Let's refrain from such unnecessary and inflammatory comments and stay on topic, shall we?

So, you actually believe that I am incapable of making some informed opinion of you based upon what you say within these forums. By your response it would seem that I have a better idea of you than you of me. Anytime you wish to compare notes, let me know.

I appreciate the humor so early in the morning, thanks. However, I don't think that because others cheat that it makes it okay to do so. If someone does something to benefit themselves knowingly that it will be at the expense of others then they're buttheads. It's not like racing, if you lose you can always race tomorrow. Those that lost their life savings may not have a tomorrow. Screwing people over shouldn't be trivialized.

I can't see where I mentioned 'screwing people over'.... nor 'cheating'.  Anyone Lance-Armstronging [new verb] in Formula One would get their butts kicked just like he did... but you should look into the ways various teams manage to make an un-moveable wing move when they are supposed to be 'rigid/fixed'.  It's simple interpretation of rules...not 'cheating' at all. ...

I am Gen-X actually, just barely.  By a year or two.  What of it? 

Does that somehow invalidate my opinion?  

Opinions tend to develop over time.....'mature' is another word for it.

Currently the world has us baby-boomers fucking it up.  You'll get your turn in a few more years.....don't fret....we'll leave some smoking embers...

Who trivialized anything?  Who said cheating was okay?  The statement that the three of us agreed upon is this (if I may paraphrase):

Within a system (healthcare market, the financial system, a sporting league) may the best entity win.  If someone is cheating, punish them.  If everyone is cheating, then the rules should be fixed and/or clarified to prevent the cheating.  If there are problems with the system, don't blame the players for playing by the rules that exist, blame the dopes who created the bad rules in the first place.  Hold the rule makers accountable and make them fix the rules to truly level the playing field.  

There is no trivialization there.  That's how markets work.  Rules exist, everyone plays by the rules and the best organizations get ahead. Where you run into problems is when the markets are distorted to favor certain entities at the expense of other entities (almost always by incompetent government interference).  Good regulation is what's needed.  Unfortunately we have almost none of it in the industries that matter because our corporatist overlords want to appear to be solving the problem while actually just handing the largest corporations nice great big barriers of entry to use to protect themselves against smaller competition and entrepreneurial market disruption.  In return they get nice contributions and cushy post-political career jobs.

But the fault in that isn't with corporations.  It's with the fools creating the rules of the game. 

no, of course not but the "what of it?" part is unnecessary, don't you think. Anyhow, it does provide me with glimpse and better understanding of how those opinions have formed.

myself am a baby boomer, grew up in Berkeley during the 60's (t'was the best of times). I'm sure you can deduct a lot just from this.

and when the corporations make the rules, what then.

Soft political corruption and too many Angelo Mozillo's.  But, warts and all, it still beats every other system ever tried.  Until humans are removed from the equation (or the planet), we'll still be contending with these issues in one form or another.

Metropolis...

you're so funny, I forgot to laugh. or, what no bouncing breasts. (and don't call me dear)

As much as I hate to agree with you on anything, I do on this.

Corporations don't make the rules.  They are using their influence to fill a gap in oversight of the government left by citizens.  

Ultimately, in the United States at least, citizens are responsible for the rules by which we live.  If the system is corrupted and broken it's the citizenry's fault for not paying enough attention and for not holding their representatives accountable.  People would rather spend their life on Facebook and tweeting and drinking and paying no attention to how this country is actually run.  And that's their right.  

However, in this country, under out system of government, we get exactly the government we deserve.  The success of democracy depends upon an informed and interested citizenry.  We don't have that, at least not in any real numbers.  When I said earlier in this thread that I thought our citizenry is dumb, that wasn't flippant.  I meant it.  As a whole, I have virtually no respect for the average American citizen as a citizen. The generations alive now in various states of running the show, baby-boomers, gen-x, millennials, have been given the greatest gift of any generation of human beings in the history of our species and we turned it into obsession with what Kim Kardashian thinks 140 characters at a time.  

But you know what?  Even in its imperfect and currently somewhat broken form, our system is still the best around because it's still the only one that, at least to some extent, aligns the incentives of individuals with what will ultimately benefit the system as a whole.  If you want to go out and be successful, you're welcome to try and if you can succeed at what you want to do, everyone else benefits by the jobs/wealth/culture you generate.  This is still the system of Google and Facebook and Tesla and Space-X and Apple and Microsoft.  Our system has still created a level of productivity unimaginable even 100 years ago.  We have created a growth in average quality of life that is slowly making its way around the world and will, provided we don't completely fuck up, eventually lead to a world that seems like a 1940s Sci-Fi novel Utopian paradise.  It'll be bumpy and messy and there will be mistakes along the way certainly, but that's the direction we're going despite the fact that our system has such problems.  

We could do better, if we wanted to.  But clearly we, as a society, don't want to put in the effort.  

As an side:  This is why I think the idea that we will somehow end up with singlepayer out of this mess is so wrong.  The only time that disinterested citizenry becomes interested and mobilized to action is when some event directly and noticeably affects them individually.  The coming healthcare premium increases and/or "If you like your plan you can keep it" plan cancellations will do that.  

Hate seems such a strong word. 

It's gobsmackingly obvious that the group of people we call our Founders were phenomenally self-aware concerning the defects of the human character.  We were lucky beyond imagination that such a collection of individuals found itself in that place and time.  They labored mightily to create a government that couldn't be easily co-opted by tyrants, but they knew even then that nothing could perfectly insulate our freedoms indefinitely (see Ben Franklin).