Debtor Nation

This says it all...
Going from "avoiding debt" to thinking we can "manage debt" is like
going from "avoiding fire" to thinking we can "play with fire"...
and the results were predictable... we got burned!

Debtor Nation - Real Clear Politics - Elections 2008 - TIME [This Post Continues after the jump...]

In capitalism, failure is not a dirty word

Private companies make enormous profits and justify it saying they are taking the risk, they should reap the benefits when things work out. But are they really taking any "risk"? The fact is some of the companies are just "too big" to be allowed to fail. If that's the case, then they should be split up like monopolies are split up. Monopolies are "too big" to allow for competition and they can legally be split up.

Likewise companies that get so large that their failure would hurt too many people must be split up somehow. If that can't be done, then we need to be willing to allow these large companies to actually fail. If a company gets too large that we are unwilling to let it fail, then there is no longer any "risk" for that company and therefore there is no justification of private ownership and huge profits. If the government/people guarantee the company, then the govt/people should reap the benefits/profits.

But I don't like government/public ownership of private companies. I prefer limiting company size (as we already do in some cases of media ownership, monoplies, utilities, etc) rather than some kind of public ownership.

OpenMarket.org » Archive » Lehman bankruptcy: In capitalism, failure is not a dirty word [This Post Continues after the jump...]

DVD ripping goes legit with RealDVD

This should have been "legal" years ago... And while this is a good first step, it still has a long ways to go. Paying more money to watch your movies on other PC is silly, only being able to rip the movie "uncompressed" is lame.

And the whole idea of having to pay for the right to copy and watch your own DVD's is just silly....


DVD ripping goes legit with RealDVD | Crave, the gadget blog - CNET [This Post Continues after the jump...]

AT&T’s Text Messages Cost $1,310 per Megabyte

Cooperate Greed at it's finest..

(2nd only to Microsoft charging me for a new OS when my computer died and I built my own replacement. I could reuse the hard-drive, monitor, keyboard, and all my other software but not a perfectly good copy of the OS)

AT&T’s Text Messages Cost $1,310 per Megabyte [This Post Continues after the jump...]

McCains report more than $100,000 in credit card debt

I wonder if this is really a balance they have left on the credit cards or if this is just a typical monthly balance.

But it still doesn't look good.. the democrat is "debt free" while the republican is loaded down pretty good.

TheHill.com - McCains report more than $100,000 in credit card debt [This Post Continues after the jump...]

Our Mounting Credit Card Debt

I thought this gave some numbers on the total Credit Card Debt but it only says 2.2 TRILLION was spent on credit cards last year. I assume a lot or most of that was paid off, but maybe this is the portion that was not paid off. Either way, we owe a lot of money.

And the US is a consumer driven economy, but we're consuming more than we can pay for. Add this to the government total debt and it looks more and more like everything is based on AIR. How long can this go on?

I really fear the whole system is going to stumble and fall one day. And just because I don't have any debt other than my mortgage, I doubt I will be any better off. We have a tendency of bailing people out -- which might make people with lots of debt that vanishes actually better off then me. But I'm hardly going to run up a huge debt and count on everything crashing and being bailed out by the government. With my luck, the crash would happen the day after I paid everything back or defaulted and they took everything away.

When credit cards put you in jeopardy - CNN.com [This Post Continues after the jump...]