Romney and Ryan are both idiots... just saying.

Moderated by Kasz216

I think you are seeing it how you want to see it. I can't really say it is being critical of the philosophy, its a game, and they did have super powers. I can see it as a critic of the philosophy though because it does touch on some points that cause it to fall apart.

Bolded is the a great example of the problems this philosophy has.

First, rules exist. Who makes the rules? Ryan? A king/dictator in reality, regardless of the free market that exists because in essense it only exists because he allows it to exist. Screwing the rules, they don't hold much meaning, no checks, no balances. If someone isn't pulling all the strings rules don't matter and that's only if that person chooses to obey them and enforce them or not.

Second, competition. The real philosophic struggle as this utopia comes crashing down is the competitive nature of Ryan and Fontaine. They are bent to control the place through means of war. In the end its greed, a human nature attribute that is the root cause for the self destruction in such an environment. Free markets can be the most effecient but it is a fragile thing that will go to the ends of entire collapse so that one person can receive an advantage. It's not everyone and its not all the time, but it is not designed to handle greed and destruction, be it from the outside or from the ones in control. It is much easy to destroy than it is to build

Essentially if you give people free reign to do what they want things will go wrong, not everyone will participate but it does not take many to throw a wrench in the system and cause everyone else to be reactionary and easily manipulated. Pure capitalism relies on people doing what is right and doing what is industrial, but those things are not always mutual.

Actually, i was going more off of what i've read people talk about the game developers, and just listening to the audio tapes.

Personally I think anarcho capitalism is full of crap.  For a lot of the reasons you stated.

Though I think that's the same reason large overarching governments don't work either, because governments are also run by men with the same greed impulse... who have the power to give favors.  In general, i'm wary of people who WANT to be in government, I mean, who looks at the President's before and after pictures and things "Yeah, I want that."

What's needed in general is a small government which enforces very clear, uniform regulations on people and buisnesses with little to no room for exceptions and waivers and such.

So for example, a progressive income tax and corporate tax with zero deductions.

 Or clear easy to understand progressive regulations.

Since just how a flat tax disproportionatly falls on the poor... flat regulations fall disproportinatly on small businesses.

Also, I think we were basically making the same point more or less.   Either way i found the interview I mentioned earlier.

"Shack:  Do you think you gave Objectivism short shrift at all? I'm not an Objectivist, I'm just curious as to how you'd respond to that.  

Ken Levine: I'm fascinated by Objectivism. I think I gave it--I think the problem with any philosophy is that it's up to people to carry it out. It could have been Objectivism, it could have been anything. It's about what happens when ideals meet reality. If you had to sum up BioShock's story, that's what it is. When philosophers write books, when they write fictional works like Atlas Shrugged, they put paragons in the books to carry out their ideals. I always wanted to tell a story of, what if a guy wasn't a paragon? What if his intentions were really good, but at the end of the day he was human? I think that's where the problem is. It's not an attack on Objectivism, it's a fair look at humanity. We screw things up. We're very, very fallible. You have this beautiful, beautiful city, and then what happens when reality meets the ideals? The visual look of the city is the ideals, and the water coming in is reality. It could have been Objectivism, it could have been anything.  "

So in otherwords... Rapture was great... except for the fact that the guy in charge of it wasn't a paragon and he was human unlike in other stories.  He screwed things up... they all pretty much did.

If anything, i think it's analogous to Orwell's statements in 1984 (since he was a social democrat and would nominally sympathize with Oceania), the idea that human nature is going to muck up any governmental system

More or less the point I was making.  Though the bioshock guy does seem to suggest it COULD work if you had the right leader.  (In the short term of course.0

There are leaders afterall at least perceived to have transceded such things in popular culture.

In general, you need to be in a sitaution where everybodies hands are on the table so to speak, and everything is done extremely simply.

Obama's changed plenty. He ended the ban on stem cell research, ending the Iraqi war, is in the process of ending the Afganistan war, signed into law credit card reform, the Affordable Care act which is going a ways to ending the Health Insurance industry's abuse of the system by requiring them to spend 80% of what their customers pay them on health care and by banning the health insurance company's ability to exclude people with pre-existing conditions (aka sick people), he signed Lily Ledbetter, reformed the Credit Card industry, formed the Consumer Protection Bureau, and became the first sitting president to openly support homosexuals. He ended Don't Ask Don't Tell through legislation (a political statement, mind you, because the Supreme Court had declared it unconstitutional just weeks before), expanded federal benefits for gay couples working in the government and became the first sitting president to openly support gay marriage.

And these days he's also showing a lot of political courage by not just embracing something that was considered taboo just two election cycles ago, he's also becoming the first presidential candidate in a generation to embrace a populist message.

As for not cutting the deficit and reducing spending, well, that's a rather difficult thing to do in the middle of an economic down turn, especially given what he was left with. A tax cut that took hundreds of billions out of government revenue every year, two incredibly expensive wars, not to mention the reduced tax income that comes with that economic down turn he, again, inherited, which also spawned TARP, which of course just about everyone supported including McCain, Romney and Obama because it kept our financial sector from crashing in on itself and making the economy even worse then it already was (of course, this brought a variety of other negativies and let the banksters get off scott free, but we are talking about goverment spending and not the too big to fail financial sector, right?).

During an economic recession, the last thing the government should do is raise taxes or cut spending, the only ways to reduce the deficit. The government spending billions less in the economy is the equivolent of the public spending less: less spending means less money being put into the economy, which means less economic growth. That's why the stimulus was needed, and why the CBO estimated it saved at least a million jobs. Raising taxes, particularly on the JOB CREATING middle class, would like wise give them less money out of pocket to put into the economy. Finally, there where things like Cash For Clunkers and the auto bail out, the latter of which saved many vital middle class jobs.

So yeah, Obama didn't manage to reduce the deficit by much. But given what he inherited, that isn't much of a surprise. Now, since you love charts so much, I got some for you:

First, a breakdown on which president accrued how much debt during their tenure, courtesy of the New York Times:

Now, a breakdown on what individual things factor into our debt's past and future, derived from CBO estimates:

And there you have it.

The main concern right now should not be debt. Most of our debt is held by our own citizens or our government. Our country has seen far worse in terms of debt to GDP. After WW2, our national debt had climbed to 127% GDP. When republican President Eisenhowever came into power in the middle of an economic down turn, massive debt, and high taxes, his first instinct was not to cut spending and lower taxes.

Instead, in the 1950s, we grew our way out of debt and recession. Eisenhower undertook the building of the interstate high way system, which revolutionized our infrastructure and allowed our businesses to thrive. He started the space race against Russia. He kept our highest effective tax rate at 91%, which encouraged the CEOs of wealthy companies to reinvest their company's profits back into the company, rather then taking a big fat pay check. Our current highest effective tax rate of 35% is nothing compared to what my grandpa paid in the 1940s and 50s when he made his fortune. 

That is what we need to do now. We need to grow our way out. We need higher government spending to fix our roads and bridges, invest in public servants, and overall simply make America the kind of country it used to be before supply side trickle down economics and deregulation that took place over the last 30 years decimated our middle class.

That felt good. I'm done.

Ok, so I'm not a republican so a lot of what you just said I agree with.  However, I'm also not a democrat so I don't have some kind of partisan blinders on like you appear to have.  

First of all, stem cell research was never banned, just certain types of research wasn't being funded by the federal government.  Since most medical research isn't government funded, I would hardly call this a big deal or much of change at all.  I also wouldn't say Obama ended that Iraq war as much as Iraq kicked us out and Obama didn't dispute it.  Semantics I know, but also note that Obama promised to end the war in 2009 but the iraq war didn't end until end of 2011, just in time for election year...  The affordable care act was shoved through congress at a time that the nation should have been focusing on the economy.  I think it was a distraction that ultimately harmed the recovery effort.  The other things you mentioned are just junk washington bills that will end up having little to no impact on anything.

Look, I aplaud Obama on his gay marriage support.  Great job.  I would be happier if he actually did something about it.  I would be even more happy if he took marriage completely out of the governments hands, there is no reason why the government should have any say in who gets married to who.  It is a personal affair and the it should stay that way.  I think Obama has done some good things with education.  

I definitely don't agree with you on raising the taxes to carter levels, but going back to Clinton levels would be a good idea.  You should go back and look what happened to the country when taxes were that high, it didn't go well.  spending on infrastructure would be great if that was what we are spending our money on but it isn't. 

The fact of the matter, the reason the government is bleeding so much money right now is due to Social Security and Medicare.  Both programs have been pilfered by law makers over the year and can no longer support themselves.  They need to be reformed, but Obama won't touch it.  These programs need to be reformed in order to actually build the infrastracture you are talking about.  

I don't like Obama, I don't like Romney.  I don't like Obama because he has failed to live up to almost all the promises he made that I cared about it.  He is a weak president that even having control of both houses of congress for the first two years of being president he still failed to pass anything meaningful other than the affordable care act and that was an issue that should have been addressed later.  

I'll keep my reply short and relevant to OP. I think Paul Ryan is a smart guy. However, I think he also costs Romney Florida, and by consequence, the election.

If the Democrat campaign can successfully depict Ryan as a "killer of seniors", and "destorying their security", and majority of voters in florida believe that then yes Romney-Ryan will lose it for sure.

Funny part is Paul Ryan's mother is actually a senior aged 78 living in Florida on Medicare. So its still pretty hard to paint him as someone who "could care less about the elderly." Interesting enough the plan he was advocating in congress made no changes to medicare for those who are aged 55 and older. People younger than that then get more choices on their future benefits/securities instead of automatically forced into the government medicare plan.

It will be interesting to watch what happens.