🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <329A2F4D.13F1@tor.hookup.net>,
Mark J. Hayman <mjh@tor.hookup.net> wrote:

>Pyramid schemes really are that bad, their principal targets being the
>elderly and the ignorant.  The amount of paper (hence, trees, the things

Caveat Emptor.

>which allow us to breath) wasted every year is beyond justification. The
>amount of non-renewable resources spent producing the flyers and carting

Yeah, well what about all that junk mail i keep getting? All those brochures
which really aren't mail because they go to everyone... Now that's a waste
for paper. At one place i used to live, i even got flyers for a supermarket
which was not even present in that neighbourhood!

>them around is unjustifiable. The amount of human labour wasted in these
>trivial pursuits (...) is appalling.  It's all about greed, and nothing
>can justify that.

If you want to look at it this way, most things that are done waste human
labour. Any commercial competition wastes it since you can more effectively
use resources if everyone cooperates (and does not perform redundant
rasks) -- hence most commercialism is a waste. If (as another posts suggests)
people want to have a dream, and you are saying that that selling
such a dream is a trivial pursuit, then it could be said that most of the
entertainement industry is a waste (since we really don't need it). In fact,
why don't we just all become yeomen?

>And, yes, lotteries should be banned, they're just a form of voluntary
>taxation, again preying upon those who can least afford to spend the
>cash.  Might as well just leave boxes in stores to donate money to the
>tax system; amounts to the same thing.

Sure. There are boxes in stores for people to donate to various purposes. If
it's voluntary, then it should be up to the individual wherther to participate -- one could argue that advertizing for lotteries would be undesirable, though.

>And why is this so massively x-posted?  I'd curtail some of the groups
>but hardly know where to begin (I'm reading this in can.gov.general)...

I didn't realize that the article i was following-up to was so rediculously
cross-posted. My news reader just automatically posted to all groups in
which the original occurred. I've tried to reduce the posting in this
one. Sorry for that oversight.

-- 
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\ Matthew Bells <mbells@undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca>         \
 \ http://www.undergrad.math.uwaterloo.ca:80/~mbells/         \ 
  \ Shad WWW: http://www.civeng.carleton.ca/Shad/homepage.html \