Image macros that make you laugh, cry, or both.

[Prak]

[Grek]

I eat my hotdogs norway style. We call them sausage wraps.

[Stahlseele]

@Prak fucking asshole bugs <.<
"No no, open world RPG, you can totally go that way from the start! . . mind you, you will die a horrible horrible death needlessly suffering again and again, but you totally can go that way if you want to!"

[Shrapnel]

This is the truest thing ever. Fucking cazadors killed me more times than any other goddamn thing in the entire goddamn game.

[name_here]

Fuck Cazadors. One of Old World Blues's "your organs are missing" perks gives you immunity to poison and I always use it.

[Josh_Kablack]

How the fuck does Cleveland get credit for appropriating what is clearly a Primanti Bros Sandwich?

[Username17]

How the fuck does Cleveland get credit for appropriating what is clearly a Primanti Bros Sandwich?

It's a "Polish Boy," which is the famous and signature dish produced by Cleveland's sportsball arenas. I've never lived in Cleveland and I knew that.





That thing got made on Iron Chef. It did not win.

-Username17

[Darth Rabbitt]

I was never too worried about cazadores because of this:

And while we're on the topic of post-apocalyptic deserts:

[Prak]

link

[hyzmarca]

Could you shrink that down a little. It's unviewably large.

Edit:Spoiler tags really don't help. Needs actual shrinkage.

Like that.

[Prak]

I just added a link to source, where it's not so huge.

[Shrapnel]

[Stahlseele]

some kind of warning about the picture in the spoilers.
not really sure what kind of warning was wanted here.

[Longes]

Wat

[...You Lost Me]

Stahl can you put that in spoilers with a warning?

[Username17]

Wat

OK, the whole "theocracy is a left wing ideology" thing is just gibberish, but the whole obsession with "force" is a dead giveaway that the person ranting there is some flavor or another of hard-right Libertarian. See, it's just a simple fact that every freedom from is opposed by a freedom to and vice versa. Your freedom from slavery is only made possible by denying me the freedom to own you.

This simple fact makes Libertarianism logically incoherent. For any set of freedoms you care to name, you could just as easily name their opposites as freedom. Your freedom to privacy vs. my freedom to inquire. Your freedom to masturbate in public vs. my freedom to travel without getting a dick in my face. And so on. So Libertarians who grasp at these problems attempt to define underlying reasons why we should privilege one set of freedoms over another. And one of their favorite ones is the idea that "force is bad."

Now that doesn't actually get them anywhere or make any sense. Obviously whenever there are two people who have opposing views of what freedoms should prevail in any situation, there has to be a resolution in favor of one over the other. And that resolution has to be backed by force, or it hasn't actually been resolved.

So really what we have is a shell game, where for no reason, every freedom they think is important is the base state, and any force protecting that status quo isn't "really" force. While conversely, any freedom that is against the set of freedoms that they want is contrary to the natural order and whatever force is enforcing that is evil.

And after that shell game is over, we are told that living in a Dickensian hellscape where they have all the money and ownership of the means of production and you have to toil for them night and day or starve and if you question their ownership of the land or the wealth or try to unionize and negotiate a better contract they will send police to beat, imprison, or kill you... is "no force." While living in a Scandinavian communist utopia is "extreme force." Because having armed guards beat the living shit out of you for asking for another slice of cheese is merely them defending their property, while the government asking them to pay taxes is robbery.

It's a nonsensical worldview, but it's obviously where that poster is coming from.

-Username17

[Stahlseele]

Stahl can you put that in spoilers with a warning?

"You would not put a picture in spoilers!"
*Like fuck i would not put a picture into spoilers! I would! I could! i did!*

[hyzmarca]

And after that shell game is over, we are told that living in a Dickensian hellscape where they have all the money and ownership of the means of production and you have to toil for them night and day or starve and if you question their ownership of the land or the wealth or try to unionize and negotiate a better contract they will send police to beat, imprison, or kill you... is "no force." While living in a Scandinavian communist utopia is "extreme force." Because having armed guards beat the living shit out of you for asking for another slice of cheese is merely them defending their property, while the government asking them to pay taxes is robbery.

Well, the Austrian School Libertarian assumption is that, because a completely unregulated market is perfectly efficient, demand for labor will always be exactly equal to the supply of labor, or close enough that it makes no difference.

In such a case, with perfectly equal demand and supply for labor, business owners and individual workers would have perfectly equal bargaining positions. Since labor is a zero-sum-game, management can't replace lost workers without poaching from other businesses. which would require offering higher salaries and more benefits.

It's insane because it assumes perfect market efficiency such that demand and supply will never be out of synch by a significant margin, which is completely absurd. Unregulated markets aren't supercomputers.

But the only reason Dickensian hellscapes are a thing is that the supply of labor usually outstrips demand by a significant margin. Robber barons can always fire you and hire another cog for the machine, a cog who will probably work for less. Take away that supply imbalance and you end up with individuals being able to demand fair wages from massive mega corps and get them.

I do like these articles, which are critical of Austrian economics, explaining how if such assumptions are market efficiency were true, it would mean that the free market was a hypercomputer with infinite processing power.

http://www.macs.hw.ac.uk/~greg/publicat ... IJUC07.pdf

and that P=NP.
https://ideas.repec.org/p/arx/papers/1002.2284.html

The thing is, unregulated Austrian Markets are Economically Optimal. And this includes labor markets. Everyone gets the maximum possible utility out of all transactions. Which means that all workers are getting the maximum possible wage.

Let's say, for example, that Bob and Tom are the only dirt shovelers in the world. Bob works for Dirtcorp and Tom works for Soilcorp. Both get paid $20 an hour.

Bob, however, is unhappy. He wants a raise. He demands at least $21 an hour for shoveling dirt and says that he'll quit if he doesn't get it. Dirtcorp Management refuses, Bob quits, Dirtcorp now has no dirtshoveler and needs to poach Tom from soilcorp. Tom likes working for Soilcorp and won't leave for less that $25 an hour, and Dirtcorp has no choice but to comply.

Then Bob goes to Soilco, which has a job opening. They offer him $20 an hour, but he points out that Tom is making $25 at Dirtcorp, and Dirtcorp would probably like to double their output with a second a second shoveler, so Soilcorp matches it.

Of course, Dirtcorp knows that this is the inevitable outcome and thus gives Bob the $1 raise. Tom points this out to Soilcorp and they match it.

This continues until Dirtcorp and and Soilcorp are paying their workers the literal maximum that they can pay their workers, and still function. And this no employer will ever pay their emplopyees less than the maximum possible salary that they can pay.

If Joe And Greg become Dirt Shovelers, bringing down the value of dirt shoveling by increasing supply above demand, then Bob and Tom will retrain and become the world's only two computer repair men. But they won't. Because the Market is perfectly efficient it will know this already and Joe and Greg will train to become computer repairmen instead of dirt shovelers.

[Kaelik]

Let's say, for example, that Bob and Tom are the only dirt shovelers in the world. Bob works for Dirtcorp and Tom works for Soilcorp. Both get paid $20 an hour.

Bob, however, is unhappy. He wants a raise. He demands at least $21 an hour for shoveling dirt and says that he'll quit if he doesn't get it. Dirtcorp Management refuses, Bob quits, Dirtcorp now has no dirtshoveler and needs to poach Tom from soilcorp. Tom likes working for Soilcorp and won't leave for less that $25 an hour, and Dirtcorp has no choice but to comply.

Then Bob goes to Soilco, which has a job opening. They offer him $20 an hour, but he points out that Tom is making $25 at Dirtcorp, and Dirtcorp would probably like to double their output with a second a second shoveler, so Soilcorp matches it.

Of course, Dirtcorp knows that this is the inevitable outcome and thus gives Bob the $1 raise. Tom points this out to Soilcorp and they match it.

This continues until Dirtcorp and and Soilcorp are paying their workers the literal maximum that they can pay their workers, and both are running dead even with 0 profit and 0 loses.

And then the CEOs of Dirtcorp and Soilco, because it is not illegal, call each other and agree that fuck all that shit, plebeian Dirt Shovelers don't deserve more than 10 cents an hour, and then both agree to shove their big corporate dicks right up Tom and Bob's ass, because there is no benefit to trying to cheat each other.

[Darth Rabbitt]

http://hugohugo.deviantart.com/art/Clev ... -539326509

[Username17]

The whole idea of market perfection is absurd on the face of it. Such a thing could never happen. But even if somehow all the information transfers were instantaneous, it still wouldn't work because of the power to strike. People can and do hold out for better deals, preventing any contract from going forward until they get what they want.

Owners can hold out longer than workers because owners are just in it to make "more money" while workers are in it to "be able to eat food." The idea that this gross power imbalance isn't essentially coercive is so ridiculous as to not be worth discussion.

-Username17

[DSMatticus]

And then the CEOs of Dirtcorp and Soilco, because it is not illegal, call each other and agree that fuck all that shit, plebeian Dirt Shovelers don't deserve more than 10 cents an hour, and then both agree to shove their big corporate dicks right up Tom and Bob's ass, because there is no benefit to trying to cheat each other.

Non-collusion (formal or otherwise) is another one of those bullshit assumptions on which the optimality of the ideal Austrian market hinges.

The whole idea of market perfection is absurd on the face of it. Such a thing could never happen. But even if somehow all the information transfers were instantaneous, it still wouldn't work because of the power to strike. People can and do hold out for better deals, preventing any contract from going forward until they get what they want.

Owners can hold out longer than workers because owners are just in it to make "more money" while workers are in it to "be able to eat food." The idea that this gross power imbalance isn't essentially coercive is so ridiculous as to not be worth discussion.

-Username17

Zero barriers to instantaneous entry is another one of those bullshit assumptions on which the optimality of the ideal Austrian market hinges (so if you want to you can just snap your fingers and be an owner).

You may be noticing a pattern here. Yes, the intellectual defense of the free market ultimately boils down to assuming away all the things that cause market failures.

[hyzmarca]

And then the CEOs of Dirtcorp and Soilco, because it is not illegal, call each other and agree that fuck all that shit, plebeian Dirt Shovelers don't deserve more than 10 cents an hour, and then both agree to shove their big corporate dicks right up Tom and Bob's ass, because there is no benefit to trying to cheat each other.

Ah, but then bob and Tom both quit, get a loan, and start Earthco, which puts both Dirtcorp and Soilco out of business.

And they will get that loan, there is no chance of the banks denying them, becasue Austrian School banks are perfectly rational actors with perfect information. They'll see that Dirtcorp and Coilco are failing due to their shit wages, and that Earthco would easily overtake them and gain market dominance.

Here's the thing. Austrian School and it's offshoots are predicated on the economy being populated by entirely homo economous. H. economous are not homo sapiens sapiens and do not act or think like h. sapiens. They're a completely different, utterly alien, species with no emotions and no biases who always make the decision that maximizes their utility.

The point is that market Libertarians aren't evil. They don't want a Dickensian hellscape. They've just drank the koolaid.

[Kaelik]

Ah, but then bob and Tom both quit, get a loan, and start Earthco, which puts both Dirtcorp and Soilco out of business.

And they will get that loan, there is no chance of the banks denying them, becasue Austrian School banks are perfectly rational actors with perfect information. They'll see that Dirtcorp and Coilco are failing due to their shit wages, and that Earthco would easily overtake them and gain market dominance.

How on earth does the plan: "I will secure your loan with literally nothing at all, and my business plan is to Do exactly the same thing as the industry standard, but pay my workers 2000 times what the industry standard is, but get the same work, and hire the same people" get even a single backer even if the banks where perfectly omniscient?

[Longes]