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Introduction
Hello! I’m new here and you can blame @Spin for that. (Can I tag people with the @ symbol? I don’t know…as I said, I’m new here.) Anyways, I’ve spent the last decade and change wearing my county’s cloth as a Naval Flight Officer. Aviators aren’t generally known for their bookishness, so my long surname was replaced by the callsign “D12”. Facebook is my only social media outlet (Twitter is a sewer, and don’t get me started on the instaporn apps). I’m hoping to find rigorous and respectful discussions with passionately reasonable people. To paraphrase Dennis Prager, I don’t care much for consensus, but clarity is priceless. See you in the comment section!
Published in General
I flew the E-6b “Mercury”, possibly the least sexy and least known aircraft in the fleet. And that’s the way we like it!
Welcome aboard, D12! Glad to have you here, and thanks for your service. Good of Spin to guide you in this direction.
Hard to believe it, but that trip was almost exactly 11 years ago. 🤯 I cringe to think back to the young knucklehead I was, trying hard to adult but still only 22. Things have improved by the grace of God and my gracious wife. One of these days you’ll have to meet her and the kiddos, @Spin!
Welcome aboard, swabbie.
Recruiter’s fee. Standard. No holiday bonus or hazard pay.
I had it out on Facebook back during Hurricane Harvey with a bunch of knuckle heads who thought that charging $6 for a bottle of water was wickedness incarnate. Not exactly well versed in the study economics, they were horrified to hear me say that if I was allowed to raise the price of goods sufficient to make it worth my while, I’d consider driving my truck down from OKC to sell desperately needed things like bottled water, blankets, gasoline powered generators, gas, etc etc. As it was I couldn’t afford to do it with price controls in place. So, people went without for an extra few days. @spin was egging me on to do it again in the midst of martial law here in NorCal. I’m going to pass this time. My views are heretical enough as it is!
He ain’t wrote it yet. I challenged my friends on Facebook to defend it, as D12 and I had locked horns on the subject before. I knew he’d be the one to bite! So I said “Join Ricochet, write a post!” I hope he does. But he’s probably off making the world safe for Democracy just now…
Dogs, and it’s not even close. Sadly, our beloved pitbull/Labrador/mutt got hit by a car just before Christmas. Another reason I’m eager to get the heck out of CA.
Chicken.
Welcome aboard, D12!
Hey… its a good description. Passionate, reasonable – seldom at the same time.
Welcome!
You’ve come to the right place. Welcome.
It is?
Welcome
I liked the S-3 Viking, even though it was a sub hunter (I was in submarines) . . .
Welcome Mr. 12!
Is that you, Mayo Pete?
All you have when there is a B-1, B-2 and B-52 is a couple of bingo numbers and a Strategic Bomber.
B-52 retired at Barksdale. I am a DoD civilian now.
My thoughts exactly. Let the price float.
@Caryn chastised me for this opinion on a different post.
No one is required to buy.
So sorry for your loss. We lost a cat (yes, cats!) several years ago and that led to the others being made permanent house pets. Welcome to the club. It’s a nice place. Mostly nice people. Well, as some of the others said…Spin…hmmm…
In fairness, my objection was to people artificially creating scarcity specifically for resale during a national disaster. I have no problem with charging prices that reflect the costs of business. Driving necessary product to a disaster area should be compensated and the person willing to do so celebrated. Denuding shelves across 1300 miles for profit when people are likely to panic over those empty shelves is just wrong.
Although in a natural disaster, it is probably ridiculous to investigate the provenance of the supplies, particularly when someone is willing to pay the price.
Remember, the hoarder starts as a price maker, but ends up as a price taker as alternatives are considered.
*Urge to comment intensifies*…. Ok I can’t help it. I would like to point out the economic service the hoarders performed when they drove around vast areas last month buying up cleaning supplies: they signaled an increased demand to the suppliers before the panic set it. In theory, that should have stimulated production to ramp up, or at least for additional supply to surge to those areas sooner than otherwise would have occurred absent the foresight and risky behavior of the much-maligned price gougers. The real villain here is Amazon, a company that knows where large stockpiles of needed goods are, knows that the owner wishes to sell them at the market rate, and yet refuses to allow access to their world-leading platform and delivery service to get the desperately
neededdesired goods from seller to buyer. Second place in the villain category is the media for castigating the foresight of the so-called “gougers.”Aaand I’m going to stop right there. *strips shirt to accept flogging for heresy*
No flogging from here.
Yep.
Plus, no so-called gouger wants to be left holding the TP. The price will adjust to get it off the truck.
Welcome aboard D12!