had absolutely no access to weapons, and did indeed make a cry for help. But the obsessions and sociopathic thoughts had apparently been fomenting for years, and even amidst sobs in the ER he openly prided himself on how well he'd hidden his inner monologue from everyone. We're very, very proud of him for doing the right thing and reaching out, but at the same time I don't think he really understands what he's put in motion. I'm not entirely sure he ever gets to go back to school, though as far as they know right now he's just taking a few sick days. Given his admitted ability to manipulate adults with ease, I don't know that appearing stable will be enough to let him out. What I do know is that his mother is freaking the fuck out, and he's refusing to see her, and I think he intends to request to come live with us instead when he does get out. Which will be a hard call to make, given the other children in the house. Very hard to imagine a good outcome from all this.

That's a really tough road to be on. Good for him to come clean, but I wonder if he will regret it and learn to keep his mouth shut and let the demons run around in his head unchecked.

My impulse would be to circle the wagons and not let him in, but he's one of the ones who should be on the inside of the wagon circle, not the outside. What an awful choice to have to make.

I don't know enough about mental illnesses to know how well his can be treated and if he can be made "safe" to be around the rest of the family.

An armed society is a...

http://www.al.com/news/index.ssf/201...hooting_a.html

stupid society?

https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-...-san-francisco

Let's put armed vets in every school in America. /s

Nurse Ratched would have kicked his ass.

Then who would be left to initiate unjustified wars to lower American living standards?

That's the job of politicians.




*I watched one of my daughter's school mates take his oath recently. I don't blame the soldier for the terrible political decisions. I do wonder about the decision to serve in our current climate.

Might be the lack of other employment opportunities, or lack of resources for further education. Wanting a piece of that $600,000,000,000 military budget?

Very much like Bonnie and Clyde, that's where the money is. Although defense contracting is where the real money is...

A Dutch pistol (with Google translations).

What

The

Fuck?

What, you never heard of the Sex Pistols? :p:

At last, a cheap solution, only $5 per student.

You guys been following this serial bomber story in Austin? They caught the guy early this morning (he blew himself up when he realized that apprehension was imminent.) We'll find out when they release his identity, but I predict that he will have been 1.) a white supremacist, and 2.) specifically using bombs because the dumb argument always is that if we take away the guns, they'll just use bombs.

Also, he was staying in a motel just 1.2 miles from my kids' school.

I didn't see that they caught him. That's awesome!

Had it gone on long enough to impact your life with fear and worry? The DC sniper back in the day did that to us.

I wasn't personally worried in the beginning, because he seemed to be targeting politically-prominent black families. (Angry, of course, and concerned for others, but not nervous for my own home.) Then the most recent bombing was a trip wire across a sidewalk near a school, placed Sunday night--it was triggered by passing late-night cyclists, but in all likelihood was meant for kids first thing Monday morning. That got to me.

Currently only known is his name, 23 years old, and home schooled. A first indication of someone without the necessary outside contacts so as to not become an extremist. Curious will be if that applies here.

When cornered, he (apparently) committed suicide. Just like suicide bombers in other countries that only learn what the dictatorial powers have order them to believe.

Overlooked is the school shooting of the week. This time in Maryland.

Lifelong homeschooling can stunt you socially and give you poor self-awareness, but it's usually along the lines of thinking you're hilarious because Mom always laughs at your jokes and no peer ever told you to shut up. It doesn't do this. If this kid was homeschooled, it was likely because the public school system couldn't/wouldn't deal with him. I know tons of kids whose parents had to become involuntary homeschool teachers.

Followed by this:

I think we can start to connect a few dots here.

The other reason for homeschooling is to be able to prevent one's child from being exposed to competing ideologies or information that runs counter to an extreme religious position.

Absolutely, and maybe that's the case here. But those folks also don't generally become religious at the moment their kid hits 9th grade. By that time, he would have already had multiple exposures to both evolution and sex ed.

It's possible that he went to a K-8 Christian school, though, and then had to figure out what to do next. There aren't nearly as many religious high school options around here as there are for the lower grades.

Parents teach their children, directly or indirectly, morality. Their morality, nobody else's.
Some think eating meat is immoral, some don't. Some think abortion is immoral, some don't. Some think racism and sexism are immoral, some don't. So you can't count on morality to thwart anyone's actions

Another lost boy, whatever the reason.

The most important part of a story about a car crash - why it happened.

Same here. The largest reason this story is significant - we need know what that reason is.

Oh, I don't disagree.

But we also need to know why this keeps happening. At an individual level there is a reason - but there is also a meta reason for why young people (mainly boys) are doing this.

Because the girls keep saying no, and the boy's hormones back up. :blush:

Malcolm Gladwell made a very compelling argument about the root cause (in a nutshell, culture is contagious and social trends can go subconsciously viral) in his book "Tipping Point." Very much worth the read, as most of his stuff is.

We would be decades farther into understanding had research into forensic psychology not been openly banned by laws desired and promoted by the NRA.

Only subjective conclusions from observation are apparent. These actions are common with people inspired by hate (ie Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, KKK, Donald Trump), educated in isolated environments where parents believe the world to be evil (also called racism, antisemitism, inspired by introverted news sources - propaganda, and contempt for what make science so useful - a hypothesis confirmed by experimental evidence and controlled experimentation).

What inspired Timothy McVeigh? What inspired so many Americans to so hate the American soldier as to believe Saddam had WMDs? Probably the same reason why most knew smoking cigarettes increases health. And why immigrants (legal and illegal) are evil. But again, we can only make conclusions from observation.

These latest bombings are only a worse case example of forensic psychology that has been obstructed due to emotions even inspired and aggravated by the NRA.

We know how Goebbels so easily promoted hate. We know from Philip Zimbardo's famous Stanford prison and torture experiments that so many adults are so easily manipulated and therefore will respond like children.

We also know pedophilia and other anti-social behavior has been created by brain tumors - and cured by removing those tumors.

So much more research is necessary. But extremists have subverted such research using the same emotional denials that also deny man made global warming.

So much to learn. So many just don't want to learn. So many so hate themselves as to not criticize the local gossip (ie 5PM news, tabloid newspapers) for not reporting why every car crash happened - so that we actually learn something.

Therein lies the underlying reasons and where a solution begins.

Sudden crazy thought: most school shooter's worst fear would be that the classmates became more famous than he did from the event.

So: have the Parkland teens inadvertently found a cure?

Either that or another reason to do it.

The NRA shifted tactics. They got guns into YouTube. To make it more interesting, this time it is a girl. They know how to keep our attention.

The NRA is the most potent human rights organization on the face of the Earth.

Briefly, thus: you have those rights, human, civil, or however characterized, that despite any degree of force, fraud, injustice or propaganda militated against them, you yourself can enforce. With the whole of the people having enforcement's wherewithal, the individual need not often do very much very often to enforce his liberties, which I am assuming are as necessary to the individual as oxygen. Three hundred million pairs of hands make light work. That's also about the number of guns in the US alone. It may barely be enough for the need.

Yet, there are those who would remove the means of enforcement from our hands, tutting and telling us we shouldn't be trusted to look after our own liberties, or resist crime, or follow the adult responsibility inhering in keeping lethal force under our personal control. They adduce all manner of excuses and rationalizations -- but the point is these people are tyrannical. It is worthwhile to stop them and stop them hard.

Some nondemocratic persons will squall in distaste at the prospect -- but they're actuated by a notion that only a state, or in autocratic wacko extremism, a ruler, an El Lider, has a right to act. They seem uncomprehending of the fact that a State strictly speaking does not have rights, but interests. Rights are really for persons.

The NRA, the GOA, the JPFO all understand how rights are gotten, and how you retain rights -- despite having a fraction of the youth, misled through their inexperience, marching against human rights in these days. They've had that in other nations that ground human rights to powder in times past; you can call up the list of those names and years in your own mind. Trying to "stand up to" a human rights lobby is going to land you in monstrous trouble, and in theory can get you prosecuted for conspiring to deny others their civil rights under the appropriate Federal law. As more than a few Democratic good ole boys got, there where old times are not forgotten, look away.

Nope. The NRA now represents force against reason.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/m...ype=collection


This is a good read.

No discussion of it here; so have we become used to or immune to vehicle attacks?

It's looking like it, unfortunately. The last time I was in a crowd, I found myself thinking about how I was vulnerable to a vehicle attack and powerless to do anything about it if something happened.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toront...sian-1.4632435

The Toronto driver is clearly one of the "rage against being" types of killers, ala Dana's JBP video. Hatred for being itself and a desire to take revenge for the outrage at it.